17th Army (Wehrmacht)

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17th Army

active December 20, 1940 to May 7, 1945
Country German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era) German Empire
Armed forces Wehrmacht
Armed forces army
Type army
Installation site Szczecin

The 17th Army / Army High Command 17 (AOK 17) 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. In August and September 1942, the 17th Army was also referred to as the Ruoff Army Group in the course of the German summer offensive .

history

Army High Command 17 was set up on December 20, 1940 in Military District II (Stettin) to replace AOK 12 in the Generalgouvernement intended for the Balkan campaign . During the attack on the Soviet Union , the army under General von Stülpnagel was used as part of Army Group South to attack Rawa Ruska and Lemberg .

Army organization on June 22, 1941

After the advance on Vinnitsa, the 17th Army took part in the Battle of Uman in early August and in the Battle of Kiev in early to mid-September . The 17th Army was also subordinate to units of the allies Hungary (motorized corps) and Slovakia, and at times also the Italian expeditionary corps .

In 1941 units of the AOK 17 took part in mass executions of Jews a. a. at Poltava .

On October 6th, under the new Army Commander Colonel General Hoth, the offensive began from the Poltava area in the direction of Losovaya and Isjum to the Donets River . In 1942 she took part in the Battle of Kharkov and the German summer offensive ( Enterprise Edelweiss ), in which she advanced into the western Caucasus as part of the newly formed Army Group A. In August and September 1942 it was referred to as the Ruoff Army Group due to the temporary subordination of the Romanian 3rd Army . In the period that followed until 1944, Romanian associations remained subordinate to a considerable extent.

Division of the 17th Army on July 7, 1943

After withdrawing from the Caucasus, the army fought in the Kuban bridgehead in 1943, which had to be evacuated in October 1943, with the army withdrawing to the Crimea . The 17th Army had at the end of September 1943 sold in the so-called "small Gotenkopf" to a smaller intermediate position: the holding in the North Group Becker the (50th and 370th Division) in the middle group Konrad (97. hunter-98th Infantry Division) and on the southern section the Sixt group (4th mountain and Romanian 19th division). The vacated V Army Corps was transferred to the Crimea, the XXXXIV. Army Corps and Divisions 9th, 101st and 125th were transferred to the 6th Army on the lower Dnieper front. In the course of the Battle of the Crimea , the 17th Army was destroyed by the Red Army in the Sevastopol area in May 1944 and then reorganized with the Army Group of Southern Ukraine . Until the end of the war she fought in Galicia , the Eastern Carpathians and finally in Silesia, where she surrendered to the Red Army after the Battle of Breslau .

Insinuation

Commander in chief

Surname Beginning of the appointment Rank
Wilhelm Hasse April 1, 1945 General of the Infantry
Friedrich Schulz July 26, 1944 General of the Infantry
Karl Allmendinger May 1, 1944 General of the Infantry
Erwin Jaenecke April 1, 1944 Colonel General
Ferdinand Schörner March 2, 1944 Colonel General
Erwin Jaenecke June 25, 1943 Colonel General
Richard Ruoff June 1, 1942 Colonel General
Hans von Salmuth April 20, 1942 General of the Infantry
Hermann Hoth October 5, 1941 Colonel General
Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel December 20, 1940 General of the Infantry

See also

literature

  • Hellmuth G. Dahms: The history of the Second World War , Munich / Berlin 1983. ISBN 3-7766-1291-6 .
  • Peter Schmitz, Klaus-Jürgen Thies: The troop numbers of the associations and units of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS and their missions in the Second World War 1939–1945. Volume 1: Das Heer , Osnabrück 1987. ISBN 3-7648-1498-5 .
  • 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 .
  • Peter Young: The great atlas for the Second World War , Munich 1974. ISBN 3-517-00473-1 .
  • Peter Joachim Lapp: Fight and fall of the 17th Army in World War II. Military-historical sketch of a large association of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, Aachen 2016, ISBN 978-3-86933-154-6

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Dieter Pohl : The Rule of the Wehrmacht: German Military Occupation and Local Population in the Soviet Union 1941-1944 . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-59174-3 , p. 267 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  2. Schramm: OKW-Kriegstagebuch, Volume II, p. 731