Staehle, Wilhelm.

Staehle, Wilhelm, born 20-11-1877 in Neuenhaus, in a Officer family. His father August Staehle was a Hauptmann in the Army, his grandfather Wilhelm Staehle was an Officer in Kassel and his mother Alberdina, born Wildeboer was from the Dutch town, Meppel. Wilhelm joined the army as a Fahnenjunker on 03-03-1897, age 19 and was a Leutnant in the subject of the boxer war in China.  He was on the Western battlefields of the first war as a Hauptmann and transferred to Berlin in 1916 to join the Prussian General Staff and an education to Reichswehr Officer. Gauleiter of Berlin was Joseph Goebbels.

From 1917 Staehle was a Signal Officer with the 4^th High Command in Flandern. Staehle was allowed in the new 100.000 men Reichswehr and involved in the put down of the Spartakusaufstandes in Berlin,  the battles between the different Free Corpses  He married Hildegard Stille, a divorced lady, in 1928, she was killed in a car accident, age 51, on 16-12-1945, and Staehle had to leave the Army. He was allowed in the Wehrmacht on 30-09-1937 and appointed as commander of the Berliner Invalidenhauses, a military disabled home and at the same time of the military orphan home in Potsdam. In the beginning he was an anti socialist as an old conservative Calvinistic Dutch worldview. He a religious man and was friends with the conspirator Carl Goerdeler, Goerdeler, a resistance man, was killed on the Berlin Plötzensee guillotine, age 60, on 02-02-1945. After the occupation of Holland in Mai 1945 (see Jan Ackermans) Staehle by his mother was involved in contacts with the resistance against Adolf Hitler and Goerdeler gave him order to talk about the coming coup d’etat. He talked in Coevorden with the leading people of the Dutch resistance in 1943 and asked for support for the possible new government after a successful attack on Hitler. This message was passed on to the Dutch exile government in London (see Pieter Gerbrandy) (see Queen Wilhelmina)  (see Prinz Bernhard),  but these were pretty reserved. After a successful assumption of power on 20-07-1944, Staehle would be the military leader in Holland and Belgium. Through the conservative resistance in his hometown of Neuenhaus he stayed in contact with the Dutch resistance, but this was discovered by the Security Police, Sipo, he was treated by a in January 1944 captured agent in Den Hague. His contact with the exile government in London was found too and Staehle was temporary imprisoned in February 1944.

Death and burial ground of Staehle, Wilhelm.

On 12-06-1944 Wilhelm was captured again suspicious of participation in the Solf Kreis, a resistance movement against National Socialism, most members didn’t survive the war. After 20-07-1944 he was imprisoned in the cell prison Lehrter Straße, in Berlin and was tried by the Volksgerichtshof under Roland Freisler    the judiciary. He was condemned, for favour of a political fugitive, to two years imprison. In the night of 22^nd on 23^rd April 1944, Staehle was killed by a shot in the neck by a special Commando of the Reichssicherheitshauptamtes, Reichs Security Main Office, in the neighborhood of  the Lehterstrasse. On 16-12-1945, his wife Hildegard was killed in a car accident under suspicious circumstances. Wilhelm Staehle is buried on the Invaliden Cemetery in Berlin, close by the graves of Gestapo head Reinhard Heydrich,

 Fritz Todt Armaments Minister , and Generaloberst der Infanterie, Werner Freiherr von Fritsch.

  , General der Flieger, Chief of the Reichs Air Force Ministry, Clark Gablenz, Vice Admiral, Lothar von Arnaud de la Periere, Hauptmann der Wehrmacht, Wolfgang Fürstner the commander of the Olympic village in 1936, General der Panzertruppe, Kommandeur der 16^th Panzerdivision , Hans Hube, the Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau, General der Flieger, Kommodore Jagd Geschwader 51 , Werner Mölders  the Flyer Ace, the General der Infanterie, died after bomb attack in the Wolfsschanze, Rudolf Schmundt Hitler’s Adjutant who was killed with the bomb attack, on 29^th July 1940, Generalmajor der Flieger, Kommandeur der 16^th Panzerdivision, Wolf von Stuttersheim and the Flyer Ace and a Hermann Goering favorite, Generaloberst der Fiieger, Director General of Equipment for the Luftwaffe, committed suicide, Ernst Udet.