The last Generaloberst, Johannes Blaskowitz.

21-08-2018

gestapo

In the German War of 1866 came to 5,500 fallen soldiers (officers, NCOs and crews) one dead General. 1870 / 71- in the Franco-German war the ratio was 1 to 5,900. In World War I, 1548 Generals of the Reichswehr and Admirals of the Imperial Navy did not experience the war. A dead soldier in the Generals or flag officers came to 10,200 killed. In contrast, the total loss list of World War II lists no less than 963 dead soldiers in General rank. In addition to 223 killed, this number also includes those who died of wounds and illnesses, who died during the war or in captivity, those 20 of the Hitler judiciary and 33 executed by the Allies, as well as 64 Generals who died by suicide. This corresponds to a ratio of one dead in the General rank to 4,600 dead soldiers. Of 19 General Marshals of the Wehrmacht were at the end of war only three in the service in active. Of the more than 50 Generalobersts, only eight of them were currently active commanders. All the others were dead, missing, imprisoned, exiled, reprimanded or dismissed. A single army leader from 1939/1945 still on duty: the son of a clergyman;  Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz-as supreme commander of Army Group H in Holland.

From Alsace-Lorraine, Blaskowitz was finally sent to my country Holland for a final military service, where he had to take over the Army Group H, which consisted of the 1st paratrooper army and the weak 25th Army. But even here there were no more laurels to harvest, although Johannes Blaskowitz for the leadership of the battles in the cut off from the Reich “Fortress Holland” on 25-01-1945 as a 126th soldier was awarded the Sword of the Knight’s Cross.  On 05 May 1945 he had to surrender to the rivals of the 25th Army in Wageningen (Holland) because of the capitulation of the German troops in the area northwest.  His negotiating partners this time were the Canadian General Charles Foulkes   commander of I Canadian Corps  and the German -born Prince Bernhard von Lippe Biesterfeld  the Netherlands as Oberkommander of the Dutch army. Blaskowitz’s last journey took him to Nuremberg, where he too was to be charged with crimes against humanity-of all things he was the son of a clergyman.who had already campaigned for the humanities in Poland and was bred for it!  He could not cope with this. Like General of the Mountain Troops Franz Böhme,   the last Chief of the Austrian General Staff and Supreme Commander of the Norwegian Army at the end of the war, a year earlier, on 29 May 1947, age 62. Johannes Blaskowitz put an end to his life himself on the 5th February, 1948 -65 years old- by falling to his death in the light shaft of the Nuremberg court prison.