Kurt von Tippelskirch

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Captain Kurt von Tippelskirch, Great Headquarters Kassel, Nov. 1918 (No. 27)

Kurt Oskar Heinrich Ludwig Wilhelm von Tippelskirch (born October 9, 1891 in Charlottenburg ; † May 10, 1957 in Lüneburg ) was a German infantry general in World War II , head of the foreign armies department and military historian .

Life

origin

Kurt came from the noble family Tippelskirch . He was the eldest son of the Prussian Major General Hans von Tippelskirch (1863–1945) and his wife Helene, née Stuckenschmidt (* 1865).

Prussian Army

After visiting the main cadet institute in Groß-Lichterfelde , Tippelskirch joined the Prussian Army as an ensign on June 24, 1909 . He graduated from the Danzig War School and was transferred to the Queen Elisabeth Guards Grenadier Regiment No. 3 on March 3, 1910 . During this period he began to work as a writer. In 1914 he published an article on the Spanish colonial conflicts in the renowned journal Vierteljahrshefte für Troopführung und Heereskunde of the Great General Staff . At the beginning of the First World War , Tippelskirch moved as a lieutenant with his regiment to the western front , where he took part in the first battles. He was seriously wounded in the Battle of the Marne and was taken prisoner of war , from which he was only able to return in 1920. During his time as a prisoner of war , which he temporarily spent in Switzerland , he learned French intensively. This enabled him to be used later as a military interpreter. For his work during the war he received both classes of the Iron Cross and the Wound Badge in Black.

Reichswehr

After the war, Tippelskirch was taken over as a captain in the Reichswehr in 1920 and in the same year he was employed as chief of the 4th Company of the 9th Infantry Regiment in Potsdam . During this time he married Elli Gallenkamp, ​​the sister of the later General of the Artillery Curt Gallenkamp . From 1924 he served on the staff of the 3rd Division . Then he was appointed to the Reichswehr Ministry on April 1, 1924 , where he belonged to the "Foreign Armies" department, which was headed under the cover name of Army Statistics Department T 3, due to his language skills . The department was led by Friedrich von Boetticher (1881–1967) and at that time was responsible for the acquisition and evaluation of information about the "enemy armies". Both the military intelligence service in the form of "Abwehr" and the work area for coordination and cooperation with the military attachés at the German embassies in other countries were subordinate to it. On October 1, 1926, Tippelskirch was transferred to the 14th Cavalry Regiment and on April 1, 1927 to the staff of the 3rd Division in Berlin. After his promotion to major in early 1930, he was again transferred to the Army Statistics Department T 3 at the Troops Office (TA) of the Reichswehr Ministry. From November 1, 1930, this was led by Herbert Fischer . From the spring of 1931 there was a realignment of the work in this area, the main aim of which was to consistently separate information gathering from news evaluation. From this point in time the original "Foreign Armies" department existed again. In February 1933 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and from October 1933 commanded the III. Battalion of the 5th (Prussian) Infantry Regiment . A year later, as part of the expansion of the Reichswehr, he was commissioned to set up the new Infantry Regiment 27 ( Rostock ), here still as the commander of the half-regiment. His promotion to colonel took place on March 1, 1935.

Wehrmacht

This task too was short-lived; because in October 1935, Tippelskirch was given command of the new 27th Infantry Regiment. From October 1, 1936, he became Head Quartermaster IV in the War Ministry and this time he was appointed head of the "Foreign Armies" department. He replaced Carl-Heinrich Stülpnagel (1880-1944) in the position. Thus the newly created areas of "Foreign Army West", "Foreign Army East", "Attaché Department" and "Army" were subordinate to him. His deputy was Colonel Maximilian Fretter-Pico (1892-1984). Before the western campaign , Tippelskirch had every bunker on the Maginot Line captured. In this position, he played a key role in the military preparation for the Second World War , because all the findings of the military reconnaissance , the gathering of intelligence using secret service means and the work of the military attachés came together with him. In 1938 Tippelskirch was taken over as head of department in the Army High Command and promoted to major general on April 1 . From November 10, 1938 he was Quartermaster IV in the Army General Staff.

During the Second World War he led various troop commands. During the Compiègne armistice negotiations , he accompanied the French delegation to the negotiating table.

Division commander

On January 5, 1941, Tippelskirch took command of the 30th Infantry Division , which fought in the German-Soviet War from June 22nd . As part of Army Group North , the division on Pola prevented a Soviet corps from breaking through and then went on to counterattack. The battle lasted a week and Tippelskirch distinguished himself in the leadership of his associations so that he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on November 23 . In the winter of 1941/42 the 30th Infantry Division was included in the Battle of Demyansk . Tippelskirch gave up the command as ordered and was flown out.

In August 1942, Tippelskirch was used as a liaison officer in the Italian 8th Army on the Don . This position was extremely difficult because he had no German staff at his disposal and the Italians were reluctant to take advice from German officers. The Italian 8th Army was drawn into the Battle of Stalingrad at the end of the year . He himself was recalled from the war front in February 1943 .

Commanding general

Tippelskirch was from February 18, 1943 as commanding general of the XII. Army Corps used. He held this position until June 4, 1944, when he had to take over command of the 4th Army on his behalf - General Gotthard Heinrici was ill. During this time, on June 22nd, the Soviet operation Bagration against Army Group Center began . The 4th Army defended the Mogilev area and repeatedly requested permission to retreat. When this was approved much too late, Tippelskirch succeeded in withdrawing most of the army behind the Dnieper . An indication of the severity of the fighting may be that all three commanding generals of the corps and ten of eleven division commanders were on the casualty list. Although the 4th Army was able to defend itself the longest against the threat of annihilation by three Soviet fronts , it was trapped near Minsk on July 1, 1944 and forced to surrender on July 8, 1944. At this point in time, Tippelskirch was outside the boiler and thus escaped capture.

On July 18, 1944, he was seriously injured in a plane crash. On July 30th, he was the 539th soldier to receive the Knight's Cross for his achievements in the battles at Mogilew. Already on October 31st he returned to work and was assigned to lead the 1st Army in Lorraine for the sick Otto von Knobelsdorff . On December 13th of that year he took over the leadership of the 14th Army in the Italian campaign . Here he led the high command as a deputy until the end of February 1945. Most recently von Tippelskirch took over command of the 21st Army in Mecklenburg and Brandenburg at the end of April 1945 . However, when General Gotthard Heinrici was dismissed as commander of Army Group Vistula , Tippelskirch received the order from General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel to temporarily take over the leadership of this Army Group. He was reluctant to do so and took the opportunity to negotiate with the Western allies. He capitulated to American troops in the Ludwigslust area on May 2, 1945 .

post war period

Tippelskirch remained in British captivity until January 1948. He spent it in Camp 11 near Bridgend (Wales) and in the Allendorf / Neustadt prison camp . During this time he helped the Operational History (German) Section prepare a US report on the invasion of Poland .

After his release in 1948, Tippelskirch settled in Lüneburg . There he dealt with the events and backgrounds of the last war. In the following years he worked on a book about the history of the Second World War. He was in close contact with other former high military personnel in the Wehrmacht and was supported by the British historian Basil Liddell Hart . This work was the first complete representation of the war in Germany and the first edition was published in 1951. It served many other generals of the Wehrmacht as the basis for their memoirs (e.g. Erich von Manstein : Verlorene Siege. 1955). In 1956, Tippelskirch brought out a second edition in which he consulted additional sources and corrected some errors. In the same year he became chairman of the Association of German Soldiers (VdS) and the Working Group for Defense Research (AfW).

At the age of 65, Tippelskirch in Lüneburg suffered a sudden cardiac death.

Fonts

  • The Spaniards in Morocco 1911–1913. In: Quarterly books for troop leadership and military studies. (Ed. Of the Great General Staff) 2/1914.
  • History of the Second World War. Athenaeum-Verlag Junker und Dünnhaupt, Bonn 1951. ( Russian translation )
  • Reviews of the history of the 2nd world war. Co-author W. Hahlweg, 1954
  • Operational overview of the 1939 campaign in Poland. In: WWR. 6/1954, pp. 252-267.
  • Operational management decisions at the height of the land war. (Without place and date)

literature

  • Klaus-Dieter Leuthäuser: General of the infantry Kurt von Tippelskirch: attempt of a biography. Short-time work, Hanover 1962.
  • Samuel W. Mitcham Jr .: The Men of Barbarossa. Commanders of the German Invasion of Russia 1941. Caseate Publ., Havertown 2009, ISBN 978-1-935149-15-6 .
  • Magnus Pahl: Foreign Armies East. Hitler's military enemy reconnaissance. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86153-694-9 .
  • Franz Thomas: The oak leaves 1939-1945. Volume 2: L-Z. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1998, ISBN 978-3-7648-2300-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Nobeligen houses. 1902. Justus Perthes, Gotha 1901, p. 836.
  2. ^ A b c Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr .: The Men of Barbarossa - Commanders of the German Invasion of Russia 1941. Havertown 2009, p. 60.
  3. ^ Kurt von Tippelskirch: The Spaniards in Morocco 1911–1913. In: Quarterly books for troop leadership and military studies. (Ed. By the Great General Staff), Vol. 11 (1914), Issue 2.
  4. ↑ Magnus Pahl: Foreign armies East. Hitler's military enemy reconnaissance. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86153-694-9 .
  5. ^ Kurt von Tippelskirch: History of the Second World War . In: Der Spiegel . No. 27 , 1953 ( online - 1 July 1953 ).
  6. ↑ Magnus Pahl: Foreign armies East. Hitler's military enemy reconnaissance. Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-86153-694-9 .
  7. ↑ a b Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearer 1939–1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 .
  8. ^ Charles B. MacDonald: United States Army in World War II - European Theater of Operations - The Last Offensive: Chapter XIX - Goetterdaemmerung. In: ibiblio.org. Office of the Chief of Military History, 1973, p. 464 , accessed July 30, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Preface quotation: Two preliminary drafts of the study and a series of questionnaires were distributed to a committee of former German general officers for reply and comment on their part in planning and operations, and to fill gaps in the official records. These former German officers included Colonel General Franz Haider, Chief of the Army General Staff through the period of the Polish Campaign, Colonel General Hans von Salmuth, General der Artillerie Walter Warlimont, General der Infanterie Guenther Blumentritt, and General der Infanterie Kurt von Tippelskirch. The replies and comments of these surviving key participants are referred to in the footnotes and are available in the author's file in the Office of the Chief of Military History for study by interested researchers.
  10. ↑ Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961 (= Studies on Contemporary History. Vol. 90). De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-11-041478-3 , p. 282.
personal data
SURNAME Tippelskirch, Kurt von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Tippelskirch, Kurt Oskar Heinrich Ludwig Wilhelm von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German infantry general in World War II; Military historian
DATE OF BIRTH October 9, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlottenburg , German Empire
DATE OF DEATH May 10, 1957
Place of death Lueneburg , Lower Saxony , Germany