Ewald von Kleist (Field Marshal General)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ewald von Kleist (1940)

Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist (* 8. August 1881 in Braunfels at the Lahn ; † 13th or 16th November 1954 in the central prison, Vladimir , Soviet Union ) was a German cavalry - officer (from 1943 Field Marshal ) and during the Second World War commander various armies and army groups of the Wehrmacht . He was convicted of war crimes in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union .

Life

Empire and First World War

Ewald von Kleist was a member of the von Kleist family , his father was the grammar school director Dr. Hugo von Kleist. Ewald von Kleist joined the field artillery regiment "Generalfeldzeugmeister" No. 3 on March 9, 1900 as a flag junior , where he was promoted to lieutenant on August 18, 1901 . On March 22, 1914, he was transferred to the No. 1 body hussar regiment as Rittmeister .

After the beginning of the First World War , Ewald von Kleist took part in the battle of Tannenberg . From 1915 to 1918 he was used as a staff and troop officer on the Western Front .

Weimar Republic

Kleist joined a volunteer corps in 1919 and was deployed in western Germany. In 1920 he was accepted into the Reichswehr . From 1924 he worked as a tactics teacher at the cavalry school in Hanover before he was transferred to the 2nd cavalry division in Breslau in 1928 as chief of staff . He then held the same position from 1929 to 1931 with the 3rd Division in Berlin. Kleist, who has meanwhile been promoted to colonel , became commander of the 9th (Prussian) Infantry Regiment in Potsdam in 1931 and, at the beginning of 1932, commander of the 2nd Cavalry Division . In October 1932 he was promoted to major general in this position .

time of the nationalsocialism

Pre-war period

After he had been promoted to lieutenant general on December 1, 1933 , Kleist was appointed commander of the "Army Service Wroclaw" in October 1934, from which the future VIII Army Corps emerged . Since the unmasking of the associations in 1935, he had the title of commander in the newly formed military district VIII and commanding general of the VIII Army Corps. On August 1, 1936, he was promoted as such to general of the cavalry . In February 1938 von Kleist was retired from service in connection with the events during the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis , where he was given permission to wear the uniform of the 8th Cavalry Regiment. To secure his retirement, he then bought an estate near Breslau.

Second World War

Kleist visits a captured iron and steel works in the Ukraine in 1941.

At the beginning of the Second World War, Kleist was reactivated and took over as commander of the motorized XXII. Army Corps participated in the attack on Poland . There his corps managed to break through the south wing of the Polish army . In May 1940, the "Kleist Panzer Group", which alone comprised five tank divisions , spearheaded the western campaign . Kleist was promoted to Colonel General on July 19, 1940 and received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross . In April 1941 he took the Armored Group 1 as part of the 12th Army under the command of Field Marshal Wilhelm List at the Balkan campaign part. In June of the same year he led Panzer Group 1 in the Russian campaign , which among other things was responsible for the breakthrough through the " Stalin Line ". Panzer Group 1 captured over 800 Soviet tanks in the battles of Uman and Kiev, together with Panzer Group 2 from Colonel General Heinz Guderian, and took around 650,000 prisoners of war . In recognition of their achievements, the Kleists and Guderians tank groups were converted into tank armies in early October 1941, which meant that their commanders-in-chief were on an equal footing with other army commanders. On February 18, 1942, Kleist was also awarded the Knight's Cross with the Oak Leaves . In the summer of 1942 he led the "Kleist Army Group" formed by subordinating the 17th Army until, in the further course of the Blau case, General Field Marshal Wilhelm List took over command of Army Group A formed for operations in the Caucasus . In the same year he received real estate worth 567,000 Reichsmarks as an endowment .

On November 22, 1942, Kleist became the new Commander-in-Chief of Army Group A, which had temporarily led Hitler personally after List's dismissal in September , and was promoted to Field Marshal General on February 1, 1943 . After repeated differences of opinion with Hitler about the conduct of the war in the East, Kleist was dismissed by Hitler in March 1944 and replaced by Ferdinand Schörner . As a result of the assassination attempt on July 20, 1944 , he was arrested by the Gestapo , but unlike his relative Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin , who had already been involved in the September conspiracy and had close contacts with the Goerdeler district , later released.

post war period

Kleist was arrested by US soldiers in Bavaria at the end of April 1945 , handed over to the British army and extradited by them to Yugoslavia in September 1946 . There he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for war crimes. In 1948 he was extradited to the Soviet Union and sentenced there to life imprisonment for war crimes . He died in the Vladimirovka prison camp on November 13 or 16, 1954 . He was the highest ranking among the German soldiers who died in Soviet captivity.

Awards (selection)

  • Iron Cross 2nd class, October 4, 1914
  • Iron Cross 1st Class, January 27, 1915
  • Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross , May 15, 1940
  • Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, February 17, 1942
  • Knight's Cross with Swords, March 30, 1944.

literature

  • Leon Goldensohn: The Nuremberg Interviews. Conversations with defendants and witnesses. (Original: The Nuremberg Interviews. New York, 2004). Edited and introduced by Robert Gellately . Artemis and Winkler, Düsseldorf / Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-538-07217-5 .
Notes on conversations between the author (American prison psychiatrist) and Ewald von Kleist in Nuremberg (as a witness at the Nuremberg trial) on June 12 and June 25, 1946, pp. 363–386.

Web links

Commons : Ewald von Kleist  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Inta Pētersone's claim that he led the attack group of the Iron Division during the Battle of Wenden in the Baltic States is based on a mix-up of people. Inta Pētersone (ed.): Latvijas Brīvības cīņas 1918–1920. Enciklopēdja . Preses nams, Riga 1999. ISBN 9984-00-395-7 , p. 359. Wilhelm von Kleist was actually employed there. Family history v. Kleist, p. 124
  2. ↑ Gerd R. Ueberschär , Winfried Vogel : Serving and earning. Hitler's gifts to his elites . Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-10-086002-0 .
  3. ↑ Compare also Winfried Vogel: "... Absolutely unworthy" . in: DIE ZEIT of March 28, 1997, No. 14/1997 ( Zeit online-digitized ).
  4. ↑ Vasilij Stepanowitsch Christoforow, Vladimir Gennadjewitsch Makarow, Matthias Uhl ( eds .): Interrogated: The questioning of German generals and officers by the Soviet secret services 1945-1952 (publications of the German Historical Institute Moscow, Volume 6). De Gruyter, ISBN 978-3110416046 , p. 188 ( https://books.google.de/books?id=JY5lCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA188 online)
  5. ↑ Samuel W. Mitcham: Field Marshall Erich von Kleist . In: Correlli Barnett (Ed.): Hitler's Generals . Grove Weidenfeld, New York 1989, pp. 249-263, here p. 260.
  6. ↑ Also on the following orders Johannes Hürter : Hitler's Army Leader. The German Supreme Commanders in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42 , Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-57982-6 , p. 637 (accessed from De Gruyter Online).
personal data
SURNAME Kleist, Ewald von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kleist, Paul Ludwig Ewald von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Field Marshal General in the Third Reich
DATE OF BIRTH August 8, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Braunfels on the Lahn
DATE OF DEATH November 16, 1954
Place of death Vladimirovka prison camp (Soviet Union)