198th Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)
|
198th Infantry Division |
|
|---|---|
| active | December 1939 to May 1945 |
| Country |
.svg){kind=small} German Empire
|
| Armed forces | Wehrmacht |
| Armed forces | army |
| Branch of service | infantry |
| Type | Infantry division |
| structure | structure |
| Installation site | Prague and Pilsen |
| Commanders | |
| list of | Commanders |
The 198th Infantry Division (198th ID) was a major unit of the army of the German Wehrmacht in World War II .
Division history
The 198th Infantry Division was reorganized as one of 13 infantry divisions of the 7th wave from December 1, 1939 by the military district of Bohemia and Moravia from the replacement troops of the military district V that had been relocated there .
After 4 months of deployment and training, the 198th Infantry Division relocated to Schleswig-Holstein for its first war mission, from where it entered Denmark as part of Operation Weser Exercise on April 9, 1940. The main task was the occupation of Copenhagen and the islands of Zealand and Funen , the secondary task was the occupation of Bornholm . After a short period of occupation in Denmark, the division transferred to the 1st Army of Army Group C in June 1940 at the front in Lorraine, where it was used in the last phase of the western campaign . Another period of occupation followed until March 1941, this time in eastern France. April 1941 saw the relocation to Romania to protect the Romanian borders and in preparation for the attack on the Soviet Union . From June 22, 1941, the division attacked the 11th Army across the Pruth River . The army had the task of conquering Romanian Bessarabia, which was only occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940, together with Romanian troops in the first step. The first skirmishes took place in the heavily fortified border area, which was defended by the Soviet southern front . Major General Röttig himself directed the crossing over the Prut, which was initiated by the detonation teams of the division blowing up watchtowers on the Soviet side of the river . This "violent exploration" was quickly expanded and the border town of Sculeni was conquered. The main task fell to the IR 305, which defended the bridgehead against strong enemy resistance. It was not until July 1, 1941, when the remaining divisions of the XXX. Army Corps advanced, the 198th Infantry Division continued its attack from the bridgehead.
From August 1941, the division fought in the unit of Panzer Group 1 (later 1st Panzer Army) in southern and eastern Ukraine, including in the offensives on the cities of Dnepropetrovsk and Rostov-on-Don . After the evacuation of Rostov in December 1941, which was forced by Soviet counter-attacks, the division defended the section of the river Mius in the winter and spring of 1942 .
The division experienced the 1942 summer offensive in the southern section of the Eastern Front as part of the 17th Army . The participation in the reconquest of Rostov in July and in the conquest of the capital of the Kuban region , Krasnodar , in August were important stages of the struggle, followed by the reaching of the West Caucasus towards the port city of Tuapse , which however could no longer be captured. The flagging German offensive force and the stiffening Soviet resistance led to a positional war up into the winter of 1942/43.
The overall situation on the southern section of the Eastern Front, which had become very difficult, led from January 1943 to the evacuation of the Caucasus region and the return of the 17th Army to the so-called " Kuban bridgehead ", which was initially supposed to include the city of Krasnodar (there the division again fought heavy fighting) , but then experienced a reduction to the area of the Taman Peninsula and the port city of Novorossiysk .
In February 1943, after the Soviet troops landed on the sea in Novorossiysk Bay, heavy fighting developed over the so-called “Small Land” on the Black Sea coast. The 198th ID was one of the first available reaction troops, which should remove the Soviet bridgehead. The GR 305 fought in house-to-house combat at Stanitschka under difficult conditions and suffered great losses. Overall, the battle for the "small country" lasted seven months, with four German divisions and some Romanian regiments fighting against almost 80,000 Red Army soldiers with 600 artillery pieces.
In April 1943, the 198th Infantry Division moved from the Kuban bridgehead as a reserve division of Army Group South to the Zaporozhye area , where it was able to carry out an initial refresher. This was followed by the transfer to the initially quiet section of the front near Isjum in the formation of the 1st Panzer Army.
In July 1943, the division in the association of the Kempf Army Department was involved in the Citadel Company in the tank battle of Prokhorovka and in the fighting between Belgorod and Korotscha. In August 1943, the 198th Infantry Division fought in the association of the 8th Army , created by renaming the Kempf Army Department, in the 4th Battle of Kharkov , which was lost on August 23rd. This resulted in noticeable symptoms of exhaustion, no fewer than a few troop units, whose fighting morale in the staff of Army Group South was described as follows:
“The panic in the troops must be overcome. The 198th and 168th Infantry Division stand at latitudes in which enemy attacks can be repulsed. It is not allowed to go back. It is incomprehensible that the powerful 198th Infantry Division could be pushed out of Belgorod . "
“Both divisions would essentially have held the front, but are included. If they hadn't gone back tonight, there would have been a much bigger mishap. "
The inevitable withdrawal of Army Group South to the east wall position on the Dnieper River in September 1943 led the 198th Infantry Division to the middle course of the river and brought it further losses, so that it was temporarily referred to as the "Kampfgruppe der 198th Infantry Division" . From November 1943, the division fought in the Kiev-Fastow-Zhitomir area in the association of the 4th Panzer Army . In eventful battles, it was possible, albeit with greater loss of space, to temporarily slow down the Soviet offensive and also to carry out counterattacks. In January 1944, the 1st Ukrainian Front broke into the Kanev area , which led to the transfer of the 198th Infantry Division to the Kanew-Cherkassy area, where it was exposed to severe attacks. On January 26, 1944, the division could no longer hold its defensive position against the 1st Ukrainian Front, which meant that it advanced quickly, and on January 28, at Zvenigorodka with the 2nd Ukrainian Front advancing from the east, a ring of 2 army corps of the 8th Army Could close the boiler near Cherkassy . The 198th ID was outside the pocket and protected the flanks of the relief attack of the III. Panzer Corps in the formation of the 1st Panzer Army. The relief attack did not take full effect, but larger parts of the trapped units managed to break out, albeit with heavy losses. After this winter battle, the 198th Infantry Division had melted down again into a combat group and - after further deployments in southern Ukraine and in Bessarabia in the 8th Army - had to be detached and relocated for reorganization.
This took place in June 1944 by transferring recovered persons, but above all by merging with the newly established so-called "Shadow Division of Bohemia" , which was created from units of the replacement army together with three other shadow divisions for the purpose of refreshing broken divisions . The relocation of the replenished division in July 1944 to the Association of the 19th Army in southern France brought a final period of recovery and training. The Allied landing on August 19, 1944 in the Toulon area then led the 198th Infantry Division to relocate to the Rhone Valley and to heavy retreat battles northwards, in which they again suffered very heavy losses and were only insufficiently replenished with numerous splinter groups and other residual units could be. Fighting further in the formation of the 19th Army, the division's route passed through Burgundy and the Vosges to Alsace, where it once again experienced trench warfare that lasted for months.
In January 1945, the 198th Infantry Division, together with the Panzer Brigade 106 Feldherrnhalle , took part in the "Sonnenwende" operation, which, in addition to the Nordwind operation, aimed to attack Strasbourg and relieve the Alsace bridgehead . Ultimately, however, all these attacks failed because of the superiority of the American and French associations and ended with the evacuation of Alsace. The holding of the Upper Rhine Front succeeded until April 1945, because only then did the enemy armies attack Baden and Württemberg from the north. The 198th Infantry Division fought its last battles on the retreat via Heidelberg , Schwäbisch Hall , Gaildorf and Günzburg and had to capitulate to US troops in the Weilheim area in Upper Bavaria at the end of April 1945 .
people
| period of service | Rank | Surname |
|---|---|---|
| November 23, 1939 to January 10, 1940 | Colonel | Hans Windeck |
| January 10, 1940 to April 10, 1942 | General of the Infantry | Otto Roettig |
| April 10 to September 6, 1942 | Major general | Albert Buck |
| September 6, 1942 to February 5, 1943 | Major general | Ludwig Muller |
| February 5, 1943 to June 1, 1944 | Lieutenant General | Hans-Joachim von Horn |
| June 1 to August 1, 1944 | Major general | Otto Richter |
| 1-5 August 1944 | Lieutenant General | Kurt Oppenländer |
| August 5 to September 1, 1944 | Major general | Alfred Kuhnert |
| September 1, 1944 to January 18, 1945 | Major general | Otto Schiel |
| January 18 to April 26, 1945 | Major general | Konrad Barde |
| April 26 to May 8, 1945 | Lieutenant General | Helmut Staedke |
| period of service | Rank | Surname |
|---|---|---|
| January 5 to October 25, 1940 | Lieutenant colonel | Karl Klotz |
| October 25, 1940 to April 1942 | Colonel | Bernhard-Georg von Watzdorf |
| unknown until September 6, 1942 | major | Erich Buhl |
| November 15, 1942 to July 1, 1943 | major | Friedrich-Wilhelm von Graevenitz |
| December 10, 1943 to May 30, 1944 | Lieutenant colonel | Heinrich Schäfer |
| May 30 to September 30, 1944 | Lieutenant colonel | Baron von Finck |
| September 30, 1944 to 1945 | major | Robert Grauer |
structure
| 1940 | 1942 | 1943-1945 |
|---|---|---|
| 305th Infantry Regiment | 305th Grenadier Regiment | |
| 308th Infantry Regiment | 308th Grenadier Regiment | |
| 326th Infantry Regiment | Grenadier Regiment 326 | |
| - | Fusilier Battalion 198 | |
| - | Field Replacement Battalion 235 | |
| Artillery Regiment 235 | ||
| Anti-tank department 235 | Panzerjäger detachment 235 | |
| Engineer Battalion 235 | ||
| News Section 235 | ||
| Supply units 235 | ||
literature
- Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945 . 2nd Edition. tape 7 . The Land Forces 131–200 . Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1979, ISBN 3-7648-1173-0 .
- French Maclean: Quiet Flows the Rhine: German General Officer Casualties in World War II . JJ Fedorowicz Publishing, 1996, ISBN 978-0-921991-32-8 .
- Gerhard Graser: Between the Kattegat and the Caucasus: Path and battles of the 198th Infantry Division 1939–1945 . Comrades relief organization and traditional association of the former 198th Infantry Division, 1961.
- Georg Grossjohann: Five Years, Four Fronts - The War Years of Georg Grossjohann . The Aberjona Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-9666389-3-6 .
Individual evidence
