On 20 July 1944 as the commander of the Military District III (Berlin) Von Kortzfleisch was summoned to the Bendlerstrasse by General Friedrich Fromm. When he arrived, he was perplexed to see that Fromm was no longer in command, that Ludwig Beck was now in control. He angrily refused to obey Operation Valkyrie orders issued by one of the leading conspirators General Friedrich Olbricht and kept shouting ‘the Führer is not dead’ and referring to the oath of loyalty to Hitler.[2] He was arrested and put under guard by the plotters and said that he was not willing to take part in a coup as he was just a soldier interested only in going home and pulling weeds in his garden.[3]
He was replaced in his command by General Karl Freiherr von Thüngen and was later allowed to leave the Bendlerblock. He subsequently interrogated Major Hans-Ulrich von Oertzen, a supporter of the plot. Kortzfleisch was later shocked to learn that the officer leading the plot was his own distant cousin Claus von Stauffenberg, with whom he had attended a wedding the previous year.[citation needed]
Death
In March 1945, Von Kortzfleisch was commanding the Rhine Bridgehead in Army Group B under Field Marshal Walter Model. Kortzfleisch and a handful of soldiers were attempting move through enemy lines to reach Berleburg, when a patrol of the 737th Tank Battalion of the United States Army encountered them at Schmallenberg-Wulwesort, Sauerland.
The general was surrounded by U.S. soldiers and told to put his hands up. Kortzfleisch refused to comply with this command and was promptly fatally shot in the chest by a U.S. soldier.[4]
^Veit Scherzer: Ritterkreuzträger 1939–1945. Die Inhaber des Eisernen Kreuzes von Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm sowie mit Deutschland verbündete Streitkräfte nach den Unterlagen des Bundesarchivs. 2. Auflage, Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis/Jena 2007, ISBN978-3-938845-17-2, S. 467.
^Michael C Thomsett (1997). The German Opposition to Hitler: The Resistance, the Underground, and Assassination Plots, 1938-1945. McFarland. ISBN0-7864-0372-1.
^Augenzeugenbericht der „Fünften Infanterie Division der US-Streitkräfte“, abgedruckt im Jahrbuch Hochsauerlandkreis 1995, ISBN3-86133-126-8, übersetzt von Frank Muermann und Rudolf Salingré, S. 70.
Fellgiebel, Walther-Peer (2000) [1986]. Die Träger des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939–1945 — Die Inhaber der höchsten Auszeichnung des Zweiten Weltkrieges aller Wehrmachtteile [The Bearers of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939–1945 — The Owners of the Highest Award of the Second World War of all Wehrmacht Branches] (in German). Friedberg, Germany: Podzun-Pallas. ISBN978-3-7909-0284-6.
Scherzer, Veit (2007). Die Ritterkreuzträger 1939–1945 Die Inhaber des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939 von Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm sowie mit Deutschland verbündeter Streitkräfte nach den Unterlagen des Bundesarchives [The Knight's Cross Bearers 1939–1945 The Holders of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939 by Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and Allied Forces with Germany According to the Documents of the Federal Archives] (in German). Jena, Germany: Scherzers Militaer-Verlag. ISBN978-3-938845-17-2.
