62nd Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)
|
62nd Infantry Division |
|
|---|---|
| active | August 26, 1939 to April 1945 |
| Country |
.svg){kind=small} German Empire
|
| Armed forces | Wehrmacht |
| Armed forces | army |
| Branch of service | infantry |
| Type | Infantry Division |
| structure | structure |
| Strength | 15,000 debit |
| Installation site | Wroclaw |
| Nickname | Moonlight Division |
| commander | |
| list of | Commanders |
The 62nd Infantry Division (62nd ID) was a major military unit of the Wehrmacht . From September 22, 1944 it was designated as the 62nd Volksgrenadier Division .
history
The 62nd Infantry Division was set up on August 26, 1939 as part of the 2nd wave of deployment in Kanth near Breslau in military district VIII . Subsequently, the division was available to Army Group South during the attack on Poland , but was not used. To protect the western border and to continue her education, she moved to the Eifel in October 1939. In the western campaign , code name Fall Gelb , the 62nd Infantry Division passed through Belgium and in June 1940 as far as Orléans in central France. Already in July 1940 the transfer to the so-called General Government took place in the association of the 18th Army, later Army Group B, then A.
For Operation Barbarossa , the 62nd was ID of the 6th Army of the Southern Army Group assumed. In 1941 she took part in the fighting for Kiev . In the further course of the offensive, the division reached the Poltava area and then Kharkov
After the death of two German soldiers, the division executed 45 “partisans” during a “purge” in October 1941 near Myrhorod . She then shot the entire Jewish population of Myrhorod, a total of 168 men, women and children. This makes the division one of the Wehrmacht units that independently murdered Jews in the Ukraine under the guise of reprisals.
In May 1942 the HGr succeeded. South to inflict a heavy defeat on the Soviets in the Battle of Kharkov (239,000 prisoners). The 62nd Infantry Division took part in this as part of the 6th Army and experienced the 1st phase of the German Fall Blau summer offensive on the advance to the central Don. There it was used in the association of the 8th Italian Army , but escaped the encirclement around Stalingrad. During Operation Saturn , the Italian Don Front collapsed in December 1942. During a phase of various retreat skirmishes in January 1943, the 62nd Infantry Division was combined with other remnants of the 6th Army in the Hollidt Army Detachment , which was tasked with preventing the Soviet breakthrough into the Donets region . The division lost most of its infantrymen; the grenadier regiments 183 and 190 had to be disbanded. As a replacement, the division initially received only the Grenadier Regiment 354, which had previously belonged to the 286th (Silesian) security division. The break in fighting on the Eastern Front in the spring of 1943 was used to regroup and refresh the division that was now defending the central Donets Front.
The division of the 1st Panzer Army , which was part of the HGr. South led the defensive battles on the Donets and the retreat on the Dnieper. Like many other infantry divisions, the 62nd Div. with new heavy losses. It was now in the structure of an Inf.-Div. of a new kind and was assigned the remnants of the grenadier regiments of the neighboring 38th Infantry Division as a so-called division group (regiment) 38. The winter fighting in southern Ukraine followed in the areas of Krivoy Rog and Uman. The repeated losses now forced the severely decimated division to be merged with the 123rd Infantry Division from March 13, 1944 to form the so-called Corps Department (Division) F, which withdrew to Bessarabia and took up new positions on the Dniester to defend Romania . After being refreshed, Corps Division F was renamed the 62nd Infantry Division on July 20, 1944, but it had little in common with the previous 62nd Infantry Division. The division was encircled in the Soviet offensive from August 20, 1944 and - like almost the entire 6th Army with 16 divisions - destroyed and formally declared dissolved on October 9, 1944.
At the same time, a new 62nd division was set up as part of the 25 new Volksgrenadier divisions of the 32nd wave. This 62nd VGD was established in Wehrkreis VIII Breslau from September 22, 1944. Only a few former members of the old 62nd Infantry Division belonged to it, the bulk of the personnel consisted of recruits, air force soldiers and so-called "combed-out personnel", so that there was hardly any experience at the front were. After only a short training period, the 62nd VGD moved to the western front, where it experienced the final phase of the Ardennes offensive in December 1944 and was then pushed back from the Eifel via Bonn and Remagen behind the Rhine. Around April 20, 1945, the division of the 5th Panzer Army went into American captivity in the so-called Ruhr Basin .
structure
| August 26, 1939 | November 2, 1943 | September 22, 1944 (VGD) |
| 164th Infantry Regiment | Grenadier Regiment 179 | Grenadier Regiment 164 (two battalions) |
| 183rd Infantry Regiment | Grenadier Regiment 354 | Grenadier Regiment 183 |
| 190th Infantry Regiment | Divisional group 38 | Grenadier Regiment 190 |
| - | Division Fusilier Battalion (AA) 162 | - |
| Artillery Regiment 162 | ||
| Division units 162 | ||
people
Commanders
| date | Rank | Surname |
| August 26, 1939 | General of the artillery | Walter None |
| September 23, 1941 | Lieutenant General | Rudolf Friedrich |
| September 15, 1942 | Major general | Richard-Heinrich von Reuss |
| December 22, 1942 | Major general | Erich Gruner |
| January 31, 1943 | Lieutenant General | Helmuth Huffmann |
| November 14, 1943 | Lieutenant General | Botho Graf von Hülsen |
| March 10, 1944 | Major general | Louis Tronnier |
Well-known members of the division
- Jürgen Bennecke , German officer, most recently in the rank of general, was adjutant in the 183 Infantry Regiment in 1939/1940.
literature
- Georg Tessin : The Land Forces 31-70 . In: Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945 . Fifth volume. Mittler & Sohn publishing house , Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 246-252 .
- Comrades Aid Organization of the former 62nd Division eV: The 62nd Infantry Division, 1938–1945: The 62nd People's Grenadier Division, 1944–1945 , 1968.
- Ralf Anton Schäfer: The Moonlight Division , Norderstedt, 2008.
Individual evidence
- ^ Georg Tessin: The land forces 31-70 . In: Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945 . Fifth volume. Mittler & Sohn publishing house , Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 246 .
- ↑ a b c d Georg Tessin: The Land Forces 31–70 . In: Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945 . Fifth volume. Mittler & Sohn publishing house , Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 248 .
- ^ Jürgen Förster: The Wehrmacht and the War of Extermination Against the Soviet Union . In: Michael R. Marrus (Ed.): The "Final Solution". The Implementation of Mass Murder , Vol. 2. Meckler, Westport 1989, p. 514; Christian Hartmann: Criminal War - Criminal Wehrmacht? Thoughts on the structure of the German Eastern Army . In: Christian Hartmann, Johannes Hürter, Peter Lieb, Dieter Pohl: The German War in the East 1941–1944. Facets of crossing borders . Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, p. 53; Dieter Pohl: Scene Ukraine. The mass murder of Jews in the military administration area and in the Reich Commissariat 1941–1943 . In: Christian Hartmann, Johannes Hürter, Peter Lieb, Dieter Pohl: The German War in the East 1941–1944. Facets of crossing borders . Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, p. 172.
- ↑ a b c Georg Tessin: The Land Forces 31-70 . In: Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945 . Fifth volume. Mittler & Sohn publishing house , Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 247 .
- ^ Georg Tessin: The land forces 31-70 . In: Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945 . Fifth volume. Mittler & Sohn publishing house , Frankfurt am Main 1965, p. 246 f .
