Werner von Blomberg (2 September 1878 – 14 March 1946) was Minister of War of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1938, preceding Walther von Brauchitsch. He was dismissed after the Blomberg-Fritsch Affair, where opponents claimed that his much younger wife had posed in pornographic photos taken by a Jew whom she lived with. He was acquitted of his charges, but Blomberg never returned to command again.
Biography[]
Werner von Blomberg was born on 2 September 1878 in Stargard, Pomerania, Prussia. Blomberg attended the Prussian Military Academy in 1904, and he was awarded the Pour le Merite during World War I. In 1925, he became chief of army training under Hans von Seeckt, and in 1928 Major-General Blomberg visited the Soviet Union, where he acquired his beliefs that a totalitarian dictatorship was the prerequisite for military power. Blomberg was made military commander of East Prussia in 1929, and in 1933 Adolf Hitler appointed Blomberg commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany. Blomberg was one of the most devoted members of the Nazi Party, and he expanded the power and size of the army, being made a Colonel-General that same year in recognition of his services. Blomberg had the army pledge allegiance to Hitler himself after the death of the former Chancellor Paul von Hindenburg, who was the only man that could prevent the Nazis from taking control of Germany. He argued against Wilhelm Faupel's proposition to dispatch three Wehrmacht divisions to fight in the Spanish Civil War, but he made enemies with Hitler's second-in-command Hermann Goring, Heinrich Himmler, and other people who were more aggressive. In 1938, his enemies claimed that his 26-year-old second wife had posed in a pornographic photo taken by a Jew that she had lived with, and he resigned all of his posts rather than insult his wife. He never held command again, and he died of colorectal cancer in 1946.