Cassius Freiherr von Montigny

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Cassius Freiherr von Montigny (born October 28, 1890 in Düsseldorf , † November 8, 1940 in Bad Tölz ) was a German military and SS officer with the rank of SS Oberführer . He was with Anna Baroness von Montigny, b. Lenhart married.

Life

Youth and First World War

Cassius Freiherr von Montigny joined the Imperial Navy in 1909 as a midshipman . From 1912 to December 1914 he served on the liner SMS Pommern . From December 1914 to January 1915, von Montigny attended a submarine school and then began his service as an officer on watch on the U- 15 submarine . He quickly made his career with the new submarine weapon: in October 1916 he was appointed first lieutenant at sea. A little later von Montigny was already in command of U 38 and in January 1917 he commanded the U 10 , U 30 and U 42 one after the other .

Its area of ​​operation at that time was mainly in the Baltic States and the North Sea during the First World War . During the war he was awarded the Iron Cross of both classes.

Weimar Republic

After the lost war, Cassius Freiherr von Montigny was a member of a free corps and thus also of the Black Reichswehr when he took over command of a combat vehicle squadron of the storm battalion of the " 3rd Marine Brigade Löwenfeld ". From December 1918 to November 30, 1919 von Montigny took part in the Freikorps missions in Upper Silesia and the Ruhr area .

Cassius Freiherr von Montigny was also an active participant in the " Kapp Putsch " in Berlin in 1920 . After its suppression, he joined the Prussian Security Police in July 1920 . There he was used as a captain and he commanded a hundred in the Rhineland .

From 1926 to 1931 von Montigny attended the Oak Police School near Potsdam, where he was promoted to major in the police force. He was then used between 1931 and February 1, 1932 as the inspection commander of the protective police in Upper Silesia.

In National Socialism

Von Montigny joined the NSDAP ( membership number 1.330.801) even before the National Socialist “ seizure of power ” and on February 1, 1934 was appointed lieutenant colonel in the police force. He took up his new post in the Berlin police administration. As early as the summer of 1934, von Montigny received a promotion to colonel in the police force, but in the autumn of the same year he transferred to the Wehrmacht . In the Wehrmacht he was first used as a staff officer in an infantry regiment and as a battalion commander.

In the autumn of 1935, Cassius von Montigny commanded the 31st Infantry Regiment and in 1936 took command of the 102nd Infantry Regiment. At a joint meeting of officers of the Wehrmacht and the SS disposable troops in 1938, von Montigny came to the personal decision that the "new Wehrmacht" could never be the guards and elite troops of the German Reich. The pressure from Wehrmacht commander Werner von Blomberg was behind the decision . As a result, he registered for the SS and on April 1, 1938, Heinrich Himmler personally accepted him into the General SS (SS no. 292,804). In a direct promotion, Himmler appointed von Montigny as SS-Obersturmbannführer on the same day and then assigned him to the SS Junker Schools in Bad Tölz and Braunschweig as a tactics teacher .

On January 30, 1939, Cassius von Montigny was promoted to SS-Standartenführer and at the same time he took over the management of the SS Junker School in Braunschweig. On August 31, 1939, von Montigny was internally deployed as commander of the 2nd SS Totenkopf Regiment and in the group command of a future SS Totenkopfdivision .

From November 1, 1939, Cassius von Montigny was employed as the first general staff officer (Ia) in the SS Totenkopfdivision under Theodor Eicke . In the Totenkopfdivision, von Montigny was the only SS officer on the division staff who did not come from the ranks of the concentration camp guards . There he was appointed SS-Oberführer on January 30, 1940 . As part of the Totenkopfdivision, von Montigny also took part in the German attack in the west . He was considered the only qualified staff officer in the Skull Division at the beginning of the campaign. In France, von Montigny suffered a rupture of a gastric ulcer on May 27, 1940 and was given leave of absence from Eicke. After almost two months, von Montigny returned to active service in the Waffen SS on July 25, 1940 and was briefly assigned to the RFSS command staff. Subsequently, he took over the management of the SS Junker School Bad Tölz.

On November 8, 1940, Baron Cassius von Montigny died in Bad Tölz as a result of a heart attack .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Samuel W. Mitcham , Rommel's Lieutenants: The Men who Served the Desert Fox, France, 1940 , Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, ISBN 0-275-99185-7 , p. 142. (English) Google Books .
  2. ^ SS Leadership Main Office: List of seniority of the NSDAP Schutzstaffel , status December 1, 1938 with amendment booklet of June 15, 1939, serial number 857
  3. ^ Samuel W. Mitcham, Rommel's Lieutenants: The Men who Served the Desert Fox, France, 1940 , Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, ISBN 0-275-99185-7 , p. 142.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Montigny, Cassius Freiherr von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Commander of the 5th SS skull and crossbones standard and tactics instructor at the SS Junker School in Bad Tölz
DATE OF BIRTH October 28, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1940
Place of death Bad Tölz