Fedor von Bock
Moritz Albrecht Franz Friedrich Fedor von Bock (3 December 1880 – 4 May 1945) was a German Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) who served in the German Army during the Second World War. Bock served as the commander of Army Group North during the Invasion of Poland in 1939, commander of Army Group B during the Invasion of France in 1940, and later as the commander of Army Group Center during the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941; his final command was that of Army Group South in 1942.
Fedor von Bock
Moritz Albrecht Franz Friedrich Fedor von Bock
- Holy Fire of Küstrin
- Der Sterber[1]
3 December 1880
Cüstrin, Prussia, German Empire
(now Kostrzyn nad Odrą, Poland)
4 May 1945 (aged 64)
Oldenburg in Holstein, Nazi Germany
German Empire (1898–1918)
Weimar Republic (1918–1933)
Nazi Germany (1933–1942)
1898 – 1942
- II. (light) Battalion, 4th Prussian Infantry Regiment (1924)
- 4th Prussian Infantry Regiment (1926)
- 1st Cavalry Division
- Military District II (1931)
- Gruppenkommando 3 (1935)
- Gruppenkommando 1 (1938)
- Army Group North (August 1939)
- Army Group B (October 1939)
- Army Group Center (October 1941)
- Army Group South (January 1942)
- Western front
- German spring offensive (1918)
- Eastern Front
- Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive (1915)
- Brusilov Offensive (1916)
-
Mally Lonny Anna Marga Klara von Reichenbach(m. 1905; died 1910)
-
Wilhelmine Gottliebe Jenny von Boddien(m. 1936; died 1945)
1
- Erich von Falkenhayn (uncle)
- Eugen von Falkenhayn (uncle)
Bock commanded Operation Typhoon, the ultimately failed attempt to capture Moscow during the autumn and winter of 1941. The Wehrmacht offensive was slowed by stiff Soviet resistance around Mozhaisk, and also by the rasputitsa, the season of rain and mud in Central Russia.[2] The Soviet counteroffensive soon drove the German army into retreat, and Bock was subsequently relieved of command by Adolf Hitler.
A monarchist, Bock was not heavily involved in politics, and he did not sympathize with plots to overthrow Adolf Hitler. Bock was also uncommonly outspoken, a privilege Hitler extended to him only because he had been successful in battle.[2]
Bock, his second wife, and his stepdaughter were killed by a strafing Royal New Zealand Air Force fighter-bomber on 4 May 1945 as they traveled by car towards Hamburg.
Early life and World War I[edit]
Fedor von Bock was born into an old Prussian military family in Cüstrin, Germany (now Kostrzyn, Poland), a fortress city on the banks of the Oder River in the Province of Brandenburg.[3]
His father, Moritz Albert Karl von Bock, had commanded a division in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871.[4] His mother, Olga Helene Franziska von Falkenhayn, was the sister of Erich von Falkenhayn, Chief of the German General Staff during the First World War,[5] and had relatives within the Russian aristocracy.[6]
At the age of eight, Bock went to study at a military academy in Berlin. The education emphasized Prussian militarism, and he quickly became adept in academic subjects such as modern languages, mathematics, and history. He spoke fluent French, and some English and Russian.[7] At an early age, and largely due to his father, Bock developed an unquestioning loyalty to the state and dedication to the military profession.[8]
While not a brilliant theoretician, Bock was a highly motivated officer. As one of the highest-ranking officers in the Reichswehr, he often addressed graduating cadets at his alma mater, which closed in 1920. His theme was always that the greatest glory that could come to a German soldier was to die for the Fatherland. He quickly earned the nickname "Holy Fire of Küstrin".[9]
In 1905, Bock married Mally von Reichenbach (1887–1910), a young Prussian noblewoman.[9] They had a daughter. In 1908, Bock entered the War Academy in Berlin, and after a year's study he joined the ranks of the General Staff. He soon joined the Army League (Deutscher Wehrverein) and came to know Walther von Brauchitsch, Franz Halder, and Gerd von Rundstedt. By the time World War I began in 1914, Bock had reached the rank of captain; he served as a battalion commander in January and February 1916. He was decorated with Pour le Mérite, German Empire's highest military decoration.
Inter-war period[edit]
Bock stayed on as an officer of the post-war Reichswehr and rose through the ranks. In the early 1920s, General Hans von Seeckt, chief of the Army Command, named Bock head of a group tasked with building up what came to be known as the Black Reichswehr. It consisted of "labour battalions" (Arbeitskommandos), purportedly made up of civilian volunteers attached to Reichswehr units, but its members wore Reichswehr uniforms and received their training and orders from it. Its actual purpose was to provide a way for the Reichswehr to circumvent the restriction in the Treaty of Versailles which limited Germany's army to 100,000 men. Bock chose Major Bruno Ernst Buchrucker to build up the Arbeitskommandos.[10]
The Black Reichswehr under Buchrucker became infamous for its practice of using Feme murders to punish "traitors" who, for example, revealed the locations of weapons' stockpiles or names of members. During the trials of some of those charged with the murders, prosecutors alleged that the killings were ordered by the officers from Bock's group. The journalist Carl von Ossietzky wrote: "... [the accused] did nothing but carry out the orders given him, and that certainly Colonel von Bock, and probably ... General Seeckt, should be sitting in the dock beside him."[11]
Several times Bock denied in court that the Reichswehr ministry had had any knowledge the "Black Reichswehr" or the murders they had committed.[12]
On 27 September 1923, Buchrucker ordered 4,500 men of the Black Reichswehr to assemble outside of Berlin as the first preparatory step toward a coup. Bock, who was Buchrucker's contact with the Reichswehr, was enraged, and in a stormy meeting berated Buchrucker for mobilizing the Black Reichswehr without orders.[13] Bock stated that the Reichswehr wanted no part in Buchrucker's coup. Despite his orders to demobilize at once, Buchrucker went ahead with the Küstrin Putsch on 1 October 1923, which ended in total failure.[14] Following the putsch, Seeckt disbanded the Black Reichswehr.[15]
In 1935, Adolf Hitler appointed Bock as commander of the Third Army Group. Bock was one of the officers not removed from his position when Hitler reorganized the armed forces during the phase of German rearmament before the outbreak of the Second World War. He remained a monarchist. Hitler reportedly said of him, "Nobody in the world but Bock can teach soldiers to die."[16] In 1936 Bock married Wilhelmine, née von Boddien (1893–1945).
Bock marched into Vienna at the head of the 8th Army in March 1938 during the Anschluss of Austria[17] and played a key role in the annexation of the Sudetenland, also in 1938.[18]
World War II[edit]
Invasion of Poland[edit]
By 25 August 1939, Bock was in command of Army Group North in preparation for the invasion and conquest of Poland. The objective of Army Group North was to destroy the Polish forces north of the Vistula. Army Group North was composed of General Georg von Küchler's 3rd Army, and General Günther von Kluge's 4th Army. These struck southward from East Prussia and eastward across the base of the Polish Corridor, respectively.
On 10 September Bock ordered the forces under his command to burn Polish villages located behind the front line to the ground if they were fired upon from the settlement and "if it proves impossible to identify the house from which the shots came". By the end of the military occupation of the country on 26 October 1939 531 towns and villages had been destroyed across Poland.[19] In five weeks, Poland was overrun by German and Soviet forces.