Erhard Raus

Erhard Raus (born January 8, 1889 in Wolframitz , South Moravia , † April 3, 1956 in Vienna ) was an Austrian officer and German colonel general in World War II . Along with Alexander Löhr and Lothar Rendulic, he was one of three Austrians who rose to the rank of Colonel General in the Wehrmacht.

Life

Erhard Raus graduated from the Königsfeld cadet school near Brno at the age of 18 and then joined the Feldjäger Battalion 20 in Cormons . At the beginning of the First World War he was deployed on the Eastern Front in southern Poland and became the commandant of the battalion's cycling company .

Raus married Marries Anna Morsani on August 17, 1918.

After the First World War he was taken over into the Austrian Armed Forces and came to the Federal Ministry for the Army, after which he was transferred to the Vienna Bicycle Battalion. He later worked as a tactics teacher in the infantry school.

From 1934 he was the commandant of the infantry school, from the end of 1936 Colonel of the General Staff and when the "Anschluss" of Austria in March 1938 he was going to Rome as a military attaché . Instead he was transferred to the staff of Group Command 5 in Vienna.

Second World War

At the beginning of the war in 1939, Raus became Chief of Staff in Military District XVII in Vienna. On July 15, 1940 he was appointed commander of the 4th Rifle Regiment, then on April 15, 1941, commander of the 6th Rifle Brigade. After being promoted to major general on October 1, 1941, he was assigned the command of the 7th Panzer Division on November 18, 1941 , but this was not carried out because on November 22, 1941 he was in charge of the 6th Panzer Division . Division , which he led in the Battle of Moscow . This was followed by the fighting back to Wolokolamsk and the snail offensive to Sychovka . On April 1, 1942, he was officially appointed commander of the Panzer Division.

General of the Panzer Troop Erhard Raus (third from right) attends the funeral of Major General Walther von Hünersdorff in Charkow with Colonel General Hermann Hoth (fourth from right) and General Field Marshal Erich von Manstein (fifth from right with marshal's baton )

On January 1, 1943, he was promoted to Lieutenant General and on February 10, 1943, he took over the leadership of the General Command z. b. V. Raus , with whom he took part in the retaking of Kharkov . After he was promoted to General of the Armored Force on April 1, 1943 , he and his corps also took part in the Citadel operation and in the retreat fighting in Ukraine. On December 10, he succeeded Hermann Hoth as Commander-in-Chief of the 4th Panzer Army , then on May 1, 1944 of the 1st Panzer Army . He was promoted to Colonel General on September 20, 1944. From August 16, 1944 to March 12, 1945 he led the 3rd Panzer Army until he was deposed by Adolf Hitler because the army could not hold the last German bridgeheads east of the Oder .

post war period

At the end of the war, Raus became an American prisoner of war, from which he was released on June 30, 1947. In the post-war period he worked as a member of the German department of the war history research group of the United States Army , the Operational History (German) Section of the "Historical Division", various memoranda for the American armed forces on the peculiarities of Soviet warfare. In his study on the “peculiarities of Russian warfare” (1950), Raus rated as one of these peculiarities that Russian soldiers would show no empathy for killed comrades. He described the fighting style of the soldiers of the Red Army with the picture: “The crowd continued to swell until the supply of people was used up”.

Otherwise he lived secluded with his wife in Bad Gastein . Raus died on April 3, 1956 after a year-long illness of a lung disease in a Viennese hospital.

Awards

• Bronze military merit medal on the ribbon of the Military Merit Cross with war decoration and swords on February 6, 1915
• Military Merit Cross (Austria) III. Class with war decorations and swords on October 5, 1915
• Karl-Troop Cross on March 15, 1917
• Order of the Iron Crown III. Class with war decorations and swords on March 16, 1918 (but without elevation to the nobility)
• Hungarian War Memorial Medal on March 9, 1931
• Austrian war memorial medal with swords on May 16, 1933
• Silver Medal of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria on April 21, 1934
• Wehrmacht service award
• Clasp for the Iron Cross 2nd class on June 29, 1941
• Clasp for the Iron Cross 1st Class on July 6, 1941
• Panzer Badge on September 1, 1941
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with oak leaves
  • Knight's Cross on October 11, 1941
  • Oak leaves on August 22, 1943 (280th award)
• Medal Winter Battle in the East 1941/42
• German cross in gold on February 14, 1943

literature

• Horst Scheibert: The 6th Panzer Division 1937–1945: armament, missions, men. Nebel Verlag GmbH, 2003, ISBN 3895550914 .
• Horst Scheibert: Illustrated book of the 6th Panzer Division 1939 - 1945. Podzun-Verlag, 1958.
• Karl Heinz Sperker: Colonel General Erhard Raus. A troop leader in the Eastern campaign. (= Fate of soldiers in the 20th century as a historical source 7.) Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 1988, ISBN 3-7648-1492-6 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Erhard Raus in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Esther-Julia Howell: Learn from the vanquished? The war-history cooperation between the US Army and the former Wehrmacht elite 1945–1961. De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2015, p. 249.
2. ^ Karl Heinz Sperker Colonel General Erhard Raus A Troop Leader in the East , ISBN 3-7648-1492-6 , pages 226-230