General Command 52

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The general command z. b. V. No. 52 (at times also referred to as the Danube Army ) was a major unit of the army of the German Empire during the First World War .

structure

The General Command 52 was a General Command z. b. V. (General Command for Special Use). These emerged from 1916 and were purely command posts, the military units were assigned to them as required.

history

General of the Infantry Robert Kosch
RJB9 - Battle of the Argesch.jpg

On August 28, 1916, General of the Infantry Robert Kosch was appointed leader of the newly formed General Command (z. B. V.) No. 52 with which he was deployed in the Bulgarian Danube region to protect against the Romanians who had also entered the war. On November 23 and 24, 1916, troops led by August von Mackensen managed to cross the Danube at Swishtow . With the help of Austrian pioneers, the newly formed Danube Army (General Command 52) with the 217th Division , the Combined Cavalry Division (General Hans von der Goltz ) and the Bulgarian 1st and 12th Divisions were brought across the river. On November 25th, the troops of the Central Powers were already assembled in the northern bridgehead at Zimnicea ; The following Turkish 26th Division served as a reserve. The Danube Army passed the Teleorman on November 26th and began its advance on Bucharest. On November 28, the first clash with Romanian troops occurred near Prunaru .

In the battle of the Argesch , which lasted several days , from the end of November to the beginning of December 1916, the Romanians were defeated in cooperation with the timely intervening group "Kühne" and the Romanian capital Bucharest was captured, which sealed the collapse of the Romanian western and northwestern fronts. The troops under General Kosch could 1917 on January 5, Braila occupy and reached the lower Siret , where the trench warfare began again. The General Command maintained contact with the Bulgarian 3rd Army under General Neresow, which was on the opposite bank of the Danube . To reinforce the section on the lower Sereth, Bulgarian and Turkish units (Ottoman VI Corps) were also subordinate to the general command known as the “Danube Army” .

After the dissolution of the Danube Army in March 1918, General Command 52 took part in the occupation of southern Ukraine and in battles against the Red Army . The subordinate 212th Division and 15th Landwehr Division secured the Crimean peninsula in early November 1918 .

After the war, the General Command was deployed in March 1919 as part of the Freikorps in Lithuania and fought the Red Army in the Schaulen area during the civil war there .

literature

  • Reichsarchiv: The World War 1914-1918 , Volume XI: The Warfare from Autumn 1916 to February 1917 . ES Mittler, Berlin 1938, p. 286 f
  • Reichsarchiv: The World War 1914-1918 , Volume XIII: The conduct of the war in the summer and autumn of 1917. The events outside the Western Front up to November 1918 . ES Mittler, Berlin 1942, p. 370 f