Sommé, Walter.

Sommé, Walter, born 27-05-1888 in Rittergut Libartowo, Posen, entered the Army as a Fahnenjunker and Company Officer in the 50^th Infantry Regiment on 01-05-1908, age 19. He was detached to the war school in Metz and was in the fields as an Adjutant of the 1^st Battalion of the 50^th Infantry Regiment until October 1915 and started a pilot training  and ended the war as a Hauptmann and Leader in a Combat Squadron. Sommé retired from the Service in 1925. He then was employed by the Army as an Instructor for Air Tactics at the Infantry School in Döberitz.  He joined the Luftwaffe Service  as an Oberstleutnant and commander of the Flying School in Braunschweig, on 01-04-1934. With the outbreak of World War II as a Generalmajor was commander of Special Purpose Air Region Staff Poland and later France. Higher Flying Training Commander Belgium and North France to 28-06-1941. Commander of Special Purpose Air Region Staff Russia with Army Group North, under Generalfeldmarschall der Infanterie, Wilhem Ritter von Leeb

  , until 22-10-1941. Commanding General and Commander in Air Region VIII in Breslau later Krakau to 31-07-1944 as a Generalleutnant and landed in the Führer Reserve (see Adolf Hitler)   until 31-12-1944. He was retired from the Army, age 56 on 31-12-1944 but still landed in US captivity on 14-04-1945 until he was released, on 11-06-1947. After the war Sommé lived in Düren, near the famous battlefields Hürtgenwald where the American lost about 60.000 soldiers and the Siegfried Line

.  

The United States lost 420.000 men on all battlefields during World War II.. Germany lost more then 7.000.000 of their population during World War II, from which 4.500.000 military deaths. Russia lost 8.700.000 soldiers and our Netherlands a total of 301.000, soldiers, resistance, population and Jewish people.

Death and burial ground of Sommé,Walter.

Walter Sommé reached the old age of almost 83 and died on 14-15-1971, two weeks before his anniversary. He is buried on the main cemetery, Ost Friedenstrasse, in Düren but alas I was too late as his gravestone was removed after 40 years in March 2011. But still resting there.

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