Falkenhausen, Alexander Ernst Alfred Hermann von.

Falkenhausen, Alexander Ernst Alfred Hermann von, born 29-10-1878 in Blumenthal, Silesia, one of seven children of Baron Alexander von Falkenhausen (1844–1909) and his wife, Elisabeth. His youngest brother was the SA Oberführer Hans-Joachim von Falkenhausen. (born 05-10-1897 in Brieg ; † 01-07-1934 in Berlin )  In his youth, Alexander von Falkenhausen initially wanted to be an explorer, but was then expelled from the grammar school in Breslau and then attended the cadet institute in Wahlstatt / Lower Silesia. He began his military career at the age of twelve. He was commissioned as a second leutnant in the German Army in 1897, age 19 and served as a military attache in Japan prior to the First World War. He was a nephew (nephew) of Ludwig von Falkenhausen, the commander of occupied Belgium in the First World War. He himself fought in the Boxer Rebellion and fought in the First World War on the Eastern and Western Fronts and in Palestine. Alexander was a great lover of Asian cultures. In 1930, von Falkenhausen retired from service and went to China to serve as Chiang Kai Shek’s  military adviser. During his 72^nd birthday in 1950, Falkenhausen received a million dollar cheque from Chiang Kai-Shek as his birthday gift and a personal note declaring him a “Friend of China”. Recalled to active duty in 1938, he served as an Infantry General on the Western Front until his appointment as military governor of the Netherlands, lost his command to General der Flieger, Friedrich Christiansen

  and became governor for Belgium in May 1940.

While serving as military governor his administration published 17 decrees against the Jewish population of Belgium as preparatory measures leading in June 1942 to the Final Solution and the deportation of 28,900 Jews. He was the head of the military government of Belgium from 1940–44 during its occupation by Germany in World War II. Von Falkenhausen was a close friend of two anti-Hitler conspirators, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler   Goerdeler was hanged at the Plötzensee prison, age 60, on 02-02-1945 and Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben , he was hanged too at Plötzensee age 62, on 08-08-1944

and soon came to detest Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime, offering his support to von Witzleben for a planned coup d’état. After the failure of the July 20 Plot in 1944, on Adolf Hitler (did you know), von Falkenhausen spent the rest of the war transferred from one concentration camp to another. In late April 1945 he was transferred to Tyrol together with about 140 other prominent inmates of the Dachau concentration camp, where the SS left the prisoners behind. He was liberated by the Fifth U.S. Army  under Lieutenant General Lucian King Truscott ,  on 05-05-1945. Alexander Falkenhausen and SS Gruppenführer, Eggert Reeder, he served as civilian administrator of Wehrmacht occupied Belgium,

Reeder was promoted SS-Gruppenführer on 09-11-1943. With both the build up of the US Army in England from 1944, and the advancement of the Soviet Red Army in the east, the Nazi occupation in the west became more focused on the final solution. After the Allied Forces invasion of Normandy in June, the Nazis relieved de Foy of his position, in part driven by the rumors that he was “London’s man,” having made contact according to post-War records with the Belgian Resistance via both Walter van der Ganshof Meersch and William Ugeux.

After Robert Jan Verbelen, a Belgian Nazi collaborator who died age 79, in January 1990  was made head of the De Vlag Veiligheidscorps , a Nazi SS security force in Belgium, and a failed attempt to execute De Foy by firing squad, he was placed in jail.  Robert de Foy was a Belgian magistrate, and head of the Belgian State Security Service, who served the Nazis during their occupation of Belgium. As the Allies entered Belgium, De Foy was released and went into hiding. Reeder was taken prisoner on 18-04-1945. He was with Falkenhausen sent to Belgium for trial in 1948, and in March 1951 they were sentenced to 12 years hard labour for deporting 25.000 Jews, (see Anne Frank)  (see Settela Steinbach)

    (see Adolf Eichmann) and executing Belgian hostages. They were defended by lawyer Ernst Achenbach.  He died age 82, on 02-12-1991, in Essen. Reeder died age 65, on 22-11-1959 in Wuppertal. During his trial in Nuremberg, Falkenhausen was vouched for by a Chinese woman named Qian Xiuling  born in 1912, who was living in Belgium, provided copious evidence that he tried to save Belgian and Jewish lives (see Simon Wiesenthal).

    As a result of this and other exculpatory evidence, he was acquitted and released three weeks into his sentence after overwhelming evidence proved that Falkenhausen tried to save as many Jews and Belgians as possible from deportation and execution.

Death and burial ground of Falkenhausen, Alexander Ernst Alfred Hermann von.

    On return to West Germany, on 30-07-1951 they were pardoned by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer  Falkenhausen died in Nassau, Rhineland-Palatinate, on 31-07-1966, at the old age of 87. He is buried with his wife Cecile, born Vent, on the village cemetery of Nassau/Lahn.

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