Henning von Tresckow
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Henning von Tresckow (January 10, 1901 – July 21, 1944) was a Major General in the German Wehrmacht.
von Tresckow was born in Magdeburg. In the winter of 1939/40 he served as general staff officer under von Rundstedt and Erich von Manstein in Army Group A.
From November 20, 1943 he served under Field Marshal Günther von Kluge as Chief of staff of the German Army Group Center in the Soviet Union until his death.
Although at first a sympathizer of National Socialism, he became an enemy of Hitler in 1938 and was active in the military resistance. He developed several assassination plots against Hitler and Himmler, but all failed. On March 13, 1943 for example, he managed to smuggle two packages of explosive disguised as bottles of cognac in Hitler's plane when the Führer visited troops at the Eastern Front. However, the explosive froze in the plane's hold, and Hitler returned safely to Berlin.
Von Tresckow killed himself with a hand-grenade, in a pretended partisan attack after Claus von Stauffenberg's assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler and the following coup in Berlin (July 20, 1944) had failed.
Tresckow had also fought as a young man on the western front during WW1 and took part at the battles of the Marne and Somme. He later took part in suppressing the Spartacist movement on January 1st, 1919, in which movement leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebnecht were murdered while in police custody. Like many prominent Prussian families, Tresckow married into another with long standing military traditions. In 1925, after a month long journey to Brazil and the Eastern United States, he returned to Magdeburg and married Erika von Falkenhayn, youngest daughter to the former Commander-in-Chief, Erich von Falkenhayn. Interestingly, General Erich von Falkenhayn was the original architect of the war of attrition on the Western Front, and engineered the assult on Verdun with the intention of bleeding France dry of both materiel and troops. After 400,000 casualties on both sides, the Germans withdrew, mired in stalemate.
According to recent historians, notably Prof. Christian Gerlach of the University of Pittsburg, Tresckow's activities during the war must be regarded with some suspicion, despite his varied attempts at killing Hitler. Gerlach, for example, argues that while he did take decisive steps to end the Nazi regieme, he actively participated in Nazi aggression against the East, where his logistic expertise was invaluable during the first phases of the Russian Front and within Army Group Center. Gerlach also maintains that he looked the other way when attrocities were brought to his attention, even signing orders, which contributed to civilian murders by Wehrmacht troops; and, specifically, the relocation of homeless Russian children to Nazi factories, where they faced certain death.
These contentious aspects of Tresckow's life only help to cloud his activities and intentions during the war, since they are all rather subjective and even harder to verify factually.
However, what is clear from a recent interview with his nephew, Christoph von Tresckow, is that Henning Tresckow hated the Nazis but was also a staunch anti-Communist. Indeed, he grew up on a large Prussian farm in what is now Poland, not far from the Russian border at the time. Certainly, he must have felt some fear at losing his family's "Heimat" to anti-religious communists not far to the East?
In this light then, it is possible to better understand his motives for aiding the Nazi invasion of Russia and lending his professionalism as a gifted officer to the Nazi cause.
And yet, as in any Faustian pact, Tresckow must have seen how the evil and murderous activities of the Nazis imperialed Germany's future. His well documented attempts at killing Hitler and ending the oppressive tyranny of the Nazis was an actualization of his understanding Nazi attrocities had on Germany and its future within Europe. Despite possibly being complicit in the war in the East, he was not willing to allow Hitler and his murderers to drag Germany down with them. This then, is the likely crux of Tresckow's motives, his character, and dilemma.
Ironically, as in all stories of the tragic hero, Tresckow's body was burned by the SS in one of the ovens at a concentration camp in Poland a few weeks after he killed himself, interned with the very victims of Nazi attrocities he could do little to stop.
[edit] Quotes
- "Hitler is not only the very enemy of Germany, but the enemy of the world."
- "The assassination must be attempted at all costs. Even if it should not succeed, an attempt to seize power in Berlin must be made. What matters now is no longer the practical purpose of the coup, but to prove to the world and for the records of history that the men of the resistance dared to take the decisive step. Compared to this objective, nothing else is of consequence."
- "No one among us can complain about his death, for whoever joined our ranks put on the shirt of Nessus. A man's moral worth is established only at the point where he is ready to give up his life in defense of his convictions."
[edit] See also
- July 20 Plot
- Widerstand
- Treaty of Moscow, 30/10/1943, "concerning the responsibility of the Hitler(amnesty) Followers for the committed atrocities". Since 1945 part of the UN-Charta, art. 106/107.
[edit] References
- Killing Hitler by Roger Moorhouse, (London, 2006), ISBN 0-224-07121-1
- The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer
- Staatsstreich by Joachim Fest
- short biography with photograph at the DHM (in German)