68th Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)
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68th Infantry Division |
|
|---|---|
 Troop registration |
|
| active | August 1939 to May 1945 |
| Country |
.svg){kind=small} German Empire
|
| Armed forces | Wehrmacht |
| Armed forces | army |
| Type | Infantry Division |
| structure | structure |
| Installation site | Guben , Brandenburg |
| Nickname | Brown bear |
| Commanders | |
| list of | Commanders |
The 68th Infantry Division (68th ID) was a major military unit of the Wehrmacht .
Division history
Areas of application :
- Poland : September 1939 to May 1940
- France : May 1940 to June 1941
- Eastern Front , Southern Section: June 1941 to September 1944
- Slovakia and Poland : September 1944 to January 1945
- Silesia : January to May 1945
The 68th Infantry Division was set up in Guben in August 1939 as a division of the 2nd wave of deployment . Their first war mission took place in Poland in 1939 . For the western campaign it was subordinated to the 16th Army and relocated to its staging area in Trier on the Moselle . During the Blitzkrieg in France it reached from Sedan to Epinal . In October 1940 she had to cede 25% of her battalions (Staff IR 196, I. Btl./169, I. Btl./118 I. Btl./196) to 340th Infantry Division . These were replaced again.
In June 1941, the 68th Infantry Division took part in the attack on the Soviet Union as part of Operation Barbarossa . As part of Army Group South , she crossed the San in southern Poland, via Lemberg and Vinnitza to Cherkassy in the center of Ukraine . Their task was to secure the flanks of the 6th and 17th Armies against attacks by the Red Army. In October 1941 she was already in the Kharkov area, coming from Poltava . In the winter of 1941/1942 there were heavy defensive battles with the Red Army in the arc of Isjum on the Donets , which broke in in several places and threatened Dnepropetrovsk .
In the spring of 1942, the Isjum and Znamenka division attacked and reached Voronezh . The 68th Infantry Division fought in the Voronezh Position until February 1943. After that, the 68th Infantry Division was on the defensive and had to retreat to Oskol and Kursk . After she suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Zhitomir in 1943/1944 during the Zhitomir-Berditschewer operation , she was defeated in January 1944 near Tarnopol . After freshening up and further struggles at wear and tear, it had to retreat to Poland and was re-established there in February 1944 as the 24th wave of the Demba shadow division . This division capitulated to the Red Army in May 1945 in Jägerndorf in the Sudetenland .
people
Commanders
| period of service | Rank | Surname |
|---|---|---|
| September 1, 1939 to November 14, 1941 | Lieutenant General | Georg Braun |
| November 16, 1941 to January 24, 1943 | Lieutenant General | Robert Meissner |
| January 24th to October 25th, 1943 | Lieutenant General | Hans Schmidt |
| October 25, 1943 to May 8, 1945 | Lieutenant General | Paul Scheuerpflug |
Well-known members of the division
- Joachim Schwatlo-Gesterding , (1903-1975) was from October 1, 1961 to March 31, 1964 in command of the Territorial Defense Command
- Gerhard Wessel , (1913–2002) was President of the Federal Intelligence Service from May 1, 1968 to December 31, 1978 .
- Bruno Sutkus (lit.Bronius Sutkus) (born May 14, 1924 in Tannenwalde near Koenigsberg / East Prussia ; † August 29, 2003)
Lithuanian sniper and member of the 68th Infantry Division, he was assigned 209 deadly precision shots - Friedrich Altrichter was commander of the 188 Infantry Regiment until January 1940 after the beginning of World War II.
Awards
A total of fourteen members of the 68th ID were awarded the Knight's Cross and 65 with the German Cross in Gold.
structure
| 1942 | 1943-1945 |
|---|---|
|
Grenadier Regiment 169 |
|
| Reconnaissance Department 168 | Fusilier Battalion 68 |
| Artillery Regiment 168 | |
| Panzerjäger detachment 168 | |
| Engineer Battalion 168 | |
| News Department 168 | |
| Supply units 168 | |
| - | Field Replacement Battalion 168 |
literature
- Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945 . 2nd Edition. tape 5 . The Land Forces 31-70 . Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1977, ISBN 3-7648-1107-2 .
