Ludwig Gehre
Encyclopedia
Life
Gehre was born in DüsseldorfDüsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
. Little detail is known of his early years in the parental home and the education he received. The first reference to Gehre appears when he was a managing director of a building contractor. In 1928 he published a study on Clausewitz; by that time he is supposed to have begun his career as an officer in the Reichswehr.
Contact man with the Conspirators
At the beginning of the Second World War Gehre was active as a Captain in the AbwehrAbwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
(Military Intelligence) under Admiral
Admiral
Admiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually considered a full admiral and above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet . It is usually abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"...
Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral, head of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, from 1935 to 1944 and member of the German Resistance.- Early life and World War I :...
. By 1939 a group in the Abwehr had formed to remove the Nazi regime and end the War. This circle included Admiral Canaris
Wilhelm Canaris
Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral, head of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, from 1935 to 1944 and member of the German Resistance.- Early life and World War I :...
, General
General
A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....
Ludwig Beck
Ludwig Beck
Generaloberst Ludwig August Theodor Beck was a German general and Chief of the German General Staff during the early years of the Nazi regime in Germany before World War II....
, Hans von Dohnanyi
Hans von Dohnanyi
Hans von Dohnanyi was a German jurist, rescuer of Jews, and German resistance fighter against the Nazi régime.-Early life:...
, Hans Oster
Hans Oster
Hans Oster was a German Army general, deputy head of the Abwehr under Wilhelm Canaris, and an opponent of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. He was a leading figure of the German resistance from 1938 to 1943.-Early career:...
, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian and martyr. He was a participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and a founding member of the Confessing Church. He was involved in plans by members of the Abwehr to assassinate Adolf Hitler...
, as well as Gehre.
By March 1943 Gehre was privy to the Military Opposition's preparations under Henning von Tresckow
Henning von Tresckow
Generalmajor Herrmann Karl Robert "Henning" von Tresckow was a Major General in the German Wehrmacht who organized German resistance against Adolf Hitler. He attempted to assassinate Hitler in March 1943 and drafted the Valkyrie plan for a coup against the German government...
to assassinate Hitler. In January 1944 Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke
Helmuth James Graf von Moltke was a German jurist who, as a draftee in the German Abwehr, acted to subvert German human-rights abuses of people in territories occupied by Germany during World War II and subsequently became a founding member of the Kreisau Circle resistance group, whose members...
was arrested, and in March 1944 Gehre was also taken by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
. Gehre, however, was soon able to flee and disappeared.
July 20 Plot
On 20 July 1944, an attempt was made to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Führer of the Third Reich, inside his Wolf's Lair field headquarters near Rastenburg, East Prussia. The plot was the culmination of the efforts of several groups in the German Resistance to overthrow the Nazi-led German government...
assassination attempt to kill Hitler , the search for Gehre intensified. Gehre, together with his wife, kept himself hidden for several more weeks. Further shelter was procured by the brothers Hans
Hans John
Hans John was a German lawyer and World War II resistance figure.Hans John was born in Ziegenhain, Hesse, and studied law at the University of Berlin. In 1939, he was hired as a legal assistant at the Aviation Law Institute in Berlin...
and Otto John
Otto John
Otto John was the first head of the West German Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution from 1950 to 1954...
. When Gehre realized that he was about to be discovered by the Gestapo on 1944 November 2, he shot his wife and then directed the gun toward himself. Although he was badly hurt, he survived.
On 1945 February 3 the building of the Central Reich Security Office on Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin was destroyed. Gehre, along with Bonhoeffer, was sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp. From there he was put onto a transport of SS special detainees and on April 5 incarcerated in the Flossenbürg concentration camp
Flossenbürg concentration camp
Konzentrationslager Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the Schutzstaffel Economic-Administrative Main Office at Flossenbürg, in the Oberpfalz region of Bavaria, Germany, near the border with Czechoslovakia. Until its liberation in April 1945, more than 96,000 prisoners...
. On April 9, 1945, after an SS flying court-martial
Court-martial
A court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...
, Gehre and Bonhoeffer were executed by strangulation with piano wire whilst being strung up by meat hooks.
In 1946 the individuals who had participated in the flying court-martial were brought to justice for murder. However Otto Thorbeck
Otto Thorbeck
Dr Otto Thorbeck was a German lawyer and Nazi SS judge.In 1941 Sturmbannführer Thorbeck was appointed the chief judge of the SS and police court in Munich for which SS Standartenführer Walter Huppenkothen was the prosecutor...
, the presiding officer, was exonerated after appeal. The decision was rescinded by the Berlin State Court in 1996.
Literature References
- Encyclopedia of the resistance 1933-1945 , hrsg. by Peter Steinbach/Johannes Tuchel, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-406-37451-4
- Winfried Heinemann: The military resistance and the war. In: The German Reich and the war. Given change of the military-historical office for research. Volume 9,1, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-421-06236-6
- Otto John: Wrong and too late. 20 July 1944. Munich and Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-7766-1317-3