2nd Paratrooper Division (Wehrmacht)
|
2nd Paratrooper Division |
|
|---|---|
 Troop registration |
|
| active | 1943 to April 1945 (surrender) |
| Country |
.svg){kind=small} German Empire
|
| Armed forces | Wehrmacht |
| Armed forces | air force |
| Type | Paratrooper Division |
| structure | structure |
| Installation site | Vannes , France |
| Second World War |
Battle for Italy |
| Commanders | |
| list of | Commanders |
The 2nd Paratrooper Division was a major unit of the Luftwaffe of the German Wehrmacht during the Second World War .
history
The 2nd paratrooper division was formed in 1943 near Vannes in Brittany and initially fought in Italy , where they carried out the liberation of the dictator Mussolini, who had been appointed by the new Italian government, among others with the company Eiche .
Towards the end of 1943, parts of it were relocated to Greece to take the Aegean island of Leros . After the successful completion of this enterprise, it was relocated to the Eastern Front, where it was subordinated to the newly formed 6th Army . There she fought until she was transferred to France.
Here she took part in the Battle of Brest in 1944 and was destroyed in September. In October of the same year, however, it was set up again and initially fought in Holland and in the defense of the Rhine sector until it surrendered to the Allies in April 1945 in the Ruhr basin .
Basically all members of the division, such as B. also those of the Brehmer Division and that of the 157th Reserve Division , were declared war criminals in March 1944 by the French Army Ministry in the spring of 1946 for “gang fighting measures” .
structure
| 1943 | 1944 |
|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Commanders
| Rank at that time | Surname | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Lieutenant General | Bernhard Ramcke | February to September 1943 |
| Major general | Walter Barenthin | September to November 1943 |
| Lieutenant General | Gustav Wilke | November 1943 to March 1944 |
| Major general | Hans Kroh | March to June 1944 |
| Lieutenant General | Bernhard Ramcke | June to August 1944 |
| Major general | Hans Kroh | August to November 1944 |
| Lieutenant General | Walter Lackner | November 1944 to April 1945 |
Well-known members of the division
- Walter Gericke (1907-1991), was from 1962 to 1965, as a major general , commander of the 1st Airborne Division of the Army of the Armed Forces
- Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte (1907–1994) was a Brigadier General of the Army Reserve and from 1966 to 1970, for the CSU , a member of the Bavarian State Parliament
literature
- Willi Kammann: The way of the 2nd paratrooper division . 3. Edition. Schild, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-88014-115-0 .
- Volker Griesser: The Carentan Lions . The Paratrooper Regiment 6 1943–1945. VS-Books, 2007, ISBN 3-932077-25-3 .
- James Lucas: The Wehrmacht from 1939–1945: Numbers, data, facts . Tosa, 2004, ISBN 978-3-85492-880-5 .
- Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945. Volume 2. The Land Forces 1–5 . 2nd Edition. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1973, ISBN 3-7648-0871-3 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Claudia Moisel: France and the German war criminals: Politics and practice of criminal prosecution after the Second World War . Wallstein Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-8353-2059-8 , pp. 93 ( google.de [accessed on January 27, 2019]).
