This day marked the death of German field marshal Werner von Blomberg. He was the minister of war (Reichskriegsminister) when Hitler was in power in Germany. In fact, along with that role, Field Marshal von Blomberg was also the supreme commander of the German Armed Forces (Oberbefehlshaber der Wehrmacht).
Werner von Blomberg was also the first German officer to whom Adolf Hitler gave the highest rank in the German army – that of Field Marshal (Generalfeldmarschall). The mentioned title of the supreme commander of the German Armed Forces (Oberbefehlshaber der Wehrmacht) was perhaps the cause of Blomberg’s downfall. Namely, it appears that Herman Göring and Heinrich Himmler were jealous of his position.
And indeed, in 1938 Göring and Himmler found a way to get rid of Blomberg. They discovered that his new wife, a 26-year-old typist, allegedly participated in some pornographic photo shoots in her youth. Furthermore, her photographer, with whom she was living at the time, was of Jewish heritage. Once Hitler was informed of this, he demanded that Blomberg divorce his wife. However, Field Marshal Blomberg refused, and was forced to resign from his positions.
After his resignation, Blomberg spent a year in exile with his wife on the island of Capri, and didn’t have any sort of significant influence during the whole of World War II. Near the end of the war, he was captured by the Allies, and died on this day in Nuremberg. He was 67 years old at the time, and the cause of his death was cancer.
