On January 12, 1948, a 44-year-old historian died of cancer in a hospital in Hanover. His name was Hans Gerd von Rundstedt. Weeks earlier, his father had been allowed to leave a British prison camp to sit at his bedside before being taken back to England. That father was Gerd von Rundstedt, the German army’s most senior field marshal, once called on by Hitler to lead army groups in France, the Soviet Union, and the defense of the West.
He had survived the war. Within five years, his son and his wife would be dead, and so would he. Gerd von Rundstedt was born in the Saxon town of Aschersleben in December 1875 into a line that had sent its men into Prussian service for generations. In January 1902, at age 26, he married Louisa von Gerdts, known to everyone in the family as Bila.
The following year, she gave birth to their only child, Hans Gerd. The marriage would last half a century, with Bila remaining the constant in a life otherwise spent in barracks, headquarters, and the field. Rundstedt rose slowly and steadily through the Imperial Army, served as a staff officer in the First World War, and stayed on in the small force Germany was permitted after 1918. He was a soldier of the old school—formal, reserved, and determined to see himself as separate from politics.
He had little respect for the Nazi party and sometimes mocked its leaders in private. Yet he continued to serve the regime at the highest level throughout its wars, a contradiction that would shape how history remembered him. By the late 1930s, he was among the most respected officers in Germany, and when the Second World War came, Hitler turned to him again and again. Rundstedt commanded the army group that broke through in France in 1940, led forces into the Soviet Union in 1941, and served as commander-in-chief in the west when the Allies landed in Normandy in 1944.
In July 1940, Hitler promoted him to field marshal. Hitler dismissed him and recalled him more than once, leaning on his prestige whenever the military situation worsened. Through all of it, Rundstedt’s closest ties stayed the same: his wife, their only son, and the officer corps to which he had given his life. He gathered neither a wide circle of friends nor a fortune.
Hans Gerd von Rundstedt did not follow his father into a fighting career. He was a scholar who earned a doctorate and took a post as a librarian at Berlin University while his father commanded armies in the field. In September 1935, he married Editha von Open, known as Dita. She held a doctorate in economics and worked in government administration in Berlin and later in occupied Paris.
Between 1936 and 1945, the couple had five children. In 1942, Hans Gerd was assigned to the army’s war history library in Berlin. From 1943, he served directly on his father’s staff in occupied France, working with the official record of the very war his father was helping to command. Dita’s administrative work had also brought her to Paris, and for a time the war kept the three of them within reach of the same headquarters.
As the front collapsed through 1944 and 1945, the territory under that headquarters shrank until there was little left to command. For the last two years of the war, the two men were side by side. They were still together on May 1, 1945, when American troops reached the Bavarian town of Bad Tölz. Rundstedt, ill and worn down, was taken prisoner.
His son was taken with him and would not live to see his father released. As Germany’s most senior surviving field marshal, Rundstedt was flown to England for interrogation. Hans Gerd followed him into the camp system, brought there on compassionate grounds to be with his father. He passed through the interrogation at Wilton Park in Buckinghamshire and a camp at Grizedale Hall in the Lake District before reaching special camp at Island Farm near Bridgend in South Wales, where Britain held its most senior German prisoners.
A British assessment of Hans Gerd survives in the camp records. It called him “the baby of the family” among the generals, noted that he had been brought there on compassionate grounds, and remarked that his English was reasonably good. He taught beginners’ English to other prisoners and, in the eyes of his captors, fussed anxiously around the senior men. While in captivity, Hans Gerd began suffering from serious problems with his throat.
The camp doctors were unable to help him. He was released from British custody in early 1947 and returned to Hanover, where it became clear that he had cancer. By the summer, he was in hospital and there was little hope that he would recover. In 1947, the British allowed Rundstedt to leave the prison camp for a short visit to his dying son.
It was the first time he had seen his wife since 1945 and the first time he had met some of his grandchildren. After the visit, he was taken back to England. Hans Gerd died on January 12, 1948, at age 44. His father was allowed to travel to Hanover once more for the funeral.
The case against Rundstedt dragged on for years. The British had drawn up a list of senior German commanders they meant to try for war crimes. On January 1, 1949, the British charged Rundstedt with a series of war crimes, including his role in passing on two criminal orders: the Commissar Order, which condemned captured Soviet political commissars to death, and the Commando Order, which denied captured Allied commandos the protections given to prisoners of war. The charges also covered the mistreatment of civilians and prisoners, forced labor, and crimes against Jews under German occupation.
The trial never took place. Rundstedt was in his 70s, his heart was weak, and years of captivity had weakened him further. Early in 1949, British doctors examined him and concluded he was unfit to stand trial. On May 5, 1949, the government confirmed in the House of Lords that the charges against Field Marshal von Rundstedt were being dropped.
He was released later that month. By contrast, Erich von Manstein, one of Germany’s most celebrated commanders, was judged fit enough to stand trial. He was convicted at Hamburg that same year on nine counts and sentenced to 18 years. Rundstedt, spared by his poor health, was simply let go.
He returned to Hanover in 1949, the city where his son had died, and for a short time was reunited with Bila. In January 1952, Bila suffered a stroke that left her partly paralyzed. On October 4, 1952, she died in Hanover after 50 years of marriage. With his wife gone and his only son four years in the grave, Rundstedt declined quickly.
Those close to him said he felt he had little left to live for. He died of heart failure on February 24, 1953, less than four months after Bila. He was 77. His reputation remained tied to the regime he had served.
Dita, Hans Gerd’s widow, lived until 1982, raising five children who had lost their father young. Several married and had families of their own, and the Rundstedt line continued into another generation. Gerd von Rundstedt had outlasted the German Empire, the Weimar Republic, and the Third Reich that had each employed him, but he did not long outlive his wife and only son.
