Albrecht Digeon of Monteton

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Albrecht Baron Digeon von Monteton (born December 8, 1887 in Bernburg , † February 3, 1946 in Riga ) was a German lieutenant general in the Wehrmacht . He was sentenced to death on February 3, 1946 by a Soviet military court in Riga for war crimes and executed.

Life

family

Albrecht was the son of the Prussian lieutenant general Anton Digeon von Monteton (1860–1937) and his wife Elisabeth, born von Alvensleben (* 1861) from the Eichenbarleben family . His older brother Constantin (1886-1944) fell as a major general in World War II . His grandfather was the officer and author Otto Digeon von Monteton (1822–1913).

He was married to Margarete Countess von der Schulenburg (1898-1958) since May 7, 1929 . She was the daughter of Matthias Graf von der Schulenburg (1861–1929) and his wife Elisabeth Countess von Sievers (1873–1953) from Warrol , Livonia . Margarete was a great-granddaughter of Werner von der Schulenburg-Wolfsburg .

Military career

On October 1, 1911, Digeon joined the Lower Saxony Field Artillery Regiment No. 46 of the Prussian Army as a one-year volunteer and was promoted to lieutenant by mid-February 1913 . In this capacity he went into the field with the 20th Infantry Division on the Western Front at the outbreak of World War I and was wounded for the first time in mid-September 1914. In the further course of the war he rose to first lieutenant at the beginning of June 1916 , was battery leader and from mid-January 1917 worked as an orderly officer with the staff of the 20th Infantry Division. For his work, Digeon was awarded both classes of the Iron Cross and the Braunschweig War Merit Cross , the Wound Badge in Black and the Friedrich Cross .

After the armistice of Compiègne , he was transferred back to his main regiment in mid-December 1918. After a brief assignment as adjutant of the 20th field artillery brigade , Digeon was taken over into the Reichswehr and from the end of October 1919 was an orderly officer with the staff of Artillery Leader 10. On May 5, 1920 he was transferred to the 13th Reiter Regiment and graduated from October 1921 training as assistant leader with the staff of the 5th Division . Digeon advanced to Rittmeister in early March 1923 , was squadron chief in the 2nd (Prussian) cavalry regiment from mid-October 1925 to late March 1929 and then in the same capacity in the 13th (Prussian) cavalry regiment. At the same time, from February 1931, he acted as site elder in Lüneburg . As a major , Digeon was transferred to the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin on October 1, 1933 . A year later he moved to the staff of the Army Service in Kassel, which after the exposure at the beginning of 1935 a position in the general staff of the General Command of the IX. Army corps in Kassel meant. From 1938 until its dissolution in 1939 he was commander of the 15th Cavalry Regiment in Neuhaus .

With the beginning of World War II, Digeon was appointed Colonel in command of the 167th Infantry Regiment of the 86th Infantry Division on September 1, 1939 . He took part in the western campaign in 1940 and was deployed on the eastern front from 1941 . In early April 1942, Digeon was promoted to major general. From April to May 1942 he was acting commander of the 206th Infantry Division and then from May 10th to July 9th 1942 with the command of the 342nd Infantry Division . From September 10, 1942 to September 5, 1944 he was commander of the newly established 391st Field Training Division , which was renamed the 391st Security Division on March 23, 1944. On June 1, 1943, he was promoted to lieutenant general in this position. In the course of the Soviet summer offensive Operation Bagration , the division was used to reinforce the heavily damaged 3rd Panzer Army of Army Group Center and withdrew fighting to the Baltic states in Latvia in July and August 1944 .

From September 1944 he commanded the 52nd Security Division , from April 1945 also as the fortress commander of Libau . In May 1945 the division was surrounded by the Red Army and he was taken prisoner by the Soviets .

War crimes conviction

On February 3, 1946, he was in the war crimes trial in Riga together with the SA standard leader and area commissioner of the Tallinn district Alexander Boecking and the SS officer Friedrich Jeckeln and other Wehrmacht officers in the general rank , such as Hans Küpper , Wolfgang von Ditfurth , Bronislaw Pawel , Siegfried Ruff and Friedrich Werther , sentenced to death on the basis of Ukas 43 . He was charged with “burning down villages, looting and abducting the population, as well as atrocities, acts of violence and mistreatment of prisoners of war”.

In front of several thousand spectators, those sentenced to death were publicly hanged on the same day in Riga, near the Daugava River .

The Von Monteton Street in Paderborn , Neuhaus is attributed to him, since he worked there as a regimental commander.

literature

  • Dermot Bradley (ed.), Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Markus Rövekamp: The General of the Army 1921-1945. The military careers of the generals, as well as the doctors, veterinarians, data officers, judges and ministerial officials with the rank of general. Volume 3: Dahlmann – Fitzlaff. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1994, pp. 134-135.
  • Mike Schmeitzner , Andreas Weigelt, Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt : Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , 2015, pp. 466–467.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Freiherrlichen Häuser. 1915. Volume ninety -fifth, Justus Perthes, Gotha 1914, pp. 166–167.
  2. ^ Dietrich Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, Hans Wätjen: History of the sex from the Schulenburg 1237 to 1983. Lower Saxony printing and publishing house Günter Hempel Wolfsburg, ISBN 3-87327-000-5 , Wolfsburg 1984, p. 398.
  3. ^ Samuel W. Mitcham: German Order of Battle: 1st-290th Infantry divisions in World War II . Stackpole Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8117-3416-5 , pp. 256 ( google.de [accessed on August 9, 2019]).
  4. ^ Samuel W. Mitcham: German Order of Battle: 291st-999th Infantry divisions, named infantry divisions, and special divisions in World War II . Stackpole Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8117-3437-0 , pp. 50–51 ( google.de [accessed on August 9, 2019]).
  5. ↑ a b Samuel W. Mitcham: German Order of Battle: 291st-999th Infantry divisions, named infantry divisions, and special divisions in World War II . Stackpole Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8117-3437-0 , pp. 95 ( google.de [accessed on August 9, 2019]).
  6. ^ Samuel W. Mitcham: German Order of Battle: 1st-290th Infantry divisions in World War II . Stackpole Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8117-3416-5 , pp. 101 ( google.de [accessed on August 9, 2019]).
  7. ↑ Dina van Faassen, Manfred Köllner, Roland Linde: Paderborn from A to Z . Bonifatius, 2006, ISBN 978-3-89710-332-0 , p. 233 ( google.de [accessed on August 9, 2019]).
  8. ↑ Jochem Schulze: A namesake with an unexplained past . ( Neue Westfälische , August 29, 2016, accessed April 24, 2020)
personal data
SURNAME Digeon from Monteton, Albrecht
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Digeon von Monteton, Albrecht Baron (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German general
DATE OF BIRTH December 8, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Bernburg (Saale)
DATE OF DEATH February 3, 1946
Place of death Riga