15th Army (Wehrmacht)

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The 15th Army / Army High Command 15 (AOK 15) was a major unit of the Army of the Wehrmacht during the Second World War . She was the high command of changing army corps and numerous special troops.

history

The 15th Army was set up in France on January 15, 1941 under Colonel General Curt Haase . From 1941 to 1944 she secured the Channel coast in Belgium and northern France on the Atlantic Wall . They moved their headquarters in Tourcoing near Lille . The army strength was 230,000 soldiers.

From September 1942 the Germans began extensive construction work after Tourcoing had been bombed and there had been an Allied trial landing attempt in Dieppe ( Operation Jubilee ). Parts of the headquarters are now a museum. On June 5, 1944 at 9:15 p.m. the Germans received the signal they knew on Radio Londres , which signaled to the French Resistance that an invasion - the landing in Normandy - was imminent. The Resistance then began with acts of sabotage on the infrastructure, e.g. B. Telegraph Poles.

After the Allied landings on June 6, 1944, the 15th Army defended Le Havre , Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk . After the surrender of Paris on August 26, 1944 , the Allies made a rapid advance; German units withdrew hastily (often leaving behind heavy weapons and other pieces of equipment).

From mid-September to early November 1944 she fought between the Scheldt and Maas ( battle of the Scheldt estuary ) and near Eindhoven . The AOK was then disguised and relocated to the Aachen area in order to take over the PzAOK 5 troops (Aachen had capitulated at the end of October 1944 ; after that the Allied advance came to a halt at the Siegfried Line). The latter was intended for use in the Battle of the Bulge (from December 16, 1944). The AOK 25 , which was set up as a replacement in the Netherlands, initially continued to be called the 15th Army for camouflage reasons. From mid-November to mid-December 1944 the army fought in the Aachen area on the Westwall . Then she had trench warfare on the Rur until the end of February . After the Allies had successfully completed Operation Blackcock (Rur triangle) and then Operation Grenade (Rur crossing), the 15th Army withdrew to the Rhine , where it went down in the Ruhr basin as part of Army Group B in April 1945 .

Calls

Commander in chief

See also

literature

  • Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945. Volume 4. The Land Forces 15–30 . 2nd Edition. Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 1976, ISBN 3-7648-1083-1 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b www.museedu5juin1944.asso.fr
  2. ^ Poem "Chanson d'automne" by Paul Verlaine

Web links