Werner von Blomberg

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Werner Eduard Fritz von Blomberg (2 September 1878 – 13 March 1946) was a German field marshal and politician who served as the first Minister of War in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1938. Blomberg had served as Chief of the Truppenamt, equivalent to the German General Staff, during the Weimar Republic from 1927 to 1929. Blomberg served on the Western Front during World War I and rose through the ranks of the Reichswehr until he was appointed chief of the Truppenamt. Despite being dismissed from the Truppenamt, he was later appointed Defence Minister by President Paul von Hindenburg in January 1933. Following the Nazis' rise to power in Germany, Blomberg was named Minister of War and Commander-in-Chief of the German Armed Forces. In this capacity, he played a central role in Germany's rearmament as well as purging the military of dissidents to the new regime. However, as Blomberg grew increasingly critical of the Nazis' foreign policy, he was ultimately forced to resign in the Blomberg–Fritsch affair in 1938, orchestrated by his political rivals, Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler. Thereafter, Blomberg spent World War II in obscurity until he served as a witness in the Nuremberg trials shortly before his…Citește mai mult

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Early life and career Werner Eduard Fritz von Blomberg was born on 2 September 1878 in Stargard, Province of Pomerania (now Stargard, Poland) into a noble Baltic German family. Blomberg joined the Prussian Army in 1897 and attended the Prussian Military Academy from 1904 to 1908. Blomberg entered the German General Staff in 1908 and served as a staff officer with distinction on the Western Front during the First World War. He participated in the First Battle of the Marne in 1914 and the Battle of Verdun in 1916. Blomberg was awarded the Pour le Mérite. Blomberg married Charlotte Hellmich in April 1904. The couple had five children. In 1920, Blomberg was appointed chief of staff of the Döberitz Brigade; in 1921, he was appointed chief of staff of the Stuttgart Army Area. In 1925, General Hans von Seeckt appointed him chief of army training. By 1927, Blomberg was a major-general and chief of the Troop Office (German: Truppenamt), the thin disguise for the German General Staff, which had been forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles.

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In the Weimar Republic In 1928, Blomberg visited the Soviet Union, where he was much impressed by the high status of the Red Army, and left a convinced believer in the value of totalitarian dictatorship as the prerequisite for military power. This was part of a broader shift within the German military toward the idea of a totalitarian Wehrstaat (transl. Defence State), which, beginning in the mid-1920s, became increasingly popular among military officers. The German historian Eberhard Kolb wrote that:from the mid-1920s onwards the Army leaders had developed and propagated new social conceptions of a militarist kind, tending towards a fusion of the military and civilian sectors and ultimately a totalitarian military state (Wehrstaat). Blomberg's visit to the Soviet Union in 1928 confirmed his view that totalitarian power fosters the greatest military power. Blomberg believed that, as in the previous world war, the next one would become a total war, requiring the full mobilization of German society and economy by the state, and that a totalitarian state would best prepare society in peacetime, militarily and economically, for war. As most of Nazi Germany's military elite, Blomberg took for granted that, for Germany to achieve the world power that it had…Citește mai mult

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Minister of Defense In 1933, Blomberg rose to national prominence when he was appointed Minister of Defense in Hitler's government. Blomberg became one of Hitler's most devoted followers and worked feverishly to expand the size and the power of the army. Blomberg was made a colonel general for his services in 1933. Although Blomberg and his predecessor, Kurt von Schleicher, loathed each other, their feud was purely personal, not political. In all essentials, Blomberg and Schleicher had identical views on foreign and defense policies. Their dispute was over who was best qualified to carry out the policies, not the policies themselves. Hindenburg personally chose Blomberg as a man he trusted to safeguard the interests of the Defense Ministry and to work well with Hitler. Above all, Hindenburg saw Blomberg as a man who would safeguard the German military's traditional "state within the state" status dating back to Prussian times under which the military did not take orders from the civilian government, headed by the chancellor, but co-existed as an equal alongside the civilian government because of its allegiance only to the head of state, not the chancellor, who was the head of government. Until 1918, the head of state had…Citește mai mult

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Scandal and downfall Göring and Himmler found an opportunity to strike against Blomberg in January 1938, when the 59-year-old general married his second wife, Erna Gruhn (sometimes referred to as "Eva" or "Margarete"). Blomberg had been a widower since the death of his first wife, Charlotte, in 1932. Gruhn was a secretary, but the Berlin police had a long criminal file on her and her mother, a former prostitute. Among the reports was information that Erna had posed for pornographic photos around Christmas 1931. The following year, she was officially registered as a prostitute and, in December 1934, a customer reported her to the police for stealing his gold watch. Blomberg had met her while walking in the Tiergarten, and she was 35 years his junior. This information was reported to the Berlin police chief, Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorf, who went to Wilhelm Keitel with the file on the new Mrs. Blomberg. Helldorff said he was uncertain about what to do. Keitel told Helldorf to take the file to Göring, which he did. Göring, who had served as best man to Blomberg at the wedding, used the file to argue Blomberg was unfit to serve as a war minister. Göring then…Citește mai mult

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Imprisonment and death Blomberg's health declined rapidly while he was in detention at Nuremberg. He faced the contempt of his former colleagues and his young wife's intention to abandon him. It is possible that he manifested symptoms of cancer as early as 1939. On 12 October 1945, he noted in his diary that he weighed slightly over 72 kilograms (159 lb). He was diagnosed with colorectal cancer on 20 February 1946. Resigned to his fate and gripped by depression, he spent the final weeks of his life refusing to eat. Blomberg died on 13 March 1946. His body was buried without ceremony in an unmarked grave. His remains were later cremated and interred in his residence in Bad Wiessee.

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