Eberhard von Mackensen

Eberhard von Mackensen

Mackensen (2nd from right) at a briefing of Army Group South with Hitler in June 1942

Friedrich August Eberhard von Mackensen (born September 24, 1889 in Bromberg , † May 19, 1969 in Neumünster ) was a German army officer, most recently colonel general in World War II , who was sentenced to death by the Allies as a war criminal after the end of the Second World War .

Life

origin

Eberhard was the fourth of five children of the later Field Marshal August von Mackensen (1849-1945) and his wife Dorothea, born von Horn (1854-1905). One brother was the diplomat Hans Georg von Mackensen .

Empire and First World War

Mackensen was on October 1, 1908 Fahnenjunker in the XVII. Army Corps in Gdansk . After his appointment as Lieutenant on 22 March 1910 he served at the outbreak of the First World War as a regimental adjutant in 1st Hussars Regiment. 1, . On February 25, 1915 he was promoted to first lieutenant . After being seriously wounded on August 23, 1915, Mackensen was transferred to the General Staff of Army Group Scholtz as an orderly officer .

Mackensen , promoted to captain on May 20, 1917, saw the end of the war in the Balkans.

Weimar Republic

After the First World War Mackensen was with a volunteer corps in the Baltic States. He was then accepted into the Reichswehr and served as chief of the 1st Squadron of the 5th (Prussian) Cavalry Regiment in Belgard . From there, Mackensen was assigned to the Army Transport Department of the Army Department in the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin in 1925 . After his appointment as major on February 1, 1928, he served in the staff of the 1st Cavalry Division in Frankfurt (Oder) from 1930 . In this position Mackensen was promoted to lieutenant colonel on October 1, 1932 .

time of the nationalsocialism

Pre-war period

From November 1, 1933 he was Chief of Staff of the Cavalry Inspection . After his promotion to colonel on September 1, 1934, Mackensen went to Hamburg in 1935 as Chief of Staff of the X Army Corps . In 1937 he became the commander of the 1st Cavalry Brigade in Insterburg .

After Mackensen was appointed major general on January 1, 1938 , he was assigned to Army Group Command V in Vienna on May 1, 1939 . There he became Chief of the General Staff under Colonel General Wilhelm List .

Second World War

After the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, Mackensen served as Chief of Staff in the 14th Army . On January 1, 1940, he was promoted to lieutenant general. After his promotion to general of the cavalry on August 1, 1940, he was on January 15, 1941 Commanding General of the III. Army Corps . Used in the Army Group South , Mackensen received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on July 27, 1941 . On November 22, 1942 he became the commander of the 1st Panzer Army .

For his services in the Kesselschlacht near Charkow Mackensen was awarded the Knight's Cross on May 26, 1942 and promoted to Colonel General on July 6, 1943. From November 5, 1943 Mackensen served as Commander in Chief of the newly established 14th Army in Italy.

War crimes involvement

On March 24, 1944, German SD members shot and killed 335 Italian civilians in the massacre in the Ardeatine Caves in retaliation for the death of 32 German soldiers in a bomb attack. This war crime was ordered by Adolf Hitler in consultation with Colonel General Alfred Jodl and Field Marshal Albert Kesselring . Mackensen was at this time in command of the 14th Army and as such subordinate to Kesselring. Mackensen, in turn, was the superior of Lieutenant General Kurt Mälzer , the city commandant of Rome .

Kesselring ultimately gave the SS Police Chief of Rome, Herbert Kappler , the order to murder the hostages. According to other sources, Mackensen himself gave the order for the shootings, in any case Kappler discussed the procedure with him and with Mälzer. Mälzer then put together a firing squad led by SS man Erich Priebke , which carried out the execution of the arbitrarily selected civilians.

post war period

After the unconditional surrender , Mackensen was initially a British prisoner of war in the Zedelgem prisoner-of-war camp ( Belgium ). On November 30, 1946, he was sentenced to death by a British military tribunal in Rome for war crimes . In mid-1947 he was pardoned ; later the sentence was commuted to 21 years imprisonment.

He was released on October 2, 1952. Before that, friends, former opponents and allegedly even Pope Pius XII. used for him. After his release, Mackensen lived a secluded life in Alt Mühlendorf near Nortorf in the Rendsburg district . He died on May 19, 1969 in Neumünster at the age of 80.

Awards

• Knight's Cross 2nd class of the Albrecht Order
• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Wound Badge (1918)
• Medal in memory of March 13, 1938
• Wehrmacht service award IV. To I. class
• Clasp for the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with oak leaves
  • Knight's Cross on July 27, 1941
  • Oak leaves on May 26, 1942 (95th award)

literature

• Law-Reports of Trials of War Criminals, Selected and prepared by The United Nations War Crimes Commission, Volume VIII, London, HMSO. 1948. (English). CASE --No. 43rd TRIAL OF GENERAL VON MACKENSEN AND GENERAL MAELZER. BRITISH MILITARY COURT, ROME. 18TH-30TH NOVEMBER, 1945 ( PDF ).
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .

Web links

Commons : Eberhard von Mackensen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Genealogisches Handbuch des Adels , Adelige Häuser B Volume XXI, Volume 108 of the complete series, CA Starke Verlag, Limburg (Lahn) 1995, ISBN 3-7980-0700-4 , p. 320.
2. ^ Gerhard Schreiber: German war crimes in Italy: perpetrators, victims, prosecution . CH Beck, 1996, ISBN 978-3-406-39268-9 .
3. ↑ Theo Schwarzmüller : Between Kaiser and Führer Field Marshal August von Mackensen. Ferdinand Schöningh, ISBN 3-506-78284-3 , p. 181.
4. ↑ NLA OL Rep 400 Order. 131 No. 703 - Denazification of the public ... - Arcinsys detail page. Retrieved April 24, 2018 . 
5. ↑ Albert Kesselring . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 1947 ( online - 12 July 1947 ).
6. ^ Ranking list of the Royal Prussian Army and the XIII. (Royal Württemberg) Army Corps for 1914 , Ed .: War Ministry , Ernst Siegfried Mittler & Son , Berlin 1914, p. 386.
7. ↑ ^{a b} Ranking list of the German Reichsheeres , Ed .: Reichswehrministerium , Mittler & Sohn Verlag , Berlin 1924, p. 152.
8. ↑ 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. 522.