Friedrich Hossbach (22 November 1894 – 10 September 1980) was a General der Infanterie of the German Wehrmacht who commanded the German 4th Army from July 1944 to January 1945 during World War II.
Biography[]
Friedrich Hossbach was born on 22 November 1894 in Unna, Westphalia, German Empire. He entered the Imperial German Army in 1913 and served in World War I, and he became the military adjutant to Adolf Hitler during the 1930s. Hossbach had a hand in outlining Hitler's expansionist policies, and a meeting on 5 November 1937 decided that Hitler would go to war with the United Kingdom and France in the future. In 1938, he warned Werner von Fritsch of Heinrich Himmler's accusations that he was gay, and Hossbach was dismissed as Hitler's adjutant for betraying this information to Fritsch. During World War II, he led the LVI Panzer Corps and the German 4th Army, and he was removed from command in January 1945 when his army was encircled in the Heiligenbeil Pocket by the Soviet Red Army. Hossbach died in Goettingen, Lower Saxony, West Germany in 1980 at the age of 85.