Fritz Antek Berger

Fritz Antek Berger (born April 15, 1900 in Allenstein in East Prussia , † June 27, 1973 in Bielefeld ) was a German naval officer who was awarded the Knight's Cross during the Second World War , most recently a sea captain .

Life

After finishing school, Berger joined the Imperial Navy on January 2, 1917 as a sea ​​cadet ( sea ​​officer candidate ) during World War I ( Crew I / 1917). On November 16, 1917 he was promoted to ensign at sea .

After the war he served first from February 1919 to June 1920 in the Marine Brigade Loewenfeld , a volunteer corps , which in June 1919 during the transport strikes in Berlin , then in the first Polish uprising in Upper Silesia and finally in April 1920 space Bottropzur combat Ruhr uprising was used. Like many other members of the brigade, he was accepted into the Reichswehr and promoted to lieutenant at sea on July 30, 1920 . The promotion to lieutenant at sea took place on April 1, 1923.

Berger received his first command of his own on October 1, 1928, when he was appointed commander of the torpedo boat Möwe . Asked as the boat on 22 August 1929 in order to refit out of service and by kicking in his place for the fourth Torpedobootshalbflottille sister boat eagle was replaced, changed Berger with the entire crew of seagull on the sea eagle , which he commanded until October 11, 1929 . He then was in command of the sister boat Falke until September 1930 , on which he was promoted to lieutenant captain on February 1, 1930 . Various positions on land followed, as well as training to become a staff officer and promotion to corvette captain on November 1, 1935.

On January 8, 1938, Berger became the commandant of the destroyer Z 8 Bruno Heinemann , which was commissioned on that day and which he commanded until December 4, 1939. In the first days of the Second World War, the Bruno Heinemann was part of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla and was one of the units deployed in the Baltic Sea to blockade the Polish Navy. From September 4, 1939 she was then involved with other destroyers and torpedo boats in the deployment of the so-called Westwall mine barriers in the North Sea . The chief of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla, Frigate Captain Bey on the Bruno Heinemann , tried several times in November, together with the Erich Steinbrinck and Friedrich Eckoldt , to wage a trade war in the Skagerrak and Kattegat , but could not find any enemy ships.

On December 5, 1939, Berger , promoted to frigate captain on August 1, 1939 , was appointed chief of the first destroyer flotilla , which consisted of six boats . In this position he managed a mining company in front of the Thames estuary on 6/7. January 1940 with the destroyers Friedrich Ihn , Friedrich Eckoldt and Erich Steinbrinck . On this mine barrier, the British destroyer Grenville and six merchant ships with a total of 21,617 GRT were sunk and one merchant ship was badly damaged. Another mining company with the destroyers Friedrich Eckholdt , Max Schultz and Richard Beitzen was headed by him from February 9-10 , 1940 in the Shipwash area . Six merchant ships with a total of 28,496 GRT were sunk by this mine barrier, and another merchant ship was damaged.

On the night of February 22nd to 23rd, 1940, the destroyers Leberecht Maass , Max Schultz , Richard Beitzen , Erich Koellner , Theodor Riedel and Friedrich Eckoldt were supposed to advance into the Doggerbank area and take action against British fishing trawlers discovered there by aerial reconnaissance ( Company Vikings ). Berger led the association from Friedrich Eckoldt . Due to serious negligence by the naval command and unfortunate circumstances, the association lost two of the six destroyers deployed before reaching the area of ​​operation due to mine hits , whereupon the company was canceled. A total of 578 crew members of the association lost their lives.

On April 9, 1940, frigate captain Berger took part in the occupation of Narvik as the only boat in his flotilla as part of the Weser Exercise Company on the Georg Thiele . After all ten German destroyers involved in the occupation of Narvik had been destroyed in two skirmishes with British ships on April 10 and 13, the approximately 2,600 surviving crew members under Berger's command were divided into four battalions in the so-called Narvik Marine Regiment (renamed April 18 as Marine-Regiment Berger) and subordinated to the mountain troops landed in Narvik to Major General Eduard Dietls . The regiment was used to defend the ore railway from Sweden to Narvik and, after the Allies withdrew their troops from northern Norway on June 8, it was disbanded on July 1, 1940. For his service in the Battle of Narvik , Berger was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on August 4, 1940 .

On August 14, 1940, he became head of the 5th Destroyer Flotilla , formed from the remaining boats of his previous 1st Destroyer Flotilla , which he led until July 17, 1942 and their boats in the North Sea, in the English Channel , in western France and the Bay of Biscay , at times as well were deployed in Norway and performed mine-laying and escort duties. His flotilla with five boats ( Richard Beitzen , Paul Jacobi , Friedrich Ihn , Hermann Schoemann and Z 25 ) belonged to the Cerberus company , the breakthrough of the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen on February 12, 1942 through the English Channel the security forces for the three large ships.

In September 1942 Berger , who had already been promoted to sea captain on March 1, 1941 , was appointed sea ​​commander of the Oslofjord , then on June 7, 1943, sea commander of Drontheim . There he got into British captivity on May 8, 1945, from which he was released on May 9, 1948.

Berger died on June 27, 1973 in Bielefeld.

Awards

• Iron Cross (1939) 2nd Class, November 16, 1939
• Iron Cross (1939) 1st Class, December 15, 1939
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross , August 4, 1940
• Destroyer War Badge
• Narvik shield
• Wound badge (1939) in black

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bernd Bölscher : Hitler's Navy in Land Warfare: A Documentation. Books on Demand, Norderstedt, 2015, ISBN 978-3-7386-3509-6 , p. 119
2. ↑ http://www.deutsches-marinearchiv.de/Archiv/1935-1945/Einheiten/infanterie/regimenter/berger.htm
3. ↑ http://www.bundesheer.at/truppendienst/verbindungen/artikel.php?id=1176 Narvik 1940, in the Austrian Armed Forces: Troop Service, Volume 322, Issue 4/2011

literature

• Manfred Dörr: The knight's cross bearers of the surface forces of the navy; Volume 1: A-K. Biblio Verlag, Osnabrück, 1996, ISBN 978-3-7648-2453-2
• Clemens Range: The knight's cross bearers of the Navy. Motorbuch Verlag Stuttgart, 1974, ISBN 978-3-87943-355-1
• Jürgen Rohwer , Gerhard Hümmelchen : Chronicle of the naval war 1939-1945 , Manfred Pawlak VerlagsGmbH, Herrsching, 1968, ISBN 3-88199-009-7
• Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearer 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 .