1st Parachute Army
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1st Parachute Army |
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|---|---|
| active | April 3, 1944 to May 5, 1945 (surrender) |
| Country |
.svg){kind=small} German Empire
|
| Armed forces | Wehrmacht |
| Armed forces | Air force , the army assumed |
| Type | army |
| structure | see structure |
| Installation site | Nancy |
| Second World War | see battle calendar |
| management | |
| Commander in chief | see list |
The 1st Parachute Army / Parachute Army High Command 1 (FschAOK 1) was a major unit of the Air Force of the Armed Forces during the Second World War . She was high command of changing army corps as well as numerous special troops and went out of the XI. Air Corps emerged.
history
The formation of the 1st Parachute Army began on an order of the Commander-in-Chief of the Air Force Hermann Göring from November 5, 1943 to establish an Army High Command with two parachute corps by April 1944. With the implementation, the General Command XI. Fliegerkorps under General of the Parachute Troops Kurt Student , which was responsible for the leadership, training and supplementation of the parachute troops of the Air Force and had previously been used, among other things, in the airborne battle of Crete . The two parachute corps were in January 1944 in Italy and France from the withdrawn from the Eastern Front II. Air Force Field Corps and the XIII. Air Corps set up. On April 3, 1944, the General Command XI was converted in Nancy . Fliegerkorps in the parachute AOK 1, which was placed under the command of Army Group D / Commander-in-Chief West . The planned subordination of the 1st Parachute Corps did not come about because it was bound in Italy.
After the Allies landed in Normandy in June 1944, the 1st Parachute Army was directly subordinate to the OKW and continued its training activities. Their first combat deployment saw the army after the breakthrough of the Allies in France on September 4, 1944 at the Albert Canal in Belgium of the Association of Army Group B . In the course of Operation Market Garden , it was pushed back towards the Meuse and Waal in eastern Holland . At that time, the army was subordinate to the II. Parachute Corps as well as an army and two SS corps . In November 1944 Colonel General Student took over the Army Group H , which was formed from the 1st Parachute Army and the 15th Army , and was replaced in the 1st Parachute Army by General of the Parachute Troop Alfred Schlemm .
During the battle in the Reichswald in February 1945, the Allies managed to advance to the Lower Rhine , where the 1st Parachute Army was pushed back into the German bridgehead near Wesel . On March 10, the army withdrew with the remaining German formations to the right bank of the Rhine and was assigned the area between Emmerich and Krefeld as a defensive section. On March 21, two days before the Allies advanced across the Rhine in Operation Plunder , General Schlemm was injured in an air raid in Erle and replaced on March 28 by General Günther Blumentritt due to a fever . A little later, he gave up his position again to Colonel General Student. From April 1945 the 1st Parachute Army was subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief Northwest, a little later it surrendered to the Allied troops in Oldenburg under its last Commander-in-Chief, General of the Infantry Erich Straube .
Battle calendar
The combat calendar of the 1st Parachute Army shows the following entries:
- Battle of Arnhem and Nijmegen September 17, 1944 - September 26, 1944
- Defensive battles on the Maas and Waal September 27, 1944 - February 7, 1945
- Fight for the Reichswald February 7, 1945 - February 13, 1945
- Retreat fighting on the Rhine (Xanten) February 14, 1945 - March 10, 1945
- Retreat fights on the Ems and Weser March 23, 1945 - May 8, 1945
people
| period of service | Rank | Surname |
|---|---|---|
| September 4 to November 18, 1944 | Colonel General | Kurt student |
| November 18, 1944 to March 28, 1945 | Parachute General | Alfred Schlemm |
| March 28 to April 10, 1945 | General of the Infantry | Günther Blumentritt |
| April 10-28, 1945 | Colonel General | Kurt student |
| April 28, 1945 until the surrender | General of the Infantry | Erich Straube |
| period of service | Rank | Surname |
|---|---|---|
| May 1 to August 20, 1944 | Lieutenant General | Wolfgang Erdmann |
| September 15 to November 1944 | Colonel | Walter Reinhard |
| November 1944 to May 8, 1945 | Colonel | Ernst Kusserow |
| period of service | Rank | Surname |
|---|---|---|
| unknown | Lieutenant colonel | Berlin |
| January 17 to May 8, 1945 | major | Arnold von Roon |
structure
Army troops
- Parachute hunter training regiment 21
- Parachute Army Weapons School 21
- Storm Battalion of the Parachute Army
- Parachute Cycling Battalion 1st
- Parachute Panzer Regiment 1
- Parachute Assault Gun Brigade 21
- Higher Artillery Commander of Parachute Army 1
- heavy thrower division of the Parachute Army 1
- Parachute Pioneer Regiment 1
- Parachute Army Resupply Forces 1
- Transport Department of the Parachute Army 1
- Parachute Army News Regiment 1st
- Parachute Army Medical Transport Department 1
- Field replacement regiment of the Parachute Army
- Recovering Battalion of Parachute Army 1st
Subordinate army corps and divisions
| September 1944 |
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| February 1945 |
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| April 1945 |
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literature
- Günter Wegmann: The end of the war between Ems and Weser 1945. 2nd expanded edition, H. Th. Wenner, Osnabrück 2000, ISBN 3-87898-367-0 .
Web links
- German 1st Paratrooper Army. 1944 - 1945. (PDF; 80 kB) Retrieved September 15, 2011 (English).
Notes and individual references
- ^ Günter Wegmann: The end of the war between Ems and Weser 1945. 2000, p. 11.
- ^ Günter Wegmann: The end of the war between Ems and Weser 1945. 2000, p. 20.
- ↑ Fallschirmjäger, illustrated book and chronicle 1939 - 1945, Rudolf Böhmler and Werner Haupt, revised edition, Verlag Hans-Henning & Podzun, Dornheim 1971, p. 229
- ↑ Permanent representative from March 1, 1944 - November 15, 1944 was Lieutenant General Walter Lackner