Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof was born in Weimar on 26 May 1939. After attending grammar school and graduating from high school in Bonn, he joined the armed forces in 1959 and was trained as an armoured officer.
In 1964 and 1965, he undertook a six-month study trip through Namibia and South Africa. After three years as head of an armoured company, he completed general staff training. This was followed by assignments as a general staff officer at the NATO headquarters of the NORTHAG army group, in the troops, in the Ministry of Defence and as commander of a tank battalion. Schultze-Rhonhof then spent four years training prospective general staff officers himself at the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College before successively becoming commander of an armoured infantry brigade, the armoured troop school, the 3rd and 1st armoured divisions and the Lower Saxony/Bremen military district.
Major General Schultze-Rhonhof's last official duties included leading NATO's first "Partnership for Peace" exercise in Hungary and participating as an observer in an Egyptian-American manoeuvre in the Libyan Desert.
Schultze-Rhonhof resigned from the Bundeswehr in 1996 at his own request because he did not want to share the responsibility for the consequences of an inappropriate reduction in the length of military service to 10 months. Since then, in 1997, he published the book "Why be brave?" , 2003 the book "1939, The war that had many fathers" and in 2008 the book "Czech-German drama 1918-1939" and other book and newspaper articles. Most recently, in 2013, he published the American book by the author J.V. Denson “ A Centrury of War" was translated into German and published under the title " They said peace and meant war" was published.
He has also undertaken numerous lecture tours in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Turkey, Italy and Peru. In 1996, Schultze Rhonhof was honoured with the Freedom Prize of the "Democracy and Market Economy" Foundation in Munich and the Courage Prize of the "Association of the Private Housing Industry" in Hanover, and in 2012 with the Culture Prize of the Landsmannschaft für freie Publizistik.
Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof is married, has three children and nine grandchildren, and lives in Haldensleben near Magdeburg.
This personal portrait was taken from Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof's private website, there you will also find further information in German about his books. As far as I know, the books mentioned have only been published in German and partly in English, even if the book titles are displayed in their respective languages in the automated translations in other languages. His best-known and most comprehensive book is "1939, The war that had many fathers", in which Schultze-Rhonhof uses a wealth of sources and research to shed light on the prehistory and the beginning of the Second World War and shakes up the one-sided and simplistic picture that is usually conveyed to the public.
Read more his detailed Letters and explanations on the war in Ukraine and his proposal for an immediate peace initiative!