Werner von Fritsch
| Werner von Fritsch | |
|---|---|
Werner von Fritsch, 1932
|
|
| Born |
4 August 1880 Benrath, German Empire |
| Died | 22 September 1939 (aged 59) Warsaw, Poland |
| Buried at | Invalidenfriedhof Berlin |
| Allegiance |
 German Empire Weimar Republic Nazi Germany
|
| Service/branch | Army |
| Years of service | 1898–1939 |
| Rank |
1.jpg){kind=small} Generaloberst
|
| Commands held |
1st Cavalry Division 3rd Infantry Division Supreme Commander of the Army |
| Battles/wars | |
| Awards | Order of the Red Eagle |
Werner, Freiherr von Fritsch (4 August 1880 – 22 September 1939) was a German general in the Wehrmacht during World War II. He served in the German High Command.
Fritsch was born in Benrath in the Rhine Province of the German Empire. 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.
During the interwar period, Fritsch served in the Weimar Republic's Armed Forces (Reichswehr). In 1924, Fritsch wrote a letter to Joachim von Stülpnagel where he expressed his hatred of democracy and his hope that General Hans von Seeckt would carry out a putsch to establish a military dictatorship. Fritsch declared he was totally opposed to seeing another "black, red and gold cur" as Chancellor and wrote that he believed that Germany was being ruined by "the propaganda of the Jewish papers". Fritsch ended his letter with a list of all whom he hated:
"For in the last resort Ebert, pacifists, Jews, democrats, black, red, and gold, and the French are all the same thing, namely the people who want to destroy Germany. There may be small differences, but in the end it all amounts to the same."
The German historian Wolfram Wette wrote that Fritsch had come close to high treason with his letter as Fritsch had taken the Reichswehreid oath to defend democracy, and in calling for a putsch to destroy the democracy that Fritsch had taken an oath to defend was an act of "...extreme disloyalty to the republic to which he had sworn an oath". Fritsch was heavily involved in the secret rearmament of the 1920s, in which Germany sought to evade the terms of Part V of the Treaty of Versailles, which had essentially disarmed Germany, limiting the country's Army to 100,000 soldiers, plus destroying all its aircraft and tanks. As such, Fritsch who worked closely with the Soviet Union in secret rearmament favored a pro-Soviet foreign policy, and had an extreme hatred for Poland. In 1928, Fritsch began work on the plan that became Fall Weiss, the invasion of Poland in 1939. He was promoted to Major-General (Generalmajor) in 1932 by Kurt von Schleicher, who regarded him as a promising young officer. Schleicher then assigned Fritsch and Gerd von Rundstedt the duty of carrying out the Prussian coup that saw the Reichswehr oust the Social Democratic government of Prussia.
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