Early Life and Career
Born in Biebrich (now a borough of Wiesbaden, Hesse) in Hessen-Nassau, he was educated in the Prussian military tradition. He served on the Western Front in World War I as a staff officer. After the war he served in various staff and command appointments. In 1931–1932, he led the group of army writers, at the Department of the Army (Truppenamt) which published the German Army Operations Manual entitled Truppenführung. The first section was promulgated in 1933 and the second section in 1934. A modified version is still in use today by the Federal German Army. He was promoted to the rank of Generalleutnant in 1932 and, two years later, he replaced General Wilhelm Adam as chief of the Truppenamt, the camouflaged General Staff (the Treaty of Versailles explicitly forbade the existence of the General Staff).
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Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“Whether lawyer, politician or executive, the American who knows what’s good for his career seeks an institutional rather than an individual identity. He becomes the man from NBC or IBM. The institutional imprint furnishes him with pension, meaning, proofs of existence. A man without a company name is a man without a country.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)