17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Götz von Berlichingen"
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17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Götz von Berlichingen" |
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|---|---|
 Troop identification: Iron Hand |
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| active | October 1943 to May 1945 |
| Country |
.svg){kind=small} German Empire
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| Armed forces |
 Armed SS
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| Branch of service | Panzergrenadiers |
| Type | division |
| structure | See outline |
| motto | "On top, on and through!" |
| Butcher |
Partisan War in Yugoslavia German Western Front 1944/1945 |
| commander | |
| list of | Commanders |
The 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Götz von Berlichingen" was a Panzergrenadier division of the Waffen SS during World War II . It was named after the imperial knight Götz von Berlichingen .
history
Lineup
In the late autumn of 1943, the previous SS Panzer Grenadier Brigades 49 and 51 and other units from the German Reich , including the 10th Panzer Division , were brought together. Together they formed the new 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Götz von Berlichingen" in south-west France .
commitment
In December 1943 it was used in the course of the war against the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army together with the V SS Mountain Corps in the Balkans . A few weeks later, she was ultimately as OKW - Reserve to the south of France pulled off. Since the invasion of the Allies in Normandy came in June 1944 as a surprise to the German troops, was moved to the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division of Saint-Lô . In order to put a stop to the advancing Allied troops, the division was drawn into the front south of Carentan . Here the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division attacked three US divisions. After heavy losses in the battle for the city of Saint-Lô, which was liberated by US troops on July 20, 1944, the division withdrew to Champagne and the greater Paris area to "freshen up". The “refreshment phase” did not last long, however, as the 3rd US Army began a major offensive against the Moselle section in mid-September 1944 . Thereupon the division went into the area of Metz and occupied the front in the fortress Metz and north of it; this was held until mid-November 1944. A few days later another major attack by the Americans started, whereupon the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division had to withdraw to the border of the Reich.
The " Operation North Wind " in Alsace and Lorraine was the last offensive of German armed forces on the western front. The 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division attacked Wœlfling-lès-Sarreguemines , Bining and Achen on the right wing of the German 1st Army on January 1, 1945 , but got stuck in the Maginot Line on the second day . A subsequent retreat followed in February 1945, which went through Baden , Northern Württemberg and Bavaria , across the Mannheim area to the Odenwald . The division successfully fought against the encirclement by US forces. At the end of March 1945, the commander Fritz Klingenberg died from an American tank shell. In April 1945 it reached the Bavarian foothills of the Alps. In the Tegernsee valley the war for the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Götz von Berlichingen" was finally over.
After the end of the war, the four-star general George Patton considered the dissolved XIII. Army corps of the Wehrmacht subordinate to the officer corps of the "Götz von Berlichingen" division in the course of the planned Operation Unthinkable in order to "drive" the Soviet army out of Europe. Patton was so impressed with the discipline within the force that he wanted them to fight alongside the American units. However, the plan was never realized and General Patton was ousted a few months later.
Areas of application
- December 1943: Balkans
- January 1944 to May 1944: Southern France
- June 1944 to July 1944: Normandy
- August 1944: Champagne
- September 1944 to November 1944: Lorraine
- December 1944 to February 1945: Saarpfalz
- March to May 1945: Württemberg, Franconia and Alpine foothills
War crimes
By members of the division
Like other SS divisions, the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division was actively involved in war crimes . In the final phase of the war, she is accused of mistreating civilians who had expressed themselves negatively towards Hitler and of shooting some foreign and German concentration camp prisoners in Ellwangen .
Fritz Swoboda , one of her relatives, told his cellmate in the US prisoner-of-war wiretapping camp in Fort Hunt near Washington about a 1944 shooting of American prisoners of war on the Western Front in which he himself was involved. Apparently nine American soldiers fell victim to this war crime, which can no longer be precisely dated, and for which “ anger ” over the previous killing of a superior was given as the reason.
In other incidents, too, members of the division have been shown to have killed prisoners of war and civilians. SS members of the SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 37 found 20 wounded US paratroopers on the night of June 11-12, 1944 in Graignes, northern France . These members of the 82nd Airborne Division , two civilians and two clergymen who had tended to the wounded, were then killed and the village burned down.
In July 1944, Allied soldiers and French civilians were also murdered in the French community of Bonneuil-Matours . Members of the division should u. a. been involved in the killing of 33 British Special Air Service personnel captured . In retaliation bombarded De Havilland Mosquitos DH.98 the Royal Air Force on 14 July 1944, the positions of the division with napalm .
Another member of the division shot and killed the mayor of the Burgthann community in the spring of 1945 after he had raised white flags as a sign of surrender . This execution is said to have taken place according to the then applicable law (the so-called flag order ), which is why the subsequent process was discontinued in 1958.
In addition, today there is a scientific opinion that the Maillé massacre was committed by the field replacement battalion of the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division .
To members of the division
- On April 18, 1945, a group of division members surrendered to American captivity in Nuremberg on the premises of the Lederer brewery. The soldiers were taken to the Israelite cemetery in Bärenschanzstrasse and shot there. The case is documented by several police reports that speak of eight dead SS men and is also described by Kunze and Günther. Both authors have further evidence of illegitimate killings of members of the division by US troops.
- On April 28, 1945, 15 Waffen-SS soldiers surrendered to the Americans in Eberstetten near Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm . The prisoners were driven in vehicles to a meadow on the outskirts and there were shot dead in the back. The Americans later confiscated the civilians' papers from the dead, so their identity remained unknown. When they were reburied in the 1950s, two of the dead were identified as members of the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division, so it is assumed that all victims belonged to this unit.
structure
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Commanders
- October 1943 to January 1944: SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Binge
- January 1944 to June 16, 1944: SS brigade leader and major general of the Waffen SS Werner Ostendorff
- 16.-18. June 1944: SS-Standartenführer Otto Binge
- June 18 to August 1, 1944: SS-Oberführer Otto Baum (in charge of the tour)
- August 1 to August 30, 1944: SS-Standartenführer Otto Binge
- August 30 to September 1944: SS-Oberführer Eduard Deisenhofer
- September 1944: SS-Standartenführer Thomas Müller
- September to October 21, 1944: SS-Standartenführer Gustav Mertsch
- October 21 to November 15, 1944: SS brigade leader and major general of the Waffen SS Werner Ostendorff
- November 15, 1944 to January 8, 1945: SS-Standartenführer Hans Lingner
- January 1945: Major General Gerhard Lindner
- January 21 to March 23, 1945: SS-Standartenführer Fritz Klingenberg
- March 1945: SS-Obersturmbannführer Vinzenz Kaiser
- March 30 to May 6, 1945: SS-Oberführer Georg Bochmann
Well-known members of the division
- Karl-Heinz Bartsch (1923-2003), was a German agricultural scientist , university professor and politician of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany in the German Democratic Republic . In this role he was Deputy Minister of Agriculture and briefly a member of the Central Committee (ZK) of the SED and a candidate for the Politburo.
- Rolf Speckmann (1918–1995) was a member of the FDP , Senator for Finance in Bremen from 1966 to 1971
literature
- Rolf Michaelis : The Panzer Grenadier Divisions of the Waffen SS. 2nd Edition. Michaelis-Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-930849-19-4 .
- Max Wind, Helmut Günther (ed.): War diary. 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Götz von Berlichingen". October 30, 1943 to May 6, 1945. Schild-Verlag , Munich 1993, ISBN 3-88014-106-1 .
- 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 .
Web links
Remarks
- ↑ In April 1945, Himmler issued the so-called flag order , according to which every male person from a house on which a white flag was hung must be shot immediately. This allowed members of the armed forces and the SS to simply execute civilians without a court martial and in arbitrary vigilante justice. See Elisabeth Kohlhaas: "From a house from which a white flag appears, all male persons are to be shot." Perseverance of terror and violence against civilians . In: Cord Arendes , Edgar Wolfrum , Jörg Zedler (eds.): Terror inward: Crimes at the end of the Second World War (= Dachau Symposia on Contemporary History. Volume 6). Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0046-6 , p. 65 ( online in the Google book preview ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Merkur Online: Patton's insane plan. , April 24, 2009, accessed February 28, 2015.
- ↑ See Felix Römer : Comrades. The Wehrmacht from within. Piper, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-492-05540-6 , p. 407 f.
- ^ Jens Westemeier: Himmler's warriors: Joachim Peiper and the Waffen SS in war and post-war times . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2013, ISBN 3-506-77241-4 , p. 304 .
- ^ Paul McCue: SAS Operation Bulbasket: Behind the Lines in Occupied France . Pen and Sword Books Ltd, 2009, ISBN 978-1-84884-193-2 , pp. 104 .
- ↑ Stephen G. Fritz: Endkampf: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Death of the Third Reich . University of Kentucky Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-8131-2325-7 , pp. 130–31 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ↑ Procedure No. 466, in: Justice and Nazi Crimes Volume XV, CF Rüter, DW de Mildt ( Memento from August 17, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Federal Court of Justice ruling v. October 22, 1957, Az .: 1 StR 116/57 on wolterskluwer-online.de, accessed on June 4, 2019, LG Nürnberg-Fürth on October 1, 1958 .
- ↑ Peter Lieb : Conventional War or Nazi Weltanschauungskrieg ?: Warfare and Fight against Partisans in France 1943/44 . Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-486-57992-4 , p. 465–6 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
- ^ Nuremberg City Archives: C 31 Police Headquarters; C 31 / I Criminal Police, No. 20–22.
- ^ Karl Kunze: End of the war in Franconia and the battle for Nuremberg. Verlag Edelmann, Nuremberg 1995, ISBN 3-87191-207-7 .
- ↑ Helmut Günther: The storm surge and the end, Vol. 3. Schild-Verlag, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-88014-103-7 .
- ^ Heinrich Streidl: City of Pfaffenhafen ad Ilm - A home book . 2nd Edition. W. Ludwig, Pfaffenhofen 1980, ISBN 3-7787-3149-1 .
- ↑ Reinhard Haiplik: Pfaffenhofen under the swastika - city and district at the time of National Socialist rule . 2nd Edition. City of Pfaffenhofen, Pfaffenhofen 2005, ISBN 3-9805521-6-0 .
- ↑ Bloody fights and executions . In: Pfaffenhofener Kurier . April 29, 2005.