Bruno Brauer - Autographed Willrich Print

[PKeating]

This is not the usual Willrich postcard as autographed by Ritterkreuzträger during the war but a print on paper, probably cut from a book of the period and send to Brauer for his autograph. The reverse bears traces of having been stuck in an album.

A decorated veteran of the First World War, with the EK1 1914, Bruno Brauer was appointed commander of Fallschirmjäger-Regiment 1 in 1938. He was previously CO of I./Regiment "General Göring" and I./FJR1 and was the recipient of the first Parachutist Badge awarded in 1936. Awarded the Knight's Cross for Holland in 1940, Brauer commanded FJR1 in Crete and then in Russia, before being posted to Crete as military governor in 1943, where he was generally considered by German and Greek alike as tough but far more humane than the other military governors to date. On Greece's national day, Brauer ordered the release of a hundred Cretans from German jails, including Constantinos Mitsotakis, a future Greek Prime Minister.

Replaced as commander of Festung Kreta in 1944, Brauer was relieved of his command of 9. Fallschirmjäger-Division after a nervous breakdown. As a POW of the British, who gave him to the Greeks for trial for alleged war crimes during his time there as military governor. Brauer was predictably found guilty and executed. He paid for the indisputable harshness of his successor, General Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller. His remains were re-interred in the cemetery on Hill 107 in the 1970s after lobbying by the German Airborne Veterans Association. George Psychoundakis himself buried Brauer's remains. In recent years, there have been calls for a posthumous pardon, a step of which the Greek authorities are wary.

This is quite a rare wartime RKT autograph.

PK

Edited October 8, 2009 by PKeating