Friedrich von der Heydte (30 March 1907 – 7 July 1994) was an oberstleutnant of Nazi Germany's fallschirmjaegers. His rank being a Lieutenant-Colonel, he was one of Germany's paratrooper commanders during World War II, and after the war's end he became a Brigadier-General of the Bundeswehr of West Germany.
Biography[]
Friedrich von der Heydte was born on 30 March 1907 in Munich, Bavaria to a family of devout Catholic nobles. He was the cousin of Count Claus von Stauffenberg, another nobleman of the German Empire. Von der Heydte gained a law degree at Graz University in 1927 and had liberal views, but in 1933 he joined the Nazi Party and Sturmabteilung (SA). He achieved his goal of becoming a cavalry officer in the new Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany, but in 1935 his regiment was turned into an anti-tank regiment, and he served as an aide-de-camp during the Fall of France in 1940. In May, he was transferred to the Luftwaffe and made an officer of its fallschirmjaegers, and he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross due to his battalion's status as being the first German troops to enter Canea in the Battle of Crete. His regiment then saw action in North Africa and Italy, and on 11 September 1943 he led the occupation of Rome after Fascist Italy betrayed the Axis Powers for the Western Allies.
Von der Heydte was wounded in an air crash on Elba in September 1943, and in January 1944 he was given command of a Fallschirmjaeger regiment. His regiment was present in Normandy and fought the United States at the Battle of Carentan on 10–14 June 1944, a defeat for the Germans. His regiment survived the Falaise Gap and moved to the Netherlands by September 1944, before fighting at the Battle of the Bulge. Von der Heydte's regiment was defeated at the Battle of Elsenborn Ridge and he suffered a broken arm, and on 23 December 1944 he surrendered to the Allies.
Von der Heydte was held as a prisoner-of-war until 1947, and when he was released he joined the Christian Social Union in Bavaria and became a colonel in the reserves of West Germany's Bundeswehr. In 1962, he was involved in the "Spiegel Affair", where the magazine Der Spiegel inadvertently revealed the weaknesses of the Bundeswehr to the Soviet Union, and he supported the arrest of several journalists. He was later criticized for his role in the affair, and he died in 1994 in Landshut.