Word: speidel
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...letter urging cadets to join, which was postpaid by the Army, was signed by Joseph Speidel '59, treasurer of the Caisson Club. "All I'm trying to do is make it easy for them to pay," Speidel said...
...that immediately presented itself was: Will the British decision start a chain reaction for reduction of forces among the other NATO allies, e.g., France and Italy? In the new distribution of power, there would be a new and different premium on the West German ground forces, whose General Hans Speidel has just taken over as Norstad's commander of allied land forces in Central Europe...
...soft-spoken Swabian who thinks like a general but looks like a professor (he once taught history at Tübingen University), Speidel is a cultivated specimen of the oldtime German general staffer. On his desk he keeps two photographs-one of the late General Ludwig Beck, the stiff-backed martinet who headed the German general staff 20 years ago, the other of turn-of-the-century German Dramatist Gerhart Hauptmann...
...testing question asked about any German general these days is where was he on July 20, 1944. That was the date of the German generals' attempt on Hitler's life. In Paris, as chief of staff in France. Speidel was intimately involved in the plot to overthrow Hitler, but like his superior. Rommel, disapproved of assassinating him. When the assassination attempt failed, Speidel was one of those cross-questioned by SS interrogators but handled himself so skill fully that Hitler never got enough on him to hang him with the rest...
When Western leaders began negotiating for EDC in 1951, Chancellor Adenauer, who had called Speidel from his classroom in 1950 to act as military adviser, sent him as West Germany's "observer" to Paris. As a German who had learned to speak fluent French as assistant military attache in the Paris of the early '30s, he made a hit with the French generals. They also remembered that as a high staff officer in the occupation he had prevented the SS from shooting hostages. Later Speidel won the sympathies of the Danes, Belgians and Dutch by criticizing French plans...