45th Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)

45th Infantry Division
active	April 1, 1938 to May 8, 1945
Country	German Empire
Armed forces	Wehrmacht
Armed forces	army
Branch of service	infantry
Type	Infantry Division
structure	structure
Strength	15,000 debit
Installation site	Linz , Austria
Commanders
list of	Commanders

The 45th Infantry Division (45th ID) was a large unit of the Army of the Wehrmacht . It was set up on April 1, 1938 - shortly after the Anschluss of Austria - as the 4th division in the Austrian Armed Forces in Linz and mobilized in August 1939 as part of the 1st wave of deployment . In June 1944, the 45th ID was completely destroyed during the Soviet summer offensive. On July 18, 1944, it was reorganized as the 45th Grenadier Division and renamed the 45th Volksgrenadier Division on October 21, 1944 .

Division history

In September 1939 the 45th Infantry Division took part in the attack on Poland , captured the city of Przemyśl and fought near Oleszyce . On the Western Front in 1940 she marched through Luxembourg and Belgium to the crossing over the Aisne in France in June 1940, which was associated with high losses. The retreating enemy was pursued across the Marne to the Loire near Nevers .

From June 1941 the 45th Infantry Division took part in the war against the Soviet Union . On June 22, 1941, Major General Schlieper began to storm the Brest fortress after crossing the Bug , mainly through IR 133 and IR 135, while IR 130 advanced south of the fortress into the city. The fortress on the western edge of the Belarusian city was heavily fortified with sniper , machine-gun positions and anti-aircraft positions of five Soviet regiments and was surrounded by several moats and canals. The German artillery preparation was inadequate, so that the raiding parties were involved in heavy house-to-house fighting . After five days, all but one fort on the North Island was captured. Only the dropping of a 1,800 kg bomb on this fort brought the last defenders to surrender. The city of Brest had been taken with only minor losses on the first day of the war. On July 2, the division withdrew with the crowd from Brest, after two battalions of IR 130 and the advance division 45 had already left the city.

The division advanced to Pinsk and from July to August 1941 was involved in skirmishes with the Red Army in the Pripet swamps . At Borki it crossed the Pripet river, at Demenka the Pzitsch river until it advanced over the Berezina to Gomel in the Dnepr lowlands in eastern Belarus. In the Dessna sector near the Ukrainian city of Priluki , the 45th Infantry Division was involved in offensive and defensive battles. In September 1941 she was involved in the Battle of Kiev . From October to December 1941, the fighting of the 45th Infantry Division ("Winter Battle") took place near Rylsk and Jelez , the latter city being an important traffic connection at the Moscow - Tula - Don basin junction in the street fight with the Far Eastern elite unit " Chabarowiaken " or "Kolkhozkorps" could be captured. With this, the division had covered 2,100 kilometers in alternating marches and battles. In the spring of 1942, the 45th Infantry Division withdrew to the Trudy sector and got into heavy fighting in the Shchigry area, at Livny, Rossosh and in the Voronezh area , which lasted until February 1943. At Liwny the 45th Infantry Division was temporarily trapped and had to break free several times, only breaking out of the pocket with great losses. From March to September 1943, the 45th Infantry Division was deployed on the Kursk front arch . Due to increasing pressure from the Red Army, the 45th Infantry Division withdrew via Orel – Brjansk –Lopandino, further via Gomel – Rjetschitza, the Beresina and Paritschi into the Bobrusik area. It held the Gomel – Rechitsa section from the end of September 1943 to the end of November 1943. In 1944, trench warfare broke out at Bobruisk in the Beresina – Dnepr – Bobruisk area , where the division was destroyed in June 1944 as part of Operation Bagration .

The reorganization as the 45th Grenadier Division took place in July 1944. The 45th Grenadier Division was deployed in September 1944 as part of Army Group Center in the Warka and Radom area in Poland.

Incorporation and subordination of the 45th Infantry Division during World War II

date	Army Corps	army	Army Group	place
September 1939	XVII	14th Army	south	Poland
November 1939	OKH reserve	-	-	Treysa
June 1940	XXVI	2nd Army	A.	France
July 1940	XXIII	9th Army
August 1940	XXXXII	16th Army		Belgium
December 1940	XXIII
February 1941	XXXXII
May 1941		15th Army	D.
June 1941	XII	4th Army	center	Brest-Litovsk
July 1941	LIII	to disposal		Pinsk
August 1941	XXXV	2nd Army		Gomel , Kiev
October 1941	XXXIV	2nd Panzer Army		Jelez , Tula
November 1941		2nd Army
January 1942	LV			Kursk
February 1942	south		Orel
August 1942	B.		Voronezh
March 1943	to disposal	2nd Panzer Army	center	Orel
April 1943	XX
July 1943		9th Army
September 1943	XXXV			Bryansk
October 1943		2nd Army		Gomel
December 1943		9th Army		Bobruisk

structure

Award certificate (Sept. 13, 1941) of KVK 2 to Corporal Johann Binder from Infantry Regiment 133 of the 45th Infantry Division

45th Infantry Division

• 130th Infantry Regiment
• 133rd Infantry Regiment
• 135th Infantry Regiment
• Reconnaissance Department 45
• 98th Artillery Regiment
  • I. Department
  • II. Department
  • III. Department
  • I./Artillery Regiment 99
• Engineer Battalion 81
• Anti-tank division 45
• News Department 65
• Field Replacement Battalion 45
• Infantry Division Supply Leader 45

45th Grenadier Division

• Grenadier Regiment 130
• Grenadier Regiment 133
• Grenadier Regiment 135
• Reconnaissance Department 45
• 98th Artillery Regiment
• Field Replacement Battalion 45
• Engineer Battalion 81
• Panzerjäger detachment 45
• News Department 65
• Commander of Infantry Division Supply Forces 45

Changes in the structure of the 45th ID from 1939 to 1944

1939	1942	1943-1944
130th Infantry Regiment	Grenadier Regiment 130
133rd Infantry Regiment	Grenadier Regiment 133
135th Infantry Regiment	Grenadier Regiment 135
-		Fusilier Battalion 45
Reconnaissance Department 45	Cycling Department 45	-
98th Artillery Regiment
I. Division / Artillery Regiment 99
Engineer Battalion 81
Anti-tank division 45	Panzerjäger detachment 45
News Department 65
Field Replacement Battalion 45
Infantry Division Supply Leader 45	Commander of Infantry Division Supply Forces 45

people

Division commanders of the 45th ID

period of service	Rank	Surname
April 1, 1938 to October 1, 1940	Lieutenant General	Friedrich Materna
October 25, 1940 to April 27, 1941	Major general	Gerhard Körner
April 27, 1941 to February 27, 1942	Major General / Lieutenant General	Fritz Schlieper
February 27, 1942 to April 25, 1943	Colonel / Major General / Lieutenant General	Fritz Kühlwein
April 25 to November 30, 1943	Colonel / Major General	Hans von Falkenstein
November 30, 1943 to February 27, 1944	Colonel	Joachim Engel
February 27 to June 1, 1944	Major general	Gustav Gihr
June 1 to July 19, 1944	Major general	Joachim Engel
July 19 to March 1945	Colonel / Major General	Richard Daniel
March 1945 until dissolution	Major general	Erich Hassenstein

General Staff Officers (Ia) of 45 ID

period of service	Rank	Surname
1939 to March 1940	Lieutenant colonel	Wilhelm Münch
March 15, 1940 to April 1, 1941	major	Wilhelm Hambergern
April 1 to October 20, 1941	major	Armin Dettmer
October 20, 1941 to November 10, 1943	Lieutenant colonel	Karl-Heinz Wirsing
November 10, 1943 to July 10, 1944	major	Rudolf Gruener

• General of the Infantry Friedrich Materna (born June 21, 1885 Hof in Moravia , † November 11, 1946 in Vienna ) was an officer in the Austrian Armed Forces before it was incorporated into the Wehrmacht. In 1935 he was major general in the Austrian army and a member of the Federal Ministry for National Defense, where he headed a training department. From 1938 to 1940 he was in command of the 45th Infantry Division, from 1940 to 1942 he was commanding general of the XX. Army Corps and from 1942 to 1943 Commander of Military District XVII .
• The local researcher, archivist, doctor and local politician Herbert Kneifel (1908-2010) served as a troop doctor in this division.
• Austria's Federal President Kurt Waldheim was platoon leader in the reconnaissance department 45.

losses

Memorial plaque in Linz

During the Second World War from September 1, 1939 to early July 1944, the 45th Infantry Division had a total of 5,710 casualties. Distributed among the individual regiments: IR 133: 1,833 dead, IR 135: 1,386 and IR 130: 1,348. Including the missing and wounded, 8,432 men fell out. As early as the Aisne crossing on June 9, 1940, 204 soldiers of 45 ID were killed. During the storming of the citadel of Brest-Litovsk under Major General Schlieper from June 22nd to 29th, 1941, about 428 soldiers were killed, others died from "self-fire" by artillery and smoke cannons, especially during fighting in and around Brest. That was a ratio of 5% of the 8,886 German casualties, calculated from the beginning of Operation Barbarossa to June 30, 1941.

During the deployment from June 1941 to December 1943, 21,665 soldiers including 15,626 wounded, 4,608 dead and 1,431 missing were documented - of which officer losses were 4 percent, wounded 3 percent and missing 1 percent. The total losses in World War II were recorded in a death register of the former division pastor, who was also a division grave officer, about 13,000 dead and 8,000 missing. This is far above the number of dead on a memorial plaque in Linz and the 5,710 fallen by the Linz State Museum. The division's total losses are unusually large and are due to the participation in several costly battles. There were great losses in the capture of the Brest-Litovsk fortress, in the Battle of Kiev, in the retreat of Yelets, in Operation Bagration and in January 1945.

literature

• Christian Ganzer: German and Soviet Losses as an Indicator of the Length and Intensity of the Battle for the Brest Fortress (1941). In: The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Volume 27, Issue 3, pp. 449-466.
• Christian Hartmann: Wehrmacht in the Eastern War. Front and military hinterland 1941/42. Munich: Oldenbourg 2009. ISBN 978-3-486-58064-8 , review in sehepunkte.de
• Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945 . 2nd Edition. tape 5 . The Land Forces 31-70 . Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1977, ISBN 3-7648-1107-2 . ; P. 124 f.

Web links

• Fallen books of the 45th Division

Individual evidence

1. ↑ named after the city of Khabarovsk
2. ↑ War losses of the 45th Infantry Division ( Memento of November 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 8.9 MB)
3. ^ Christian Ganzer: German and Soviet Losses as an Indicator of the Length and Intensity of the Battle for the Brest Fortress (1941). In: The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Volume 27, Issue 3, p. 449-466.
4. ^ Christian Hartmann: Wehrmacht in the Eastern War. Front and Military Hinterland 1941/42 R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 2009, 201ff.