Erich Marcks (General)

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Erich Marcks (born June 6, 1891 in Schöneberg ; † June 12, 1944 near Hébécrevon in the French department of Manche ) was a general of the artillery of the German Wehrmacht .

Life

Marck's plan (August 5, 1940), first draft for Operation Barbarossa

Marcks was the son of the well-known historian Erich Marcks . After graduating from high school in 1909, he began to study philosophy in Freiburg im Breisgau and impressed Professor Heinrich Rickert there with his knowledge . However, Marcks dropped out after only three semesters and became a career officer. Seriously wounded and disfigured in the face as an artillery lieutenant at the beginning of the First World War , he joined the General Staff as a captain in 1917 and joined the Supreme Army Command in 1918. At the beginning of the 1930s he was a major head of the press department of the Reichswehr Ministry . From 1932 to 1933 he served as Reich Press Chief under the Reich Chancellors Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher .

Marck's friendship with Kurt von Schleicher, who was later murdered by the National Socialists in connection with the alleged suppression of the so-called " Röhm Putsch " , did not hinder his military career. He was on friendly terms with constitutional lawyer and philosophy professor Carl Schmitt , who publicly defended the Nazi murders of the "Röhm Affair" as legitimate. On October 1, 1935 he was promoted to Chief of the General Staff of the VIII Army Corps as Colonel and on April 1, 1939 to Major General. With the VIII Army Corps, he took part in the attack on Poland . After this he was appointed Chief of the General Staff of the 18th Army on October 25, 1939 , with which he took part in the campaign in the west .

In the summer of 1940 AOK 18 was the first higher command authority to be relocated to the east and moved into quarters in Königsberg . On behalf of the Chief of Staff of the Army , Colonel General Franz Halder , Marcks worked out a first operational plan for the attack on the Soviet Union intended by Adolf Hitler by August 5th . In a supplementary memorandum (“Assessment of the Red Situation”), which was ignored by the OKH , he warned in September 1940 against overly optimistic assessments of the duration of the campaign and considered a comprehensive allied counter-attack in East and West from 1942 to be entirely possible. His draft was combined with the parallel draft by Major General von Loßberg under the direction of General Paulus in the winter of 1940 to form a first detailed plan.

In June 1941, Marcks, now lieutenant general and commander of the 101st Light Infantry Division , was seriously wounded in the Ukraine and lost his left leg. In the war against the Soviet Union in 1941 the first and in 1943 the second of Marcks' three sons died. From March 15 to September 20, 1942 he was in command of the 337th Infantry Division .

In 1943 Marcks became the commanding general of the LXXXIV. Army corps used to defend Normandy. He was one of the few army generals, one invasion of the Allies held there for possible. Their successful landing in Normandy , Operation Overlord on D-Day , finally took place on Marcks' 53rd birthday. In the course of the fighting around the Cotentin peninsula , Marcks fell a few days later in a low-flying attack a few kilometers northwest of the city of Saint-Lô .

Awards

literature

Movie

Individual evidence

  1. ^ German biography. Retrieved December 15, 2015.
  2. ^ The German Reich and the Second World War , Volume 4 (The attack on the Soviet Union), Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 978-3-421-06098-3 , pp. 219-229.
  3. ↑ a b c Ranking list of the German Imperial Army. Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin 1930, p. 129.
  4. ↑ 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. 526.
personal data
SURNAME Marcks, Erich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German artillery general in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Schöneberg
DATE OF DEATH June 12, 1944
Place of death Hébécrevon , Manche department , France