PROFESSOR DR. RICHARD SUCHENWIRTH, a well-known and somewhat controversial German and Austrian historian, author, teacher and lecturer, was born in Vienna on 8 October 1896. Until 1934 he pursued t...view morePROFESSOR DR. RICHARD SUCHENWIRTH, a well-known and somewhat controversial German and Austrian historian, author, teacher and lecturer, was born in Vienna on 8 October 1896. Until 1934 he pursued the career of teacher in his native Austria. He became a citizen of Germany in 1936, and, until 1944, was Director of the Teacher’s College at Munich-Pasing. In the final year of World War II he was a Professor of History at the University of Munich. Europas letzte Stunde? (Europe’s Last Hour?), the last of his many books, was published in 1951.
Prof. Suchenwirth’s interest in military history dates back to his childhood when he memorized accounts of Hannibal’s battles and traced the great general’s campaigns on his father’s maps. A lieutenant in World War I, he served as an aide to an Austrian general and learned much at firsthand concerning the problems of leadership.
Probably no other historian has interviewed as many of the highest ranking officers of the German Wehrmacht as has Professor Suchenwirth. He has enjoyed a particularly close association with all of the contributors of the GAF Monograph Project and is thoroughly familiar both with their work for the USAF Historical Division and with the documents which have been brought together in the Karlsruhe Document Collection.
In his own words, Prof. Suchenwirth’s interest in military history “...lies not in any affection for militarism, but rather in the realization of the extent to which freedom and the greatness and fate of a people are dependent upon military decisions; of how many human lives, how many brave soldiers and people behind the front are affected by good or bad leadership in time of war.”
He died in Herrsching, Germany in 1965.view less