275th Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)

275th Infantry Division
active	November 17, 1943 to April 1945
Country	German Empire
Armed forces	Wehrmacht
Armed forces	army
Type	Infantry division
structure	see structure
Installation site	France
Second World War	Battle of Normandy Battle of the Hürtgenwald Kessel von Halbe
Commanders
list of	Commanders

The 275th Infantry Division was a major military unit of the Wehrmacht during World War II .

Division history

The division was reorganized from November 17, 1943 as a division of the 22nd wave of deployment, first as part of the 1st, then from 2.1944 in Brittany under the 7th Army. For this she was assigned: Staff 223rd Inf.-Div., Artillery Regiment 223 (without parts), II. Dept. Art.Rgt. 194 and 3 reserve grenadier battalions of the 158th Res.-Div. and other smaller units. The replenishment with personnel was carried out by recruits and with "combed out" soldiers who had previously not been used at the front. The setup, equipment and training were associated with numerous difficulties, so that the 275th Inf.-Div. even after 6 months it was not always ready at the front.

After the start of the Allied landing in Normandy, for the time being only the Grenadier Regiment 984, reinforced by individual companies from other units, was sent to the combat area there as Kampfgruppe Heintz, 984th GR. In July 1944, the rest of the division followed and was deployed in the west wing of the invasion front. The division suffered heavy losses in the fighting during US Operation Cobra and in the retreat in the Falaise pockets; only smaller parts could break out there and fight their way back via the Seine and Somme to southern Belgium. In Mons the 275th Inf.-Div. At the beginning of September 1944 further losses and arrived with only about 800 men and almost without heavy weapons in the Siegfried Line near Aachen .

In October 1944, the division was partially refreshed, including the addition of 2 Luftwaffe fortress battalions. In the meantime, the US armed forces had also advanced on the Siegfried Line near Aachen. The 275th Infantry Division was sent into combat again near Düren and met the 9th US Infantry Division in October 1944 in the so-called " All Souls Battle " around the village of Schmidt . The division was again practically destroyed. The remnants of their combat troops were incorporated into the 344th Infantry Division and only the so-called divisional framework was used for a re-formation of the 275th Inf.-Div. used, which took place in the military district X (Hamburg) . The unfinished Division was from March 1945 on the Eastern Front in the 4th Panzer Army on the Neisse front Lausitz used and the end of April in Halbe destroyed.

people

Commanders

period of service	Rank	Surname
December 10, 1943 to November 22, 1944	Lieutenant General	Hans Schmidt
October 11 to November 21, 1944	Colonel	Helmut Bechler (entrusted with the deputy tour)
March to April 1945	Lieutenant General	Hans Schmidt

General Staff Officers (Ia)

period of service	Rank	Surname
December 1943 until unknown	major	Fritz Hahn
February 5 to August 1, 1944	Lieutenant colonel	Hugo Hass
August 1, 1944 to April 1, 1945	major	Johann Berger

Well-known members of the division

• Friedrich Lengfeld was the company commander of the 2nd Company of the Fusilier Battalion of the 275th Infantry Division. He was killed trying to rescue a wounded American soldier from a minefield.

structure

• 983rd Grenadier Regiment
• 984th Grenadier Regiment
• 985th Grenadier Regiment
• Division Fusilier Battalion 275
• Artillery Regiment 275
  • I. to IV. Department
• Engineer Battalion 275
• Field Replacement Battalion 275
• Panzerjäger detachment 275
• News Department 275
• Resupply Troops 275

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 .

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

1. ^ Report of the Heintz Combat Group from June 30, 1944. BA-MA RS3-17 / 8.
2. ↑ Hürtgenwald municipality. In: www.huertgenwald.de. Archived from the original on January 29, 2013 ; accessed on January 13, 2019 .