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Werner Eduard Fritz von Blomberg (September 2nd, 1878 – March 14th, 1946) was a German General Staff officer, who, after serving at the Western Front during World War I, was appointed chief of the Troop Office during the Weimar Republic and Minister of War and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the first general to be promoted to Generalfeldmarschall in 1936. His political opponent Hermann Göring confronted him with criminal records among allegations of pornographic activities of his newly wed wife and forced him to resign on January 27th, 1938.
Biography edit
Early life and military career edit
Born in Stargard, Pomerania, Prussia (present-day Poland) into the illegitimate line of a Baltic German noble family, Werner von Blomberg joined the army in 1897 and attended the Prussian Military Academy in 1904. In April 1904, he married Charlotte Hellmich. The couple had five children. After graduating in 1907, Blomberg entered the German General Staff in 1908. Serving with distinction on the Western Front during the First World War, Blomberg was awarded the Pour le Mérite.
In 1920, Blomberg was appointed chief of staff of the Döberitz Brigade, and in 1921 was made chief of staff of the Stuttgart Army Area. In 1925, Blomberg was made chief of army training by General Hans von Seeckt. By 1927, Blomberg was a major-general and chief of the Troop Office (German: Truppenamt), which was the thinly disguised German General Staff forbidden by the Treaty of Versailles.
Rise to power edit
In 1933, Blomberg rose to national prominence when he was appointed Minister of Defence in Hitler's government. Blomberg became one of Adolf Hitler's most devoted followers, working feverishly to expand the size and power of the army. Blomberg was made a colonel general for his services in 1933. Although Blomberg and his predecessor Schleicher loathed one another, their feud was purely personal, not political, and in all essentials Blomberg and Schleicher had identical views on foreign and defence policies. Their dispute was simply over who was best qualified to carry out these policies, not over policy differences.
Blomberg was chosen personally by President Hindenburg as a man he trusted to safeguard the interests of the Defence Ministry, and as a man who could be expected 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 rather co-existed as an equal alongside the civilian government, owing its allegiance only to the head of state (not the chancellor, who was the head of the government.
Early on, Blomberg has conflicts with Ernst Röhm, who descried to have his Sturmabteilung eclipse the Reichwehr, which both Blomberg and Hitler were dead against. This eventually lead to Röhm being killed in the Night of the Long Knives and the SA being superseded by the Schutzstaffel.
Downfall edit
Göring and Himmler found an opportunity to strike against Blomberg in January 1938, when the general, then 59, married his second wife, Erna Gruhn (1913–1978, 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 25-year-old typist and secretary, but the Berlin police had a long criminal file on her and her mother, a former prostitute. Among the reports was information that in 1932, Erna Gruhn had posed for pornographic photos.
He 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 in his turn, seeing a chance to destroy Blomberg's career, 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 informed Hitler, who had been present at the wedding. Hitler ordered Blomberg to annul the marriage to avoid a scandal and to preserve the integrity of the army. The upcoming wedding of one of Blomberg's daughters, Dorothea, would have been threatened by scandal. She was engaged to Karl-Heinz Keitel, eldest son of Wilhelm Keitel. Blomberg refused to end his marriage but, when Göring threatened to make public the pasts of Erna Gruhn and her mother, Blomberg was forced to resign his posts to avoid this, which he did on January 27th, 1938. His daughter was married in May the same year.
Death edit
Blomberg decided to spend the rest of the war in obscurity, but was arrested by the Allies in 1945. Later he gave evidence at the Nuremberg trials.
Blomberg's health declined rapidly while he was in detention at Nuremberg, facing the contempt of his former colleagues and the intention of his young wife to abandon him. It is possible that he manifested symptoms of cancer as early as 1939. On October 12th, 1945, he noted in his diary that he weighed slightly over 72 kilograms. He was diagnosed with colorectal cancer on February 20th, 1946. Resigned to his fate and gripped by depression he spent the final weeks of his life refusing to eat.
Blomberg died on March 14th, 1946, his body buried without ceremony in an unmarked grave. Later on his remains were cremated and interred in his residence in Bad Wiessee.