213th Security Division (Wehrmacht)

213. Security Division XX
Troop registration number 213rd Security Division, World War II
active	March 15, 1941 to September 17, 1944
Country	German Empire
Armed forces	Wehrmacht
Armed forces	army
Branch of service	Security force
Type	Fuse division
structure	structure
management
List of commanders	Commanders

The 213th Security Division was a German Infantry Division of the Army in World War II in the VIII Military District.

Division history

The division was officially set up on March 15, 1941 on the Neuhammer military training area in Silesia from parts of the 213rd Infantry Division for Army Group South .

During the entire war, the division was mainly used on the eastern front in the Ukraine for security tasks in the rear army area. In June 1941 the XVII. Army corps assigned to the 6th Army , participation in the Russian campaign and participation in the tank battle near Dubno-Lutsk-Rivne and later in the year the securing of the rear army area. The Division's 318 Infantry Regiment was deployed at the end of April 1942 to support the Italian 3rd Division "Celere" in the southern sector of the Russian front .

Other missions followed, e.g. Partly only from regiments of the division, in the 4th Panzer Army :

• Beginning of January 1943: Voronezh-Kharkiv operation
• October 1943 in the VII Army Corps : Battle of the Dnepr
• November 1943 in XXXVIII. Army Corps , half of the 75th Infantry Division and the 88th Infantry Division : Battle of Kiev

It was also used in the Cherkassy Kessel Battle , the Polesier Operation and the Wehrmacht Operation Sturmwind at the beginning of 1944 . Here the unit suffered such heavy losses that it had to be disbanded by the OKH on September 16, 1944 .

structure

• Reinforced Infantry Regiment 318 (later transformed into Security Regiment 318)
• I./Artillery Regiment 213
• Staff Landesschützen-Regiment 57 (until 10.1942)
• Guard Battalion 703 (until 05.1942)
• Field News Commander 39
• Police Battalion 318 (from Police Regiment 6)
• Division units 213
• Cavalry Department (Cossacks) 213 (04.1942 to 10.1942)
• East-Reiter-Department 318 (from 10.1942)

Commanders

• Lieutenant General René de l'Homme de Courbière : until August 1942
• Major General / Lieutenant General Alexander Göschen : August 1942 until dissolution

Well-known members of the division

• Major General Rudolf Bächer (1880–1947): as commander of the Artillery Regiment 213 until August 1941

literature

• Samuel W. Mitcham (2007). German Order of Battle. Volume One: 1st - 290th Infantry Divisions in WWII. PA; United States of America: Stackpole Books, pp. 265 + 266. ISBN 978-0-8117-3416-5 .

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.
• 213rd Infantry Division / 213rd Security Division on EHRI portal from the Federal Archives

Individual evidence

1. ^ Gordon Williamson: German Security and Police Soldier 1939-45 . Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012, ISBN 978-1-78200-039-6 , pp. 15 ( google.de [accessed January 1, 2019]).
2. ^ Antonio J. Muñoz: The German Secret Field Police in Greece, 1941-1944 . McFarland, 2018, ISBN 978-1-4766-3104-2 , pp. 167 ( google.de [accessed on January 1, 2019]).
3. ^ Antonio J. Muñoz: The German Secret Field Police in Greece, 1941-1944 . McFarland, 2018, ISBN 978-1-4766-3104-2 , pp. 186 ( google.de [accessed on January 1, 2019]).