General Adolf Heusinger Autographs, Memorabilia & Collectibles

Adolf Heusinger (1897-1982) was a German military officer who served in Germany's armed forces from World War I to the Cold War. He joined the Imperial German Army in 1915, after the outbreak of World War I, received a commission to lieutenant (1916). He was wounded several times at Verdun and Flanders and was taken prisoner by the British in 1917. Heusinger was highly decorated for his actions in World War I and received the Prussian Iron Cross 1st and 2nd Class. After the war, Heusinger joined the Weimar Republic's Reichswehr and rose to the newly formed Operations Staff of the Army General Staff in 1937, after Adolf Hitler assumed power. He was promoted to colonel and became chief of the Operationsabteilung in 1940, which made him third in the Army's planning hierarchy after General Franz Halder and Friedrich Paulus. He rose to the rank of Generallutenant in 1943 and, in 1944, replaced General Kurt Zietzler, who had suffered a nervous breakdown in 1944 as Chief of the General Staff of the Army. Heusinger was standing next to Hitler during the failed July 20, 1944 bomb assassination on Hitler, being wounded by the explosion. He was captured by the Allies in 1945 and was a prisoner of war until 1947, testifying in the Nuremberg Trials. Later, Heusinger rejoined the military in 1955 with the Federal Republic of Germany's Bundeswehr, rising to full general and the first Inspector General of the Bundeswehr in 1957. He was also Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 1961 to 1964.