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Karl Strecker
Born20 September 1884
Radmannsdorf, West Prussia
Died10 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

First Silesian Uprising

World War II

Awards
Awards[1]
2nd Class (2)
1st Class (2)
3rd Class
Spouse(s)Hedwig (née Born)[2]
Police career
DepartmentSicherheitspolizei
Service years1920-1935
RankGeneralmajor

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. 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.[3] 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.[4][5][6]

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.[7][4]

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.[4][8][a]

Interwar period and police service

Three months 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, or Security Police. This commission put him directly into the vast and often violent political struggles of the interwar era.[9] The new police forces were formed by the government in response to municipal police being unable to control street violence and the State's hesitation to rely on the effective but politically unreliable Freikorps. Additionally the new security police forces acted as a paramilitary force capable of acting as an active reserve, after the restriction placed on the size of Germany's military in the Treaty of Versailles. Strecker's preference was to stay in the Army but, like many veterans, this new force was a good second choice. His first posting was in Munster where he married Hedwig Bonn, the daughter of the Mayor of Marienburg, having two children with her. Strecker openly held anti-democratic and anti-socialist political positions and an unrestrained contempt of the Weimar government, which inhibited his career as a civil servant in the heavily socialist Prussian administrative district. During the early 1920's he served as an instructor at police academies in Munster and Eiche, where he taught the newly formed security police small arms and close order drill in order to better equip them to deal with violent street protest and agitation.[10][11]

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 an 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.[12] In 1931 he was transferred back to Munster, eventually being promoted to Lieutenant Colonel and taking command of his old police academy there. Although he had reservations about the rise of Hitler and his party para-military forces, Strecker, worked with the SA to suppress communist uprisings and demonstrations and was generally held in favor by the Nazi government, quickly finding promotion to Majorgeneral in under the new regime and given command of the newly restructured Stettin police district in April 1934. His assignment to this district was in response to previous abuses by the SS officer who preceded him. One of the most vocal local critics of the SS officer's abuses was the retired Field Marshal August von Mackensen, one of Strecker's former commanding officers in the First World War. Mackensen and Strecker met regularly to discuss work and politics, part of the overall effort to reassure locals that police work was again under the authority of a career civil servant.[13]

Strecker was a supporter of the old Monarchist political order and held out hope that Hitler could be the type of strong leader he thought was necessary to bring political and economic prosperity back to Germany. As Hitler's abuses of power unfolded Strecker conceded to associates that Hitler was not this person.[14] He 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.[15][11] When the purges began Stercker considered resigning his commission but instead worked to limit the impact on his district.[16] His concerns with the growing power of the SS were somewhat allayed when he was permitted to rejoin the Army as a Generalmajor in 1935. While conflicted about serving the Nazi political order his old Prussian devotion to soldierly duty won out as he explained to a friend saying, "My politics are these: wherever I am, I am with my whole heart. I am now a soldier, so my politics are obedience...Whatever is or may be, I accept the whole without reservation." As with many officers of senior rank being incorporated in the rapidly expanding Wehrmacht, Strecker was given a rapid series of commands below his nominal rank in order to quickly 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 continued to prevent 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.[6][17]

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 and the subsequent offensive toward Paris. He was noted for universal praise by his superiors, including Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben who called Strecker one of his best division commanders and recommended him as a Corps commander. He was then 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.[18][19]

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, again earning his praise from his superiors and another recommendation to command a Corps.[19] The brutalitiy of Hitler's "War of Extermination" quickly became apparent to Strecker who claimed he was, by this time, having to inspect all communications from above in order to make sure that oppressive or illegal orders, such as the Commissar Order, didn't reach his troops, and countermanding those that did.[20] In January he was sent on convalescent leave for an irregular heartbeat for three months. In April Wilhelm Keitel asked Strecker to return to active duty, which Strecker acceded to, taking temporary command of the 17th Army Corps in Army Group Centre and receiving a promotion to General der Infanterie. He commanded the 17th Army Corps in the Second Battle of Kharkov.[21] The commander of Army Group South, Freidrich Paulus, had been so impressed with Strecker's performance at Kharkov that he had Strecker transferred to his 6th Army to take permanent command of the 11th Corps.[18][20]

Stalingrad

After the 6th Army defeated the Soviets at the Second Battle of Kharkov it drove toward the city of Stalingrad. Much to Strecker's dismay Hitler had significant forces diverted from his sector to an offensive in the Caucasus. This relocation of forces forced the 6th Army to attack Stalingrad directly, instead of in a pincer. Paulus was gravely concerned about becoming enricled and tasked Strecker's 11th Corps with protecting the northern flank, on the 6th Army's left, telling Wilhelm Adam that he knew Strecker very well and that he was "a man we can leave things to."[22] Strecker and other senior commanders in the 6th Army supported a strategic withdrawal to protect their flanks and take up better positions but this was refused by Hitler. Even after Strecker moved up to an observation point on the front lines to personally take reconnaissance on the Russian build-up that was telegraphing an attack on the flanks, Hitler still refused to heed the advice. In November the Russians attacked as part of Operation Uranus and within days Strecker and the rest of the Army were surrounded. Strecker led the his Corps in a counter attack straight into the encircling forces in order to avoid being cut off from the rest of the 6th Army. He was forced to abandon most of his heavy equipment in order to accomplish this maneuver. [23][24]

An armory outside the Tractor Plant used by Strecker as a makeshift HQ in the final days of the Battle of Stalingrad

By late January the strategic situation was hopeless and the 6th Army was starving. Strecker's positions had been laregly isolated from the rest of the 6th Army, in the northern sector of Stalingrad. 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.[24] 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.[25] 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.[26] 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.[27] The next morning Strecker surrendered his 11th Corps to Soviet troops.[28] 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.[24] 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".[29] This omission was noticed and likely changed before reaching Hitler.[24] 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.[30][11][31]

Surrender and Captivity

File:Streckerfanal.jpg
"The Beacon of Stalingrad": The 11 Feburary 1943 cover of Illustrierter Beobachter, the official propaganda magazine of the NSDAP, showing, from left, Friedrich Paulus, Walter Heitz, and Karl Strecker after their surrender.

After the surrender, Strecker and the rest of the general officers were transferred by train to Camp 27, near Krasnoyarsk, and then bused to a former cloister in Suzdal. Finally, in July, they were sent to Camp 48 in Voikovo, where Strecker would remain for the next 12 years.[32] Like most senior officers of the Wehrmacht he received reasonable treatment. He was put before a show trial and sentenced to 25 years confinement.[11] Eventually, the senior officers housed at Camp 48 were allowed one 25 word postcard a month, although few ever arrived in 1943, due to Hitler's desire to maintain the fiction that all the generals had died defending their positions in Stalingrad. Although Strecker's family was made aware of his survival he was not allowed to received mail until 1947 due to his refusal to cooperate with his captors. 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. This was a common tactic in the POW camps, where the Soviets used communist German expatriates and turned officers to try and recruit captured officers.[33] Strecker and the rest of the anti-communist group boycotted all contact with their fellow officers who joined the formation of the National Committee for a Free Germany and its spin-off, the League of German Officers (BDO) in 1943. They convinced Paulus to write up a formal declaration against the BDO, which they all signed. Strecker was amoung a group off officers who maintained this boycott throughout the war, although Paulus and a little more than half the other captive officers had joined by the end of 1944.[34] A brief period of thaw occurred between the BDO and non-BDO officer in the wake of the July 20 bomb plot. Many non-BDO officers such as Strecker were not Nazi loyalists, but still considered it their duty to resist their captors. The assassination attempt on Hitler changed this for many of them. The fact that so many senior officers were involved, the subsequent purges so far ranging, that they viewed the resistance to Hitler as now viable and necessary. In December of 1940, Strecker and 50 other officers at the camp signed a BDO authored procimation calling upon Germany to depose Hitler and end the war. He and Rodenburg were in the last group of Germans to be repatriated, in October of 1955.[35] 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 and personal shame at not more aggressively opposing Hitler's regime, viewing his time spent attempt to shape and limit the Nazi agenda, instead of outright opposing it, was a mistake.[36][11][31][24] He lived out the remainder of his life in Riezlern, Austria, where he died in 1973.[15].

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)

Notes

  1. ^ Halller and Mitcham differ on whether he was discharged in October of 1919 or January of 1920, respectively.[4][8]

References

  1. ^ Fellgiebel 2000, p. 336.
  2. ^ Haller 1994, p. 23.
  3. ^ Haller 1994, p. 3.
  4. ^ a b c d Mitcham, pp. 78–81.
  5. ^ Busch 2014, p. 84.
  6. ^ a b Lucas 2014.
  7. ^ Haller 1994, p. 8.
  8. ^ a b Haller 1994, p. 13.
  9. ^ Haller 1994, p. 10.
  10. ^ Haller 1994, p. 18.
  11. ^ a b c d e Mitcham, p. 100.
  12. ^ Haller 1994, p. 26.
  13. ^ Haller 1994, p. 29.
  14. ^ Haller 1994, p. 27.
  15. ^ a b Haller 1994.
  16. ^ Haller 1994, p. 30.
  17. ^ Mitcham, pp. 78–80.
  18. ^ a b Mitcham 2012, p. 80.
  19. ^ a b Haller 1994, p. 37.
  20. ^ a b Haller 1994, p. 39.
  21. ^ Forczyk 2013.
  22. ^ Adam & Rühle 2015.
  23. ^ Haller 1994, p. 39-43.
  24. ^ a b c d e Beevor 1999.
  25. ^ Hellbeck, 2015 & Hütler, Max, pp. 402–404.
  26. ^ Busch, 2014 & , Schwarz, Karl H, p. 232.
  27. ^ Busch, 2014 & Schwarz, Karl H, p. 234.
  28. ^ Adam 2015, p. 215.
  29. ^ Mitcham, p. 93.
  30. ^ Scherzer 2007.
  31. ^ a b Hellbeck 2015, p. 400.
  32. ^ Haller 1994, pp. 50–51.
  33. ^ Haller 1994, p. 53.
  34. ^ Haller 1994, p. 57-60.
  35. ^ Mitcham, p. 101.
  36. ^ Haller 1994, p. 33 & 36.

Bibliography

  • Adam, Wilhelm; Ruhle, Otto (2015). With Paulus at Stalingrad. Translated by Tony Le Tissier. Barnsley, U.K.: Pen and Sword. ISBN 9781473833869. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Beevor, Antony (1999). Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943. London, United Kingdom: Penguin. ISBN 9781101153567. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Busch, Reinhold (2014). Survivors of Stalingrad: Eyewitness Accounts from the 6th Army, 1942-43. Barnsley, U.K.: Frontline Books. ISBN 9781848327665. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • 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}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |trans_title= ignored (|trans-title= suggested) (help)
  • Forczyk, Robert (2013). Kharkov 1942: The Wehrmacht strikes back. New York, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781780961590. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Haller, Uli (1994). Lieutenant General Karl Strecker: the life and thought of a German military man. Santa Barbara, California: Praeger. ISBN 9780275945824. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Hellbeck, Jochen (2015). Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third Reich. New York City, New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN 9781610394970. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • Lucas, James (2014). Hitler s Commanders: German Bravery in the Field, 1939 1945. Barnsley, U.K.: Frontline. ISBN 9781473815124. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • 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. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
  • 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}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); 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}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
Military offices
Preceded by
None
 Commander of 79. Infanterie-Division
March 1939 - 12 January 1942 		Succeeded by
Preceded by
General der Infanterie Karl-Adolf Hollidt
 Commander of XVII. Armeekorps
2 April 1942 - 12 June 1942 		Succeeded by
General der Infanterie Karl-Adolf Hollidt
Preceded by
General der Infanterie Joachim von Kortzfleisch
 Commander of XI. Armeekorps
1 June 1942 - 2 February 1943 		Succeeded by
Unit surrendered at Stalingrad


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

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