Walter Krueger (26 January 1881-20 August 1967) was a General of the US Army during World War II. Krueger was a "mustang", rising from the rank of private to general.
Biography[]
Walter Krueger was born in Flatow, West Prussia, German Empire (now Zlotow, Greater Poland Voivodeship, Poland) on 26 January 1881 to a family of ethnic Germans, and his mother took Krueger and his two siblings to live with their uncle in St. Louis, Missouri in the United States after their father passed away in 1889. Krueger was raised in Madison, Indiana, and he attended a technical high school in Cincinnati, Ohio, planning on becokimg a blacksmith. However, he volunteered in the US Army during the Spanish-American War and served on occupation duty in Cuba, and he re-enlisted during the Philippine-American War. Krueger was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1901, and he was posted to the Pennsylvania national guard in 1914. In 1916, his regiment was mobilized and sent to the border with Mexico during the Mexican Revolution, and he served as chief of staff of the Tank Corps in France in 1918 during World War I.
Between the wars, Krueger picked up his childhood dream of becoming a naval officer and attended the Naval War College, and he became commander of the US Third Army in 1941. Krueger expected to stay at home training troops, but he was sent to the Pacific in 1943 to command the US Sixth Army during the war with Japan. He commanded the Army in support of Chester Nimitz's US Navy during its island-hopping operations in the Pacific, taking part in the capture of the Bismarck Islands, the Admiralty Islands, the fighting in New Guinea, and the liberation of the Philippines, and he managed to outmaneuver the Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita before accepting his surrender in September 1945. After the war, he retired to San Antonio, Texas, and the rest of his life was full of tragedy; his son was dismissed from the army in 1947 after a scandal, his wife's health deteriorated before she died of cancer in 1956, and his daughter killed her husband in 1952. He died in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in 1967 at the age of 86.