Walther von Reichenau

Walther von Reichenau

Generalfeldmarschall Walther von Reichenau, 1941
Birth name Walter Karl Ernst August von Reichenau
Born (1884-10-08)8 October 1884
Karlsruhe, Grand Duchy of Baden, German Empire
Died 17 January 1942(1942-01-17) (aged 57)
Poltava, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union now Poltava, Poltava Oblast, Ukraine
Buried at Invalidenfriedhof Berlin
Allegiance  German Empire (to 1918)
 Weimar Republic (to 1933)
 Nazi Germany
Years of service 1903–1942
Rank Generalfeldmarschall
Commands held 10th Army
6th Army
Battles/wars

World War I

World War II
Awards Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross

Walter Karl Ernst August von Reichenau (8 October 1884 – 17 January 1942) was a German officer and Generalfeldmarschall during World War II. He issued the notorious Severity Order which encouraged German soldiers to murder Jewish civilians on the Eastern Front, and he was in charge of forces which helped to commit the massacre of over 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar as well as other massacres during the holocaust.

Early life

Reichenau was born in Karlsruhe, in the Grand Duchy of Baden, into an aristocratic Prussian family, the son of Ernst August von Reichenau (1841–1919), who later became a Lieutenant General. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries the Reichenau family owned and operated one of the largest furniture factories in Germany. Having passed the Abitur examination, Reichenau joined the Prussian Army in 1903.

During the First World War, Reichenau served on the Western Front, serving as adjutant and then as staff officer. He was awarded the Iron Cross Second and First Class. After the Armistice of 11 November 1918, he joined the Grenzschutz Ost Freikorps units in Upper Silesia and Pomerania.

In 1919 Reichenau was selected to remain in the newly established Reichswehr, the army of 96,000 men that Germany was allowed to maintain under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The officer corps of the new Reichswehr was limited to 4,000, and there was to be no German General Staff. Reichenau took a post in the Truppenamt, which was the "underground" equivalent of the General Staff formed by Hans von Seeckt. From 1931 Reichenau was Chief of Staff to the Inspector of Signals at the Reichswehr Ministry, and later served with General Werner von Blomberg in East Prussia. Here he supported Blomberg in the development of new tactics to put into practice the concept of mobile warfare that had shown promise at the end of the First World War. Reichenau had much of the written work of British tank proponents, including B. H. Liddell Hart and J. F. C. Fuller, translated into German.[1]

Nazi support

Generalmajor von Reichenau, 1933

Reichenau's uncle was an ardent Nazi and introduced him to Adolf Hitler in April 1932. Reichenau joined the Nazi Party, although doing so was a violation of the army regulations laid down by Seeckt to insulate the army from national politics.[2]

Reichenau married Alix, a daughter of the Silesian Count Andreas von Maltzan. During the war, Alix's sister Maria (Marushka) hid her Jewish lover Hans Hirschel from the Gestapo in her Berlin flat; Reichenau knew this and visited them there. Maria also worked to hide underground Jews and political dissidents, sustain them, or help them escape from Germany.[3]

When Hitler came to power in January 1933, Blomberg became Minister of War and Reichenau was appointed as head of the Ministerial Office, acting as liaison officer between the Army and the Nazi Party. He played a leading role in persuading Nazi leaders such as Göring and Himmler that the power of Ernst Röhm and the SA must be broken if the army was to support the Nazi-led government. This led directly to the "Night of the Long Knives" of 30 June 1934.

In 1935 Reichenau was promoted to lieutenant general (Generalleutnant) and was also appointed to command the military forces in Munich. In 1938, after the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair, in which General Werner von Fritsch was forced out of the Army command, Reichenau was Hitler's first choice to succeed him, but older leaders such as Gerd von Rundstedt and Ludwig Beck refused to serve under Reichenau, and Hitler backed down.

Second World War

Poland and France

In September 1939, Reichenau commanded the 10th Army during the German invasion of Poland. In 1940 he led the 6th Army during the invasion of Belgium and France, and in 1940, Hitler promoted him to field marshal during the 1940 Field Marshal Ceremony.

Barbarossa

Hitler and Reichenau in Russia, September 1941

During the German invasion of the Soviet Union, as commander of the Sixth Army, he led his army into the heart of Russia during the summer of 1941. The Sixth Army was a part of Army Group South, and captured Kiev, Belgorod, Kharkov and Kursk. Reichenau supported the work of the SS Einsatzgruppen in exterminating the Jews in the occupied Soviet territories.

T-34 tanks headed to the front

During its offensive into the Soviet Union, the German army was confronted with a number of superior tank designs. Reichenau inspected the Soviet tanks he came across, entering each tank and measuring its armour plate. According to general staff officer Paul Jordan, after examining a T-34, Reichenau told his officers "If the Russians ever produce it on an assembly line we will have lost the war."[4]

Death

On 14 January 1942 Reichenau suffered a hemorrhagic stroke after a run in cold weather,[5] and it was decided to fly him from Poltava to a hospital in Leipzig, Germany. However, he died before the flight could depart. The flight carrying his body crashed while landing in Lemburg. "The corpse of the dead man was so cut up that it had to be bound together with bandages." Hitler gave him a state funeral.[6]

War crimes

Politically, Reichenau was an anti-Semite who equated Jewry with Bolshevism and the perceived Asian threat to Europe. The infamous "Reichenau Order" or Severity Order of October 1941 supported the Nazi genocidal policies by instructing the officers thus:

"In this eastern theatre, the soldier is not only a man fighting in accordance with the rules of the art of war... For this reason the soldier must learn fully to appreciate the necessity for the severe but just retribution that must be meted out to the subhuman species of Jewry...".[7]

All Jews were henceforth to be treated as de facto partisans, and commanders were directed that they be either summarily shot or handed over to the Einsatzgruppen execution squads of the SS-Reichssicherhauptamt as the situation dictated.[7] Upon hearing of the Severity Order, Reichenau's superior Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt expressed "complete agreement" with it, and sent out a circular to all of the Army generals under his command urging them to send out their own versions of the Severity Order, which would impress upon the troops the need to exterminate Jews.[8]

Promotions

Awards

See also

References

Citations

  1. ↑ Liddell Hart p. 23
  2. ↑ Liddell Hart, p. 13
  3. ↑ Gross, Leonard (1982). The Last Jews in Berlin. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 253, 159, 133, 126, 83, 37. ISBN 0-671-24727-1. Retrieved 2009-12-18. ...her second sister Alix, and Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau, her baffling brother-in-law, one of the first, if not the first, important army officers to embrace the Nazis, who nonetheless knew of and liked Hans; who always came to Marushka's flat when he was in Berlin to have several glasses of his favourite drink, Turk's Blood, a half-and-half mixture of Burgundy and champagne; ...who one day, just before his death of a stroke in January 1942, warned Marushka that even he would be unable to help her if she ran afoul of the Gestapo for associating with a Jew.
  4. ↑ video by Guido Knopp and Henry Kohler: "Hitler's Warriors. Paulus the Defector." (accessdate=2012-1-08), year=1998; publisher=ZDF Enterprises.
  5. ↑ Glantz & House 2009, p. 192.
  6. ↑ Adam, Wilhelm; Ruhle, Otto (2015). With Paulus at Stalingrad. Translated by Tony Le Tissier. Pen and Sword Books Ltd. p. 1-2. ISBN 9781473833869.
  7. 1 2 Reichenau, Walter von (October 10, 1941). "Secret Field Marshal v. Reichenau Order Concerning Conduct of Troops in the Eastern Territories, 10 October 1941". Stuart D. Stein, The School of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, University of the West of England. Archived from the original on December 27, 2009. Retrieved 2009-12-18. The soldier in the eastern territories is not merely a fighter according to the rules of the art of war but also a bearer of ruthless national ideology and the avenger of bestialities which have been inflicted upon German and racially related nations. Therefore the soldier must have full understanding for the necessity of a severe but just revenge on subhuman Jewry. The Army has to aim at another purpose, i.e., the annihilation of revolts in hinterland which, as experience proves, have always been caused by Jews
  8. ↑ Mayer, Arno J. Why Did The Heavens Not Darken?, New York: Pantheon, 1988, 1990 page 250.
  9. ↑ Fellgiebel 2000, p. 352.

Bibliography

  • Craig, William (1974). Enemy at the Gates. The Battle for Stalingrad. Victoria: Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-139017-4. 
  • Fellgiebel, Walther-Peer (2000) [1986]. Die Träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939–1945 — Die Inhaber der höchsten Auszeichnung des Zweiten Weltkrieges aller Wehrmachtteile [The Bearers of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939–1945 — The Owners of the Highest Award of the Second World War of all Wehrmacht Branches] (in German). Friedberg, Germany: Podzun-Pallas. ISBN 978-3-7909-0284-6. 
  • Glantz, David M.; House, Jonathan (2009). To the Gates of Stalingrad: Soviet-German Combat Operations, April-August 1942. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-1630-5. 
  • Görlitz, Walter (1989). "Reichenau," in Correlli Barnett ed., Hitler's Generals. New York: Grove Weidenfeld. pp. 208–18.
  • Liddell Hart, B.H., The German Generals Talk. New York, NY: Morrow, 1948.
  • Scherzer, Veit (2007). Die Ritterkreuzträger 1939–1945 Die Inhaber des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939 von Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm sowie mit Deutschland verbündeter Streitkräfte nach den Unterlagen des Bundesarchives [The Knight's Cross Bearers 1939–1945 The Holders of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939 by Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and Allied Forces with Germany According to the Documents of the Federal Archives] (in German). Jena, Germany: Scherzers Miltaer-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2. 

External links

Military offices
Preceded by
none		 Commander of 10th Army
6 August 1939 - 10 October 1939 		Succeeded by
General Heinrich von Vietinghoff otherwise Scheel
Preceded by
none		 Commander of 6. Armee
10 October 1939 - 29 December 1941 		Succeeded by
Feldmarschall Friedrich Paulus
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