Word: falkenhausen
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Died. Alexander Ernst von Falkenhausen, 88, German general, a Prussian Junker who was military overseer of Belgium and Northern France during World War II until his complicity in the 1944 plot to kill Hitler ended his career, then despite his claim to anti-Nazism, was convicted as a war criminal in Belgium but, granted an amnesty, left the country with this bitter entry in the customs book: "Ingrata Belgia, non possidebis ossa mea";* of a heart attack; in Nassau, West Germany...
...become a tourist guide, and a more freewheeling, freeloading, freethinking travel agent there never was. A further device, for which the reader can be grateful, is to tell great lies about his adventures. There even seems to be some doubt about his real name, which he says is von Falkenhausen, though there are reports to which neither he nor his publisher refer, that it is actually Peter Brooke...
Married. Lieut. General (ret.) Alexander Ernst Alfred Hermann von Falkenhausen. 81, World War II occupation governor of Belgium, who was imprisoned in 1944 by the Gestapo for his alleged part in an anti-Hitler conspiracy and from 1945 to 1951 by the Allies; and Cecile Vent, 54, wealthy Belgian also jailed by the Gestapo for underground work; both for the second time; in Nassau, Germany...
Lieut. General Alexander von Falkenhausen, sentenced to twelve years at hard labor last month on charges of war crimes committed while he was military governor of Belgium, last week was a free man. The Belgian government released the 72-year-old prisoner, after crediting him with the six years served before he came to trial. Before dawn, Falkenhausen hurried to the German border, where he told newsmen: "I will go to friends and to my dogs who surely wait for me." As for German participation in European defense: "I can't imagine myself fighting shoulder to shoulder with contingents...
...Pleaded Falkenhausen: "During my interrogations by the Gestapo I was reproached with having been too mild in Belgium; I was supposed to have arrested too few and released them too soon." He admitted that under his regime there were arrests, shootings, deportations. "A German general, like any soldier, must obey his chiefs." But, he said, "I employed every means to frustrate, modify or alleviate the orders and instructions which opposed my views. Obviously, I could frustrate them completely [only] in a few cases. But I always tried to do the best I could under the circumstances ... St. Augustine has written...