Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven
Wessel Freiherr Freytag von Loringhoven (born 10 Novemberjul / November 22 1899greg in Great Born, Kurland, .. † July 26, 1944 in OKH Mauerwald, East Prussia ) was a colonel in the general staff of the German Wehrmacht. He was a member of the military resistance against Adolf Hitler and friends since 1937, Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, who exercised the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944.
Life
Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven came from the Baltic branch of an old Westphalian noble family and grew up Adiamünde ( Skulte ) in Livonia on. After graduation he joined in 1918, the Baltic country's military, with their conversion in the 13th Infantry Regiment of the Latvian Army, he was Latvian soldier. In 1922 he left as a German - Balt the newly founded Republic of Latvia to join the German Reichswehr.
His military career took him in 1943 as a Colonel in the High Command of the Wehrmacht ( OKW ). Initially, a sympathizer of National Socialism, he joined because of his experiences during the Eastern campaign and the associated German crimes the Resistance. Through his work as Ic of Army Group South against the security police, he collided in the spring of 1942 with the tips of the SS in Ukraine ( see this "Secret FS SS brigade leader Dr. Max Thomas ( Security Office, Commander of the Security Police and Security Service) to SS Obergruppenführer Hans -Adolf Priitzmann ( HSSPF ) "). However, he was able to escape announced in the telex further investigation by the SS. In 1943 he was seconded at the instigation of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris as Colonel to the OKW to Berlin and there used II Sabotage Canaris in the intelligence chief of the department. His predecessor in this office was Major General Erwin Lahousen, with whom he and Admiral Canaris flew on 29 July 1943 Venice to inform the Italian intelligence chief Cesare Amé on the SS plans for the removal of pope and king. Canaris had managed to get approved the Venice flight Keitel in "Check the allegiance of Italy". The success of this trip confirm the " memories " of the then German ambassador to the Vatican, Ernst von Weizsäcker (page 362ff. ).
Wessel Freytag von Loringhoven got the explosives, the assassination took with the Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg on 20 July 1944. Following the resignation of Wilhelm Canaris from the Office Defence / Foreign Freytag- Loringhoven had to leave the defense. He found his next job as head of the military affairs department of the General Staff of the Army. There he was, thanks to its position procure English explosives detonators, which he now pretended to have the end of June 1944 sunk in Mauersee. However, the Gestapo was able to demonstrate after the failure of the assassination attempt on 20 July 1944 that the detonators and explosive material came from this same source and Freytag- Loringhoven had handed over the material to Stauffenberg. This is consistent with the representation of Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff, who handled the explosives at Army Group Center and how Tresckow and Schlabrendorff had tested (p. 121 and 144 in " Soldier in the downfall ", photo of the second, von Stauffenberg and Werner von Haeften discarded as they travel to the airport explosives package. ) Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the Reich Security main Office was able to educate Freytag perpetration in detail. On 26 July 1944 immediately prior to his arrest by the Gestapo, sat Freytag- Loringhoven his own life to an end, because it was known as an officer of military intelligence, the expected interrogation methods for the detection of co-conspirators.
The chances of success of an attack he had seen highly skeptical.. Example, at a meeting of resistance officers in Castle Tolksdorf (near the " Wolf's Lair ") in the early summer of 1944, he then said: "But even if we do not succeed, will be available at least in German history that people have risked their lives, to eliminate these criminals. " ( from Prince Alexander Dohna- Schlobitten: "Memoirs of an old East Prussia ", p.186 ). Freytag- Loringhovens farewell letter to his wife is in the Military History Museum of the Bundeswehr in Dresden. After his death, his wife was jailed along with the women of the other participants of July 20 in Moabit. His four sons were separated from their mother and put into Bad Sachsa into custody from which they were released in October 1944.
Works
As news chief of Army Group B, he presented the Battle of Stalingrad in early October of 1942 a memorandum which awaited the big Russian attack -on-Don, where he actually broke out on 19 November. The upcoming battle of encirclement, he saw it unerringly ahead, but the content of the memorandum left at his headquarters and Hitler no effect.