Alexander Lohr (20 May 1885 – 26 February 1947) was a Generaloberst of the Luftwaffe of Nazi Germany, formerly serving in the Austrian Air Force before the Anschluss with Germany in 1938.
Biography[]
Alexander Lohr was born on 20 May 1885 in Turnu-Severin, Romania to a Catholic Austrian father and an Orthodox Christian Ukrainian-Jewish nurse, and he grew up speaking German, Russian, French, and Romanian, with the family speaking French due to his parents' inability to speak each other's languages well. He graduated from the Theresian Military Academy in 1906, and he was a witness of the Battleship Potemkin's mutiny while visiting family in Odessa. Lohr served in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I, and in 1921 he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel. In 1938, following the Anschluss with Nazi Germany, Lohr became a Lieutenant-General of the Luftwaffe and the commander of their forces in Austria. At the start of World War II, he took part in the bombing of Warsaw in 1939 and the 1941 bombing of Belgrade, in which thousands of people were killed by incendiary bombs.
On 3 July 1942, Lohr succeeded Walter Kuntze as commander of the German 12th Army, and on 28 December he was appointed commander-in-chief of all Axis Powers forces in southeastern Europe (Army Group E). Lohr oversaw the successful Dodecanese Campaign of 1943, but on 9 May 1945 he was forced to surrender to Yugoslav partisans at Topolsica in Slovenia. Lohr was found guilty of war crimes (especially the bombing of Belgrade) and was executed by firing squad on 26 February 1947 in Belgrade.