Fellgiebel, Walther Peer.

Fellgiebel, Walther Peer, born 07-05-1918 in Berlin-Charlottenburg, the son of General Fritz Erich Fellgiebel, a major conspirator in the July 20 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. As head of Hitler’s Signal services, Fellgiebel knew every military secret, including Wernher von Braun’s 

 rocketry work at the Peenemünde Army Research Center. Erich Fellgiebel’s  most famous act that day was his telephone report to his co-conspirator General Fritz Thiele   at the Bendlerblock , after he was informed that Hitler was still alive: “Etwas schreckliches ist passiert! Der Führer lebt!” (“Something awful has happened! The Führer lives!” Thiele was found guilty by Jurist Roland Freisler 

and hanged in the Plötzensee, age 50 on 04-09-1944.

Fritz Thiele joined the Army in March 1914 and completed a training course as a communications officer. In 1936 he was transferred to the Reich War Ministry and in 1940 he was appointed as chief of the office group Armed Forces Communications in the Armed Forces High Command. In this capacity he worked closely with General Erich Fellgiebel, chief of Army communications, and with Fellgiebel’s deputy, Colonel Kurt Hahn. Thiele collaborated with them in planning the “Valkyrie” operations and in cutting communications links to the “Führer’s” headquarters, the “Wolf’s Lair” on July 20, 1944. After the failure of the assassination attempt, when it became clear that Hitler was still alive, Thiele opposed continuing with the coup plans. After Fellgiebel’s arrest the following day he initially took over his assignments in the communications center of the “Führer’s headquarters.” Fritz Thiele was arrested by the Gestapo on 11-08-1944. He was sentenced to death by the People’s Court on 21-08-1944 and murdered on 04-09-1944 in Berlin-Plötzensee.  Oberst Kurt Kahn  was arrested on 12-08-1944, sentenced to death with six other officers by the People’s Court on 04-09-944, age 43 and murdered the same day in Berlin-Plötzensee. His wife was only informed three weeks after his murder that the death penalty has been carried out.

On 10-08-1944,  Fritz Erich Fellgiebel was also found guilty by Roland Freisler and sentenced to death. He was executed/hanged on 04-09-1944, age 57, at the Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.

  Plötzensee is a prison in Berlin-Charlottenburg. The prison was built between 1868 and 1879 and, after the takeover of the National Socialists in 1933, had an important function as a prison and as a central execution site for political opponents of the Nazi regime. Between 1933 and 1945, 2,891 people were put to death in Plötzensee, including members of the Rote Kapelle and of the plot of July 20, 1944 against Adolf Hitler. The Plötzense Monument was erected in 1952.

About half of the 2891 executed were German, most were sentenced to death for resistance to the Nazi regime. Among them were members of the Rote Kapelle, the plot of 20-07-1944 against Hitler and the Kreisauer Kreis. 677 executed came from Czechoslovakia, 253 people were executed from Poland and 245 from France. The number of female victims was 300.

Die Rote Kapelle, literally translated as The Red Orchestra, was a resistance movement and espionage group that, according to the government of the former GDR, had a major influence on the defeat of Germany during the Second World War, but according to Western historians it was mainly significant as a resistance movement against the Nazis. used to be. However, her information would have been of little value to the Soviet Union, because the Soviets would not have been militarily interested in Western Europe during World War II. The significance of the politically left-oriented movement is still assessed very differently, depending on the political color of the writer. The famous theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer,   himself an opponent of the Nazis, had great appreciation for the movement. The three main “founders”, or members from the very beginning, were the architect Harro Schulze-Boysen  and the economist Arvid Harnack and his wife Mildred Fish.   The Rote Kapelle played along for quite some time, but when Konstantin Efremov a Soviet GRU intelligence officer, known as a scout in Soviet intelligence parlance, with the rank of captain.Jeffremov, an anti-Semite. was an expert in chemical warfare.and was arrested and severely tortured during the interrogations, he betrayed part of the group. Although this was a small part, thirty men were still arrested and sentenced to death. According to another version, German counterintelligence, the Abwehr, managed to decipher a secret message from the group in 1942, thus discovering the whereabouts of some of its members. A total of 217 members of Die Rote Kapelle were arrested and convicted, 143 were executed (mostly in the Berlin-Plötzensee prison, by hanging from a meat hook) or lost their lives in a concentration camp.

Walther Fellgiebel followed the Primary School in Weinhübel and the Gymnasium in Berlin and Altdöbern and made his final examination in 1937. After the Reichs Labour and Wehr service, he joined the War School in Hanover and shortly before the outbreak of World War II he was promoted to Leutnant of the Artillery. Walther had his own distinguished military career and was involved in the Poland invasion with the 28^th Infantry Regiment as an Adjutant. He won the Iron Cross Second Class on 13-07-1940, during the French Campaign as an Oberleutnant. On July 30-07-1941, Fellgiebel received the Iron Cross First Class and the wound badge in Black , for actions on the Russian Front with the 298^th Artillery Regiment, as an Adjutant. He would receive the Wound Badge in Silver , for additional wounds, on August 03-08-1943. An artilleryman, Walter Fellgiebel won the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross on 07-09-1943 as the battery commander of the 2^nd Battery of the 935^th Light Army Artillery Detachment. Ten days later, Fellgiebel received the General Assault Badge as an Hauptmann. The younger Fellgiebel was probably unaware of his father’s participation in the assassination plot, but was arrested on 01-08-1944.

Death and burial ground of Fellgiebel, Walther Peer.

 Fellgiebel here with Oberst Martin Steglich

   and Generalleutnant Heinz Georg Lemm   was released for lack of evidence, but re-arrested in February 1945. Generalfeldmarschall Ferdinand Schörner

  personally interceded and restored Fellgiebel’s rank to Major and assigned him as commander of Artillerie-Abteilung 935. He thus survived the war. He served as the head of the Association of Knights Cross Recipients  .After the Second World War, the former officer initially worked in agriculture from 1945 to 1948, among other things. as a farm driver and trustee of an estate. From 1948 he worked as an industrial clerk, so he became managing director of a transport company and opened a rental car company. He later rose to the position of department manager at an industrial gas company. He made a career at the German Zündwaren-Monopoly Company (DZMG) from 1950 onwards, first as an assistant to the management, then as a clerk and authorized representative or personnel manager. In 1963 he became a member of the two-person board in Frankfurt am Main. In 1975 Fellgiebel received the Federal Cross of Merit, 1st Class.

Fellgiebel who was married with Rosemarie and had two children retired in Frankfurt am Main, where he died at the age of 83, on 14-10-2001.Walther Fellgiebel is buried with his wife Rosemarie, who died age 79, in 1999 on the Hauptfriedhof, Main cemetery, in Frankfurt am Main.

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