Background
Friedrich Fromm was born in Berlin on 8 October 1888.
Friedrich Fromm was born in Berlin on 8 October 1888.
At the beginning of the Nazi era, Fromm played an important role in the power structure of the regime: beginning in 1933, he was responsible for the human and material upgrade of the German army.
A professional soldier who served in World War I, with the rank of First Lieutenant in 1918, Fromm subsequently joined the Reichswehr. After holding a series of staff posts, he was promoted to Colonel on 1 February 1933 and head of the Army Department in the Reich War Ministry.
In September 1939 he was made Chief of Armament and Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve Army, positions he held until the July plot of 1944.
At the time of the bombing attempt on Hitler’s life at the Rastenburg field headquarters, Fromm was at the Ministry of War in Berlin. He was lost to the conspiracy from the moment that he accidentally learned from General Keitel on the telephone that Hitler was still alive. He promptly ordered the arrest of his own Chief of Staff, Colonel Graf von Stauffenberg , who had just arrived from Rastenburg, suggesting to his partner that he shoot himself.
Though Fromm was arrested by the conspirators, they were soon delivered into his hands by loyal officers and after a summary court-martial he had his former associates, including von Stauffenberg and Friedrich Ol- bricht despatched by a firing squad in the War Ministry yard. This act of savagery, designed to cover up the traces of his own participation in the conspiracy, was then followed by another piece of treachery. Under his eyes General Ludwig Beck, military leader of the conspiracy, was persuaded to commit suicide, twice attempting unsuccessfully to blow his brains out, until he was finished off by a sergeant with a shot in the neck. Fromm's cowardly betrayal was of no avail. The next day he was arrested on the orders of Heinrich Himmler, who had already replaced him as head of the Reserve Army and was determined to implicate him in the plot against Hitler.
Sentenced to death by the People’s Court, Fromm was himself executed by a firing squad on 19 March 1945.
Fromm played an ambiguous role in the conspiracy against Hitler, blowing hot and cold, his vacillation arising out of a weak-minded opportunism and desire to be certain that success was assured, before he committed himself to the Resistance.