2nd Marine Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)

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2nd Marine Infantry Division

active March to May 1945
Country German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era) German Empire
Armed forces Wehrmacht
Armed forces Navy
Branch of service infantry
Type Marine Infantry Division
structure structure
Commanders
list of Commanders

The 2nd Marine Infantry Division was a major military unit of the German Wehrmacht .

Division history

Lineup

Their formation was ordered in February 1945 and the division was formed in March 1945 in Glückstadt and Itzehoe largely from available naval personnel. In addition to the marines, who were barely trained for warfare on land, the division also received a battalion of SS soldiers, some of whom were only 16 years old, recruited from the Hitler Youth , who were initially intended to replace the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth" . Two Hungarian units of questionable morale were also added to her.

On paper, the division was structured like a Volksgrenadier division , but it remained practically without heavy weapons, equipped mainly with rifles and bazookas . Like all divisions in the structure of a Volksgrenadier division, it was to receive a tank destroyer company, and the tank destroyer company 1199 was set up at the Milowitz military training area for this purpose, but until mid-April it did not have any of the ten Jagdpanzer 38 ( t) "Hetzer" had received. On April 18, 1945, orders were issued to train the company as bicycle- mobile tank destruction troops, but this troop did not reach the division until the end of the war in the internment room. The other companies of Marine-Panzerjäger-Division 2 had also no longer received any PaK and were therefore used as tank destruction squads (with bicycles and bazookas). Since the division did not have its own anti-aircraft components, the Luftwaffe anti-aircraft batteries 4./117 and 4./162 were subordinated to it in March 1945 . Other planned units were not set up or only incompletely set up: the Marine Pioneer Battalion 2 was never set up, the setting up of the Marine Intelligence Department 2 and the Marine Field Replacement Battalion 2 was not completed, and the Marine Supply Regiment 200 was hardly operational due to a lack of vehicles.

Mission history

The division was originally intended to carry out the planned liberation attack under the SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS Felix Steiner ("Army Group Steiner") on Berlin with the 7th Panzer Division and the 25th Panzer Grenadier Division . On March 2, Hitler ordered that the division should be given priority in equipping weapons and deployed at the front in the Stettin area. Hitler rejected the proposal of the division commander, Vice Admiral Ernst Scheurlen , that his inexperienced soldiers should only be trained in the regimental framework in the interaction of infantry and artillery ; there was no time for that and the troops should receive their training immediately and directly behind the front.

On April 2, 1945 the division reported ready for action and was then relocated not to Pomerania , but to the Bremen area and on April 5 to defend the Weser - Aller line against the advancing British (in the area of Cloppenburg , Bersenbrück , Nienburg , Verden , Schwarmstedt , Walsrode , Visselhövede ) subordinated to the Student Army Group, from April 10 the Blumentritt Army Group . There she was largely wiped out in the following weeks with high human losses. From April 7, 1945 it was in use in the Verden-Walsrode Aller section, parts of it in the Nienburg area. Here she was involved in heavy defensive battles with heavy losses against the British 53rd (Welsh) Infantry Division on the Aller between Verden and Rethem as well as in the Essel- Schwarmstedt bridgehead . The division commander, Vice Admiral Scheurlen, was so badly wounded on April 7th in a low-flying attack near Walsrode that he died the next day. The division was headed by the former submarine commander, Captain Werner Hartmann , commander of the 5th Marine Grenadier Regiment, until his successor was appointed . On April 10, 1945, Colonel of the reserve Werner Graf von Bassewitz-Levetzow , with simultaneous appointment as captain of the sea, was transferred to the leadership of the division.

From April 15 to 20, fights took place at Kirchboitzen , Kirchlinteln , Visselhövede, Neuenkirchen and Jeddingen . All guns of the two anti-aircraft batteries were lost in the fighting on the Aller and Weser . The remnants of the division were on April 20, 1945 in the area south of Bremen . Of the original nearly 13,000 men, only 3,000 remained on April 21, after two weeks of heavy fighting. They settled in the Cuxhaven area on April 23 , where they were deployed again, and then on April 28 they crossed the Elbe to Meldorf . They were then brought to Itzehoe after reorganization . At this point in time, the entire division had only about 750 officers and men, who then withdrew to the north via the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal . There they fought in the last days of the war in the Albersdorf and Hemmingstedt area . At Bunsoh at midnight from May 4th to 5th, they learned of the unconditional surrender of the three German armies operating in northwest Germany, which had been signed in Wendisch Evern . The remaining men were then partially dismissed with temporary papers and came into British captivity and were Internierungsraum Eiderstedt , Section B (in the former district Norderdithmarschen ), interned . Some prisoners came to the Zedelgem prisoner-of-war camp in Belgium , from which they were released at the end of 1945.

War crimes

On April 14, a squad of marines from the Hodenhagen division crossed the Aller and killed the 76-year-old doctor from Ahlden , Dr. Richard careless, with axes in his bed. Mayor Heinrich Rathge was seriously injured in the head. Dr. Lack of concern was a thorn in the side of the supporters of the Nazi regime because it treated foreign workers too well.

The opposing side also acted brutally in one case. When the British found an injured young German soldier in a barn in Otersen on April 12, they first wanted to shoot the owner of the barn because he had given the soldier protection. This did not happen because the German soldier surrendered and was shot by the British on the edge of the forest.

Commanders and staff

Division commanders
period of service Rank Surname
February 11 to April 8, 1945 Vice admiral Ernst Scheurlen
8-10 April 1945 Sea captain Werner Hartmann ( mdFb )
April 10 to May 6, 1945 Colonel / sea captain Werner Graf von Bassewitz-Levetzow (Army)
General Staff Officers (Ia)
period of service Rank Surname
February 9 to April 20, 1945 Lieutenant Colonel i. G. Josef Heck
April 20, 1943 to May 6, 1945 major Wachsmann

structure

5th Marine Grenadier Regiment 2 battalions; erected in March 1945 near Glückstadt; Kdr .: KzS Werner Hartmann
Marine Grenadier Regiment 6 2 battalions; erected in March 1945 near Husum
Marine Grenadier Regiment 7 2 battalions; erected in March 1945 near Flensburg and Itzehoe
Marine Fusilier Battalion 2nd
Marine Artillery Regiment 2nd 3 light and 1 heavy battalion
Marine tank destroyer division 2 was never set up; an army tank hunter division was subordinated to the division for use on the Aller
Navy Engineer Battalion 2nd was never set up
Navy News Division 2 Setup was not completed
Marine Field Replacement Battalion 2nd Setup was not completed
Marine Supply Regiment 200 hardly ready for use due to lack of vehicle

literature

  • Rolf Klodt: At sea and on land. On the history, missions and uniforms of the German marines, marines, the naval security force and the naval protection forces. Report Verlag, Bonn 2008, ISBN 978-3-932385-28-5 .
  • Ulrich Saft: War at home. The bitter end between Weser and Elbe. 4. revised Edition. Verlag Walsrode Ulrich Saft, Walsrode 1992, ISBN 3-9801789-3-5 .
  • Bernd Bölscher: Hitler's navy in land warfare 1939 - 1945. BoD - Books on Demand, 2015, ISBN 978-3-7386-3509-6 .
  • Hans H. Hildebrand: The organizational development of the navy together with staffing 1848 to 1945. Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 2000, ISBN 3-7648-2541-3 .
  • Lawrence Paterson: Black Flag: The Surrender of Germany's U-Boat Forces. MBI Publishing, 2009, ISBN 978-0-7603-3754-7 .

Web links

Notes and individual references

  1. ↑ Paterson, p. 84.
  2. ↑ Paterson, pp. 83-84.
  3. ↑ a b Dorfchronik Otersen, 1998, pp. 86–93 ( Memento from October 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (DOC file; 472 kB)
  4. ↑ Small Chronicle Flecken Ahlden.
  5. ↑ in charge of the tour