ABSTRACT
Falkenhausen, Alexander Freiherr von (1878–1966) German General who served from 1940 to 1944 as the Military Governor of occupied Belgium and northern France, Alexander von Falkenhausen was born on 29 October 1878 in Blumenthal, Silesia. A professional soldier of the old Prussian school, descended from a Junker family, he was military attaché to the German embassy in Tokyo in 1912, and during World War I was attached to the Turkish army, serving in Palestine. He received the Pour le Mérite decoration for courage in combat. From 1927 to 1930 von Falkenhausen was Commandant of the Infantry School in Dresden. In 1934 he succeeded General von Seeckt (q.v.) as head of the German Military Mission in China, where he remained for over four years, training the army of Chiang Kai-Shek and helping to develop a modern Chinese arms industry.
