Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte

German military officer, academic and politician (1907–1994)

Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte (30 March 1907 – 7 July 1994) was a German paratroop officer during World War II who later served in the armed forces of West Germany, achieving the rank of General. Following the war, Heydte pursued academic, political and military careers, as a Catholic conservative professor of political science, a member of the Christian Social Union political party, and as a Bundeswehr reservist. In 1962, Heydte was involved in the Spiegel affair.

Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte joined the Reichswehr in April 1925. In 1927, he was released from military service to attend Innsbruck University, receiving a degree in economics. In 1927, Heydte was awarded his degree in law at Graz University. He joined the NSDAP on 1 May 1933, obtaining membership number 2.134.193. He entered the Sturm Abteilung the same year. In 1935 Heydte re joined the Reichswehr where he attended staff training. Meanwhile, Heydte had begun his academic career in international law in 1933 as a private assistant to Hans Kelsen in Cologne on Alfred Verdross's recommendation. Following Kelsen's dismissal in the wake of the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, Heydte became Verdross's assistant at the Consular Academy in Vienna (1933–1934). Because of his National Socialist activities, he had to leave the Consular Academy in 1934 and became an assistant to Karl Gottfried Hugelmann at the University of Münster.

Heydte took part in the invasion of Poland and the Battle of France as a junior commander. In May 1940, he was transferred to Luftwaffe's parachute arm; he commanded a battalion during the Battle of Crete in May 1941. In July 1942 Heydte was sent to Libya as commander of the Fallschirm Lehrbataillon, part of the Ramcke Parachute Brigade. Heydte was an officer in the Ramcke Brigade in North Africa until February 1943 when he and several other officers were transferred to France to form the nucleus of the new 2nd Fallschirmjäger Division under command of major general H. B. Ramcke. He was posted as an operations officer in the divisional HQ. After the fall of Sicily during the summer of 1943, the Germans grew wary of a potential Italian defection to the Allies. To counter this event the 2nd Fallschirmjäger Division was transferred from France to Rome on 6 August. Heydte gained audience with Pope Pius XII and befriended the Pope's "Throne Assistant", the theologian Alois Hudal, who would later become a key person in helping Nazi war criminals evade the courts of justice during the post war war crime trials. The division participated in taking Rome under German control as part of the German Operation Achse. Heydte was given command of a regiment of the 2nd Fallschirmjäger Division in January 1944. By the time of Operation Overlord, the 6th Fallschirmjäger Regiment had been attached to the 91st Luftlande Infantry Division. Heydte's unit took part in the Battle of Carentan, Operation Lüttich, and in fighting against the Allied forces in Operation Market Garden.

Prior to the Ardennes Offensive, the Germans planned Operation Stösser to drop paratroopers behind the American lines north of Malmédy and to seize a key crossroads (N68 N672) leading to the towns of Eupen and Verviers. To conceal the plans from the Allies and preserve secrecy, Heydte wasn't allowed to use his own, experienced troops. Most of the new paratroops had little training. The kampfgruppe was tasked with dropping at night onto a strategic road junction 11 kilometers north of Malmédy and to hold it for approximately twenty four hours until relieved by the 12th SS Panzer Division, with the aim of hampering the flow of Allied reinforcements and supplies. The planes that were relatively close to the intended drop zone were buffeted by strong winds that deflected many paratroopers and made their landings far rougher. Since many of the German paratroopers were very inexperienced, some were crippled upon impact and died where they fell. Some of their bodies were found the following spring as the snow melted. Heydte broke his arm upon landing from his jump. Initially, only 125 men made it to the correct landing zone, with no heavy weapons. By noon on 17 December, Heydte's unit had scouted the woods and rounded up a total of around 300 troops. With only enough ammunition for a single fight, the force was too small to take the crossroads on its own. Because all his radios had been destroyed or lost in the jump, Heydte didn't know the 12th SS Panzer Division failed to defeat the Americans at the Battle of Elsenborn Ridge, and was unable to relieve his forces. Cut off, without supplies and pursued by the U. S. forces, Heydte ordered his men to break through Allied lines and reach the German lines. Heydte arrived in Monschau on 21 December and surrendered on 23 December. He was held as a prisoner of war in England until July 1947.

After his release as a POW, Heydte returned to his academic career, completing his dissertation in 1950 at the university of Munich under Erich Kaufmann (Jurist), whom he had met at the Hague Academy of International Law before the outbreak of World War II.

In 1985, Heydte became one of the central figures in the Flick affair, a serious party funding scandal in which Heydte allegedly had, as the director of the Würzburg Institute of Political Science and Policy Association for many years, helped to launder money for political donations to the CDU/CSU and FDP. He had to appear before the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany on the issue of party funding through tax deferred contributions.

In 1962, as head of the Institute for Military Law at University of Würzburg, Heydte challenged the weekly magazine Der Spiegel over an article it published claiming a "scandalous" state of affairs in the Bundeswehr. Specifically, Von der Heydte accused the editors of high treason because they had revealed the military weaknesses of the new Bundeswehr to the public and thus to the Soviets. Because of that accusation and Heydte's position as an expert in military law, the issue was brought to a federal court, triggering what was to be known as the Spiegel affair, with many arrests of journalists and others connected to that publication. The police raid on Der Spiegel was forcefully led by Theo Saevecke, the Kriminalrat at Sicherungsgruppe Bonn. Saevecke's wartime past was soon revealed. He had achieved the rank of SS Hauptsturmführer and served with SS Einsatzgruppe IV in Poland (1939–40), the SS Sicherheitsdienst in North Africa (1942–43) and commanded the Gestapo and Italian fascist police in Milan (from 1943 to 1945). All these associations marked him as a potential war criminal. Heydte's and Saevecke's conduct in the Spiegel affair caused a public outcry followed by demonstrations and public debates. The Spiegel affair was the first sign of a change in the popular beliefs in West Germany and the progenitor of all the protest later in that decade against all former Nazi German officials still in office. Heydte was heavily criticised for his actions by several prominent West German politicians, and in 1965, a court cleared the editors of Der Spiegel on all charges.

Heydte died in Aham, Landshut, in 1994 after a long illness.