110th Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)

110th Infantry Division
active	December 1940 to August 3, 1944
Country	German Empire
Armed forces	Wehrmacht
Armed forces	army
Branch of service	infantry
Type	Infantry Division
structure	structure
Installation site	Luneburg
Nickname	Viking division
Second World War	Battle of Rzhev
Commanders
list of	Commanders
insignia
Troop registration number 2	Viking ship

The 110th Infantry Division (110th ID) was a large unit of the army of the German Wehrmacht in World War II . It was erected in December 1940 and stationed in occupied Poland until June 1941. From there she took part in the attack on the Soviet Union . It was completely destroyed in July 1944 on the Eastern Front near Minsk in Belarus .

Division history

The 110th Infantry Division was set up as part of the 12th wave of deployment in 1940 in Lüneburg in military district X from parts of the 12th ID and 30th ID . In addition, the 400 Home Guard Battalion was integrated into the 110th Infantry Division. In " Operation Barbarossa " the 110th Infantry Division was subordinate to Army Group Center from June 1941 . In December 1941, the 110th Infantry Division was withdrawing from the Kalinin front line in a south-westerly direction. As part of the 9th Army , the division fought in the Battle of Rzhev in 1942 . Due to heavy losses, the GR 252 had to be disbanded on November 2, 1943 and its survivors had to be incorporated into division group 321.

Course of the Kesselschlacht near Minsk from June 29, 1944, 10:00 p.m. to July 3, 1944, 10:00 p.m. At this point in time, the 110th Infantry Division and the Panzergrenadier Division “Feldherrnhalle” were at the forefront of the parts of the 4th Army moving west.

As part of the 9th Army, 110 ID was involved in a war crime in March 1944 . During the German occupation of Belarus , the working population was enslaved and those unable to work were deported . The family members who were left behind and could no longer look after themselves - women, old people and children - were taken to three specially built assembly camps near Osaritschi . The camps were located in a swamp area in the no man's land between the German and Soviet front lines and were intended to disrupt a possible Soviet offensive. A total of 33,000 people, including 15,960 children and 13,072 women, were interned here without any buildings or facilities and were left unsupervised for one to two weeks. Typhus sufferers were deliberately mixed with the inmates. The entrances were mined.

Like the 35th and 129th IDs, the 110th ID set up interim camps in villages to accommodate the deportees on their way to the repository. The 110th Infantry Division was also involved in capturing and transporting civilians in the division area. Units of the 110th ID provided marching columns for the deportees to smaller camps and took over the guarding. Escape attempts and resistance were broken by force of arms. People who could not make it through the grueling march, especially children and old people, were shot. In the camps, too, people who approached the fences or wanted to start fires were shot without warning. By the time the Red Army was liberated, around 8,000 people had died. In Ernst Beyersdorff's division history, the crime, which was also the subject of the war crimes trial in Gomel in 1948, is kept secret.

In July 1944, the 110th ID was almost completely destroyed as part of the 4th Army in the Battle of Minsk in Belarus as part of the Soviet summer offensive Operation Bagration . On June 30, 1944, the 110th Infantry Division reached the Berezina ; the division's pioneers built a makeshift bridge over the river under difficult conditions such as mass attacks by Soviet attack aircraft and continuous artillery fire. Fleeing troops such as B. scattered units of the Panzergrenadier division "Feldherrnhalle" , 78th Sturm-Division etc. pushed increasingly on the pioneer bridge and intensified the mass panic of the disbanding Army Group Center. On July 1, 1944, the severely decimated division was able to withdraw from the forest of Schorowez after heavy losses, reached the Meldekopf near Borowino, which was supposed to catch the retreating troops, and finally on July 7, 1944, 16 kilometers southwest of Minsk by far superior Soviet troops posed. In view of the hopeless situation, Lieutenant General von Kurowski ordered the surrender of the few survivors. Von Kurowski and the remains of his combat group were taken prisoner by the Soviets.

On August 3, 1944, the 110th Infantry Division was completely disbanded due to a lack of personnel. In Lüneburg there is a memorial to the members of the 110th ID who fell in World War II.

Subordination of the 110th Infantry Division during World War II

date	Army Corps	army	Army Group	place	Location
December 1940	in preparation	11th Army	C.	Luneburg	Germany
January 1941	in preparation	11th Army	C.
May 1941	WK XI	Panzer Group 2	-
July 1941	XXXXII	available OKH	center	Vilna	Eastern front, central section
August 1941	XXIII	9th Army		Smolensk
September 1941	VI	9th Army		Smolensk
October 1941	VI	Panzer Group 3		Vyasma
November 1941	to disposal	Panzer Group 3		Clin
December 1941	VI	9th Army		Rzhev
January 1942	VI
February 1942	XXVII
March 1942	XXIII
April 1942	XXVII
May 1942	XXIII
January 1943	XXIII
April 1943	LV	2nd Panzer Army		Bryansk
September 1943		9th Army		Bryansk
January 1944				Rogachev
February 1944	LVI			Bobruisk
April 1944	XXXXI
May 1944	to disposal
June 1944	XXXIX	4th Army		Orsha

structure

252nd Infantry Regiment
254th Infantry Regiment
255th Infantry Regiment
Artillery Regiment 120
- I. Department
- II. Department
- III. Department
- IV. Department
Panzerjäger detachment 110
Reconnaissance Division 110
News Department 110
Engineer Battalion 110
Supply troops

Commanders

Division commanders of 110 ID
period of service	Rank	Surname
December 10, 1940 to January 24, 1942	Lieutenant General	Ernst Seifert
0February 1, 1942 to June 1, 1943	Lieutenant General	Martin Gilbert
0June 1 to September 25, 1943	Lieutenant General	Eberhard von Kurowski
September 25 to December 1, 1943	Colonel	Albrecht Wüstenhagen
0December 1, 1943 to May 11, 1944	Lieutenant General	Eberhard von Kurowski
0May 11-15, 1944	Major general	Gustav Gihr
May 15 to July 1944	Lieutenant General	Eberhard von Kurowski

General staff officers (Ia) of 110 ID
period of service	Rank	Surname
December 10, 1940 to November 3, 1941	Lieutenant colonel	Heinrich Gäde
February 1942	major	Wilhelm Freiherr von Malzahn
April 10, 1942 to September 20, 1943	Lieutenant colonel	Carl Kleyser
December 10, 1943 to July 1944	Lieutenant colonel	Karl Bieling

Awards

A total of nine division members were awarded the Knight's Cross and 83 with the German Cross in Gold.

Knight's Cross bearer
Rank	Surname	unit	Award date
5!Sergeant Major	Fluhs!Friedrich Fluhs	Platoon leader 5th Kp./GR 255	49431104 ♠0November 4, 1943
1!Captain	Westenberger!Walter Westenberger	Battalion Commander I. Btl./GR 255	49431112 ♠November 12, 1943
0!major	Shipowner!Deert Jacob Shipowner	Battalion Commander II. Btl./GR 254	49431130 ♠November 30, 1943
2!First lieutenant	Rye cultivation!Ulrich Roggenbau	Company commander 7th Kp./GR 254	49431130 ♠November 30, 1943
3!lieutenant	Fritzler!Heinz Fritzler	Leader 1. Kp./Divisions-Füsilier-Btl. 110	49431205 ♠0December 5, 1943
1!Captain	Mohring!Heinz Möhring	Battalion Commander II. Btl./GR 255	49440306 ♠0March 6, 1944
7!Corporal	Wassmann!Adolf Wassmann	MG shooter 6th Kp./GR 255	49440316 ♠March 16, 1944
6!sergeant	Grossmann!Hugo Grossmann	Deputy Leader 3rd Kp / GR 252	49440326 ♠March 26, 1944
4!Ensign	Tonnies!Hermann Tönnies	Ordinance officer staff I. Btl./GR 255	49440420 ♠April 20, 1944

literature

Ernst Beyersdorff: History of the 110th Infantry Division. Podzun Verlag, Bad Nauheim 1965.
Karl Kleysex: archive material of the 110th Infantry Division. Self-published by the traditional association.
Traditional association of the 110th Infantry Division: Fragments from the Russian campaign of the 110th Infantry Division. Self-published.
Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in World War II 1939–1945, Volume 6: The land forces . No. 71-130. 2nd Edition. Osnabrück 1979, ISBN 3-7648-1172-2 .

Web links

Backstage I, information about the war crimes of the 110th ID for an exhibition at the University of Lüneburg

Individual evidence

↑ http://kunstraum.leuphana.de/veranstaltungen/hinterbuehne.html

^ ^A ^b Christian Gerlach : In: Karl Heinrich Pohl (Ed.): Wehrmacht and extermination policy. Military in the National Socialist system. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, p. 103; Christoph Rass: "Human material". German soldiers on the Eastern Front. Interior views of an infantry division 1939–1945. Schöningh, Paderborn 2003, p. 386 ( online ).

↑ Christoph Rass: "Human Material ". German soldiers on the Eastern Front. Interior views of an infantry division 1939–1945. Schöningh, Paderborn 2003, pp. 394-401 ( online ).

↑ Christoph Rass: "Human Material ". German soldiers on the Eastern Front. Interior views of an infantry division 1939–1945. Schöningh, Paderborn 2003, p. 388 ( online ).

^ Ernst Beyersdorff: History of the 110th Infantry Division . Podzun Verlag, 1965, pp. 150-158.

[1] ttp://kunstraum.leuphana.de/veranstaltungen/hinterbuehne.html

[G1-2] A ^b Christian Gerlach : In: Karl Heinrich Pohl (Ed.): Wehrmacht and extermination policy. Military in the National Socialist system. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, p. 103; Christoph Rass: "Human material". German soldiers on the Eastern Front. Interior views of an infantry division 1939–1945. Schöningh, Paderborn 2003, p. 386 ( online ).