352nd Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)

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352nd Infantry Division

352nd Infantry Division logo.jpg

Troop registration
active Late February to March 1945
Country German Reich NSGerman Reich (Nazi era) German Empire
Armed forces Wehrmacht
Type Infantry Division
Butcher Omaha Beach

Battle of the Bulge

The 352nd Infantry Division (352nd ID) was a large unit of the Wehrmacht . It was used in France in 1944 to repel the Allied invasion ( Operation Neptune ) and during the Battle of the Bulge.

history

The 352nd Infantry Division was formed from the end of February 1944 in Le Desert / France from surviving personnel from the 321st Infantry Division , which had been broken up on the Eastern Front . It was one of eight infantry divisions of the 21st wave of formation . On June 1, 1944, it comprised 12,734 soldiers, NCOs and officers.

During the Allied landing in Normandy on June 6, 1944, she defended the beach on the Allied landing section of Omaha Beach . The commander of the 352 artillery regiment, Major Werner Pluskat, is said to have been the first German officer ever to discover the Allied landing ships that morning. His regiment fired all available ammunition. During the landing of US troops, the Division's 916 Grenadier Regiment inflicted heavy losses on the landing US troops. Heinrich Severloh , who was deployed as a machine gunner in Resistance Nest 62 , which the landing troops could not eliminate for hours , gained a certain fame .

According to estimates by military historian Niklas Zetterling, the division lost around 9,000 men to death, wounding and imprisonment during the fighting in France in June and July. At the end of July 1944, the division was dissolved. The surviving units were merged with the 352nd Volksgrenadier Division .

The 352nd Volksgrenadier Division was reorganized on September 21, 1944 near Flensburg . In March 1945 the division was broken up again, only a few remnants were able to escape across the Rhine near Worms to Darmstadt . Here on April 14, 1945 the order was issued to re-establish the 352nd Volksgrenadier Division from remnants of various troops. However, the construction of the new division was no longer completed.

structure

  • Grenadier Regiment 914
  • Grenadier Regiment 915
  • Grenadier Regiment 916
  • 352nd Artillery Regiment
  • Divisional Fusilier Battalion 352
  • Engineer Battalion 352
  • Panzer Jäger Department 352
  • Field Replacement Department 352
  • Divisional News Department 352
  • Division Supply Leader 352

literature

  • Niklas Zetterling (2000) (på eng). Normandy 1944: German military organization, combat power and organizational effectiveness. Winnipeg, Man .: JJ Fedorowicz. Libris 6788071. ISBN 0-921991-56-8 .
  • Burkhart Müller-Hillebrand The Army 1933–1945. Development of the organizational structure. Volume 3. The War on Two Fronts. The army from the beginning of the campaign against the Soviet Union to the end of the war. Mittler, Frankfurt am Main 1969.