Bernhard Waber

Waber was born on May 20, 1884 in Kroměříž (German name: Kremsier), Moravia, in what is now Czechia but was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[1]

Joining the Austrian Army in 1907 as a junior officer, he was at the Austrian war academy when World War I broke out. He was immediately attached as a staff officer to an infantry brigade, serving in that capacity for various infantry brigades and being promoted from Senior Lieutenant to Captain in 1915.[1] He then served on the General Staff of the 3rd Army on the Eastern Front. In 1918 he was assigned to the General Staff of the Army Of The East.[1]

After the war, he continued to serve in the army of the First Austrian Republic, achieving the rank of Major General in 1936. He retired that same year. But less than week after the Anschluss (Austria being absorbed into Nazi Germany), he returned to active duty in on March 17, 1938, with the German Air Force. He served during the coming Second World War, mostly as commander of various administrative regions on the Eastern Front.[1]

He was promoted to Lieutenant General in 1940, and became commander of the Air Region VIII, based in Breslau, in 1941, shortly before the German invasion of the Soviet Union. In 1941 he was made commander of Field Air Region Kiev, in early 1942 being promoted to the rank of General of Aviators, a three-star rank equivalent to a British or American Lieutenant General. Later that year was moved over to command of Field Air Region Kharkov, and in 1944 to command of Air Region XXX based in Belgrade. Later in 1944 he was given command of the North Balkan Air Force.[1]

Here, as the German armed forces entered its death throes (Belgrade itself fell in October 1944), Waber apparently engaged in looting, theft of German government property, and permitting rampant black market activities in his command. Air Force chief Hermann Göring, angry at defeatism and unauthorized retreats in the Air Force, had Waber arrested (on November 1, 1944) along with three other Air Force generals. The other three were tried and acquitted, but Waber was judged guilty of "severe mismanagement in his headquarters and staff and rampant defeatism throughout his region" and given the death penalty. He was executed (either by hanging[1] or firing squad,[2] according to different sources) in Spandau Prison on February 6, 1945.[1][3] [4]

This incident further weakened Air Force morale, and engendered anger at Göring, who after all had himself engaged in massive looting during the war.[3]