Hitler's Commanders by Jr. Samuel W. Mitcham Read Free Book Online Page B

informer, Buhle handed the evidence over to the Gestapo. As a result the admiral was stripped naked, taken out, and hanged by the SS on April 9, 1945.
    General Buhle survived the war and the subsequent trials. Released from Allied captivity in 1947, he retired to Stuttgart, where he died on December 28, 1959.
    wilhelm burgdorf was born on February 15, 1895, in Fuerstenwalde/Spree. On August 3, 1914, as World War I was breaking out, the 19-year-old Burgdorf joined the Imperial Army as a Fahnenjunker in the 12th Grenadier Regiment of the Brandenburger 5th Infantry Division. Commissioned second lieutenant in 1915, he rejoined the main body of his regiment on the Eastern Front in the spring of 1915 and was named adjutant of its fusilier battalion. Burgdorf fought in Belgium and France, including the battles of Verdun and the Somme. He became regimental adjutant in 1916 and held the post until after the end of the war, fighting in Alsace, Champagne, the Russian Front, and Italy. Returning to the Western Front in early 1918, he fought in the Battle of Picardy, the Aisne, the Marne, and the Ardennes.
    After the armistice, Second Lieutenant Burgdorf joined the Reichsheer as adjutant of the 54th and then 10th Grenadier Regiment, a platoon leader in the Prussian 10th Grenadiers (1920–1921) and its successor unit, the 8th Infantry Regiment at Frankfurt/Oder (1921–1923). He became adjutant of the I/8th Infantry at the start of 1923, and began his General Staff training in the fall of that year. Despite a solid record, he was not promoted to first lieutenant until 1925.
    After a thorough training program, Burgdorf returned to the 8th Infantry at Frankfurt/Oder (1925–1933), where he worked as a signals officer, regimental adjutant, and company commander. He was on the staff of the 4th Infantry Division at Dresden (1934–1936) and, by the end of 1936, was serving as adjutant of Wehrkreis IX (IX Corps) at Kassel. He was promoted to captain in 1930, major in 1935, and lieutenant colonel in August 1938.
    During the early days of the war Burgdorf served as adjutant of the IX Corps on the virtually inactive Western Front. Prior to the invasion of France, however, he was named commander of the 529th Infantry Regiment, which he led in Belgium and France (1940) and in the savage battles on the central sector of the Russian Front (1941–April 4, 1942). After the Soviet winter offensive of 1941–1942 had been checked, Burgdorf (who had been promoted to full colonel in September 1940) was made a department chief in the Army Personnel Office ( Heerespersonelamt , or HPA), a part of OKW, in May 1942. On October 1, 1942, he was promoted to major general and named deputy chief of the Army Personnel Office; he was elevated to lieutenant general in October 1943. No doubt his overt allegiance to the Nazi Party played a major role in his rapid advancement.
    The failed assassination attempt by Colonel von Stauffenberg on July 20, 1944, led to further advancement for Burgdorf, as well as his participating in the extraction of revenge on the anti-Hitler conspirators. General of Infantry Rudolf Schmundt, the Fuehrer’s Army adjutant and chief of the HPA, was mortally wounded by the explosion, which only slightly injured Hitler. Taken to the Rastenburg hospital, Schmundt succumbed to his injuries on October 1, 1944, and Hitler named Burgdorf his successor.
    Adolf Hitler demanded quick and brutal revenge be meted out to the conspirators. One victim was Germany’s most popular commander, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the legendary Desert Fox, who was implicated in the plot. Field Marshal Keitel called upon Burgdorf to carry out a secret mission—to confront Rommel with the testimony that accused him of complicity in the “treason.” If the statements were true, the popular Rommel was to be given a choice: suicide or a trial before the People’s Court.
    Obediently, Burgdorf and his deputy, Lieutenant General Ernst Maisel, went to Rommel’s home at