Hans Speidel

Speidel joined the Imperial German Army in 1914, seeing action during World War I, and served in the Reichswehr during the interwar period. He served as chief of staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel during World War II and was promoted to lieutenant general in 1944. Speidel participated in the 20 July Plot to assassinate Hitler due to objecting to the racial policy of Nazi Germany, and he was tasked with recruiting Rommel for the resistance. After the plot failed he was arrested by the Gestapo. With the help of religious Pallottines, he was able to escape together with other prisoners and they were able to go into hiding in Urnau in today's Lake Constance district and were taken there by French troops in the last days of the war. Speidel was one of the few participants in the 20 July Plot to survive the war.


During the early Cold War, Speidel emerged as one of the major military leaders of West Germany, and played a key role in West Germany's rearmament, Western international negotiations on defence cooperation and West German integration into NATO. He is thus regarded as one of the founders of the Bundeswehr. He was appointed as the military advisor of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer in 1950 and joined the predecessor of the Federal Ministry of Defence in 1951, was the West German chief delegate to the conference on the Treaty establishing the European Defence Community from 1951 to 1954 and was a lead negotiator when West Germany joined NATO. In 1955 he became a director-general in the Federal Ministry of Defence with the military rank of lieutenant-general in the Bundeswehr, and in 1957 he became the first officer to be promoted to full General in West Germany. He served as COMLANDCENT from 1957 to 1963, with headquarters at the Palace of Fontainebleau in Paris.


Speidel was also a historian by training, taught at the University of Tübingen and wrote several books. He received the Grand Cross with Star and Sash of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1963. In 1964 he became President of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, the German government's main think tank in international relations. He was the father of Brigadier General Hans Helmut Speidel and the father-in-law of European Commissioner and liberal politician Guido Brunner. A German Army military base, the General Dr Speidel Barracks in Bruchsal, was named in his honour in 1997.