ERICH HOEPNER GENERALOBERST – COLONEL-GENERAL

HOEPNER WAS A DISTINGUISHED PANZER OFFICER WHO BECAME PARTY TO THE PLOT FOLLOWING HIS SACKING BY HITLER IN 1942

the son of a general, erich hoepner served in World War i and initially supported the nazis’ policy of rearmament, but feared hitler’s threatened attack on Czechoslovakia in 1938 was a step too far, and so joined the nascent resistance. regardless, he served as a corps commander in the invasions of Poland and France, where he clashed with the Waffen-ss over their atrocities.

Promoted to lead Panzergruppe 4 for the invasion of the soviet Union, he distinguished himself, only to fall foul of hitler that same winter by ordering his battered formations to withdraw without the dictator’s express permission. sacked, he was also dismissed from the army – an act he successfully overturned in court. By now an avid anti-nazi, despite enthusiastically ordering his men to execute captured commissars and communists while in russia, he was a supporter of the 20 July Plot.

Following his arrest he was offered suicide as a way out but refused – insisting on a trial, where the chief prosecutor roland Freisler humiliated him by making him wear grotesquely ill-fitting clothes without a belt for his trousers, and refusing to let him wear his false teeth.

Erich Hoepner shaking hands with Hitler in 1939. He would win glory in Russia before being executed for his part in the Plot