Fedor
v. Bock: 1942; Relieved
of command by Adolf Hitler after recommending a withdrawl during the
Russian counteroffensive in 1941/42. |
Walter
v. Brauchitsch: 1941; Army fails to capture Moscow and after a
serious heart attack Hitler relieved him on 10 December and assumed the
command of OKH
himself. He was transferred to the
Officers Reserve remaining without assignment
until war's end. |
Ewald
v. Kleist: 1944; At 22, the youngest of the plotters. He was in the
group that was to stage the coup in Berlin, had the assassination been
successful. After the plot's failure, he managed to cover up
his resistance activities and proceedings against him were
dropped in December 1944 for want of evidence. He
was, thereby, spared a trial before the Volksgerichtshof, which would
almost certainly
have ended with a death sentence, as it did for many of his fellow
plotters, including his own father.
However, he was imprisoned at the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and
subsequently sent to the front, until war's end. |
Wilhelm
Ritter v. Leeb: 1942; In January von Leeb asked Hitler to
relieve him of his command, and Hitler complied. Officially von Leeb
had
stepped down due
to illness and Hitler never employed von Leeb again. |
Wilhelm
List: 1942; Hitler was angered by the loss of momentum
in the Caucasus, and when List proposed moving some stalled spearhead
units
to another, less advanced
portion of the front to assist in destroying stubborn Soviet forces,
Hitler relieved him of command
on 9 September, he never returned to active duty.
|
Erich
v. Manstein: 1944; With Hitler's directive of 19 March that from
then on all positions were to be defended to the last
man, Manstein's Army
became
encircled when permission to break out was not received from
Hitler in time. Manstein flew to Hitler to
convince
him to change his mind. Hitler eventually
relented, but
relieved Manstein of his command on 30 March.
|
Gerd v. Rundstedt:1941; Dismissed by Hitler in
December, after a German retreat from Rostov, but was recalled in 1942
and assigned in the west.
1944; Dismissed again after
the German defeat in Normandy in July 1944, but was again recalled as
Commander in Chief in
the West in September,
holding this post until his final dismissal by Hitler in March 1945.
|
Erich v. Witzleben: 1941; Retired for health
issues although some say forced to, after being critical of invading
Russia.
1944; On 7 August, in the first group of accused
conspirators he stood before the Volksgerichtshof and was hanged that
day. |
Ludwig Beck: 1938; Chief of the German General
Staff during the early years of the Nazi regime. Unhappy about the
situation with Czechoslovakia,
he
resigned alone on 18 August,
and left office on 27 August. Beck had no moral objection to the idea
of war of aggression to
eliminate
Czechoslovakia as a state, however, Beck felt that Germany needed more
time to rearm before starting such a war.
At Hitler's request, Beck
kept his
resignation secret, and thus nullified the protest value
of his resignation.
Hitler promised Beck that if he kept
his resignation
secret, he would be rewarded with a major field command, and Beck was
much disillusioned
when he was instead put on the retired list.
1944; Major leader within
the conspiracy against Hitler (would have
been provisional head of state had the 20 July plot succeeded).
When the plot failed, Beck
was arrested and he offered to commit suicide with a pistol. |
Alexander v. Falkenhausen:
1944; Recalled
to active duty in 1938, he served as an infantry general on the Western
Front until his appointment as
military governor
for Belgium in May 1940. A close friend of anti-Hitler conspirators,
Carl Goerdeler and Erwin
von Witzleben, Falkenhausen
was arrested after the July Plot. He was imprisoned, however, unlike
his two
friends he was not brought to trial and was
still alive at the end of the Second World War. |
Fritz Fromm: 1944; Aware that some of his
subordinates—most notably Claus von Stauffenberg, his Chief of
Staff—were planning an assassination
attempt against Adolf Hitler, he remained quiet
and agreed to have a part in it if he became a top official of the new
government after the mutiny.
When the it failed, Fromm immediately had the conspirators
executed (against Hitler's orders to
take
the conspirators alive) , however, this did not save him. When he
returned to his office for the
night, he was met by
various Nazi
officers, Dr. Goebbels among them who said "You've been in a damn hurry
to get witnesses out of your way."
|
Franz Halder: 1942; Because of Halder’s
disagreement with Hitler’s conduct of the war, Hitler concluded that
the general no longer possessed an
aggressive war mentality. Following a speech in which Hitler
announced his plan to find a replacement for Halder, Halder
walked out
stating "I am leaving", and was retired into the "Fuhrer Reserve" on 24
September.
1944; On 23 July 1944
Halder was arrested by the Gestapo. Although he was not involved in the
July 20 plot, intense interrogations
of
the conspirators revealed that Halder had been involved in earlier
conspiracies against Hitler and he was imprisoned.
|
Erich Höppner: 1942; On 5 December 1941 he
ordered a retreat of his over-extended forces, refusing to comply with
Hitler's rigid 'Halt Order'.
A month later in
January 1942, Hoepner was dismissed from the service with the loss of
all his decorations and pension
rights. Subsequently Hoepner
instituted a lawsuit against the Reich over his pension rights and won.
1944; A
participant in the 20 July Plot, following the failure of their coup
attempt he had a private conversation with General
Fromm and was not shot by firing squad with the others in
the courtyard.
Having already been dismissed from the
Wehrmacht in 1942, he was arrested that night and
then tortured by the Gestapo, given a summary trial by the
Volksgerichtshof and sentenced to death.Hoepner was hanged on 8 August,
in Berlin's Plötzensee Prison.
|
Richard Ruoff: 1943; Transferred to the
Officers Reserve late June, remaining without assignment
until war's end. |
Adolf Strauss: 1942; In January he was replaced
in command of the 9th Army for health reasons and placed in Officer
reserve.
1944; In August
takes charge of "Festungsausbau der Oder-Warthe-Stellung"
1945; Appointed
"Kommandant des Festungsbereichs Ost". |