Wolfgang Fleck

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Wolfgang Fleck (born May 16, 1879 in Berlin , † February 16, 1939 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German intelligence officer (NO) in Section III b and later General of the Infantry of the Reichswehr .

Life

Wolfgang Fleck joined the 3rd Thuringian Infantry Regiment No. 71 of the Prussian Army on March 13, 1897 as a Second Lieutenant . From March 1903 he acted there as adjutant of the III. Battalion and was commanded from October 1, 1905 to July 20, 1908 at the War Academy . The training there was primarily geared towards the later use of the graduates in the general staff, also included foreign language training with an interpreter test and was intended to prepare the carefully selected officers in peacetime for military tasks in wartime. In the meantime he was promoted to lieutenant on May 18, 1907 at the War Academy . On April 1, 1909, he was assigned to the General Staff . There he was employed as an employee of Department III for the area of ​​Russia in order to gain first general staff experience. In the spring of 1910 he then replaced the intelligence officer (NO) Walter Nicolai (1873-1947) with the I. Army Corps in Königsberg . As a member of Section III b of the Great General Tab, he was thus in a double function. Once, within the General Command, he was responsible for gathering and evaluating important military information about the Russian side of this border section. On the other hand, his tasks consisted of acting as an intelligence service, leading liaison officers and in this way obtaining information that the enemy had kept secret. Especially in times of tension, it was extremely important to be timely and truthfully informed about activities on the other side. In the first few months after the takeover, this was not so easy, as the network of informants taken over from his predecessor was very much geared towards Nicolai's personality and Fleck first had to build up the relationship of trust necessary for this work. When the Russian side carried out several mobilization exercises in 1911 and 1912 in order to test the degree of deployment of the military and other forces active in the border area, he had the necessary information only a few hours after the alarm was triggered. With his promotion to captain on March 20, 1911, Fleck was confirmed for another 2 years in his area of ​​activity as an intelligence officer of the III b in the section of the 1st Army Corps. According to the career determination for general staff officers, he was mandatorily deployed in early 1914 as a company commander in the infantry regiment "von Boyen" (5th East Prussian) No. 41 . The intelligence officer Friedrich Gempp (1871-1947) took over his previous duties .

With the outbreak of the First World War , he was reassigned to the Great General Staff. Here he was given the management of the intelligence service against southern Russia and Serbia and he took his seat in Teschen. From this point on, all intelligence officers in this front area were subordinate to him. His task was to lead these officers for intelligence purposes and to forward the information they received to Department IIIb of the General Staff. In addition to the reports of the liaison officers, there were also the documents stolen from the Russian staffs through the development of the war and the results of the obligatory questioning of Russian prisoners of war. In the summer of 1915, Fleck then moved to the Austro-Hungarian army as a communications liaison officer. Friedrich Gempp (1871-1947) took over his previous area of ​​work , who then took over the management of III b in the entire Russian front area as well as the command of the intelligence officers located there in the 4 army corps. On March 22, 1916, he was promoted to major and, to cover his activities as NO between the two armies, from June 1916 as an Ia in the General Staff of the I. Army Corps . From there he was transferred to the Prussian War Ministry on March 22, 1917 , where he remained until the end of the war. For his achievements he was awarded several awards during the war, including the Knight's Cross of the Royal Prussian House Order of the Hohenzollern with Swords.

Wolfgang Fleck was accepted into the Reichswehr in 1919 , where he was promoted to lieutenant colonel on December 18, 1920 , as chief of staff in the Reichswehr Ministry , and remained in the same position until March 31, 1923. He then took over command of the III on April 1, 1923. Battalion of the 7th (Prussian) Infantry Regiment in Hirschberg in the Giant Mountains . Two years later, on January 1, 1925, he became Chief of Staff of the 5th Division in Stuttgart . His promotion to colonel took place shortly afterwards on April 1, 1925. From February 1, 1928 to January 31, 1929, Fleck acted as commander of the 9th (Prussian) Infantry Regiment in Potsdam . At the same time he was promoted to major general , he was appointed Infantry Leader III on February 1, 1929. As such, he became lieutenant general on March 1, 1930 and commander of the 6th Division in Münster on May 1, 1931 . In this function, Fleck was also the commander in Military District VI (Münster) .

After the National Socialists seized power in early 1933, two generals were shot in the so-called Röhm Putsch in 1934 for alleged treason. When Reichswehr Minister Werner von Blomberg did not inform the other generals about the background, Fleck lost his trust in the Reichswehr leadership and submitted his departure. He wrote literally to Blomberg: "[...] it has not been customary in the Prussian army until now for the Wehrmacht Minister to lie to his military district commanders [...]". At the same time he was promoted to General of the Infantry, Fleck was retired from active service on September 30, 1934. He also received permission to wear the uniform of the 9th (Prussian) Infantry Regiment.

Wolfgang Fleck died on February 16, 1939 in Freiburg / Breisgau.

Awards

literature

  • Dermot Bradley (Ed.): The Generals of the Army 1921-1945. The military careers of the generals, as well as the doctors, veterinarians, intendants, judges and ministerial officials with the rank of general. Volume 4: Fleck – Gyldenfeldt. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1996, ISBN 3-7648-2488-3 , pp. 5-6.
  • Hilmar-Detlef Brückner, The intelligence officers of Section III b of the Great General Staff of the Prussian Army 1906-1918, in: Jürgen W. Schmidt, Secret Service, Military and Politics in Germany, Ludwigsfelder Verlagshaus 2008
  • Epkenhaus, Groß, Pöhlmann, Stachelbeck (Ed.) Secret Service and Propaganda in World War I (1914-1918) De Gruyter Verlag Oldenburg, 2019
  • Klaus Walter Frey, Colonel Walter Nicolai, Chief of the German Military Intelligence Service III b in the General Staff (1913-1918), in: Jürgen W. Schmidt, Secret Service, Military and Politics in Germany, Ludwigsfelder Verlagshaus 2008

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Walter Frey, Colonel Walter Nicolai, Head of the German Military Intelligence Service III b in the General Staff (1913-1918) p. 159ff in: Jürgen W. Schmidt, Secret Service, Military and Politics in Germany, Ludwigsfelder Verlagshaus 2008
  2. ↑ Hilmar-Detlef Brückner, The intelligence officers of Section III b of the Great General Staff of the Prussian Army 1906-1918 p. 26 ff. In: Jürgen W. Schmidt, Secret Service, Military and Politics in Germany, Ludwigsfelder Verlagshaus 2008
  3. ↑ Colonel Walter Nicolai, Geheime Mächte - Internationale Espionage and their combating in World War I and today, Verlag KFKöhler, Leipzig 1923, p. 83ff.
  4. ↑ Epkenhaus, Groß, Pöhlmann, Stachelbeck (ed.) Secret Service and Propaganda in World War I (1914-1918) De Gruyter Verlag Oldenburg, 2019
  5. ↑ HF Berndorff: General between East and West. Hamburg 1953, p. 312.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g Reichswehr Ministry (Ed.): Ranking list of the German Reichsheeres . Mittler & Sohn Verlag , Berlin 1930, p. 107.
personal data
SURNAME Fleck, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German general of the infantry
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 16, 1939
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau