25 years ago Mittenwald Kübler barracks were renamed Karwendel barracks. The “Bloodhound of Lviv” was the first to implement the so-called gang order during World War II.
- The Mittenwald Karwendel barracks was still called Kübler barracks until 1995
- 25 years ago a teacher drew attention to the war crimes of General Ludwig Kübler
- Kübler was known as the “bloodhound of Lemberg” and put the notorious gang order into practice
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Mittenwald – Ludwig Kübler – sometime in the 1990s Jakob Knab (69) stumbled upon this name. The high school teacher from Kaufbeuren is currently studying Friedrich Andrae’s book “Also against women and children”. On page 157 he comes across the notorious gang order of December 16, 1942, issued by General Wilhelm Keitel, the chief of the Wehrmacht High Command, on Führer’s orders. A few weeks before the devastating defeat of Stalingrad, he ordered: “The troops are therefore entitled and obliged to use every means in this struggle without restriction, even against women and children, if it only leads to success.”
“The traditional terror general Ludwig Kübler was the first to put the gang order into practice,” wrote Knab on April 22, 1995 in a press release from Pax Christi, an international Catholic peace movement. Precisely for this reason, in a further broadcast on July 13, 1995, the then Federal Defense Minister Volker Rühe (CDU) called for the “immediate renaming” of the General Kübler barracks in Mittenwald. Because this Nazi officer was “the ice-cold and ruthless leader on the battlefield” – the “bloodhound of Lemberg”, the “Adria-Schreck”, the “war criminal”. Knab’s fearless struggle against what he saw as a false sense of tradition was successful: On November 27, 1995, the mountain and winter combat school was renamed the Karwendel barracks.
Author Knab not only made friends with his anti-Kübler campaign in 1995
A quarter of a century after the triumph of his initiative, the author and retired director of studies says in retrospect: “The basic values of right, freedom and human dignity have won.” an anonymous caller. Far from the only one who usually picks up the phone at night. After all, the Knab family has to get a secret number.
General Ludwig Kübler was relentless.
© mauritius images/Alamy
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“But I also experienced a lot of solidarity,” the devout Catholic recalls. “Mr. Knab, I pray for you every day,” someone from Oberammergau encourages him. High-ranking Bundeswehr representatives also see the “constitutional patriot”, as Knab calls himself, on the right track. But most of them want to stay in the background – not least for career reasons.
Alois Lösl (65 years old) from Mittenwald did his service 25 years ago in the General Kübler barracks as a mountain hunter officer and mountain guide. During his training, he never dealt with the vita of the namesake of the winter combat school. Only when this topic is raised by Pax Christi, he and the then commander Martin Glagow prick up their ears. “Of course that’s a historic mortgage,” says Lösl, the retired lieutenant colonel, referring to the Nazi era. With a gap of 25 years, Lösl states with regard to General Ludwig Kübler (1889 to 1947): “I am absolutely in favor of the renaming.”
Kübler chased 300 of his own Bavarian mountain hunters into “Death and Verderben” in one day
In the summer and autumn of 1995, many in the vicinity of the German army see it completely differently. In countless letters to the editor, they vent their anger at Knab in the daily newspaper. “For some years now, forces have been gaining in weight in Germany that question everything that is soldier and military,” says Karl R. Griessinger, for example, the long-time president of the mountain troops’ circle of comrades. With Kübler he comes to a completely contrary judgment: “In the numerous life descriptions he is portrayed as a tough leader with clear language, as a humble, warm, caring person, as a chivalrous officer, in particular he was not a follower of Hitler.” Such an assessment alienates Knab : “Due to his boastful contempt for human beings, Kübler hounded 300 of his own Bavarian mountain troops into death and ruin in one day”, informed the Kaufbeurer in a press release on August 2, 1995. How Griessinger thinks today about “the founder and creator of the mountain troops of the Wehrmacht” , stays in the dark. Griessinger could not be reached to comment. The former four-star general Dr. Klaus Reinhardt, who served in Mittenwald for many years and made a name for himself as a history and political scientist in the Federal Republic, does not want to comment on the topic of Kübler / Mittenwald.
Goes his way: Jakob Knab (left), the “constitutional patriot”.
© Private
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But now it is undisputed and simply a historical fact that Kübler, who wore the Knight’s Cross, was anything but chivalrous on the Eastern Front and in the Balkans during the war of annihilation. In retrospect, it was a mistake to make him the patron of a Bundeswehr property in Mittenwald.
Barracks first bore the name of Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff (1865 to 1937), who played a leading role in the 1923 Hitler putsch
When it was inaugurated in 1937, it bears the name of Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff (1865 to 1937), who not only played a leading role as Commander-in-Chief in World War I, but also in the 1923 Hitler putsch. In 1964 this, from today’s perspective, this bad choice disappears – and is replaced by Ludwig Kübler.
It stayed that way for 31 years until Jakob Knab from Pax Christi made himself heard in the spring of 1995. “Citizens with or without uniforms have to stick together” is the credo of the studied theologian, who in 1970 after three months of basic military service in Ulm was recognized as a conscientious objector. “Flieger Knab, you are out of place here”, a train driver is said to have advised him at the time.
The man from Pax Christ believes that the politically correct name Karwendel barracks could one day disappear. “The daisy names are long gone.” In the meantime, the crisis and war-tested Bundeswehr no longer remembers questionable Nazi commanders, but rather the silent heroes of a parliamentary army such as Sergeant Tobias Lagenstein, who was killed in an attack in Afghanistan in 2011 Finds death. In honor of Lagenstein, the Emmich Cambrai barracks will be renamed Hanover in March 2018. A good and meaningful choice.
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