Today, at the suggestion of pseudo-historians and anti-Sovietists, it has become fashionable to assert that the Red Army, they say, did not know how and did not even want to fight, we did not defeat the Germans, but only filled them with corpses. And what did the opponents themselves think about this, in particular the Wehrmacht generals?
The walk through Europe is over
EXACTLY a week after the start of the war, on June 29, 1941, the Chief of the General Staff of the Wehrmacht Franz Halder will write in his diary: “Information from the front confirms that the Russians are fighting everywhere to the last man ... Some of the Russians are fighting until they are killed ... Inspector General of Infantry Ott reported on his impressions of the battle in the Grodno area. The stubborn resistance of the Russians forces us to fight according to all the rules of our combat manuals. In Poland and in the West, we could afford certain liberties and deviations from statutory principles; now it is already unacceptable. "
Many of the German military leaders fought with Russia in the First World War. Now they have the opportunity to compare the Tsarist and Soviet armies. Hereinafter, quotations are cited from the book of the British historian Liddell Garth “Battles of the Third Reich. Memories of the highest ranks of the generals of Nazi Germany ”. Deputy Chief of the Wehrmacht General Staff Gunther Blumentritt: “The very first battles in June showed us a new Soviet army. Our losses sometimes reached 50 percent ... Pretty soon we learned what the Russian war was. The Fuhrer and our top military leaders did not know this. This is what caused many misfortunes. The Red Army of 1941-1945 was much stronger than the tsarist army. They fought fanatically for the idea. ” Field Marshal von Kleist says about the same: “These people were first-class fighters from the very beginning, and we owe our success only to a great deal of experience. With experience, they became first-class soldiers. They fought fiercely, had tremendous stamina and could do without many things that soldiers of other armies would find vital. Their commanders immediately learned the lessons of the first defeats and in a short time began to act extremely effectively. "
Technical excellence
An equally important role in the victory was played not only by the perseverance and skill of the fighters, but also by the quality of Soviet technology and the fantastic performance of the industry. Blumentrit, who repeatedly prepared memoranda to Hitler, said: “Our intelligence had information that Russian factories and factories in the Urals and elsewhere were producing 600-700 tanks a month”. These data went to Hitler's table. He replied: "It is impossible." The famous German Field Marshal von Runstedt noted that Soviet heavy tanks from the very beginning of the war "were of surprisingly high quality and reliability."
I agree with this point of view and Kleist: “Their equipment was very good from the first days, first of all I mean the tanks. The artillery also turned out to be excellent, as well as the armament of the infantry - they had more modern rifles and machine guns than ours. And the T-34 tank was the best in the world! " True, General Manteuffel, the tank general, called the Stalin tank created in 1944 the best of all that ever existed (meaning the IS-4 tank). Liddell Garth says British experts criticized Soviet tanks for their lack of technical equipment. At the same time, German generals believed that the British and Americans were paying too much attention to minor improvements at the expense of operational reliability.
Mysterious country
And IN GENERAL, when reading the memoirs of the highest ranks of the Wehrmacht, one gets the impression that they could not understand our people. Answering a question about the basic qualities of the Red Army, for example, Major General Dietmar said: “The first thing I would call the soldiers' utter indifference to their fate - it was something more than fatalism. Of course, they were not completely insensitive when the situation was not the best for them, but usually it was very difficult to make a strong impression on them. In this they differed from the armies of other countries. During the period of my command on the Finnish front, only once did the Russians surrender to my troops ... By special order of Hitler, an attempt was made to instill the mentality of the Russians in our army. We tried to copy their mentality, and they (and obviously more successfully) - our tactics ”.
But the resilience of not only the Red Army surprised the German generals. Blumentritt recalls the battle near Moscow: "Several of our units still managed to penetrate the outskirts of Moscow, but there they were met by crowds of workers from factories, who, having no weapons, came at us with hammers and shovels." And he is.
They dreamed of marching victoriously to the cherished Moscow, leaving behind them the scorched space, the barbed wire of the death camps and millions of corpses. Generals of the Wehrmacht, favorites of the Fuhrer, well-trained and trained strategists of the most advanced military machine in Europe at that time. For the bloody crimes on the land of Soviet Belarus, two dozen performers of the doctrine of the superiority of the Aryan race, who wore general's shoulder straps, had to pay with their own lives. The stages of the camps of the Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees of the GUPVI and the Main Directorate of the camps of the famous GULAG of the NKVD-MVD of the USSR turned out to be a harsh moment of truth for the flawed Nazi psychology of many senior officials of the German generals. So who are these people, who dreamed of swimming in the rays of victorious glory, which warmed pride, but burned out the conscience? - Anatoly Vasilyevich, according to previously classified information, the stay of German generals in Soviet captivity stretched out for long post-war decades. However, their personalities and the fate of the camp remained largely "white" spots in the history of World War II? - During the years of the Great Patriotic War, 3.2 million servicemen of Hitlerite Germany were taken prisoner by the Soviet Union. The overwhelming majority of them were rank-and-file soldiers and representatives of junior command personnel. After the surrender of Nazi Germany, 376 German and 12 Austrian generals ended up in Soviet captivity. On the territory of Belarus, during the grandiose military operation "Bagration", 22 German generals were captured. In addition to these "stripe" prisoners of war, 35 more generals were taken from other regions to the prisons of the republic for prosecution. The first of the twenty-two captured generals were the commander of the 12th infantry division, Lieutenant General Rudolf Bamler and the commandant of the Mogilev fortified area, Major General Gottfried Erdmannsdorf. They surrendered to Soviet troops in Mogilev on June 28, 1944. On the same day, near Borisov, the commander of the 95th infantry division, Major General Herbert Michaelis, was captured, and near Vitebsk, the commander of the 206th infantry division, Lieutenant General Alphonse Hitter. Nikolai Yakimov, an army reconnaissance officer of the 464th artillery regiment of the 164th rifle division, became famous in the "general's hunt". The "trophy" of the junior lieutenant was the commander of the 53rd Army Corps, General of the Infantry Fritz Gollwitzer. Realizing the senselessness of resistance, the military commandant of Bobruisk, Major General Adolf Haman, the commanders of the 6th and 36th infantry divisions, Lieutenant General Hans-Walter Heine, Major General Alexander Konradi, the commander of the 35th Army Corps, Lieutenant General Baron, surrendered. Kurt-Jürgen Hening von Lützow, commander of the 246th Infantry Division, Major General Klaus Müller-Bülow. The chief of the engineering troops of the 9th German army, Major General Aurel Johann von Schmidt, did not manage to hide in the forests of the Slonim. In the forest near Minsk, the commander of the 41st Panzer Corps, Lieutenant General Edmund Hofmeister, was captured, the commander of the 383rd Infantry Division, Major General Gustav Gere, surrendered through parliamentarians. Subsequently, 8 more generals of the Wehrmacht surrendered on the territory of Belarus. - Can one get the impression that the surrender of the highest ranks of the German army on the Belarusian territory took place too casually and almost bloodless? - Far from it. For example, on July 6, 1944, a three-thousand-strong group of Nazi soldiers and officers with the remnants of the 78th assault division, led by Lieutenant General Hans Trout, made a desperate attempt to break through the Minsk-Mogilev highway near the villages of Lyady and Stanevo in the direction of Rudensk. However, the German group led by Trout, defeated by heavy fire from Soviet artillery, surrendered to the mercy of the victors. An attempt to break through the remnants of the 18th Motorized and 69th Infantry of Hitler's divisions in the Minsk region, where Major General Friedrich-Karl von Steinkeller was captured, ended in failure. In the Samokhvalovichi area, together with the headquarters, the commander of the 27th Army Corps, General of Infantry (infantry) Paul-Gustav Felkers, and the commander of the 2nd Army Corps, Lieutenant General Vincenz Müller, surrendered. Major General Gunther Klammt and Knight of 5 Hitler Orders, Lieutenant General Wilhelm Ochsner, fiercely tried to escape from the so-called Minsk cauldron. The last of the 22 generals captured in Belarus was the commander of the 110th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Eberhard von Kurowski. Where did the highest Nazi officials pay for the crimes committed? - For their maintenance on the territory of the Soviet Union, special "generals" camps were created, however, they were not on the territory of Belarus. One of the most famous was the Lezhnevsky camp in the village of Cherntsy, Ivanovo region, where by the beginning of the summer of 1944 there were 21 German generals. The conditions of detention of the generals were extremely humane - with the right to correspond with relatives and receive parcels through the Red Cross. According to the order of the NKVD of the USSR No. 00683, issued in 1943, as well as the order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR No. 256 of October 5, 1946, a rationed daily special ration was provided for generals prisoners of war. It included meat, cheese, fish, butter, sugar, coffee, fresh vegetables, i.e. those products that were often inaccessible to our compatriots in the territories liberated from the enemy. In addition, the generals were entitled to receive 20 cigarettes and matches daily. They were also offered to watch feature films, use the library, and engage in artistic creativity. However, such heavenly booths were not prepared for all the Nazis. A number of generals, including senior officials of the diplomatic, police and punitive bodies of the Third Reich, aroused particular interest in the Soviet army intelligence SMERSH and the state security service. From the moment of their capture, they were kept in these departments for as long as possible without transferring them to the GUPVI system. The Nazis detained by SMERSH, as a rule, were sent to the prisons of the NKGB-MGB. There was even a kind of rivalry between the counterintelligence agencies of the NKGB and the GUPVI in an effort to get the most eminent and knowledgeable generals. In most cases, they sought the transfer of high-ranking prisoners of war to the GUPVI system, but some were never transferred: capital punishment was applied to them or they were sent to serve their sentences in the GULAG correctional facilities. - What is the fate of the fascist generals taken prisoner on the territory of Belarus? - This category of persons, like all prisoners of war, was subject to the jurisdiction of military tribunals - special courts operating in the Soviet army. A distinctive feature of these judicial bodies was, as a rule, the closed nature of the processes carried out, with the exception of open, demonstrative ones. The first public trials took place during the war years, in particular, in 1943 in Krasnodar, Krasnodon, Kharkov and Smolensk. Then there were - Kiev and Bryansk, Minsk and Gomel, Vitebsk and Bobruisk, other cities. The wave of demonstrative military tribunals that swept across the USSR over the highest ranks of the Third Reich became the personification of retribution for the atrocities of the Nazi invaders in the occupied territory. An open trial in Belarus in the case of high-ranking Nazis took place on January 15-29, 1946 in the Minsk District Officers' House. These days, the former commandant of Mogilev, Major General Erdmannsdorf, Lieutenant General Johann Richert, commander of the 286th and later 35th Infantry Division, Major General of Police, SS Brigadefuehrer Eberhard Gerf, appeared on the bench of war criminals. According to the verdict of the court of the military tribunal of the Belarusian Military District, these criminals were hanged at the Minsk hippodrome with a large crowd of people. It should be noted that a year earlier, by the decision of the Military Tribunal of the Moscow Military District of December 29, 1945, the former commandant of Orel, Bryansk and Bobruisk, Major General Haman, was hanged. From October 28 to November 4, 1947, in the premises of the Bobruisk House of Officers, Lieutenant Generals Ochsner and Trout, Major Generals Konradi and Johann Tarbuk were convicted among other war criminals. The accused brought before the military court were active participants in the atrocities committed by the fascist invaders on the territory of Belarus. For example, the accused Ochsner in October-November 1943 ordered the burning of all settlements in the course of the retreat of the Nazis. In the face of a military tribunal, the former commander of the 31st Infantry Division, Oksner, admitted that the destruction of settlements on the territory of Belarus was raised by him to the rank of a system. It should be noted that the Nazi criminal Oksner was one of the most sinister figures on the territory of occupied Belarus. For example, in December 1943, he commanded a group of troops defending the approaches to Zhlobin. During this time, on his order, all residents of the nearby villages of Mormal, Bratki, Krasnoe, Dubrovo were forcibly sent to the Azarichi death camp. The sick and elderly residents of the village of Mormal, who refused to be forcibly sent to the death camp, were herded into a barn and burned alive. Some villagers tried to hide from the inevitable disaster in pre-dug cellars and dugouts, but on Oksner's orders, such shelters were thrown with grenades. In April 1944, Oksner organized a special camp in the village of Medvedovka, Chaussky District, where typhoid patients were deliberately housed with all the residents. As a result, the insidious epidemic claimed the lives of thousands of civilians. By the decision of the Extraordinary State Commission for Investigation of the Atrocities of the German Occupiers, the "bloodthirsty" Ochsner was included in the lists of war criminals. Another odious personality of the German generals, the former commander of the 78th assault division, Hans Trout, ordered his subordinates to leave behind a lifeless desert. On the first day of the retreat west of Orel, Trout's stormtroopers burned 20 settlements to the ground. In November 1943, having occupied the defense line in the Orsha fortified area, Trout, in violation of international conventions, ordered Soviet citizens to be sent to build fortifications of the front line of the Nazi defense. From October 1943 to June 1944, the Hitlerite general had 7 working battalions from among civilians of 1,200 people. Moreover, 5 workers' battalions consisted exclusively of Belarusian women. In 1943, the headquarters of the 78th assault division issued a special order, according to which women and children were involved in the clearance of highways in the area of the villages of Glazunovo and Malo-Arkhangelskoye. For a long time, the convoy carried heavy harrows along the mined roads, often taking off into the air. On the conscience of the executioner Trout, not only thousands of innocent civilian victims, but also Red Army prisoners of war. Many people know from the story of the martyrdom of the Red Army prisoner of war Yuri Smirnov. He was captured by the Nazis on June 25, 1944 in the village of Shalashino, Vitebsk region. During interrogation, nails were driven into his palms and other parts of his body, trying in vain to find out the location of the advancing Red Army units. Embittered by courage and steadfastness, the Nazis crucified a Russian prisoner of war in the headquarters dugout. Subsequently, Yuri Smirnov was posthumously awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. For the atrocities committed on Soviet soil, by a decision of the Extraordinary State Commission, Trout was also included in the lists of war criminals. - In December 1947, the tribunal of the troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Belarusian Military District in the premises of the Gomel Club of Railway Workers, during open court hearings, considered the criminal cases of Lieutenant General Kurowski, Major General Klammt, Major General Kullmer, as well as Major General Kolsdorfer. In the premises of the Vitebsk city theater before the tribunal of the Baltic Military District, among the other accused were General of the Infantry Gollwitzer, Lieutenant General Hitter and Major General Müller-Bülov. What charges were brought against these gentlemen in general's shoulder straps? - Undoubtedly, one of the most serious charges brought against these and dozens of other generals during the meetings of the military tribunals was the destruction and also mockery of civilians. Take General Gollwitzer, for example. Fulfilling the order of the commander of the army group "Center" Field Marshal Kluge, for the construction of the defensive line "Panther" from the mouth of the Pripyat to Vitebsk (more than 500 kilometers long), Golwitzer mobilized about 200 thousand women, old people and adolescents. In order to speed up the construction of this fortification, Golwitzer on the Gomel - Chausy - Gorki - Dubrovno - Rudnya section created special camps in which civilians and prisoners of war of the Red Army were kept behind barbed wire. People worked 10-15 hours a day, receiving a ration of 150 grams of bread and half a liter of liquid gourd. While on the territory of the Vitebsk region, Gollwitzer twice issued orders for the forced deportation of the able-bodied population for slave labor to Germany. According to these orders, the troops of the 53rd Army Corps from April to June 1944 forcibly drove 4,800 civilians from the Vitebsk region to Germany. Gollwitzer issued criminal orders to his subordinates, obliging them to shoot Soviet citizens, burn settlements, and confiscate livestock and food. During the court hearings, Generals Gollwitzer, Ochsner, Trout, Konradi, Tarbuk, Kurowski, Klammt, Kullmer, Kolsdorfer, Heather, Müller-Bülow were found guilty of committing the gravest war crimes and sentenced to 25 years of imprisonment in special camps Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR. - Anatoly Vasilyevich, another completely unknown page in history related to the punishment of Hitler's generals. What are the features of holding closed hearings? - Unlike open trials, closed sessions of prisoner-of-war trials were conducted in a more simplified form. According to the joint order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Justice and the Prosecutor's Office of the USSR No. 739 dated November 24, 1947, military prosecutors and chairmen of military tribunals of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were ordered to consider cases of prisoners of war at closed court hearings at the place of detention of criminals. It was also ordered to qualify the accusation in accordance with Part 1 of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with the use of imprisonment in forced labor camps for a period of 25 years. All cases were to be considered without the participation of the parties and without calling witnesses. The procedural order of the hearing in closed courts was determined by the military prosecutor after studying the materials of the investigation of the case and confirming the indictment. For example, in the minutes of the preparatory meeting of the military tribunal of the Ministry of Internal Affairs troops in the Minsk region dated May 15, 1950 in the case of prisoner of war Major General Otto Johan Zuidov, it is said: "The case should be heard in a closed court session without the participation of representatives of the prosecution and defense and without calling witnesses." The first closed trials in the case of captured Nazi generals took place in Belarus in the second half of 1948. Generals Herbert Michaelis, Moritz von Strakhovits, Edmund Hofmeister, Robert Schlüter and Gustav Lombord appeared before the court of the military tribunals of the Ministry of Internal Affairs troops of the Vitebsk, Gomel, Minsk and Polesye regions. In 1949, a number of generals were sent to Belarusian prisons for investigation, among them were Werner von Bercken, Hermann Bettchen, Martin Bieber, Gottfried Weber, Joseph Rauch, Otto Schwarz, Rudolf Scherenberg and a number of other generals. All of them received 25 years in the camps. Lawsuits against captured German generals did not stop in subsequent years. This campaign was launched most intensively after the release of the secret decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 1108-396 of March 17, 1950 "On bringing the generals of the former German army to criminal responsibility." Belarusian military tribunals convicted 9 generals in 1950, including Oskar Audersch, Gustav Zies, Hermann Henle, Otto Zuidov, Karl-Richard Kossmann and a number of others. Justice against the generals of the Wehrmacht was administered not only at the place of their capture, for example, 5 generals taken prisoner on the territory of Belarus were transferred to other regions of the country for trials - they then served their sentences in labor camps of the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic and Ukraine , Karaganda and Vorkuta. One more feature should be paid attention to before the adoption of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of May 26, 1947 "On the abolition of the death penalty" from the lips of military judges the word "execution" often sounded, but capital punishment still did not prevail in the structure of punishment. A number of convicted Nazis used their right to appeal the sentence, there were cases of appeals to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for clemency, but all these appeals, as a rule, were not satisfied. - However, as evidenced by the facts, individual generals of the Wehrmacht were never brought to trial. Why could this happen? - Most likely, the Nazis who escaped the trial actively supplied the Soviet political and intelligence agencies with valuable information. For example, the captive head of the Abwehr's 3rd counterintelligence department, Lieutenant General Rudolf Bamler, made a statement in the press that the Spanish dictator Franco was an agent of German intelligence. After being held in the camps, the GUPVI was repatriated to his homeland in July 1948, General Schmidt, Generals Müller and Bamler escaped prosecution. They were sent to Germany in 1950. Some Wehrmacht generals were not destined to see their native land at all. General Felkers was the first prisoner to die from a cerebral hemorrhage on Belarusian soil in 1948. He was buried in the cemetery section of the prisoner of war camp No. 324 at the city cemetery in Ivanovo. General Engel, who committed suicide in Gomel prison No. 1, was buried in the cemetery in Prudok. Three years later, on February 20, 1951, Lieutenant General Hofmeister dies from heart paralysis in the Sverdlovsk camp No. 476. Major General Müller-Bülow, who died on February 5, 1954, from cardiovascular failure, did not live quite a bit before the general repatriation of German prisoners of war. Eight Wehrmacht generals, convicted in Belarus: Strakhovits, Kullmer, Specht, Zikst, Nichus, Runge, Shendelfer and Noack, did not return to Vaterland either. The convicts Oksner, Trout and Luttsov managed to change more than ten places of detention in various camps of the GUPVI, prisons in Bobruisk, Vitebsk, Gomel, Mogilev, Minsk, Krasnodar and other cities during the time they were serving their sentences. They also appeared among the patients of the special hospitals of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where they recovered their health, which was shaken from a long sitting on a bunk. - How loyal were the representatives of the German generals to the country, which in a number of cases gave them life? - Undoubtedly, reactionary anti-Soviet sentiment was present among many captured generals. However, a sense of self-preservation forced them to become loyal, as, for example, General Gollwitzer, who fully supported Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus, who actively collaborated with the Soviet authorities. His line of conduct was supported by Generals Zikst and Konradi, who, together with Gollwitzer, highly appreciated Paulus's speech at the meeting of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. By the way, after a confidential conversation with Zikst at special facility no. 35 / B "Ozyory", Paulus agreed to openly oppose Hitler. For which their other "stripe" colleague, General Friedrich Steinkeller, accused Paulus of baseness and betrayal. In places where prisoners of war were held, facts of sabotage and the creation of fascist groups and organizations were noted. A reactionary anti-Soviet group of 48 people was also among the generals. The members of the group spoke about plans for the revival of Germany and the German army, the need to punish members of the anti-fascist national committee "Free Germany", the organization of the struggle against the Bolshevization of Germany. Among the active conspirators were famous personalities such as Generals Steinkeller, Trowitz, Michaelis, Konradi and Heather, which ultimately played a decisive role in their future fate. - By 1947, Europe was finally split into the spheres of influence of the states participating in the anti-Hitler coalition. One of the main instruments in the political struggle is the issue of prisoners of war. How was the repatriation of German prisoners of war from the territory of the Soviet Union carried out? - In April 1947, a conference of the foreign ministers of the USSR, the USA and Great Britain was held in Moscow, at which a decision was made on the repatriation of German prisoners of war until December 31, 1948. However, in practice, repatriation dragged on until 1950, and for those convicted of political or war crimes - for another 5 subsequent years. Of the 357 generals of the German army registered by the GUPVI in August 1948, only 7 were repatriated (former members of the Free Germany National Committee and the Union of German Officers), 68 of them by this time had been convicted, 5 transferred to Poland and Czechoslovakia, 26 died. As for the remaining generals, only 23 did not have incriminating materials, and the rest had to wait more than one year for the decision of their fate. Just one figure: in the summer of 1950, 118 generals of the German army were brought to trial. After negotiations in October 1955 between the Federal Chancellor of Germany Konrad Adenauer with Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin on establishing diplomatic relations with the FRG, more than 14 thousand convicted German prisoners of war were repatriated, including generals who left a bloody mark on the fate of many generations of Belarusians. Instead of an afterword German generals Kurt von Lutzow, Karl-Richard Kossmann and Hermann Bettchen were among the last to be expelled from the USSR in 1956. Having received on the road a decent general's dry ration (smoked sausage, butter, canned food, cheese, caviar and sweets), as well as new woolen coats, felt hats, suits, ties, shirts and boots, repatriated through the Brest transit camp, they left the open space forever, and Belarus that did not submit to them. *** General of the Wehrmacht Fritz Gollwitzer drove into German slavery about 5 thousand inhabitants of the Vitebsk region. *** The authors of the publication "Reckoning", military historian Professor Anatoly Sharkov and journalist Yuri Bestvitsky, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Great Victory, offer readers of "R" previously unknown pages of history related to the collapse of the generals of Nazi Germany. The authors ask the veterans and participants of the Great Patriotic War who were involved in the events outlined to respond. You can contact us by phones: 287-16-34; 243-71-34, and also write to the editorial office "R".
Hello dear!
Yesterday I looked at a pretty good German film called "Rommel", which, as you might guess, is about the life and fate of Edwin Rommel ("Hello, Captain Obvious!" - I smile and wave my hand :-))))), a military leader, nicknamed by the British "Desert Fox". So, watching the twists and turns of the film, I caught myself thinking that most of our people know very little about the Supreme Generals of the countries participating in World War II. At least at the minimum level. No, it is clear that the Soviet marshals are still more or less remembered by someone, in any case, Rokossovsky and Zhukov will not be confused purely visually, but about everyone else ... And it does not matter whether they are enemies or allies. Well, that thought came to me - to write a series of posts in which, slightly, and without going into the jungle of historical praise, tell about the most interesting Generals of the Great War. I believe I have read a sufficient number of memoirs, scientific and near-historical literature in order to have the right to state my point of view on this issue. Perhaps my assessments will not coincide with the generally accepted ones, but I beg your pardon - I just think so. I also want to emphasize that I will assess the military leaders not from the point of view of “fought for us / fought against”, but, if possible, from the standpoint of professionalism, moral and mental abilities. That is, if I somehow highly appreciated some German or Italian general, this does not mean at all that I bow to them and take them as an example. There are simply those who remain human under any circumstances, but someone loses their human appearance in war catastrophically .. I addressed this remark to those who like to show their "Phi" to the author of any work written on WWII, not from the standpoint of exclusively praising Soviet military genius and the lowering of the high military command of both the Axis countries and the Allies.
Marshals of Victory. Not all....
So, the introductory word has been said and, perhaps, let's start, if you don't mind. By the way, if this topic is interesting only to me, then I ask you not to immediately throw unripe tomatoes and overripe corn at me and not force the noosphere with phrases - "Chilean author Loch", but simply write that "uncle, it is not interesting at all." Let's better talk about cartoons! ":-)))) Well, of course, constructive criticism is listened to attentively and is well perceived (please focus on the term constructive) :-)))
And we will start with you, dear readers, probably all the same with the Germans. More precisely, from the top generals of the Third Reich. 
Portrait of Hermann Goering in full dress
The highest military rank of this period of the activity of the German state was the rank of General - Field Marshal (Generalfeldmarschall, abbreviated as GFM), or more precisely, even General - Field Marshal (I will use both of these names in the text, let it not scare you). For the first time in the German territories, this title appeared in the middle of the 17th century, so we can say that Hitler did not invent anything new, he took the experience of former generations as a basis. However, if, say, during the First World War, only five people were awarded this honorary title, then the Second World War increased the number of nominees many times over. Only after the end of the French company, and more specifically on June 19, 1940, did Chancellor Adolf Hitler confer this rank on 12 generals at once. I must say that in addition to prestige, the Field Marshal received an annual tax-exempt salary of 36,000 Reichsmarks plus allowances. In total, during WWII, this title was held by 26 people. I received this number, counting not only the Field Marshals of the Wehrmacht, but also the corresponding to this rank Field Marshals der Flyge (at the Luftwaffe) and Grand Admirals (at the Kriegsmarine). And this is not counting the saddest character of the Reich, SS chief Heinrich Himmler, whose rank Reichsführer just corresponded to the rank of Field Marshal in the Wehrmacht, and, in contrast to this, the brightest, most interesting and curious character of Germany of those years - Hermann Goering, who deserves a separate post ... The title of "Tolstoy Hermann" was the Reichsmarshal of the Greater German Reich and had no analogies. Close, perhaps, to the Generalissimo, but a little short of him. But, again, this is a topic for a separate conversation. 
Buttonholes of the Generals and Field Marshals of the Wehrmacht
Field Marshal General could be distinguished, first of all, by his buttonholes and shoulder straps. For all the generals of the Wehrmacht, there was a single scarlet buttonhole with a special general's pattern (this is how it happened historically). However, on April 3, 1941, the Field Marshal received an elongated buttonhole with a slightly modified ornament pattern, now there were not 2, but 3 elements. The shoulder straps were a weave of a cord (the so-called soutache), and the outer rows of the soutache were gold, and the middle one was silvery, with a gold button. That is, they are the same as for all generals, only not with stars, but with silver crossed marshal's wands.
Shoulder straps of the Field Marshal of the Wehrmacht.
Field Marshal der Flyge's buttonholes were white (this is also important) which showed the Luftwaffe Eagle carrying a swastika and small crossed marshal's batons underneath. The soutache shoulder strap was completely gold, with a gold button and gold rods. 
Collar of Field Marshal der Flyuge
The Grand Admirals wore a shoulder strap similar to that of the Wehrmacht, with the difference that his lining (from the shoulder strap) was blue, and an anchor was squeezed out on the button. Well, admirals didn't wear buttonholes yet - they had sleeve patches. The Grand Admiral had one wide and 4 narrow gold stripes with a gold five-pointed star on a blue background. 
Patch of the Grand Admiral
Common to all Field Marshals was also the presence of a standard and a marshal's baton. And if the standards were general and differed only depending on the type of troops (the Wehrmacht had one, and the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine had others), then the marshal's baton is a more interesting thing. The marshal's baton was a cylinder about 4.5 cm in diameter and about 30 cm long, made of valuable wood and richly decorated with overlaid gold ornaments and / or carvings. The most interesting thing is that a single sample of a field marshal's baton did not exist, and for each field marshal general, artists and jewelers developed a unique sample of the baton. After the death of the commander, his rod became a family heirloom. 
Personal baton of Field Marshal General Baron Maximilian von Weichs.
Now that we have sorted out a little with the identification of the German field marshals general, I propose to move on to specific personalities (in any case, start).
The largest field marshals general (19) belonged (which is not surprising) to the Wehrmacht. These are: Werner von Blomberg, Fedor von Bock, Walter von Brauchitsch, Erwin von Witzleben, Wilhelm Keitel, Hans Gunter von Kluge, Wilhelm von Leeb, Wilhelm Liszt, Walter von Reichenau, Gerd von Rundstedt, Erwin Romchmel, Georg von Kueh Manstein, Friedrich Paulus, Ernst Busch, Maximilian von Weichs, Ewald von Kleist, Walter Model, Ferdinand Schörner. 
Not yet field marshals ... Right-to-left Milch, Keitel, Brauchitsch, Raeder, Weichs. Nuremberg. September 12, 1938
In terms of who do I consider the most talented among them? Perhaps Manstein. The strongest from a professional point of view is Kluge. The most highly moral is Bock, the most irreplaceable is Kleist, the most controversial is Model, and the most insignificant and weak is Keitel.
But more specifics, if you are, of course, interested, in the next part ...
This year in Germany, at the age of 99, the last surviving general of the Wehrmacht, Heinrich / Heinz / Trettner, died.
The whole life of this man is perceived as a terrible reality with ... a happy ending, for Lieutenant General of the Wehrmacht Trettner was undoubtedly the most successful German officer and general of the last war, and not only because he lived for almost 100 years. Trettner's biography is truly fantastic.
In April 1937, Ober-Lieutenant Trettner, the son of a Kaiser's officer, who entered service in 1925, quickly changing his career as a cavalryman to a pilot, was the flight commander of the 88th Bomber Group. The one that participated in the destruction of the Spanish city of Guernica, whose name has since been a symbol of barbarism and cruelty. From November 1936 to January 1938, he fights in Spain, where civil war is raging, at the helm of a bomber in the Condor legion composed of German volunteer pilots, a Franco strike force. In May 1940, Major Trettner organized the seizure of Dutch Rotterdam by the landing force, which was simultaneously subjected to the most severe bombardment by the Luftwaffe. For this operation he was awarded the "Knight's Cross" by Hitler. In May 1941, Trettner takes part as Chief of Staff of the 9th Air Corps in the most bloody battle for the Wehrmacht before the attack on the USSR, the Battle of Crete. Then he fights in the same position near Smolensk, serves in France, and since the end of 1943 he has been in command of the 4th paratrooper division in Italy - he skillfully fights against the Americans and the British, leads punitive operations against the Italian partisans in the area of Florence and Bologna.
In September 1944, Major General Trettner was awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. He thus became one of the 681 bearers of the Oak Leaves in the Third Reich. Naturally, such awards were given only for very large "merits". However, the retribution for these "merits" was rapidly approaching - Nazi Germany, despite the inhuman efforts of its army, was losing the war. And if during the war German generals had a much better chance of surviving than ordinary soldiers, then after the end of the war everything changed. Moreover, not even the first persons in the Wehrmacht hierarchy, who were tried in Nuremberg in front of the whole world, suffered especially badly, but the generals little known to the general public who commanded divisions and corps, who were sentenced to death by "small" tribunals in Athens and Rome without much ado. other capitals of European countries, occupied by the Nazis during the war, where the Wehrmacht also had to fight with the partisans and the population supporting them. Therefore, many of Trettner's generals-colleagues in Greece and Italy passed away in the first post-war years.
Of course, they would simply not believe if they were told that their comrade-in-arms, the "hero" of Guernica and Crete, would not only avoid being shot, but would ... be awarded high awards from France, Italy, Greece, Great Britain, the United States - in addition to Hitler and Franco orders - and even lead the army of West Germany for several years. He will receive, in particular, the Grand Officer degree of the famous French Order of the Legion of Honor, will become a Knight-Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, which is given for personal services to the British monarch, and will be the owner of the American Legion of Honor, awarded for “outstanding service and achievements” .. But it will be later.
At the end of the war, Trettner spent three years in Western captivity. After leaving the places of detention, the Lieutenant General of the Wehrmacht had to think about how to get a livelihood. He got a job ... in a charitable Catholic society at the Cologne episcopate, then was a traveling salesman in private companies. In November 1953, Trettner became ... a student at the University of Bonn, where he studied economics and law. After graduating from the university, he entered the Bundeswehr with the rank of major general. Until 1959, he headed the logistics department at NATO's European Headquarters in Fontainebleau near Paris.
In 1960 he was appointed commander of the first corps of the Bundeswehr, in 1964 he became the Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, in other words, he reached the highest stage in the professional career of the German military. To the numerous awards Trettner added the "Grand Cross of Merit with a star and a ribbon." In 1966, due to disagreements with the political leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany, he resigned, so that, observing from the outside and not needing anything, to be a witness to the dramatic events in the world of the last four decades and to deserve mentions in the German and world press after his death.
Sergey LATYSHEV, ITAR-TASS
War is always a cruel test; it does not spare anyone, not even generals and marshals. Each military leader has ups and downs during hostilities, each has its own destiny. As one American president rightly pointed out, war is a dangerous place. The statistics of the deaths of high-ranking officers during the hostilities of the Second World War are a clear confirmation of this.
If a lot has been written about the military destinies and losses of the generals of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War in recent years, much less is known about their German "counterparts" who died on the Eastern Front. At least the authors do not know about books or articles published in Russian on the topic in the title. Therefore, we hope that our work will be useful for readers interested in the history of the Great Patriotic War.
Before proceeding directly to the narration, it is necessary to make a small note. In the German army, the practice of posthumous assignment of general ranks was widespread. We do not consider such cases and we will only talk about persons who had a general rank at the time of their death. So let's get started.
1941 year
The first German general killed on the Eastern Front was the commander of the 121st East Prussian Infantry Division, Major General Otto LANCELLE, who died on July 3, 1941, east of Kraslava.
In the Soviet military history literature, various information was provided about the circumstances of the death of this general, including a version of the involvement of Soviet partisans in this episode. In fact, Lancelle was the victim of a fairly typical offensive incident. Here is an excerpt from the history of the 121st Infantry Division: “ When the main body of the 407th Infantry Regiment reached the forest, General Lancelle left his command post. Together with the divisional headquarters officer, Chief Lieutenant Steller, he went to the command post of the 407th regiment. Having reached the forward divisions of the battalion advancing to the left of the road, the general did not notice that the right battalion had lagged behind ... the Red Army men retreating in front of this battalion suddenly appeared from the rear. In the ensuing close combat, the general was killed ...».
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On July 20, 1941, the acting commander of the 17th Panzer Division, Major General Karl von Weber, died in a field hospital in Krasny. He was wounded the day before during shelling by fragments of a Soviet shell in the Smolensk region.
On August 10, 1941, the first general of the SS troops, SS Gruppenführer and Police Lieutenant General, commander of the SS Polizai division, Arthur MULVERSTEDT, was killed on the Soviet-German front.
The division commander was at the forefront, during the breakthrough by units of his division of the Luga defensive line. Here is how the death of the general is described on the pages of the divisional chronicle: “ Enemy fire paralyzed the attack, she was losing strength, she was threatened with a complete stop. The general immediately assessed the situation. He rose to resume promotion by example. "Go guys!" In such a situation, it doesn't matter who sets an example. The main thing is that one attracts the other, almost like a law of nature. A lieutenant can raise a shooter to attack, or maybe a whole battalion is a general. Attack, forward! The general looked around and gave an order to the nearest machine-gun crew: "Cover us from the side of that fir tree!" The machine-gunner gave a long burst in the indicated direction, and General Mühlverstedt again moved forward, into a small hollow overgrown with alder bushes. There he knelt down to get a better look around. His adjutant, Lieutenant Rymer, was lying on the ground, changing the magazine in the submachine gun. Nearby, a mortar crew was changing positions. The general jumped up, his command "Forward!" At that moment, a shell explosion threw the general to the ground, fragments pierced his chest ...
A non-commissioned officer and three soldiers were taken toIljishe Proroge... There, a dressing station for the 2nd Medical Company was organized under the leadership of the senior physician, Dr. Ott. When the soldiers delivered their cargo, the only thing that the doctors could do was to state the death of the division commander».
According to some reports, the presence of the general directly in the combat formations of the infantry was caused by the dissatisfaction of the higher command with the not very successful actions of the division.
A few days after Mühlverstedt, on August 13, the explosion of a Soviet anti-tank mine put the final point in the career of the commander of the 31st Infantry Division, Major General Kurt Kalmukov (Kurt KALMUKOFF). He, along with his adjutant, was blown up in a passenger car while driving to the front line.
Colonel General Eugen Ritter von SCHOBERT, commander of the 11th German Field Army, became the highest-ranking Wehrmacht officer to die on the Soviet-German front in 1941. He also had the fate of becoming the first German army commander to die in World War II.
On September 12, Schobert flew in a liaison Fieseller-Storch Fi156 from the 7th Courier Detachment (Kurierst. 7), led by pilot Captain Suvelak, to one of the divisional command posts. For some unknown reason, the plane landed before reaching its destination. It is possible that the vehicle received combat damage on the way. The landing site for the "fiziler" (with serial number 5287) turned out to be a Soviet minefield near Dmitrievka, in the area of the Kakhovka-Antonovka road. The pilot and his high-ranking passenger were killed.
It is curious that in Soviet times, the heroic story of ts was written. "Based on" this event. In his story, a German general watched as his subordinates forced Soviet prisoners to clear the minefield. At the same time, it was announced to the prisoners that the general had lost his watch on this very field. One of the captive sailors who took part in the demining, with a mine just removed in his hands, approached the surprised Germans with a message that the watch had allegedly been found. And, approaching, blew himself up and enemies. However, it may be that the source of inspiration for the author of this work was completely different.
On September 29, 1941, Lieutenant General Rudolf KRANTZ, commander of the 454th Security Division, was wounded. On October 22 of the same year, he died in a hospital in Dresden.
On October 28, 1941, on the Valki-Kovyagi road (Kharkov region), the car of Lieutenant General Erich BERNECKER, commander of the 124th artillery command, was blown up by an anti-tank mine. During the explosion, the artillery general was mortally wounded and died on the same day.
In the early morning of November 14, 1941, Lieutenant General Georg BRAUN, commander of the 68th Infantry Division, took off with a mansion at 17 Dzerzhinsky Street in Kharkov in Kharkov. This triggered a radio-controlled land mine planted by miners from the operational engineering group of Colonel I.G. Starinov in preparation for the evacuation of the city. Although by this time the enemy had already more or less successfully learned how to deal with Soviet special equipment, but in this case the German sappers blundered. Together with the general, two staff officers of the 68th division and "almost all of the clerks" (or rather 4 non-commissioned officers and 6 privates) were killed under the rubble, as the record in German documents says. In total, the explosion killed 13 people, and, in addition, the head of the division's reconnaissance department, an interpreter and a sergeant major were seriously injured.
In retaliation, the Germans, without any proceedings, hanged the first seven townspeople who came to hand in front of the explosion site, and by the evening of November 14, crazed by the explosions of radio-controlled land mines thundering all over Kharkov, they took hostages from the local population. Of these, 50 people were shot on the same day, and another 1000 had to pay with their lives if sabotage was repeated.
The death of General Kurt von BRIESEN, commander of the 52nd Army Corps, opened an account for the losses of senior Wehrmacht officers from Soviet aviation. On November 20, 1941, at about noon, the general left for Malaya Kamyshevakha to set the task for subordinate units to capture the city of Izium. At that moment, a pair of Soviet planes appeared over the road. The pilots attacked very competently, planning with engines running on low gas. Target fire was opened from a height of no more than 50 meters. The Germans sitting in the general's car discovered the danger only from the roar of the engines again working at full power and the whistle of flying bullets. Two officers accompanying the general managed to jump out of the car, one of them was wounded. The driver remained completely unharmed. But von Briesen received twelve bullet wounds in the chest, from which he died on the spot.
Who was the author of this queue label is unknown. Note that according to the operational summary of the Air Force headquarters of the Southwestern Front, on November 20, our aviation, due to bad weather, acted limitedly. Nevertheless, the Air Force units of the 6th Army, operating just over the area of von Briesen's death, reported on the destruction of five vehicles during the attack of enemy troops moving along the roads.
Interestingly, the father of the deceased von Briesen, Alfred, was also a general and also died on the Eastern Front in 1914.
On December 8, 1941, Lieutenant General Herbert GEITNER, commander of the 295th Infantry Division, was wounded near Artyomovsk. The general was evacuated from the front line, but the wound was fatal, and he died on January 22, 1942 in a hospital in Germany.
The death of Lieutenant-General Conrad COCHENHAUSEN, commander of the 134th Infantry Division, was very unusual for the Wehrmacht "model of 1941". The general's division, together with the 45th Infantry Division, was surrounded by units of the Southwestern Front in the Yelets area. In winter conditions, the Germans had to fight their way out of the resulting "cauldron" to join up with the rest of their army. Cohenhausen could not stand the nervous tension and on December 13, considering the situation hopeless, he shot himself.
Most likely, such a tragic outcome was predetermined by the general's character traits. Here is what he wrote about this: “ Already when I met Lieutenant General von Cohenhausen on September 30, 1941, he was very pessimistic about the general martial law on the Eastern Front.". Of course, the encirclement is not a pleasant thing and the losses of the Germans were great. We do not know for sure the losses of the 134th division, but its "neighbor", the 45th infantry division, lost over a thousand people from 5 to 17 December, including 233 killed and 232 missing. Material losses were also great. Only light field howitzers were left by the 45th division during the retreat of 22 pieces. But, in the end, the Germans still managed to break through.
The rest of the Wehrmacht divisions in the central sector of the Soviet-German front found themselves in similar situations more than once or twice. The losses were also very significant. But their division commanders, nevertheless, did not lose their composure. How not to recall the popular wisdom - "all diseases are from the nerves."
The penultimate general of the Wehrmacht, who died on the Eastern Front in 1941, was the commander of the 137th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Friedrich Bergman (Friedrich BERGMANN). The division lost its commander on December 21 during the Kaluga operation of the Western Front. Trying to prevent the mobile group of the 50th Soviet army from entering Kaluga, units of the 137th division launched a series of counterattacks. General Bergman arrived at the command post of the 2nd battalion of the 449th infantry regiment, located in the forest north of the village of Syavki (25 kilometers southeast of Kaluga). Trying to personally assess the situation on the battlefield, Bergman moved with the battalion reserve to the edge of the forest. The Germans were immediately fired upon by Soviet tanks supporting their infantry. One of the machine-gun bursts mortally wounded the general.
The last to die in 1941 (December 27) was the commander of the 1st SS Motorized Brigade, SS Brigadeführer and SS Major General Richard HERMANN. This is how the episode is reflected in the combat log of the 2nd Field Army: “ 12/27/1941. From the very early morning, the enemy with a force of up to two reinforced rifle regiments, with artillery and 3-4 squadrons of cavalry, began an offensive to the south through Aleksandrovskoe and Trudy. By noon, he managed to advance to Vysokoe and break into the settlement. SS Major General Herman was killed there.».
Two more episodes should be mentioned that are directly related to the topic touched upon in this article. A number of publications provide information about the death of General Veterinarian of the 38th Army Corps Erich BARTSCH on the Soviet-German front on October 9, 1941. However, Dr. Barch, who died from a mine explosion, had the title of Oberst Veterinarian at the time of his death. it has nothing to do with purely general losses.
According to some sources, the commander of the 2nd SS Police Regiment, Hans Christian Schulze, is considered an SS Brigadefuehrer and Police Major General. In fact, Schulze was a colonel both at the time of his injury near Gatchina on September 9, 1941, and at the time of his death on September 13.
So, let's summarize. In 1941, twelve Wehrmacht and SS generals were killed on the Soviet-German front (including the commander of the 295th Infantry Division who died in 1942), and another general committed suicide.
German generals killed on the Soviet-German front in 1941
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Name, title |
Position |
Cause of death |
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Major General Otto Lancelle |
Commander of the 121st Infantry Division |
Melee Killed |
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Major General Karl von Weber |
etc. commander |
Artillery fire |
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Police Lieutenant General Arthur Mühlverstedt |
Commander of the MD SS "Policeay" |
Artillery fire |
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Major General Kurt Kalmukov |
Commander of the 31st Infantry Division |
Undermining on a mine |
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Colonel General Eugene von Schobert |
Commander of the 11th Army |
Undermining on a mine |
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Lieutenant General Rudolf Krantz |
Commander of the 454th Security Division |
Not installed |
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Lieutenant General Erich Bernecker |
Commander of the 124th art. command |
Undermining on a mine |
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Lieutenant General Georg Brown |
Commander of the 68th Infantry Division |
Sabotage (detonation of radio explosives) |
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General of the infantry Kurt von Briesen |
Commander of the 52nd ak |
Air raid |
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Lieutenant General Herbert Geithner |
Commander of the 295th Infantry Division |
Not installed |
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Lieutenant General Konrad von Cohenhausen |
Commander of the 134th Infantry Division |
Suicide |
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Lieutenant General Friedrich Bergmann |
Commander of the 137th Infantry Division |
Machine gun fire from a tank |
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Major General of the SS forces Richard Hermann |
Commander of the 1st SS IBR |
Melee Killed |
1942 year
In the new year 1942, the bloody battles that eventually engulfed the entire Eastern Front could not help but result in a steady increase in irrecoverable losses among the senior officers of the Wehrmacht.
True, the first loss in the second year of the war on the Soviet-German front, the generals of the Wehrmacht suffered for a non-combat reason. On January 18, 1942, Lieutenant General Georg HEWELKE, commander of the 339th Infantry Division, died of a heart attack in Bryansk.
We will now be transported to the southernmost sector of the Soviet-German front, to the Crimea. On the isthmus connecting the Kerch Peninsula with the rest of the Crimea, stubborn battles are going on. The combat ships of the Black Sea Fleet provide all possible assistance to the ground forces of the Red Army.
On the night of March 21, 1942, the battleship "Paris Commune" and the leader "Tashkent", while maneuvering in the Feodosiya Gulf, fired at the enemy's troop concentrations in the Vladislavovka and Novo-Mikhailovka areas. The battleship fired 131 shells of the main caliber, the leader - 120. According to the chronicle of the 46th Infantry Division, the units located in Vladislavovka suffered serious losses. Among the seriously wounded was the divisional commander, Lieutenant General Kurt HIMER, who had his leg amputated in the hospital, but German doctors failed to save the general's life. On April 4, 1942, he died in the military hospital 2/610 in Simferopol.
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On March 22, Soviet pilots achieved new success. In an air raid on a command post in the village of Mikhailovka, the commander of the 294th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Otto GABCKE, was killed. Here is what Stefan Heinsel, the author of the book about the 294th division, said about this episode: The command post of the division was located at the school in the village of Mikhailovka. At 13.55, two so-called "rats"on low level flight, they dropped four bombs on the school. Major Jarosch von Schwedler, two sergeant major, one senior corporal and one corporal were killed along with General Gabke.". Interestingly, Major Jarosch von Schwedler, who died in the bombing, was the chief of staff of the neighboring 79th Infantry Division, temporarily assigned to the headquarters of the 294th.
On March 23, 1942, Walter STAHLECKER, the head of the Einsatzgroup A, the chief of the order police and the security service of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, completed his bloody journey. If the biography of the SS Brigadefuehrer and Major General of the Police is known quite well, then the circumstances of his death are rather contradictory. The most plausible version is that the brigadeführer was seriously wounded in a battle with Soviet partisans, leading a detachment of Latvian policemen, and died while being transported to a rear hospital. But at the same time, the area in which a military clash with the partisans took place - Krasnogvardeisk, which is indicated in all sources without exception, looks very doubtful.
Krasnogvardeysk in March 1942 is the front-line zone of the 18th Army, which was besieging Leningrad, and occasionally fell under the shells of Soviet railway artillery. It is unlikely that in those conditions the partisans could conduct an open battle with the Germans. The chances of surviving for them in such a battle were close to zero. Most likely, Krasnogvardeysk is a more or less conventional point (like "Ryazan, which is near Moscow"), to which events are "tied", but in reality everything happened much further from the front line. There is no clarity about the date of the battle in which Stahlecker was wounded. There is an assumption that it happened a little earlier on March 23rd.
In the introductory part of the article, the principle was declared - not to include in the list of losses officers who received the rank of general posthumously. However, on common reason, we decided to make a few deviations from this principle. We will justify ourselves by the fact that the officers mentioned in these retreats were not only posthumously promoted to the rank of general, but, and this is the main thing, at the time of their death they held general positions of divisional commanders.
The first exception will be Colonel Bruno HIPPLER, commander of the 329th Infantry Division.
So, the 329th Infantry Division, transferred to the Eastern Front from Germany in late February 1942, took part in Operation Bruckenschlag, the result of which was to release the six divisions of the Wehrmacht's 16th Army encircled in the Demyansk region.
At dusk on March 23, 1942, the divisional commander, Colonel Hippler, accompanied by an adjutant, rode out in a tank for reconnaissance. After a while, the crew of the car radioed: “ The tank ran into a mine. The Russians are already there. Rather help b ". After that, the connection was interrupted. Since the exact location was not indicated, the searches made the next day were unsuccessful. Only on March 25, a reinforced reconnaissance group found a blown up tank, the bodies of the division commander and his companions on one of the forest roads. Colonel Hippler, his adjutant and the tank crew, apparently died in close combat.
Another "fake" general, but the commander of the division, the Wehrmacht lost on March 31, 1942. True, this time Colonel Karl FISCHER, commander of the 267th Infantry Division, did not die from a Soviet bullet, but died of typhus.
On April 7, 1942, west of the village of Glushitsa, a well-aimed Soviet sniper shot ended the career of Colonel Franz SCHEIDIES, commander of the 61st Infantry Division. Shadies took over command of the division only on March 27, leading the "team" of various units and subunits that repulsed the attacks of the Red Army north of Chudov.
On April 14, 1942, in the area of the village of Korolevka, the commander of the 31st Infantry Division, Major General Gerhard Berthold, was killed. Apparently, the general personally directed the attack of the 3rd battalion of the 17th infantry regiment on the Soviet positions at Zaitseva Gora on the Yukhnov-Roslavl highway.
On April 28, 1942, Major General Friedrich KAMMEL, commander of the 127th artillery command, shot himself in the village of Parkkin. This is the only German general who died in Northern Finland during the Great Patriotic War. The reason for his suicide is not known to us.
The beginning of the 1942 summer campaign was marked, as the Germans like to write, by the "spectacular" success of Soviet anti-aircraft gunners. As a result, the first general of the Luftwaffe died on the Soviet-German front.
So, in order. On May 12, 1942, a German transport plane Junkers-52 from the 300th transport group was shot down by Soviet anti-aircraft artillery in the Kharkov region. Survivor and captured Feldwebel Leopold Stefan said during interrogation that there were four crew members, ten passengers and mail on board. The car lost its bearings and was shot down. However, during the interrogation, the captured sergeant major did not mention a very significant detail - there was a whole German general among the passengers. This was the commander of the 6th Luftwaffe Construction Brigade, Major General Walter HELING. It should be noted that since Feldwebel Stefan was able to escape, then Heling could well become the first Wehrmacht general to be captured.
On July 12, 1942, the habit of taking advantage of a flight on a communications plane ended deplorably for another Wehrmacht general. On that day, the Chief of Staff of the 4th Panzer Army, Major General Julius von BERNUTH, flew to the headquarters of the 40th Panzer Corps in a fiziler-Storch plane. It was assumed that the flight will take place over territory that is not controlled by Soviet troops. However, the "Aist" never arrived at its destination. Only on July 14, a search group of the 79th Infantry Division found a wrecked car, as well as the bodies of the general and the pilot, in the area of the village of Saving. Apparently, the plane was hit by ground fire and made an emergency landing. The passenger and pilot were killed in the shootout.
During the summer campaign of 1942, heavy fighting took place not only on the southern flank of the huge Soviet-German front. The troops of the Western and Kalinin Fronts tried to knock out of the hands of the Wehrmacht "the pistol at the heart of Russia" - the Rzhev-Vyazemsky ledge. Combat actions on it quickly took on the character of bloody battles within the defensive line, and therefore, these operations did not differ in rapid and deep breakthroughs, leading to a violation of the enemy's control system and, as a consequence, to losses among the highest command personnel. Therefore, among the losses of German generals in 1942, there was only one who died in the central sector of the front. This is the commander of the 129th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Stephan RITTAU.
Here is how the death of the divisional commander on August 22, 1942 is described in the divisional chronicle: “ At 10.00, the commander of the 129th Infantry Regiment, accompanied by an adjutant in an all-terrain vehicle, went to the command post of the 427th Infantry Regiment, located in the forest between Tabakovo and Markovo. From there, the divisional commander intended to personally conduct a reconnaissance of the battlefield. However, 15 minutes later, a motorcyclist messenger arrived at the division's command post, who reported that the division commander, Lieutenant General Rittau, his adjutant, Dr. Marschner and the driver had died. Their all-terrain vehicle received a direct hit from an artillery shell on the southern exit from Martynovo».
On August 26, 1942, another Wehrmacht general added to the list of losses, this time again on the southern flank of the Soviet-German front. On this day, the commander of the 23rd Panzer Division, Major General Erwin MACK, with a small task force went to the forward units of the division, repelling the fierce attacks of the Soviet troops. Further events are reflected in the dry lines of the "Journal of Combat Actions" of the 23rd TD: " At 08.30, the division commander arrived at the command post of the 2nd battalion of the 128th motorized infantry regiment, located on a collective farm south of Urvani. He wanted to personally find out the situation at the Urvan bridgehead. Shortly after the start of the discussion, a mortar mine exploded in the middle of the participants. The division commander, the commander of the 2nd battalion, Major von Unger, the adjutant of the 128th regiment, Captain Graf von Hagen, and the chief of the division commander, Chief Lieutenant von Puttkamer, were mortally wounded. They died on the spot or on the way to the infirmary. Miraculously survived the commander of the 128th regiment, Colonel Bachmann, who received only a slight wound.» .
On August 27, 1942, the General of the Medical Service, Dr. Walter HANSPACH, was on the list of irrecoverable losses, the corps doctor (head of the medical service) of the 14th Panzer Corps. True, so far we have not found information on how and under what circumstances this German general died.
The authors, who grew up on Soviet military-patriotic literature and cinema, more than once read and watched how Soviet military intelligence officers infiltrated enemy lines, ambushed, and then successfully destroyed a German general riding in a car. It would seem that such plots are just the fruit of the activity of a sophisticated writer's mind, but in the reality of the war there really were such episodes, although of course there were not many of them. During the battle for the Caucasus, it was in such an ambush that our soldiers managed to destroy the commander and chief of staff of the 198th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht.
On September 6, 1942, at about noon on the road leading northeast from the village of Klyuchevaya to Saratovskaya, an Opel passenger car with a commander's flag on the hood was driving. In the car were the commander of the 198th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Albert BUCK, the chief of staff of the division, Major Buhl, and the driver. On approaching the bridge, the car slowed down. At this moment, explosions of two anti-tank grenades were heard. The general was killed on the spot, the major was thrown out of the car, and the seriously wounded driver turned the Opel into a ditch. The soldiers of the construction company working on the bridge heard explosions and shots, were able to quickly organize the pursuit of Soviet intelligence officers and were able to capture several of them. From the prisoners it became known that the reconnaissance and sabotage group consisted of servicemen from the reconnaissance and mortar company of the 723rd Infantry Regiment. The scouts set up an ambush, taking advantage of the fact that the dense bushes in this place approached the road itself.
On September 8, 1942, Dr. SCHOLL, General of the Medical Service from the 40th Panzer Corps, was added to the list of Wehrmacht losses. On September 23, 1942, Major General Ulrich SCHUTZE, commander of the 144th Artillery Command, was on the same list. As in the case of the medical general Hanshpakh, we have not yet been able to find information under what circumstances these two generals died.
On October 5, 1942, the Wehrmacht command issued an official message, which said: “ On October 3, 1942, the commander of a tank corps, general of tank forces, Baron Langermann und Erlenkapm, holder of the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, was killed on the front line on the Don River. Colonel Nagi, the commander of one of the Hungarian divisions, died shoulder to shoulder with him. They fell in battles for the freedom of Europe". The message was about the commander of the 24th Panzer Corps, General Willibald Freiherr von LANGERMANN UND ERLENCAMP. The general came under Soviet artillery fire while traveling to the front line at the Storozhevsky bridgehead on the Don.
In early October 1942, the German command decided to withdraw the 96th Infantry Division to the reserve of Army Group North. The division commander, Lieutenant General Baron Joachim von SCHLEINITZ, went to the corps command post to receive the appropriate orders. On the night of October 5, 1942, an accident occurred on the way back to the division. The divisional commander and the chief lieutenant Koch who accompanied him were killed in a car accident.
On November 19, 1942, a hurricane of Soviet artillery fire announced the beginning of the Red Army's winter offensive and an imminent turning point in the course of the war. With regard to the topic of our article, it should be said that it was then that the first German generals who went missing appeared. The first of these was Major General Rudolf MORAWETZ, head of POW camp # 151. He went missing on November 23, 1942 in the Chir station area and opened the list of losses of German generals during the 1942-1943 winter campaign.
On December 22, 1942, the commander of the 62nd Infantry Division, Major General Richard-Heinrich von REUSS, was killed near the village of Bokovskaya. The general tried to slip through the columns of Soviet troops rushing to the rear of the enemy after breaking through the German positions during the operation "Little Saturn".
It is noteworthy that 1942, which began with a heart attack in General Gevelke, ended with a heart attack in another German divisional commander. On December 22, 1942, Major General Viktor KOCH, the commander of the 323rd Infantry Division, which was on the defensive in the Voronezh region, died. Several sources claim that Koch was killed in action.
Medical Service General Dr. Josef EBBERT, corps physician of the 29th Army Corps, committed suicide on December 29, 1942.
Thus, in 1942, losses among German generals amounted to 23 people. Of these, 16 people died in battle (counting two colonels - division commanders who were posthumously awarded the general rank: Hippler and Shadies). It is interesting that the number of German generals killed in battle in 1942 was only slightly higher than in 1941. Although the duration of hostilities doubled.
The rest of the irrecoverable losses of the generals occurred for non-combat reasons: one person died as a result of an accident, two committed suicide, three died as a result of an illness, and one disappeared without a trace.
German generals who died on the Soviet-German front in 1942
|
Name, title |
Position |
Cause of death |
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Lieutenant General Georg Gevelke |
Commander of the 339th Infantry Division |
Died of illness |
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Lieutenant General Kurt Giemer |
Commander of the 46th Infantry Division |
Artillery fire |
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Lieutenant General Otto Habke |
Commander of the 294th Infantry Division |
Air raid |
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Police Major General Walter Stahlecker |
Chief of the Order Police and Security Service of the Reichskommissariat "Ostland" |
Close combat with guerrillas |
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Colonel (posthumously Major General) Bruno Hippler |
Commander of the 329th Infantry Division |
Close combat |
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Colonel (posthumously Major General) Karl Fischer |
Commander of the 267th Infantry Division |
Died of illness |
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Colonel (posthumously Major General) Franz Scheidies |
Commander of the 61st Infantry Division |
Killed by a sniper |
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Major General Gerhard Berthold |
Commander of the 31st Infantry Division |
Not installed |
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Major General Friedrich Kammel |
Commander of the 127th art. command |
Suicide |
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Major General Walter Helling |
Commander of the 6th Luftwaffe Construction Brigade |
Killed in a downed plane |
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Major General Julius von Bernuth |
Chief of Staff of the 4th Panzer Army |
Melee Killed |
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Lieutenant General Stefan Rittau |
Commander of the 129th Infantry Division |
Artillery fire |
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Major General Erwin Mack |
Commander of the 23rd TD |
Mortar fire |
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General of the Medical Service Dr. Walter Hanshpach |
Corps doctor of the 14th Panzer Corps |
Not installed |
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Lieutenant General Albert Buck |
Commander of the 198th Infantry Division |
Melee Killed |
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General of the Medical Service Dr. Scholl |
Corps doctor of the 40th tank corps |
Not installed |
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Major General Ulrich Schütze |
Commander of the 144th art. command |
Not installed |
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General Willibald Langermann und Erlenkamp |
Commander of the 24th Panzer Corps |
Artillery fire |
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Lieutenant General Baron Joachim von Schleinitz |
Commander of the 96th Infantry Division |
Killed in a car accident |
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Major General Rudolf Moravec |
Head of the transit camp for prisoners of war No. 151 |
Missing |
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Major General Richard-Heinrich von Reuss |
Commander of the 62nd Infantry Division |
Not installed |
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Major General Viktor Koch |
Commander of the 323rd Infantry Division |
Died of illness |
||
|
General of the Medical Service Dr. Josef Ebbbert |
Corpus Doctor of the 29th Army Corps |
Suicide |
As we can see, in 1942, there were no prisoners among the German generals. But everything will change dramatically in just a month, at the end of January 1943, in Stalingrad.
1943 year
Undoubtedly, the most important event of the third year of the war was the surrender of the German 6th Field Army in Stalingrad and the surrender of its command led by Field Marshal Paulus. But, besides them, in 1943, quite a lot of other senior German officers, who are little known to fans of military history, fell under the "Russian steam roller".
Although the generals of the Wehrmacht began to suffer losses in 1943 even before the final of the Battle of Stalingrad, we will start with it, or rather with a long list of captured senior officers of the 6th Army. For convenience, this list is presented in chronological order in the form of a table.
German generals captured at Stalingrad in January-February 1943
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Capture date |
Title, name |
Position |
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Lieutenant General Hans-Heinrich Sixt von Armin |
Commander of the 113th Infantry Division |
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Major General Moritz von Drebber |
Commander of the 297th Infantry Division |
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Lieutenant General Heinrich-Anton Deboi |
Commander of the 44th Infantry Division |
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Major General Professor Dr. Otto Renoldi |
Chief of Medical Service of the 6th Field Army |
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Lieutenant General Helmuth Schlomer |
Commander of the 14th Panzer Corps |
||
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Lieutenant General Alexander Baron von Daniels |
Commander of the 376th Infantry Division |
||
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Major General Hans Wulz |
Commander of the 144th Artillery Command |
||
|
Lieutenant General Werner Sanne |
Commander of the 100th Jaeger (Light Infantry) Division |
||
|
Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus |
Commander of the 6th Field Army |
||
|
Lieutenant General Arthur Schmidt |
Chief of Staff of the 6th Field Army |
||
|
General of Artillery Max Pfeffer |
Commander of the 4th Army Corps |
||
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General of Artillery Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach |
Commander of the 51st Army Corps |
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Major General Ulrich Vassoll |
Commander of the 153rd Artillery Command |
||
|
Major General Hans-Georg Leyser |
Commander of the 29th Motorized Division |
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Major General Dr. Otto Korfes |
Commander of the 295th Infantry Division |
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|
Lieutenant General Carl Rodenburg |
Commander of the 76th Infantry Division |
||
|
Major General Fritz Roske |
Commander of the 71st Infantry Division |
||
|
Colonel General Walter Heitz |
Commander of the 8th Army Corps |
||
|
Major General Martin Lattmann |
Commander of the 14th Panzer Division |
||
|
Major General Erich Magnus |
Commander of the 389th Infantry Division |
||
|
Colonel General Karl Strecker |
Commander of the 11th Army Corps |
||
|
Lieutenant General Arno von Lenski |
Commander of the 24th Panzer Division |
One note should be made to this table. The German bureaucracy seems to have tried to do everything to make life as difficult as possible for future researchers and military historians. Examples of this are innumerable. Stalingrad was no exception in this respect. According to some reports, the commander of the 60th Motorized Division, Major General Hans-Adolf von Arenstorff, became a general in October 1943, i.e. already after six months spent in Soviet captivity. But that's not all. The rank of general was awarded to him on January 1, 1943 (the practice of assigning titles "retroactively" was not so rare among the Germans). So it turns out that in February 1943 we captured 22 German generals, and six months later there were one more of them!
The German group surrounded in Stalingrad lost its generals not only as prisoners. Several more senior officers died in the "cauldron" under various circumstances.
On January 26, the commander of the 71st Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Alexander von HARTMANN, was killed south of the Tsaritsa River. According to some reports, the general deliberately sought his own death - he climbed the railroad embankment and began firing a rifle in the direction of the positions occupied by Soviet troops.
On the same day, death overtook Lieutenant General Richard Stempel, commander of the 371st Infantry Division. On February 2, the commander of the 16th Panzer Division, Lieutenant General Gunter ANGERN, was added to the list of irrecoverable losses. Both generals committed suicide, not wanting to surrender.
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Now, from the grandiose battle on the Volga, let us return to the chronological presentation of the events of the winter campaign of the third military year.
Uniform plague attacked the commanders of the 24th Panzer Corps in January 1943, when corps units came under attack from the advancing Soviet formations, during the Ostrogozh-Rossoshan operation of the Voronezh Front troops.
On January 14, at his command post in the Sotnitskaya area, the corps commander, Lieutenant General Martin WANDEL, was killed. The command of the corps was taken over by the commander of the 387th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Arno JAHR. But on January 20, too, Wandel's fate befell him. According to some reports, General Yaar committed suicide, not wanting to be captured by the Soviet Union.
Only one day, January 21, commanded the 24th Panzer Corps, Lieutenant General Karl EIBL, commander of the 385th Infantry Division. In the confusion of the retreat, the column in which his car was located ran into the Italians. They mistook the allies for the Russians and opened fire. In the fleeting battle, it came to hand grenades. The general was seriously wounded by shrapnel from one of them and died a few hours later from severe blood loss. Thus, within one week, 24th Panzer Corps lost its full-time commander and the commanders of both infantry divisions that were part of the formation.
The Voronezh-Kastornenskaya operation carried out by the troops of the Voronezh and Bryansk fronts, which completed the defeat of the southern flank of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, became a "crop" for the general's losses.
The German 82nd Infantry Division came under the first blow of the advancing Soviet troops. Its commander, Lieutenant General Alfred BAENTSCH, is listed as dead of his wounds on January 27, 1943. The confusion reigning in the German headquarters was such that on February 14, the general was still considered missing, along with his chief of staff, Major Allmer. The division itself, under the command of the Wehrmacht's 2nd field army, was categorized as defeated.
Due to the rapid advance of Soviet units to the Kastornoye railway junction, the headquarters of the 13th Army Corps was cut off from the rest of the troops of the 2nd German Army, and its two divisions, in turn, from the corps headquarters. Corps headquarters decided to push westward. A different solution was chosen by the commander of the 377th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Adolf LECHNER (Adolf LECHNER). On January 29, when an attempt was made to break through in the southeastern direction, to parts of his compound, he and most of the division headquarters were missing. Only the chief of staff of the division, Oberst Lieutenant Schmidt, went out to his own people by mid-February, but he too soon died of pneumonia in a hospital in the city of Oboyan.
The encircled German divisions began to make attempts to break through. On February 1, the 88th Infantry Division broke through to the outskirts of Stary Oskol. Parts of the 323rd Infantry Division moved behind it. The road was under constant fire from the Soviet troops, and on February 2, the divisional headquarters following the head battalion was ambushed. The commander of the 323rd Infantry Division, General Andreas NEBAUER, and his chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Naude were killed.
Despite the fact that in the North Caucasus, the Soviet troops did not manage to inflict the same crushing defeat on the German Army Group "A" as on the Volga and Don, the battles there were no less fierce. On the so-called "Hubertus Line" on February 11, 1943, the commander of the 46th Infantry Division, Major General Ernst HACCIUS, was killed. It was credited to Soviet pilots, most likely attack aircraft (the division's chronicle says "attack from low level flight"). The general was posthumously awarded the following rank and given the Knight's Cross. Hatzius became the second commander of the 46th Infantry Division killed on the Eastern Front.
On February 18, 1943, the commander of the 12th Army Corps, Infantry General Walter GRAESSNER, was wounded in the central sector of the front. The general was sent to the rear, underwent treatment for a long time, but, in the end, died on July 16, 1943 in a hospital in the city of Troppau.
On February 26, 1943, not far from Novomoskovsk, the Fiziler-Storch disappeared, on board of which was the commander of the SS Panzer-Grenadier Division "Dead's Head" SS Obergruppenführer Theodor Eicke (Theodor EICKE). One of the reconnaissance groups sent to search for Eicke found the shot down plane and the body of the Obergruppenführer.
On April 2, in the Pillau area, the aircraft SH104 (head 0026) from the Flugbereitschaft Luftflotte1 crashed. The crash killed two crew members and two passengers on board. Among the latter was General Engineer Hans FISCHER of the 1st Air Fleet Headquarters.
On May 14, 1943, the commander of the 39th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Ludwig LOEWENECK, was killed north of Pechenega. According to some reports, the general was the victim of an ordinary traffic accident, according to others, he fell into a minefield.
On May 30, 1943, Soviet aviation dealt a powerful blow to the German defenses at the Kuban bridgehead. But according to our data, from 16.23 to 16.41 the enemy positions were stormed and bombed by 18 groups of Il-2 attack aircraft and five groups of "Petlyakovs". During the raid, one of the groups "hooked" on the command post of the 97th Jaeger Division. The division commander, Lieutenant General Ernst RUPP, was killed.
On June 26, 1943, the Germans suffered another loss at the Kuban bridgehead. In the morning of that day, the commander of the 50th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Friedrich Schmidt (Friedrich SCHMIDT) headed for the positions of one of the battalions of the 121st Infantry Regiment. On the way, his car ran into a mine near the village of Kurchanskaya. The general and his driver were killed.
In the Battle of Kursk, which began on July 5, 1943, the German generals did not suffer large losses. Although there were cases of injury to division commanders, only one division commander was killed. On July 14, 1943, during a trip to the front line north of Belgorod, the commander of the 6th Panzer Division, Major General Walter von HUEHNERSDORF, was mortally wounded. He was badly wounded in the head by a well-aimed shot from a Soviet sniper. Despite the hours-long operation in Kharkov, where the general was taken, he died on July 17.
The offensive of the troops of the Soviet fronts in the Oryol direction, which began on July 12, 1943, was not replete with deep breakthroughs, in which the enemy headquarters fell under attack. Nevertheless, there were losses in generals. On July 16, the commander of the 211st Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Richard MUELLER, was killed.
On July 20, 1943, Lieutenant General Walter Schilling, commander of the 17th Panzer Division, was killed near Izyum. We were unable to establish the details of the deaths of both generals.
On August 2, the commander of the 46th Panzer Corps, General of the Infantry Hans ZORN, was killed. Southwest of Krom, his car was bombed by Soviet planes.
On August 7, in the midst of our counteroffensive near Kharkov, the commander of the 19th Panzer Division, Lieutenant General Gustav SCHMIDT, who was familiar to everyone who watched the film "Arc of Fire" from the famous Soviet epic "Liberation", was killed. True, in life everything was not as impressive as in the movies. General Schmidt did not shoot himself in front of the commander of Army Group South, Erich von Manstein, and his staff officers. He died in the defeat of a column of the 19th division by tankmen of the Soviet 1st Tank Army. The general was buried in the village of Berezovka by the crew members of the commander's tank, who survived and were taken prisoner by the Soviets.
On August 11, 1943, at about six o'clock in the morning Berlin time, Soviet snipers again distinguished themselves. A well-aimed bullet overtook the commander of the 4th mountain infantry division, Lieutenant General Hermann KRESS. The general at that moment was in the trenches of the Romanian units blocking Myskhako - the legendary "Small Land" near Novorossiysk.
On August 13, 1943, Major General Karl SCHUCHARDT, commander of the 10th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Brigade, was killed. Details of the death of the general - the anti-aircraft gunner could not be found, but he died unambiguously in the zone of the 2nd field army of the Wehrmacht. According to the documents of this association, on August 12, Shuhard reported to the army headquarters about the transfer of the brigade to operational subordination.
On August 15, 1943, Lieutenant General Heinrich RECKE, commander of the 161st Infantry Division, went missing. The general personally raised his soldiers to counterattack in the area south of Krasnaya Polyana. The division's chronicle provides information from eyewitnesses who allegedly saw how Soviet infantrymen surrounded the general. On this, his traces were lost. However, in the Soviet sources available to us, there is no mention of the capture of General Rekke.
On August 26, in the area of the Polish city of Ozarov, the commander of the 174th reserve division, Lieutenant General Kurt RENNER, was killed. Renner was ambushed by Polish partisans. Together with the general, two officers and five privates were killed.
The aforementioned 161st Division was taken over by Major General Karl-Albrecht von GRODDECK. But the division did not fight with the new commander for two weeks. On 28 August, von Groddeck was wounded by shrapnel from an aerial bomb. The wounded man was evacuated to Poltava, then to the Reich. Despite the efforts of the doctors, the general died on January 10, 1944 in Breslau.
On October 15, 1943, the 65th Army of the Central Front launched an offensive in the Loy direction. The powerful fire of the Soviet artillery violated the communication lines of the German troops defending in this sector. Lieutenant General Hans KAMECKE, the commander of the 137th Infantry Division, went to the command post of the 447th Infantry Regiment to personally orientate himself in the situation developing during the large-scale Russian offensive that had begun. On the way back south of the village of Kolpen, the general's car was attacked by Soviet attack aircraft. Kameke and the liaison officer who was accompanying him, Chief Lieutenant Mayer, were seriously injured. On the morning of the next day, the general died in a field hospital. Interestingly, Lieutenant General Kameke was the second and last full-time commander of the 137th Division in World War II. Recall that the first commander, Lieutenant General Friedrich Bergmann, was killed in December 1941 near Kaluga. And all the other officers in command of the divisions wore the prefix "acting" until December 9, 1943, the unit was finally disbanded.
On October 29, 1943, German troops fought stubborn battles in the Krivoy Rog region. During one of the counterattacks, the commander of the 14th Panzer Division, Lieutenant General Friedrich SIEBERG, and his chief of staff, Oberst Lieutenant von der Planitz, were wounded by fragments of an exploding shell. If Planitz's wound was minor, then the general was out of luck. Although he was urgently taken by plane "fiziler-Storkh" to hospital No. 3/610, despite all the efforts of the doctors, Sieberg died on November 2.
On November 6, 1943, the commander of the 88th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Heinrich ROTH, died of an injury received the day before. His division at that time was engaged in heavy battles with Soviet troops who were storming the capital of Soviet Ukraine - Kiev.
Major General Max Ilgen (Max ILGEN), commander of the 740th formation of the "eastern" troops, is listed as missing on November 15, 1943 in the Rivne region. As a result of a daring operation, the general was stolen from his own mansion in Rovno by the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov, who operated under the name of Lieutenant Paul Siebert. Due to the impossibility of transporting the captured Ilgen to Soviet territory, after interrogation he was killed in one of the neighboring farms.
On November 19, 1943, the aviation of the Black Sea Fleet and the 4th Air Army delivered the most powerful blow since the beginning of the war against the enemy's naval base. This base was the port of Kamysh-Burun on the Crimean coast of the Kerch Strait. From 10.10 to 16.50, six "petlyakovs" and 95 attack aircraft, whose operations were supported by 105 fighters, worked at the base. Several high-speed landing barges were damaged as a result of the raid. But this was not the only loss of the enemy from our strike. It was on this day that the commander of the German Navy on the Black Sea ("Black Sea Admiral") Vice Admiral Gustav KIESERITZKY decided to visit Kamysh-Burun and reward the BDB crews successfully blocking the Soviet bridgehead in the Eltigen area. At the entrance to the base, a car, in which, in addition to the admiral, his adjutant and the driver, there were two more naval officers, was attacked by four "silts". Three, including Kiesericki, died on the spot, two were seriously injured. According to A.Ya. Kuznetsov, the author of the book "Big Landing", the enemy fleet in the Black Sea was beheaded by one of the four fours of the 7th Guards Assault Regiment of the 230th ShAD of the 4th Air Army. Note also that Kiesericki became the first admiral of the Kriegsmarine to die on the Eastern Front.
On November 27, 1943, the acting commander of the 9th Panzer Division, Colonel Johannes SCHULZ, was killed north of Krivoy Rog. He was posthumously awarded the rank of major general.
On December 9, 1943, the combat career of Lieutenant General Arnold SZELINSKI, commander of the 376th Infantry Division, ended. We have not established the details of his death.
The third war year brought both quantitative and qualitative changes to the structure of losses of the German generals on the Soviet-German front. In 1943, these losses amounted to 33 people killed and 22 people taken prisoner (all captured in Stalingrad).
Of the irrecoverable losses, 24 people died in the battle (including Colonel Schultz, the division commander, who was awarded the rank of general posthumously). It is noteworthy that if in 1941 and 1942 only one German general died from air strikes, then in 1943 - as many as six!
In the remaining nine cases, the reasons were: accidents - two people, suicides - three people, "friendly fire" - one person, two were missing, and one more was killed after being captured in the German rear by partisans.
It should be noted that among the losses due to non-combat reasons, there are no deaths due to diseases, and the reason for all three suicides was the unwillingness to be in Soviet captivity.
German generals who died on the Soviet-German front in 1943
|
Name, title |
Position |
Cause of death |
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|
Lieutenant General Martin Wandel |
Commander of the 24th Panzer Corps |
Possibly killed in close combat |
||
|
Lieutenant General Arno Yaar |
And about. Commander of the 24th Panzer Corps, Commander of the 387th Infantry Division |
Suicide possible |
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Lieutenant General Karl Able |
And about. Commander of the 24th Panzer Corps, Commander of the 385th Infantry Division |
Close combat with allied Italian units |
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|
Lieutenant General Alexander von Hutmann |
Commander of the 71st Infantry Division |
Close combat |
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Lieutenant General Richard Shtempel |
Commander of the 371st Infantry Division |
Suicide |
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Lieutenant General Alfred Bench |
Commander of the 82nd Infantry Division |
Not installed. Died of wounds |
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Lieutenant General Adolf Lechner |
Commander of the 377th Infantry Division |
Missing |
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Lieutenant General Gunther Angern |
Commander of the 16th TD |
Suicide |
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|
General Andreas Nebauer |
Commander of the 323rd Infantry Division |
Close combat |
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Major General Ernst Hazzius |
Commander of the 46th Infantry Division |
Air raid |
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General of the infantry Walter Greissner |
Commander of the 12th Army Corps |
Not installed. Died of wounds |
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SS Obergruppenfuehrer Theodor Eicke |
Commander of the SS Panzer-Grenadier Division "Death's Head" |
Killed in a downed plane |
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General Engineer Hans Fischer |
1st Air Fleet headquarters |
Plane crash |
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Lieutenant General Ludwig Loeweneck |
Commander of the 39th Infantry Division |
Killed in a car accident |
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Lieutenant General Ernst Rupp |
Commander of the 97th Jaeger Division |
Air raid |
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Lieutenant General Friedrich Schmidt |
Commander of the 50th Infantry Division |
Undermining on a mine |
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Major General Walter von Hünersdorf |
Commander of the 6th TD |
Wounded by a sniper. Died from his injury |
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Lieutenant General Richard Müller |
Commander of the 211st Infantry Division |
Not installed |
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Lieutenant General Walter Schilling |
Commander of the 17th TD |
Not installed |
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General of the infantry Hans Zorn |
Commander of the 46th Panzer Corps |
Air raid |
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Lieutenant General Gustav Schmidt |
commander of the 19th TD |
Close combat |
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Lieutenant General Hermann Kress |
Commander of the 4th GPD |
Killed by a sniper |
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Major General Karl Schuhard |
Commander of the 10th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Brigade |
Not installed |
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Lieutenant General Heinrich Recke |
Commander of the 161st Infantry Division |
Missing |
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Lieutenant General Kurt Renner |
Commander of the 174th Reserve Division |
Close combat with guerrillas |
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Major General Karl-Albrecht von Groddeck |
Commander of the 161st Infantry Division |
Wounded during an air raid. Died of wounds |
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Lieutenant General Hans Kameke |
Commander of the 137th Infantry Division |
Air raid |
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Lieutenant General Friedrich Sieberg |
Commander of the 14th TD |
Wounded during an artillery attack. He died of his wounds. |
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Lieutenant General Heinrich Rott |
Commander of the 88th Infantry Division |
Not installed |
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Major General Max Ilgen |
Commander of the 740th formation of the "eastern" troops |
Killed after being captured by partisans |
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Vice Admiral Gustav Kiesericki |
Commander of the German Navy on the Black Sea |
Air raid |
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Colonel (posthumously Major General) Johannes Schultz |
and about. commander of the 9th TD |
Not installed |
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Lieutenant General Arnold Zhelinski |
Commander of the 376th Infantry Division |
Not installed |
