Carl Heinrich Rudolf Wilhelm von Stulpnagel (born January 2, 1886, in Berlin, † 30 August 1944 in Berlin-Plotzensee) was a German officer, the last General of the Infantry of the Wehrmacht during the Second World War and in the resistance against the Nazis involved in the assassination attempt of 20, July 1944.
Family And The First World War
Stulpnagel Uckermark is the name of a noble family, 1321 is first mentioned. Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel was the son of the Prussian lieutenant general for grabs (“free disposal”) of Stulpnagel Hermann (1839-1912) and Louise Baroness von der Tann-Rathsamhausen (1856-1907). He laid in 1904 from a high school in Frankfurt am Main. On 1 October 1904 he joined the rank of Darmstadt flags Junkers in the first Grand Ducal Hessian Infantry (Guards) Regimental No. 115 a. After passing the exams officer on 18 May 1905, the appointment to lieutenant on 21 January 1906. From 1 October 1911 to 30 June 1914 he attended the Prussian Military Academy.
The selection as Lieutenant was on 19 Juli, 1913. When war broke out in 1914 he was company commander of the 12th Company of his regiment and regimental adjutant. On 19 July 1915 he was promoted to captain. On 20 January 1916, he married Helene on Good Brandis Baroness von Pentz (1889-1965), the daughter of the landowner Friedrich Freiherr von Pentz, Familienfideikommiss Good lord at Brandis, and Marie Mason. The First World War ended Stulpnagel than 1 General Staff Officer of the 18th Division on the Western Front.
Weimar Republic And World War II
In the fall of 1931, he was teaching at the Central group commander of the army infantry school in Dresden. Along with the future head of the troop's Office in the Defense Ministry, Colonel General Ludwig Beck, he developed the regulation of troop leadership (HDv 300/1). From 1 December 1932, he was head of the Foreign Armies in Truppenamt; On 1 October 1935, he was promoted to major general, taking command of the newly-formed 30 Infantry Division in Lübeck to 6 Oktober 1936.
Since the so-called Röhm-Putsch of 1934 he took an increasingly critical stance against the Nazi regime. Stulpnagel was from February 1938 Quartermaster II and from November 1938 to May 1940 I Quartermaster General Staff of the Army and, therefore, Deputy Chief of Staff Franz Halder.
On 20 April 1939, he was promoted to General of Infantry. Stulpnagel was privy to the conspiracy from September 1938 to overthrow Hitler and was, in the winter of 1939/40, the staunch opponent of Hitler’s Army General Staff. During the second phase of the West’s campaign, he led the Second temporarily Army Corps. He was then chairman of the Franco-German Armistice Commission by December 1940.
Then he led the 17th Army of Army Group South in the German-Soviet war. In October 1941, he was relieved of command because of disagreements with the High Command of the Wehrmacht at his own request.
After the occupation of Lviv was murdered on 1 July 1941, Ukrainian civilians, auxiliary volunteers, members of the Einsatzgruppen, and Wehrmacht soldiers about 4,000 Jewish residents of the city. According to Soviet reports, the Army High Command should have 17 favors the pogrom under the leadership Stiilpnagel and have stimulated the next day in the Reich Security Main Office in Berlin to use the active-site anti-Jewish forces everywhere for “self-cleaning action.”
The proposal was well received and was passed as a command to all Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the SD. Stiilpnagel, a personal burden, however, is not detected correctly. The only report of these facts is based on the “Event Message USSR No. 10 of 2 July 1941 “, which was used in the Soviet Union and communist propaganda.
Stulpnagel differed significantly between the Jewish and non-Jewish population of the occupied Ukraine – for example in his command of 30 July 1941 on the “treatment of enemy civilians (partisan, youth gangs) and the Russian prisoners of war”: “As far as the initiating act of Ukrainian local population can not be proven, the mayor should be instructed to call primarily Jewish and communist inhabitants.
It must be considered that the active older communists fled for the most part or were kept hidden in an adjacent area so that they were not accessible for quick access. Many stayed behind were the members of the Russian State Youth (Komsomol zen). Especially the Jewish Komsomol members are to be regarded as the carrier of sabotage and banding of young people.”
Stiilpnagel anti-Semitism is particularly clear in a memorandum dated 12 August 1941 to the commander of Army Group South on “position and influence of Bolshevism”: “Increased struggle against Bolshevism and before acting alone in his sense international Jewry. Among the population of the occupied territory is often an irritated mood against the Jews.
On the other hand, it has also been found to have produced draconian measures against Jews in various population groups, with pity and sympathy for them. Strong awareness of Judaism among the population, especially in the Ukraine, is therefore necessary to obtain first a persistent and consistent rejection. This can also prevent the risk that the Jews sooner or later, under the hand regain influence on the economy, especially in free trade, or can operate as a center of a resistance movement.”
Stulpnagel was finally appointed in February 1942 as a successor to his distant relative Otto Stulpnagel, the military commander in France based in Paris, where he remained until 1944.
During this time, he continued to maintain relations with the resistance, including through its employee Caesar von Hofacker (1896 – 1944, executed in Berlin-Plotzensee).
20th July 1944
Stulpnagel was in the conspiracy of the officers against Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944 involved. He managed to get arrested by state police officials and the prominent leader of the SS, the Security Service of the Reichsführer SS, and the Gestapo in Paris.
A total of 1,200 members of the Nazi regime were arrested. He tried in vain to Commander West Field Marshal Günther von Kluge to persuade them to participate in the coup. When the night arrived, the news of the failure of the attempt to Paris, he was dismissed from his post by von Kluge.
When he, on 21 July 1944, received the command to come to the High Command of the Wehrmacht, he tried to shoot himself and blind it. In the hospital, he was arrested and taken to Berlin, where he, on 30 August, was executed in 1944 by the People’s Court sentenced to death and on the same day.