Alois Windisch

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Alois Windisch (born February 3, 1892 in Fischau-Brunn , Lower Austria ; † December 28, 1958 in Wiener Neustadt , Lower Austria) was an Austrian and German officer , most recently major general , and commander of units in the First and large units in World War II . Windisch and Friedrich Franek were the only people who received both the Knight's Cross of the Maria Theresa Order and the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross .

Life

Youth and education

Alois Windisch was born on February 3, 1892 in Bad Fischau-Brunn ( Lower Austria ) as the second child of elementary school director Alois Windisch (1862–1934) and Maria Windisch (née Gruber, 1867–1945). He attended the kuk infantry cadet school in Vienna- Breitensee , in order to finally complete the officer training at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt .

On August 18, 1913, Alois Windisch was taken over as a lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian Army and assigned as platoon leader of the 9th Company of the Imperial and Royal Upper Austrian Infantry Regiment "Ernst Ludwig Grand Duke of Hesse and Rhine" No. 14 in Linz .

First World War

With the start of the First World War he became a battalion - aide to Galicia added and later company commander of the 9th Company of his regiment.

On May 1, 1915, he was promoted to first lieutenant and on January 15, 1917, he was given command of the 10th company of this regiment, which was a machine gun company and was deployed in Italy. He remained in this position until the end of the war.

In total, Windisch was wounded three times during the First World War. For his achievements on December 4, 1917 on the Dolomite front on Monte Tondarecar and on Monte Miela between Primolano and Asiago , he was awarded the Knight's Cross of this order at the 192nd award ceremony in the history of the Maria Theresa Order on December 11, 1925 . If this award had still taken place during the time of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Windisch would automatically have been given the Austrian nobility and would have been able to apply to be raised to the baron class, excluding the usual fees.

Interwar period

After the end of the First World War he stayed with the armed forces and was promoted to captain on January 1, 1921, and to staff captain on June 1, 1925 .

When Austria was annexed to the German Reich (March 1938), he was Colonel of the General Staff from 1934 (promotion on June 24, 1936) and a tactics instructor for senior officer courses at the military academy in Vienna. Because of his well-known rejection of the new rulers, he was classified by the National Socialists as unreliable and not accepted into the German general staff service. For this reason he was scheduled for early retirement, but due to the German attack on Poland, the outbreak of World War II and the resulting need for experienced troop leaders, it did not materialize.

Second World War

When he was taken over by the Wehrmacht as a colonel, he became the commander of the 139 Mountain Infantry Regiment, which he subsequently set up and which was placed in Military District XVIII (responsible for Styria, Carinthia, Tyrol and Salzburg) and was subordinate to the 3rd Mountain Division . Before the attack on Poland , his regiment was transferred to Slovakia , from where it marched into Poland with the 4th light division.

In March 1940, his association was made available for the Weser Exercise Company , the invasion of the Wehrmacht in Denmark and Norway, where it was used together with the Navy in the occupation of Narvik . For his achievements in Narvik he received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on June 20, 1940 .

Colonel Windisch was a commander who was known and loved for his level-headedness and care for his subordinates. During the attack on the Soviet Union , he and his regiment under Lieutenant General Eduard Dietl crossed the Finnish-Soviet border on the northern Arctic Ocean.

After a discussion about an attack order from Lieutenant General Hans Kreysing , the commander of the 3rd Mountain Division, which he had rejected as senseless , he was removed from his post. His successor was the senior battalion commander, Major Arthur Haussels .

From March 1942 to January 1943 he was ordered to the function of commander of prisoners of war in the Kirovograd district , which was a military step backwards.

The deterioration of the general military situation to the detriment of the German Reich and his old Austrian commanding experience led to his being appointed commander of the Croatian Grenadier Regiment 383. Qualified by his general staff training, he was subsequently given command of the Croatian 373rd Infantry Division . This association's mandate was to secure railways and roads, as well as to fight partisans . On June 1, 1943, he was promoted to major general .

Always under suspicious observation, Alois Windisch was transferred to the Führerreserve on July 1, 1943 , and was only assigned to service as deputy commander of the 292nd Infantry Division on February 16, 1944 . He gave up this post on April 10, 1944.

This was followed on July 30, 1944 as commander of the 281st Security Division in the Polotsk and Courland area under the 16th Army , which was active in enforcing the occupation regime and imposed fines, imprisonment and forced labor in the earlier and later stages of the war and executed shootings. However, on October 9, 1944, he took command of the 264th Infantry Division from Lieutenant General Martin Gareis . This division, deployed in Dalmatia since October 5, 1943 , was destroyed there on December 5, 1944 in a pocket near Knin .

post war period

When he was captured by American troops on the night of May 8th to 9th, 1945 near Summerau ( Upper Austria ), he was deployed in the special staff of Army Group F. The Americans handed him over to the Red Army, which in turn handed him over to Yugoslavia in May 1946 because he had served in the Balkans.

Windisch was interned in the Sremska Mitrovica prison and sentenced to 20 years in prison. In his biography of Windisch, Schwarz describes an unfair trial following torture and privation. After his appeal, he was sentenced to death by shooting, he was handcuffed day and night, his handcuffs were only removed for personal hygiene. Unlike many other prisoners in Tito Yugoslavia, the death sentence was never carried out, according to rumors whether the intervention of one of his former soldiers from the First World War and now a high-ranking partisan officer, who had kept his humane and caring commander in honor. Windisch remained on death row under aggravated conditions.

On June 30, 1952, following interventions by his family members, his former comrades and the Austrian Federal President Theodor Körner, he was released as one of the last prisoners of war of Tito Yugoslavia and was received by the later first Austrian Defense Minister Ferdinand Graf at the Rosenbach train station in Carinthia .

Alois Windisch died on December 28, 1958 in Wiener Neustadt as a result of the physical and mental exhaustion of his imprisonment. The Jägerkaserne in Klagenfurt is named after him.

Awards

Military Order of Maria Theresa by Alois Windisch, Heeresgeschichtliches Museum Vienna

Alois Windisch was one of only two former Austro-Hungarian officers who were awarded both the Knight's Cross of the Maria Theresa Order and the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Walter A. Schwarz: Major General a. D. Alois Windisch. A soldier's life (1892–1958) . Austrian Society for Religious Orders, Vienna 1996, p. 13.
  2. ^ Walter A. Schwarz: Major General a. D. Alois Windisch. A soldier's life (1892–1958) . Austrian Society for Religious Orders, Vienna 1996, pp. 145 ff.
  3. ^ Walter A. Schwarz: Major General a. D. Alois Windisch. A soldier's life (1892–1958) . Austrian Society for Religious Order, Vienna 1996, p. 147.
  4. Jürgen Kilian: Wehrmacht and Occupation in the Russian Northwest 1941–1944: Practice and everyday life in the military administrative area of ​​Army Group North . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012, ISBN 978-3-657-77613-9 , p. 247 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  5. Helmut Krausnick: Hitler's Einsatzgruppen: The Troop of the Weltanschauung War 1938–1942 . FISCHER Digital, 2016, ISBN 978-3-10-560903-3 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  6. ^ Walter A. Schwarz: Major General a. D. Alois Windisch. A soldier's life (1892–1958) . Austrian Society for Religious Order, Vienna 1996, p. 151.
  7. ^ Roland Kaltenegger: Major General Alois Windisch . Flechsig, 2018, ISBN 978-3-8035-0089-2 .
  8. ^ Walter A. Schwarz: Major General a. D. Alois Windisch. A soldier's life (1892–1958) . Austrian Society for Religious Order, Vienna 1996, p. 154.
  9. ^ Walter A. Schwarz: Major General a. D. Alois Windisch. A soldier's life (1892–1958) . Austrian Society for Religious Orders, Vienna 1996, p. 159.
  10. ^ Walter A. Schwarz: Major General a. D. Alois Windisch. A soldier's life (1892–1958) . Austrian Society for Religious Order, Vienna 1996, p. 159 ff.
  11. ^ Walter A. Schwarz: Major General a. D. Alois Windisch. A soldier's life (1892–1958) . Austrian Society for Religious Orders, Vienna 1996, p. 164.
  12. by Frank [zu Döfering], Karl Friedrich: Alt-Österreichisches Adels-Lexikon , Volume I (1823-1918), self-published, Vienna 1928, p. 347, entry number 10280
  13. Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 1939-1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 788.