Georg Thomas
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Georg Thomas (20 February 1890 – 29 December 1946) was a German general and a resistance fighter in the Third Reich.
Thomas was born in Forst (Lausitz), Brandenburg. The factory owner's son and later general joined Infantry Regiment 63 as an ensign and a career soldier in 1908. From 1928, he dealt with armament questions at the Army Weapons Office in the Reich Defence Ministry in Berlin. In 1939, he became head of the Defence Economy and Armament Office in the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht. He was a member of the board of Kontinentale Öl AG (an oil company whose purpose was to exploit petroleum resources in occupied countries) as well as Reichswerke Hermann Göring, a major iron and steel company.
Thomas, who since 1940 had been a general of the infantry, recognized early on that Germany's ability to wage a lengthy war was limited by the state of its economy. Since he still had contacts with his former superior Ludwig Beck, as well as with Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and Johannes Popitz, he got to work as early as 1938-39 on the planning for a military coup d'état against Adolf Hitler.
In November 1942, Thomas resigned from the Defence Economy and Armament Office. Albert Speer and his Armament Ministry, meanwhile, had taken over almost all the expertise relating to armament issues.
After the failed attempt on Hitler's life at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia on 20 July 1944, all the old plans from 1938-39 were found, leading to Thomas's arrest on 11 October 1944, followed by stays in the Flossenbürg and Dachau concentration camps. While he was being transported to Bolzano-Bozen, he was freed by American troops and died in their custody in 1946.
