212th Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)
212th Infantry Division |
|
---|---|
active | August 26, 1939 to September 15, 1944 |
Country | German Empire |
Armed forces | Wehrmacht |
Armed forces | army |
Type | Infantry division |
structure | structure |
Installation site | Munich |
Second World War | Leningrad Blockade , Battle of the Volkhov , Leningrad-Novgorod Operation |
Commanders | |
list of | Commanders |
The 212th Infantry Division and later the 578th Volksgrenadier Division or 212th Volksgrenadier Division was a major unit of the army of the German Wehrmacht .
Division history
Areas of application:
- Siegfried Line : September 1939 to May 1940
- France : May 1940 to November 1941
- Eastern Front , Northern Section: November 1941 to September 1944
The 212th Infantry Division was deployed as a division of the 3rd wave of deployment in Munich in August 1939. Immediately afterwards it was transferred to Sigmaringen and then to Freudenstadt on the Upper Rhine and placed under the 7th Army . At the beginning of the western campaign , the division was ready for action at the Heuberg military training area . During the battle for France , the 212th Infantry Division fought in association with the 16th Army near Nancy .
From July 1940 to February 1941 the division was inactive. In February 1941 the soldiers of the 212th Infantry Division were called up again and had to do coastal protection on the Channel coast until November 1941 .
In the winter of 1941, the 212th Infantry Division was sent to Army Group North on the eastern front to take part in the siege of Leningrad . Their assigned operational area was initially the eastern flank of the Oranienbaum bridgehead near the city of Peterhof . At the beginning of 1942 she was involved in the Battle of the Volkhov before she returned to the Oranienbaumer Kessel, where she was used in the attack on the Krasnaya Gorka Fort. Later that year she also fought in the Leningrad enclosure ring before the fighting shifted to Novgorod in January 1943 and to Chudovo in the winter of 1943/44 . There the 212 ID had such major failures that in February 1944 it was only as strong as a combat group. When the pressure of the Red Army increased to finally liberate Leningrad, the 212th Infantry Division crossed the Luga River to Pleskau on the border with Estonia . From there she had to withdraw to the Narva via Lissino and Korpus. The 212th Infantry Division was captured by the advancing Red Army in the course of the Operation Bagration offensive near Lepel after it had been relocated to the area of Army Group Center as reinforcement at the end of June 1944. She had to flee via Vilna to Olita , where she was destroyed. The official dissolution took place on September 15, 1944. On September 17, 1944, the survivors of the division were transferred to the 212th Volksgrenadier Division, which was set up at the Schieratz military training area in the Warthegau .
Division history of the 578th and 212th Volksgrenadier Division
In September the 578th Volksgrenadier Division was set up at the Schieratz military training area from the remains of the 212th Infantry Division, which was renamed the 212th Volksgrenadier Division a short time later. This division received most of its personnel from Bavaria . Like many Volksgrenadier divisions, the 212th VD had hardly any radio equipment or assault guns . On December 16, 1944, the 212th VD together with the LXXX. Army Corps of the 7th Army deployed in the Battle of the Bulge on the Western Front. In April 1945, the division was still subordinate to the Bavaria training division .
The commander of the 7th Army, General of the Panzer Force, Erich Brandenberger, classified the 212th VD as one of its best formations and ordered it to secure the southern flank of the operational area. In the course of the battle, known by Anglo-Saxon historians as the "Battle of the Bulge", the 212th VD encountered the 4th US Infantry Division . The 212th VD recorded some initial successes, could ultimately not achieve its operational goals, withdrew to the Rhine and capitulated to the US troops at the end of the war.
people
period of service | Rank | Surname |
---|---|---|
August 26 to September 15, 1939 | Major general | Walter Friedrichs |
September 15, 1939 to October 1, 1942 | Lieutenant General | Theodor Endres |
October 1, 1942 to October 1, 1943 | Lieutenant General | Hellmuth Reymann |
October 1, 1943 to May 1, 1944 | Major general | Karl Koske |
May 1 to October 1944 | Lieutenant General | Franz Sensfuss |
period of service | Rank | Surname |
---|---|---|
1939 to April 1940 | Lieutenant colonel | Heinz von Gyldenfeldt |
1940 | Captain | Hoefs |
1941 to September 1941 | Captain | Reichel |
1942 to March 1943 | major | Hermann Lassen |
March 1943 to September 1944 | Lieutenant colonel | Horst Ogilvie |
September 1944 | major | Adolf Wicht |
period of service | Rank | Surname |
---|---|---|
October 1944 to April 1, 1945 | Lieutenant General | Franz Sensfuss |
1. – 21. April 1945 | Major general | Max Ulich |
April 21 to May 8, 1945 | Major general | Jobst Freiherr von Buddenbrock |
period of service | Rank | Surname |
---|---|---|
September 20 to December 30, 1944 | major | Wolfgang Köstlin |
December 30, 1944 to 1945 | Lieutenant colonel | Hans Ritter and Edler von Rosenthal |
structure
Changes in the structure of the 212th ID from 1939 to 1943
1939 | 1943 |
316th Infantry Regiment | 316th Grenadier Regiment |
320th Infantry Regiment | Grenadier Regiment 320 |
423rd Infantry Regiment | Grenadier Regiment 423 |
Artillery Regiment 212 | |
Engineer Battalion 212 | |
Anti-tank department 212 | Panzerjäger detachment 212 |
Reconnaissance Division 212 | Division Fusilier Battalion 212 |
- | Field Replacement Battalion 212 |
News Department 212 | |
Supply Force 212 |
literature
- Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945 . Volume 8: The Land Forces 201–280 . 2nd Edition. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1979, ISBN 3-7648-1174-9 .
- Werner Haupt : The German Infantry Divisions 1921–1945, 3 volumes, Dörfler Verlag 2005, ISBN 978-3-89555-274-8 .
- Egid Gehring: From the Saar to the Moselle. March, fight and victory of an infantry division in the west. A memory book (= 212th Infantry Division), Munich 1942.
Web links
- 200th through 370th German Infantry, Security, and Panzer Grenadier Divisions. Organizations and Histories 1939–1945 ( Memento from February 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 461 kB), Nafziger Collection, Combined Armed Research Library.
Notes and individual references
- ↑ the 212 VD had only four instead of the mandatory 28 assault guns
- ↑ I. – III. Btl. By training manager Landsberg am Lech , replacement battalion in Augsburg
- ↑ I. – III. Btl. By training manager Rosenheim , replacement battalion in Ingolstadt
- ↑ I. – III. Btl. By Head of Training Landshut, replacement battalion in Neuburg