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Karl Strecker
Born	20 September 1884 Radmannsdorf, West Prussia
Died	10 April 1973(1973-04-10) (aged 88) Riezlern, Austria
Allegiance	German Empire (to 1918) Weimar Republic (to 1920) Nazi Germany
Service / branch	Prussian Army Reichsheer Army (Heer)
Years of service	1905–1920 1935–1945
Rank	General der Infanterie
Commands	79. Infanterie-Division XVII. Armeekorps XI. Armeekorps
Battles / wars	Battles/Campaigns World War I Tannenberg Marsurian Lakes Battle of the Vistula River Battle of Łódź Invasion of Russia (1915) Invasion of Romania Second Battle of the Aisne First Silesian Uprising World War II Battle of France Operation Barbarossa Battle of Kiev (1941) First Battle of Kharkov Battle of Stalingrad
Awards	Awards Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross German Cross in Gold Iron Cross 2nd Class (2) 1st Class (2) Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918 Eastern Front Medal Order of Michael the Brave 3rd Class
Spouse(s)	Hedwig (née Born)
Police career
Department	Sicherheitspolizei
Service years	1920-1935
Rank	Generalmajor

Karl Strecker (20 September 1884 – 10 April 1973) was a German Wehrmacht general and police commander. He fought on both the Western and Eastern Fronts of both World Wars. A member of the Prussian military class, he spent more than forty years in either the military or the para-military Security Police. He was a conservative Christian whose religious beliefs and ethics caused strain with, and sometimes outright defiance of, the Nazi regime. He commanded the German Army's XI. Armeekorps (11th Army Corps) at the Battle of Stalingrad and was the last German General to surrender their command in the city. He spent twelve years in Soviet captivity before being released in 1955.

Early life and World War I

He was born in Radmannsdorf, West Prussia to a Prussian Army officer in 1905. A lifelong and devoted evangelical Christian, Strecker wanted to follow in his grandfather's footsteps and become a priest but the financial hardship that followed his father's suicide forced him to instead attend a state-funded military school in Koeslin at the age of 12. Strecker began military training in a time of transition in the German Army. Historically the Prussian officer corps had been dominated by aristocratic Junkers, but Strecker was part of a new wave of middle-class Prussians who were beginning to dominate the Army's officer ranks. Despite feelings of isolation due to his middle-class background, he excelled academically, graduating with excellent marks in all subjects, including Russian. In 1905 he joined the 152nd Infantry Regiment of the 41st Division as a company commander and then battalion adjutant. In June of 1914, one month before the start of the First World War, he was promoted to Lieutenant and made the Regimental adjutant. He was promoted quickly and served as both the battalion and regimental adjutant.

With the outbreak of the First World War Strecker's Division was part of XX Corps, in the 8th Army. He participated in the battles of Tannenberg and Marsurian Lakes. Immediately after the Battle of Marsurian Lakes his division was transferred to the German 9th Army, arriving in the middle of October, and fought in the Battles of Vistula River and Łódź as part of XX. Corps. In February the Division was transferred back to the 8th Army to participate in the counter-offensive into Russia where it was engaged in heavy fighting until Mayof 1916. After a brief rest and refit Strecker and his unit where then sent south, to conduct operations in Romania. Just prior to his unit entering Bucharest in December Strecker, by then a Hauptmann, was transferred to the railway department of the German General Staff. Such assignments were normal for successful staff officers such as Strecker but he disliked the assignment, complaining to a friend from the regiment that he was unhappy and depressed in the impersonal and highly formal atmosphere of the General Staff.

Six months later, in May of 1917, Strecker was again reassigned, this time to the artillery staff of the 52nd Infantry Division on the Western Front near Paris. Between May and September Strecker filled in a variety of roles within the Division, including staff positions and the commander of the Division's 111th Regiment. In this time Strecker fought at the Second Battle of the Aisne and, after another period of rest and refit, the Battle of La Malmaison. He briefly served in two other units before being seriously injured in an automobile accident. After recovering he returned to the front in a staff position in the 30th Division and as the deputy commander of the 121st Division in Belgium. He finally returned to his home unit, the 152nd Regiment, after the Armistice, this time as its commander. While back in Prussia he led the 152nd on behalf of the Weimar Republic in the First Silesian uprising before being discharged from the Army.

Interwar period and police service

Three days before his discharge from the radically down-sized Reichswehr he was preemptively commissioned as a Major in the police force of the pre-Nazi Prussian Sicherheitspolizei. This new position put him directly into the vast political struggles of the new Weimar Republic. He married Hedwig Bonn, the daughter of the Mayor of Marienburg, having two children with her. Strecker openly held anti-democratic and anti-socialist positions which inhibited his career in the Weimar government's national police. Strecker was transferred to Berlin in 1927 to command one of the police districts in the city. His tour of duty in the capital came during a time of tremendous upheaval and violence. During this period he worked in a environment of political violence and assassination, which necessitated regular meetings with both radical left and right-wing forces in order to help avoid unnecessary clashes. He was a Lieutenant Colonel by the time the Weimar Republic collapsed and Hitler came to power. Although he had reservations about Hitler and his party para-military forces, Strecker helped the SA to suppress communists and had a generally favorable view of the Nazis, quickly finding favor and promotion to Majorgeneral in under the new regime. Strecker reacted with disgust at the Nazi's anti-Jewish pogroms and the purges of 1934 but he viewed the assent of the Nazi's as not entirely unwelcome, ,as it brought security to the chaos of the Weimar era and peace on the streets.

His concerns with the growing power of the SS were somewhat allayed when he was permitted to rejoin the Army in 1935. As with many officers of senior rank being incorporated in the rapidly expanding Wehrmacht, Strecker was given a command below his nominal rank in order to prepare him for larger combat commands. Also similar to some senior Army officers of the time, he openly supported his Jewish friends' shops while in uniform and, being a devout Christian, defended a Lutheran clergyman who used the pulpit to object to Nazi policy. Despite this, and his abhorrence of antisemitism, his ethics as a Prussian military officer prevented him from joining any organized German resistance. In spite of his lack of political support for the Nazis, he was made Deputy Commander of the 34. Infanterie-Division (34th Infantry Division) in November of 1938 and then given command of the 79. Infanterie-Division (79th Infantry Division) which was formed by expanding the 34th Division in the summer of 1939.

World War II

Strecker's new division was a reserve unit and was assigned to the border with France during the invasion of Poland. Although the division's posting opposite the Maginot Line in Saarland was not as heavily active as other fronts, Strecker distinguished himself there as a very capable combat commander during assaults on the Maginot's fortifications. He was noted for praise by his superiors, including Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben and promoted to Generalleutnant in June of 1940. He remained in France until early 1941 when his division was transferred Austria and then to the Eastern Front to participate in Operation Barbarossa as part of the 6th Army in Army Group South.

Being an experienced veteran of the Eastern Front in the First World War, Strecker was strongly opposed to the invasion of the Soviet Union, believing that it would cost Germany the war. Nonetheless he led his division in the invasion of Ukraine and participated in the Battle of Kiev and the First Battle of Kharkov. Sometime time January he was sent on convalescent leave for three months. The commander of Army Group South, Freidrich Paulus, had been so impressed with Strecker's performance at Kharkov that, upon his return to active duty and promotion to General der Infanterie in April, Paulus had him transferred to his staff and made him the acting commander of XVII Corps, in place of the temporarily absent Karl-Adolf Hollidt. On 1 June Paulus appointed him as the commander of XI Corps.

By late January the strategic situation was hopeless and the 6th Army was starving. In the north of the city Strecker was determined to hold on as long as possible in order to provide any assistance he could to Manstein's other forces, although he refused to continue to fight exclusively for propaganda purposes and forbade his staff from committing suicide. In the final days of the battle Strecker worked to evacuate as many wounded as he could while trying to maintain a fighting formation. He issued an order to his officers in the final days of that month that any soldier seen breaking away from their unit and moving toward Soviet positions was to be shot and that any soldier caught taking airdropped supplies for himself or who disobeyed orders was to be immediately court-martialed. As a last ditch effort to find a point where his Corps could attempt a breakout, he authorized final reconnaissance of the Volga on 29 December but the entire west bank of the river was occupied by entrenched Soviet forces. On 1 February, having confirmed that Paulus and all other combat formations had surrendered, Strecker gathered his staff and told them that additional the military situation was hopeless and that all troops under his command had the freedom to act as their conscious saw fit. The next morning Strecker surrendered his 11th Corps to Soviet troops. Having never embraced Nazi ideology, Strecker had made it a point in his career to not acknowledge Hitler or the his regime in his own dispatches to his troops. When he and his Chief of Staff, Helmuth Groscurth, drafted the final transmission sent by the 6th Army at Stalingrad, telling the OKW that the XI Corps "had done its duty", they omitted the customary "Heil Hitler" and instead used "Long live Germany". This omission was noticed and likely changed before reaching Hitler. Paulus later said that he received a radio transmission just prior to his surrender that promoted Strecker to Generaloberst and conferred this promotion on Strecker after the surrender but the transmission was not able to be substantiated after the war.

He was held in captivity, first in Krasnoyarsk and then in Camp 48 in Voikovo. Like most senior officers of the Wehrmacht he received reasonable treatment. He was put before a show trial and sentenced to 25 years confinement. Along with Carl Rodenburg, Heinrich Sixt von Armin(de), Walter Heitz, and the 6th Army's Chief of Staff Arthur Schmidt, he was part of the "anti-communist" faction of officers in his camp who refused to cooperate with the Soviets while confined. At one point Strecker denounced a group of collaborating German Generals, lead by Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, as traitors when they attempted to recruit him and other anti-communist officers. He and Rodenburg were in the last group of Germans to be repatriated, in October of 1955. After arriving back in West Germany he took an extended convalescence and retired to Idar-Oberstein where he wrote a memoir. In his later years he came to reject his anti-democratic views and expressed regret at not more aggressively opposing Hitler's regime. He lived out the remainder of his year in Riezlern, Austria, where he died in 1973..

Published works

• Von Hannibal zu Hindenburg : Studien über Hindenburgs Strategie u. ihre Vorläufer m. Skizzen d. Schlachten bei Cannä, Kunersdorf, Sedan, Tannenberg, an d. Masurischen Seen. Erscheinungsdatum, 1915[1]
• Das Deutsch-Ordens-Infanterie-Regiment Nr 152 im Weltkriege : Nach d. amtl. u. privaten Kriegstagebüchern, Berichten, Feldpostbriefen u. Zuschriften. Berlin-Charlottenburg: Bernard & Graefe, 1933. ID 362836647
• Lieutenant General Karl Strecker: the life and thought of a German military man, Praeger, 1994. ISBN 9780275945824 (Collected diaries and notes, with Uli Haller)

Bibliography

• Adam, Wilhelm; Ruhle, Otto (2015). With Paulus at Stalingrad. Translated by Tony Le Tissier. Barnsley, U.K.: Pen and Sword. ISBN 9781473833869.
• Beevor, Antony (1999). Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943. London, United Kingdom: Penguin. ISBN 9781101153567.
• Busch, Reinhold (2014). Survivors of Stalingrad: Eyewitness Accounts from the 6th Army, 1942-43. Barnsley, U.K.: Frontline Books. ISBN 9781848327665.
• Fellgiebel, Walther-Peer (2000) [1986]. Die Träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939–1945 — Die Inhaber der höchsten Auszeichnung des Zweiten Weltkrieges aller Wehrmachtteile (in German). Friedberg, Germany: Podzun-Pallas. ISBN 978-3-7909-0284-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
• Haller, Uli (1994). Lieutenant General Karl Strecker: the life and thought of a German military man. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger. ISBN 9780275945824.
• Hellbeck, Jochen (2015). Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich. New York City, New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN 9781610394970.
• Lucas, James (2014). Hitler s Commanders: German Bravery in the Field, 1939 1945. Barnsley, U.K.: Frontline. ISBN 9781473815124.
• Mitcham Jr., Samuel W.; Mueller, Gene (2012). Hitler's Commanders: Officers of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine, and the Waffen-SS. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781442211544.
• Patzwall, Klaus D.; Scherzer, Veit (2001). Das Deutsche Kreuz 1941 – 1945 Geschichte und Inhaber Band II (in German). Norderstedt, Germany: Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall. ISBN 978-3-931533-45-8. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
• Scherzer, Veit (2007). Die Ritterkreuzträger: 1939 - 1945 ; die Inhaber des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939 von Herr, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm sowie mit Deutschland verbündeter Streitkräfte nach den Unterlagen des Bundesarchivs [The Knight Cross Carriers : 1939 - 1945; the owners of the Knights Cross of the Iron Cross in 1939 by Herr, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm, and allied forces of Germany, according to the documents of the Bundesarchiv] (in German). Vol. 1993 and 1994. Jena, Germany: Scherzers Militaer-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2.
• {{cite book}}: Empty citation (help)

External Links

• Preserved copy of Strecker's final communication at the Bundesarchiv, likely modified from the original message.

Category:1884 births Category:1973 deaths Category:People from Chełmno County Category:People from West Prussia Category:Generals of Infantry (Wehrmacht) Category:Reichswehr personnel Category:German military personnel of World War I Category:Prussian Army personnel Category:German commanders at the Battle of Stalingrad Category:Recipients of the Gold German Cross Category:Recipients of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross Category:German prisoners of war in World War II held by the Soviet Union Category:Recipients of the Order of Michael the Brave Category:German police officers