Jonathan Fenby, Chiang Kai-shek’s British biographer, called Alexander von Falkenhausen “a First World War veteran with a vulturelike head and pince-nez.” Historian Barbara Tuchman described Falkenhausen as a skilled commander who led from the front but got nowhere with Chiang, who was the villain in her biography of American Gen. Joseph Stilwell. In 1953 Chiang, by then president of the Republic of China on Taiwan, sent Falkenhausen 75th birthday wishes and an enclosed check for $12,000 (more than $120,000 in today’s dollars). But it was a Chinese woman named Qian Xiuling, “China’s female Schindler,” who helped Falkenhausen—a hero in China and a villain in Belgium—beat a 12-year prison sentence as a Nazi war criminal.
Falkenhausen seemed destined for controversy long before his birth. Genealogy establishes him as a descendant of Karl Wilhelm Friedrich, margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach, by his mistress, Elisabeth Wünsch, making Falkenhausen a distant member of the Prussian royal family.
The future general himself was born on Oct. 29, 1878, in Blumenthal, Silesia, to Baron Alexander von Falkenhausen and wife Elisabeth ( Schuler von Senden). The second of seven children and son of a baronial family, young Alexander initially attended a (classical secondary school) in Breslau but at age 12 transferred to the military academy at Wahlstatt as a cadet. In 1897 the teenager was assigned to an Oldenburg infantry regiment as a second lieutenant. When the Boxer Rebellion broke out in 1900, Falkenhausen volunteered and was sent to China. Most of the fighting was over by the time he arrived, but he developed
