Speck Hermann Ritter von, born 08-08-1888, in München , the son of the Bavarian Generalmajor Maximilian Ritter von Speck and his wife Josefine, born Pfülf, occurred after attending a Humanistic High School
, the Royal Bavarian Army
on 18-07-1907, age 18. Hermann came to the 3rd Royal Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment “Prince Leopold”.
On 11-02-1908 he was promoted to Fahnrich. After attending the war school, he was promoted to Leutnant on 07-03-1910. As such, he was then employed as a battery officer in the 3rd Royal Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment “Prince Leopold”. After a command at the Munich Artillery and Engineering School, Leutnant von Speck became an adjutant to the 2nd Division, under command of Otto Ernst Vinzent Leo von Below
of his regiment on 01-05-1913. When war broke out on the Western Front, his personal involvement in an attack near Nancy brought about a decisive turn in the attack, which earned him the Knight’s Cross of the Military Max Joseph Order
on 07-09-1914. He was thus raised to personal nobility and was now allowed to call himself Knight of Bacon. From 19-05-1915, he was promoted to first Leutnant. As such, on 04-06-1916, he here with General Heye
was appointed regimental adjutant to the 3rd Royal Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment “Prince Leopold”. On 26-12-1917 Speck took over the command of a battery of the Landwehr Field Artillery Regiment 1. Promoted to Hauptmann on 22-03-1918, he was employed as a deputy adjutant by the 6th Field Artillery Brigade after the war. Speck married Melitta, born born Rogetzki, in 1919. A daughter emerged from the marriage. On 01-02-1919, he took over the management of the 1st battery. On 04-03-1919, the Speck security battery was installed, with which he acted on April 12, 1919 against insurgent communists in Bavaria. The security battery was then renamed the 1st battery of the Reichswehr Artillery Regiment 24. He
himself was taken over as a captain in the army. He married Melitta, born Rogetzki,
in 1919. The marriage resulted in a daughter. In the spring of 1920, he was also deployed to the 200,000-man transitional army as chief of battery for the Reichswehr Artillery Regiment 24. He then came to the 7th (Bavarian) Artillery Regiment in the formation of the 100,000 man army of the Reichswehr.
Von Speck then completed his driving assistant training (General Staff training) in the early 1920s. He spent the years 1923/24 with the General Staff of Group Command 2 in Kassel. In 1925 he was transferred to the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin. First, he was used in the Army Department (T 1) by the Troop Office (TA). In 1926 he came to the Wehrmacht department. Promoted to major on 01-11-1927, he later became adjutant to the chief of the Army Command. In 1929 he, was transferred to the staff of the 3rd Division of the Reichswehr in Berlin, two years later he was appointed Oberstleutnant to the 1st General Staff Officer (Ia) at the staff of the 7th Division of the Reichswehr in Munich. In 1932 he was appointed commander of the 1st division of the 7th (Bavarian) Artillery Regiment in Würzburg.
On 01-04-1934, he gave up his command when he was promoted to Oberst. For this he was now assigned to the command office in Regensburg. During the expansion of the Reichswehr to the Wehrmacht, he was appointed commander of the Amberg Artillery Regiment on 01-10-1934. When the associations were exposed, he was appointed commander of Artillery Regiment 10 in Amberg on 15-10-1935. He kept this command for the next few years. On 01-08-1937, he was promoted to Generalmajor. In the spring of 1938, he took over the 33rd Infantry Division
as the successor to General of the Infantry Eugen Ritter von Schobert. Schobert, with his pilot, during a reconnaissance flight landed in a minefleld and died..
On 01-06-1939, von Speck was promoted to Generalleutnant. He gave up command of the 33rd Infantry Division at the end of April 1940. For this purpose, von Speck with the leadership of the new Generalkommando XXXXIII Army Corps instructed. With this he then took part in the western campaign in the spring of 1940. The XXXXIII. Army Corps was created on 15-04-1940 in military district XI (Weimar). It participated in the Battle of France, where it played only a secondary role. After the French capitulation it occupied the Channel coast in the area of Rouen.
During the French campaign at the end of May 1940, he gave his leadership over the corps to Generalleutnant Franz Böhme. Böhme committed suicide on 29-05-1947, aged 62, by jumping from the 4th story of the prison in which he was being held. His body was interred at St. Leonhard-Friedhof in Graz, Austria. Ritter von Speck has now been transferred to the
Death and burial ground of Speck, Hermann Ritter von.




On 05-06-1940, he received command of the General Command XVIII. Mountain Corps. He replaced General der Infanterie Eugen Beyer
On 15-06-1940, age 51, Ritter von Speck fell while exploring a Pont-sur-Yonne bridge, by French machine gun fire. After nightfall, he brought forward two guns of his own accord and opened fire on the houses of the village with them from close distance. Worn down by the surprising artillery fire, the defenders conceded the location. Von Speck is transported to his car to take him to a dressing station, After a short time, the wound turned out to be so severe that the journey had to be stopped. Before the doctor who had been summoned arrived, Generalleutnant von Speck closed his eyes forever. The German infantry could move at midnight, the brave intervention of the leader of the two guns spared them a costly urban battle.” He was the first German General to fall in World War II. The new situation does not alter the will of the Germans who built a pontoon bridge near Sixte. The attack intensifies in the north. The defenses are under siege, the brick building located on the left bank at the corner of Carnot and Gambetta streets is riddled with bullets. Taking advantage of the night, the order of withdrawal is given to Villeperrot, where the fights will continue. Given the large number of casualties, 26 civilians and 163 soldiers, during these two days, the new German commander of the sector will have a mass celebrated by the French-American Roman Catholic prelate Bishop Jean Baptist Lamy.
An honor guard frames the coffins in the cemetery Lamey died of pneumonia in 1888 and is buried under the sanctuary floor of the basilica.
A bronze statue, dedicated in 1915, stands in his memory outside the front entrance of the Basilica, and the village of Lamy, New Mexico, was named after him near the source of the sandstone for the Cathedral.
General Speck subsequently received the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross on 07-10-1940 and was appointed General
of Artillery with effect from 01-06-1940. General Hermann Ritter von Speck
was buried in a field grave in Pont-sur-Yonne.
In 2010, Jay Nordlinger spoke with von Speck’s daughter, who claimed that the General deliberately sought death in battle “According to his daughter, he wanted to die, and arranged to die. He felt he could not break his oath to the army — he could not desert. And his Catholic faith prevented him from committing suicide — suicide straight out, you might say. So, he put himself in the line of fire. In his dying words, he did not say, ‘Give my love to my family’, or anything like that. He said, ‘It had to be this way’.”



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