Background
Werner von Fritsch was born in Benrath, near Düsseldorf, on 4 August 1880.
Werner von Fritsch was born in Benrath, near Düsseldorf, on 4 August 1880.
He entered the Prussian Army at the age of 18, in 1901, he transferred to the Prussian Military Academy. In 1911, he was appointed to the German General Staff, where he served during World War I.
He entered the War Academy in 1901 and ten years later was appointed to the General Staff. After service in World War I, he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel in 1922 and in 1926 headed a department in the Reichswehr Ministry. Promoted to Major General and given command of a cavalry division in 1930, von Fritsch’s single-minded dedication to his army career made him a popular figure in the General Staff. Made Commander of Military District III (Berlin) in 1932, he was promoted to Lieutenant-General. A friend of President von Hindenburg, the traditionalist General was the latter's nomination as Chief of the High Command of the German Army in February 1934.
On 2 May 1935 von Fritsch was promoted to Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht and participated actively in its reconstruction and rearmament.
At the beginning of 1938 von Fritsch became the victim of a complicated intrigue engineered by Himmler , w ho saw in him an obstacle to his plans for expanding the role of the SS, and Goering, who coveted his position as Commander-in-Chief of the army. With the help of Heydrich’s Security Services, fake charges of homosexuality were concocted against von Fritsch who was a bachelor, seemingly uninterested in women. It was alleged that he had been paying blackmail to an ex-convict since 1935 to cover up homosexual offences, a charge he categorically denied when confronted with it by Hitler in an interview in the Chancellery library on 24 January 1938. At this interview (where Goering and Himmler were also present) a notorious male prostitute and blackmailer named Hans Schmidt was produced, whose false testimony convinced Hitler that the charges were true.
On 4 February 1938 Hitler announced that von Fritsch - and his colleague Werner von Blomberg, - had resigned ‘for reasons of health', though by this time the Fiihrer knew that the army chief was the victim of a Gestapo frame-up. The Blomberg-Fritsch crisis was too golden an opportunity for Hitler to miss, to rid himself of the last remaining representatives of conservatism in high positions and to gain complete control over the armed forces.
On 22 September 1939 near Praga, before Warsaw, he walked into the held of fire of a Polish machine gunner, as if seeking his own death.
Though he never disguised his hostility and contempt for the Nazi Party and the SS, von Fritsch kept his distaste to himself, remarking in May 1937: I have made it a guiding principle to confine myself to the military domain and to keep aloof from all political activity. I lack all talent for it.’ The prototype of the ‘unpolitical soldier’, von Fritsch was nonetheless alarmed when Hitler revealed his plans to use armed force against Austria and Czechoslovakia at the Hossbach Conference of 5 November 1937. Von Fritsch realized that this aggressive programme would mean a European war and tried to dissuade Hitler on the grounds that Germany was not militarily prepared for such an enterprise.
On 18 March 1938 von Fritsch was eventually acquitted by a military court of honour of the charges made against him. Significantly, the dismissed Commander-in-Chief made no real gesture of defiance, beyond challenging Himmler to a duel, and refused to support any attempt by army officers to overthrow Hitler with the fatalistic comment: ‘This man is Germany’s destiny, and this destiny will run its course to the end.’
A letter of 2 December 1938 written by von Fritsch to his friend. Baroness Margot von Schutzbar, suggests an underlying ambivalence in his attitude to Hitler. In the letter, von Fritsch stated that after World War I he came to the conclusion that for Germany to regain its power, it would have to be the victor in three battles: against the working class (already accomplished), against the Catholics and against the Jews - the latter, added von Fritsch, ‘is the most difficult’. Recalled to the army in an honorary position, as Colonel-in-Chief of his old regiment (the Twelfth Artillery Regiment), von Fritsch died in strange circumstances during the Polish campaign.
The aristocratic von Fritsch was a professional soldier of the old Prussian school, gifted, unbending and ascetic in his life-style.