| The Prussian Machine - Generals |
Wilhelm Groener
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Karl Eduard Wilhelm Groener (22.11.1867 - 3.5.1939) place of birth: Ludwigsburg (Württemberg) Lieutenant general who started his career as an officer in the Württemberg Army. He was the son of Karl Eduard Groener, a regimental paymaster, and his wife Auguste Boleg. Young Wilhelm entered the Württemberg Army in 1884 shortly after his Abitur exam and was a Portepéefähnrich on 8 August 1885. He attended the Kriegsakademie from 1893 to 1896. By 1899, he became an almost permanent fixture in the Great General Staff, where for the next 17 years he devoted his energy to the Field Railway Section. As head of this department, Groener was largely responsible for the August 1914 mobilization and was vehemently opposed Moltke's well-documented changes to the Schlieffen Plan. He then headed up the supply and personnel departments at the War Office, but his regard for the welfare of munitions workers and struggles with war profiteers incurred the Supreme Command's wrath, so he was eventually transferred to the Eastern Front as a corps level commander in Ukraine. General Groener was awarded the Pour le Merite in 1915 for organizing the railway transport of Austro-German forces during the Galician campaign. At war's end, General Groener replaced Hindenburg as Chief of General Staff (1918-19). When Kaiser Wilhelm II sought to deploy military against post-war revolutionaries, Groener personally informed the Kaiser that the army no longer supported him. With the Kaiser's abdication, the Marxist Spartacist League had declared a soviet republic in Berlin. Newly-named Chancellor Friedrich Ebert sought to forestall the communists' actions, but apparently on the spur of the moment Philip Scheidemann proclaimed the Republic. Groener, who was second-in-command of the German Army and who had known Ebert from the soldier's days in charge of war production, contacted the socialist leader that evening. The two men concluded the secret Ebert-Groener Pact, with Ebert agreeing to suppress the Bolsheviks and maintain the defeated Army's role as one of the pillars of the German state. For his part, General Groener agreed to throw the weight of the still-considerable Army behind the new government. For this act, Groener earned the enmity of much of the military leadership, much of whom sought the retention of the monarchy. After supervising demobilization of the Army, Groener served as Transportation Minister (1920-23), Reichswehr Defense Minister (1928-32), and Interior Minister (1931-32). Groener was married to Helene Geyer, with whom he had one daughter, and later to Ruth Naeher-Glück, with whom he had a son. He died on 3 May 1939 in Bornstedt near Potsdam.
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