Johannes Poeppel

Johannes "Hans" Poeppel (20 July 1921 – 29 September 2007) was a general in the German ''Bundeswehr''. He served as '' Inspekteur des Heeres'' (Inspector of the Army) 1979–81.obituary of the Clausewitz-Gesellschaft
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Early life

Poeppel was born in Schivelbein, Farther Pomerania (today Świdwin, Poland) and passed his '' Abitur'' at a Napola institution in Berlin in 1939.Wirtschaftswoche.de "Gelobt sei was hart macht" 20 May 2009

Career

Wehrmacht

That year he passed his ''Abitur'', Poeppel joined the ''Wehrmacht'' as an officer cadet and served in the ''Artillerieregiment 32'' throughout the Second World War. In 1941 while serving in Serbia, he ordered the massacres of Serbian Jews. By the end of the war, he had attained the rank of ''Hauptmann'' (captain), and managed to avoid Soviet captivity.Biography at deutschesheer.de
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Post-war

In 1947–49, he studied at the Pedagogic Institute in Celle, including a semester at the University of Manchester. He started to work as a teacher in 1949 in Wriedel (Uelzen) and became an academic assistant at the Pedagogic University of Osnabrück in 1952.

Bundeswehr

After the founding and organization of the ''Bundeswehr'' in 1955, Poeppel volunteered and was reinstated at his former rank of captain. Poeppel passed his general staff training at the ''Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr'' in 1958–61 and served on the Staff of the ''I. Korps'' in Münster. He became Staff Officer to the ''Generalinspekteure'' Friedrich Foertsch and Heinrich Trettner and commanded the '' Feldartilleriebataillon 31'' in Lüneburg. In 1967–69, he worked at the Federal Ministry of Defense in Bonn.

Within the ''Bundeswehr'', Poeppel was known as an advocate of the "traditionalist" school, which saw the ''Bundeswehr'' as a continuation of the Wehrmacht, the ''Reichswehr'', the Royal Prussian Army and ultimately could trace its descent all the way back to the army founded by the Great Elector of Brandenburg in 1640. Against the "traditionalist" school with its emphasis on the continuity of Prussian-German military history, there were the "reformers" who argued that the ''Bundeswehr'' was a new force unconnected to the past and who placed an emphasis on the discontinuity between the ''Reich'' that had existed between 1871-1945 and the new Federal Republic founded in 1949. As such, the "reformers" argued that the ''Bundeswehr'' should not be venerating men such as Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and Admiral Günther Lütjens as heroes. Poeppel argued in a memo because the Defense Minister Theodor Blank had stated the intellectual role models for the ''Bundeswehr'' were to be Carl von Clausewitz, August Neidhardt von Gneisenau, and Gerhard von Scharnhorst, that in his view that the ''Bundeswehr'' was a continuation of the old Prussian Army, and as such figures from the past like Hindenburg and Lütjens were to be venerated in the new ''Bundeswehr''.   

On 1 January 1970, Poeppel became the commander of '' Panzergrenadierbrigade 1'' in Hildesheim until 31 March 1973 and until 31 March 1978 of the '' 6. Panzergrenadierdivision'' in Neumünster. There he was promoted to '' Generalmajor''.

On 1 April 1978 Poeppel returned to Bonn and became the Deputy Inspector of the Army and a year later Inspector ('' Inspekteur de sHeeres''). Poeppel retired on 1 October 1981.

In 1983, the American historian Christopher Browning in an article published in ''Militärgeschichtiche Mitteiblugen'' entitled "Wehrmacht Reprisal Policy and the Mass Murder of Jews in Serbia" accused Poeppel of being involved in the massacres of Serbian Jews in 1941. Poeppel was never prosecuted because German law maintained a distinction between murder and being accomplice to murder-the latter defined as killing someone while obeying orders in the service of the state. Only those who killed on their own initiative in the National Socialist era were considered to have committed murder in the legal sense. In 1968, the ''Bundstag'' passed a law that retroactively declared the statute of limitations for being an accomplice to murder as expiring within 15 years of the crime. In 1969, it was estimated that because of the new statute of limitations for the crime of accomplice to murder that 90% of those Germans suspected of war crimes and crimes against humanity during the National Socialist era now enjoyed legal immunity as these people could argue that they had only committed their crimes while obeying orders. As the massacres that Poeppel had ordered took place in 1941 and all of the evidence indicated that he was merely obeying the orders of his superiors, the statute of limitations for these crimes expired in 1956 and as such he enjoyed legal immunity.    

Personal life

Poeppel was married in 1947 to Edelgard, "the girl next door" to him in Pomerania, and the couple had two children. Their son, Burkhardt, also became a ''Bundeswehr'' officer; their daughter, Susanne studied for an advanced degree at the Pädagogische Hochschule in Bonn. Poeppel was an able and ardent tennis player all his life.

Bibliography

* Abenheim, Donald ''Reforging the Iron Cross: The Search for Tradition in the West German Armed Forces'', Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014.
* Hans Poeppel, Wilhelm-Karl Prinz von Preußen, Karl-Günther von Hase, ''Die Soldaten der Wehrmacht,'' 6. Auflage, München 2000.
* Wette, Wolfram ''The Wehrmacht History, Myth, Reality'', Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Poeppel, Johannes
1921 births
2007 deaths
People from Świdwin
People from the Province of Pomerania
Deputy Chief of Staff of the Federal Armed Forces
German Army officers of World War II
Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany
Lieutenant generals of the German Army