Friedrich Fangohr

Fangohr (right) with (from left) Erich von Manstein, Theodor Busse and Hans Speidel, Soviet Union, June 21, 1943

Friedrich Fangohr (born August 12, 1899 in Hanover , † April 17, 1956 in Munich ) was a German officer, most recently a general of the infantry in World War II . From July 1942 to June 1944 he was Chief of the General Staff of the 4th Panzer Army and most recently from January 1945 Commanding General of the 1st Army Corps .

Life

Fangohr occurred during the First World War on December 8, 1916 as a cadet in the Infantry Regiment "Field Marshal von Mackensen" (3rd West Prussian) No. 129 a. After successfully completing an ensign course in Döberitz , he was appointed ensign on July 30, 1917 and finally promoted to lieutenant on November 20, 1917 . As such, he served from mid-January 1918 in Infantry Regiment No. 477. First as platoon leader , then as adjutant of the 1st battalion and finally as an orderly officer with the regimental staff.

After the end of the war and return home, Fangohr joined the Haase volunteer regiment as a platoon leader in the volunteer company at the end of December 1918 and later worked in the Petri volunteer battalion. On February 4, 1920 he was accepted into the provisional Reichswehr and assigned to the Reichswehr Infantry Regiment 108. A few months later he was transferred to Infantry Regiment 16 and from there he was transferred to Infantry Regiment 3 on December 12, 1920 . Fangohr became first lieutenant in 1925, captain in 1933 and major in 1936 . Since October 1937, Fangohr was first general staff officer (Ia) of the 13th (motorized) infantry division .

In this function he was involved in the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938 and in the attack on Poland in 1939. In January 1939 he became a lieutenant colonel in the general staff. From February 1940 he was Ia des XXXXI. Army corps in the western campaign and from February 15, 1941 Chief of the General Staff of the LVII. Panzer Corps, which belonged to Panzer Group 3 under Colonel General Hermann Hoth , where he was promoted to Colonel on March 1, 1941.

In July 1942 he became chief of staff of the 4th Panzer Army , which was commanded by Hoth until November 1943. In this role he was involved in the Wintergewitter Company in December 1942 in Stalingrad, the Citadel Company in July 1943 and the Battle of the Dnieper and subsequent retreat fights. He became major general in February 1943 and lieutenant general in February 1944 . From June to August 1944 he was transferred to the Führerreserve and then took over command of the 122nd Infantry Division in Army Group North on August 25, 1944 . In January 1945 he took over the leadership of the 1st Army Corps , which he held until April 22, 1945. During this time he was in the Kurland basin .

At the end of the war in May 1945, he was head of the German liaison staff at the Allied headquarters in Reims , which organized the implementation of the German surrender (disarming and interning members of the Wehrmacht). After the end of the war he was a prisoner of war until March 1948. There and after his release, 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", he also wrote analyzes of his time as a general staff officer on the Eastern Front for the Americans. In his study “Russia as a Combat Space” (1950/1951), for example, Fangohr warned that because of the “significantly lower cultural level” of the people there, Western soldiers would always run into problems that civilized soldiers would not have expected. Due to his naive closeness to nature, the Russian soldier possesses a talent for camouflaging and exploiting the terrain that is not possible with a western soldier. He behaves towards "heat and cold [...] just as indifferent as towards hunger and thirst".

Awards

After he had already received the Iron Cross II. And I. Class in the First World War , he received them again in the Second World War and in 1942 the German Cross in Gold and on June 9, 1944 the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross .

literature

• Dermot Bradley (Ed.): Die Generale des Heeres 1921–1945, The military careers of the generals, as well as doctors, veterinarians, intendants, judges and ministerial officials in the general rank , Volume 3: Dahlmann – Fitzlaff, Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück 1994, ISBN 3 -7648-2443-3 , pp. 417-418.

source

• Steven H. Newton (Editor) Kursk - the german view , Da Capo 2002.
  • with a biography of Fangohr and a translation of the section that Fangohr wrote about the operations of the 4th Panzer Army for the Americans in the 1940s (this was coordinated by General Theodor Busse at the time )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Fangohr is also mentioned once in the memoirs of Erich von Manstein ( Lost Siege ), as the admirable Chief of Staff von Hoth, in connection with the fighting in retreat south of the Don in early 1943 in the succession of Stalingrad
2. ↑ 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. 245 u. P. 248