Ferdinand Schörner

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Schörner on the Acropolis , April 1941

Ferdinand Schörner (born June 12, 1892 in Munich ; † July 2, 1973 there ) was a German army officer (field marshal general since 1945 ). During the Second World War he was commander in chief of armies and army groups and in 1945 briefly the last commander in chief of the army . Schörner was considered a staunch National Socialist . He was convicted of war crimes in the Soviet Union in 1952 and of manslaughter of German soldiers in the Federal Republic of Germany in 1957.

Life

Bavarian Army

Lieutenant of the reserve Ferdinand Schörner on the occasion of the award of the order Pour le Mérite. Report in the magazine Die Woche , number 9/1918

Schörner's military career began after graduating from high school with a service period as a one-year volunteer with the Infantry Body Regiment of the Bavarian Army . Subsequently released to reserve , he studied philosophy and new languages in Munich , Lausanne and Grenoble .

With the outbreak of war in 1914, Schörner was reactivated as a vice sergeant and reserve officer candidate in the infantry body regiment, and in November 1914 was promoted to lieutenant in the reserve and used as a company commander. Schörner was deployed on the Western Front , in Tyrol , Serbia, Romania and in the Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo against Italy. For the storming of the height 1114 on October 24, 1917 he was awarded the order Pour le Mérite . In addition to Schörner, then Lieutenant Erwin Rommel also received this prestigious award for storming Monte Matajur. In 1918 Schörner switched from the reserve career to active service and was promoted to first lieutenant . He was seriously wounded three times during the war.

Weimar Republic

After the armistice , Schörner was initially active in the Epp Freikorps , and in 1920 he joined the Reichswehr . He was deployed as a company commander and completed the pilot assistant course . In 1923 Schörner was adjutant to the military district commander of Munich , General von Lossow , and was involved in the suppression of the Hitler coup .

After he had completed his general staff training, Schörner was promoted to captain on July 1, 1926 , combined with taking over a company in Landshut and a little later in Kempten (Allgäu) . Schörner, who had a good knowledge of Italian , was then transferred for some time to the Alpini , the Italian mountain troops, as an interpreter . From 1931 Schörner was employed as a tactics teacher at the Infantry School Dresden .

time of the nationalsocialism

Pre-war period

In 1934 Schörner was promoted to major and appointed head of the 4th group in the 3rd division ( foreign armies ) of the troop office. In this position he was responsible for the south and south-east of Europe. On March 1, 1937, Schörner was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

On October 1, 1937, Schörner became the commander of the 98 Mountain Infantry Regiment. In this position he was also involved in the March 1938 invasion of Austria . On August 27, 1939, a few days before the start of the Second World War, Schörner was promoted to colonel .

Second World War

In Poland, the Balkans and Norway

At the beginning of World War II, Schörner was commander of the 98 Mountain Infantry Regiment during the attack on Poland. In May 1940, Schörner was appointed commander of the newly established 6th Mountain Division and took part in the French campaign. On August 1, 1940, he was appointed major general.

Schörner (center) in Bulgaria in 1941

In the spring of 1941 Schörner was deployed with the 6th Mountain Division in the Balkan campaign . On April 20, 1941 he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for piercing the Metaxas line at Belasica-Planina , a successful attack at Krusa-Planina and a further advance towards Thessaloniki . On April 27th, his advance division hoisted the imperial war flag on the Acropolis . After the campaign was over, Schörner and his division stayed in Greece as an occupation force.

In autumn 1941 Schörner and the 6th Mountain Division were relocated to the Arctic Ocean front (see: Defense of the Far North ). In January 1942, Schörner took over the leadership of the Mountain Corps Norway (later XIX Mountain Corps ) as the successor to Eduard Dietl and was promoted to Lieutenant General at the end of the month . In June 1942 he was promoted to general of the mountain troops , when he was also the commanding general of the corps .

On the Eastern Front

In October 1943, Schörner took over the XXXX as commanding general for the wounded Sigfrid Henrici . Tank Corps of the 1st Tank Army in Ukraine . At this point the Red Army had started to cross the Dnepr and was preparing an advance on Krivoy Rog in order to cut off the German troops standing in the Dnepr bend (→ Nikopol-Krivoy Roger operation ). At the end of the month Schörner took over the leadership of the three corps standing in this bridgehead, which were called the Schörner Group or the Nikopol Army Division . On February 17, 1944, Schörner received the oak leaves for the Knight's Cross for successfully clearing the bridgehead near Nikopol .

At the beginning of March he temporarily took over the leadership of the 17th Army in the Crimea and after the dismissal of the Commander-in-Chief of Army Group A , General Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist , was entrusted with the leadership of what is now Army Group South Ukraine at the end of the month . With retroactive effect to March 1, 1944, Schörner was promoted to Colonel General in May .

In July 1944, Schörner took command of Army Group North . On August 28, 1944, he was awarded the Swords of the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves for re-establishing the connection to Army Group Center in Kurland (→ Doppelkopf Company ), and on January 1, 1945, he received the diamonds for three heavy, two-month defensive battles in the Kurland area. On January 20, 1945, Schörner was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Army Group A (→ Vistula-Oder Operation ) and on April 5, 1945, he was appointed Field Marshal General.

On April 30, 1945, Hitler named Schörner Commander-in-Chief of the Army in his political will . On May 8, 1945, American troops under Lieutenant Colonel Robert Pratt informed him of the German surrender at his headquarters in Bad Welchow .

Schörner as a type of National Socialist troop leader

Schörner always demonstrated his National Socialist sentiments, but only became a member of the NSDAP in 1943 . On February 1, 1944, he was appointed head of the newly created National Socialist command staff of the army . In this function he was responsible for training the troops in the National Socialist sense. Just two weeks later he resigned from office due to a serious conflict with Hitler's secretary Martin Bormann .

Schörner led the troops under his command with extreme severity, and he demanded unconditional obedience. His inhuman attitude was expressed in countless death sentences against Wehrmacht soldiers as well as in his saying that the soldier must have "more fear in the back than in front". He regularly tore off medals and badges of rank from retreating officers. In March 1945, Schörner wanted to have Major General Hanns von Rohr executed because he had refused to shoot soldiers who had fled Soviet tanks. The OKH softened the death sentence to demotion and probation . Shortly before the end of the war, when the defeat was clearly foreseeable, Schörner sent numerous soldiers and Volkssturm men on so-called ascension orders . In Joseph Goebbels' diary entry for March 12, 1945 it says:

“I then report in detail to the Führer about my visit to Lauban . The Führer is also of the opinion that Schörner is one of our most outstanding military commanders. ... Schörner had succeeded in essentially stabilizing the front in his fighting area. It was due to him that the morale of the troops there was so excellent. I tell the Führer about the radical methods that Schörner uses to achieve this goal. Deserters find no mercy with him. They are tied to the nearest tree and hung around their necks with a sign that reads: 'I am a deserter . I refused to protect German women and children, so I was hung. ' Such methods work naturally. In any case, the soldier in Schörner's combat area knows that he can die in front and must die in the back.

Schörner's loyalty was only to the Nazi rulers, not to the soldiers under his command, and unlike other troop leaders, he was not prepared to share their fate. This became very clear at the end of the war, when he abandoned his troops. While he himself had already sentenced scattered soldiers to death for vain reasons, he now fled to western Bohemia so as not to fall into Soviet captivity. In Bad Welchow he surrendered to the advancing Americans. The day after the capitulation, on May 9th, he fled in civilian clothes and with a few thousand marks from the staff treasury in a Fieseler Storch to an alpine pasture in Göriach ( Austria ), where he was arrested by American troops a little later. They handed him over to the Red Army , which had captured most of the troops under his command.

Convictions and Post War

Schörner was sentenced to 25 years of forced labor for war crimes in the Soviet Union in February 1952 and was imprisoned in various camps until the end of 1954. He was released on January 15, 1955. His return to Germany (first to Dresden, then to Bavaria) took place at the time of rearmament ; the establishment of the Bundeswehr was imminent. On March 31, 1955, the federal disciplinary attorney opened disciplinary proceedings with the aim of withdrawing his pension payments. The fact that former Wehrmacht officers devoted to the Nazi regime received pensions in accordance with the 131 rule in the Federal Republic of Germany and sometimes even came out with National Socialist remarks was sharply criticized by the opponents of the rearmament. Even conservative politicians have now spoken out against the granting of a pension in the Schörner case. The later defense minister Franz Josef Strauss distanced himself from him ("monster in uniform"), and the Bundestag decided on July 13, 1955 a retroactive change to the federal disciplinary code , which was considered Lex Schörner . The competent federal disciplinary chamber saw the prohibition of retroactivity violated and submitted the case to the Federal Constitutional Court , which decided in accordance with the Federal Disciplinary Prosecutor.

In 1957, charges were brought against Schörner. He was sentenced to four and a half years' imprisonment and the deprivation of pension entitlement because of the death sentences he pronounced at the end of the war, which were judged by the court to be committed and, in another case, attempted manslaughter . On August 4, 1960, Schörner was released early from prison in Landsberg correctional facility for health reasons. In 1963, Federal President Heinrich Lübke granted him part of his pension.

The "bloody Ferdinand" was considered "the most brutal of Hitler's field marshals". He was buried in Mittenwald in 1973 . Soldiers of the Bundeswehr were forbidden to attend the funeral in uniform; participation in civilian clothes was not desired.

Awards

literature

  • Klaus-Volker Gießler:  Schörner, Johann Ferdinand. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 435 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Klaus Schönherr : Ferdinand Schörner. The ideal typical Nazi general. In: Roland Smelser, Enrico Syring (ed.): The military elite of the Third Reich. 27 biographical sketches. Ullstein, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main 1995. ISBN 3-550-07080-2 . Pp. 497‒509.
  • Peter Steinkamp: Field Marshal General Ferdinand Schörner. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (ed.): Hitler's military elite. From the beginning of the war to the end of the world war. Volume 2. Primus. Darmstadt 1998. ISBN 3-89678-089-1 . Pp. 236‒244.
  • "LG Munich I October 15, 1957". In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German convictions for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, vol. XIV, ed. by Irene Sagel-Grande, HH Fuchs and CF Rüter. Amsterdam: University Press, 1976, No. 452, pp. 357-399

Web links

Commons : Ferdinand Schörner  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c d e Franz Thomas and Günter Wegmann (eds.): The knight's cross bearers of the German Wehrmacht 1939–1945. Part IV: The Mountain Troop. Volume 2: L-Z. Biblio, 1994, ISBN 3-7648-2430-1 .
  2. ↑ On January 25th, renamed Army Group Center ; see. Manfred Rauh: History of the Second World War. Volume 3. Berlin 1998, p. 357.
  3. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. 2nd edition. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 556.
  4. ^ Federal Archives ( Memento from March 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Klaus W. Tofahrn, The Third Reich and the Holocaust , Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, Frankfurt am Main 2008, p. 268
  6. ^ Joseph Goebbels: Diaries 1945. The last notes. Berlin 1977, p. 164.
  7. ^ Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World in Arms. The global history of World War II , Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 1995, p. 861
  8. ↑ Contemporary history: The bloodhound is back , Zeit 2005, issue 37, accessed February 4, 2016
  9. ^ The Lubyanka dossier from General Field Marshal Schörner , Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, accessed February 4, 2016
  10. ↑ Bert-Oliver Manig: One of the most brutal Nazi soldiers was one of the late returnees from Soviet captivity in 1955: Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner. The embarrassment was great in Bonn , Zeit Online , September 8, 2005.
  11. ↑ See BVerfGE 7, 129.
  12. ↑ But Schörner knows nothing , Zeit, October 10, 1957, accessed February 4, 2016
  13. ^ Sven Keller: Volksgemeinschaft am Ende: Society and Violence 1944/45 , Walter de Gruyter 2013, ISBN 978-3-486-76364-5 , p. 332.
  14. ↑ The Federal Archives (B 122 = Federal President's Office) contains 4919 Bd .: 2 requests for clemency that Schörner made 1955–1962 (Federal President was Theodor Heuss until 1959 , from then Lübke)
  15. ↑ Mark Mazower : Military violence and National Socialist values ​​- The Wehrmacht in Greece 1941 to 1944. In: Hannes Heer, Klaus Naumann (ed.): War of extermination. Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944. Hamburg 1995, p. 172.
  16. ↑ Grandfather greets Grand Admiral , faz.net, February 17, 2016.
  17. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Klaus-Volker Gießler:  Schörner, Johann Ferdinand. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 23, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-11204-3 , p. 435 f. ( Digitized version ).
  18. ↑ a b c d e Ranking list of the German Imperial Army. ES Mittler & Sohn . Berlin 1930. p. 144.
  19. ↑ 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. 681.
  20. ^ Klaus D. Patzwall : The Golden Party Badge and its honorary awards 1934-1944. Studies of the history of awards. Volume 4. Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall. Norderstedt 2004. ISBN 3-931533-50-6 . P. 31.
personal data
SURNAME Schörner, Ferdinand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, most recently Field Marshal General in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH June 12, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH 2nd July 1973
Place of death Munich