Georg Lindemann

This article deals with the German army officer. For the social democratic local authority, see Georg Lindemann (politician) .

Georg Lindemann (photo montage. The knight's cross was added to an earlier photo in 1940)

Georg Lindemann (born March 8, 1884 in Osterburg (Altmark) , † September 25, 1963 in Freudenstadt ) was a German army officer (since July 1942 Colonel General ). As an officer, Lindemann served in the Prussian army during the First World War and, after serving briefly in a volunteer corps, made a career in the Reichswehr and Wehrmacht . During the Second World War (1939-1945), Lindemann initially commanded the 36th Infantry Division and the L. Army Corps before he took over the 18th Army in 1942 . After he was promoted to commander in chief of Army Group North in early May 1944 , he was dismissed by Adolf Hitler in early July 1944 because of his refusal to sacrifice the occupation of the "permanent place" Polotsk . Lindemann experienced the end of the war as " Wehrmacht commander in Denmark", where in May 1945 he pleaded for the continuation of the "final battle". He led the German occupation forces back into the German Reich and into British captivity. He himself was imprisoned by the Allies and then in Danish custody, from which he was released in 1948.

Life

Youth and First World War

Promotions

• February 26, 1903 flagjunker
• 18 October 1903 Ensign
• August 18, 1904 Lieutenant
• August 18, 1912 First Lieutenant
• November 28, 1914 Rittmeister
• April 1, 1926 Major
• February 1, 1931 Lieutenant Colonel
• June 1, 1933 Colonel
• April 20, 1936 Major General
• April 20, 1938 Lieutenant General
• November 1, 1940 General of the Cavalry
• 5th July 1942 Colonel General

Lindemann was born on March 8, 1884 as the son of the royal Prussian state court and secret judge Hermann Lindemann and his wife Elisbeth (née Placke) in Osterburg . He attended the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in Hanover and made his Abitur there .

After graduating from school, Lindemann joined the Magdeburg Dragoon Regiment No. 6 in Mainz on February 26, 1903 as a flag junior . After he had risen to the rank of first lieutenant , he was transferred to the Jäger Regiment on Horses No. 13 in Saarlouis on October 1, 1913 . From April 1, 1914, he was posted to the Great General Staff in Berlin , although he had not previously attended the military academy , as is usual . In the general staff he got to know his later superior Georg von Küchler , who was also posted there. Lindemann married Annemarie von der Osten in 1907 , with whom he had children Ernst (1908), Rosemarie (1910) and Erika (1912).

Because of the outbreak of the First World War , Lindemann could not finish his training in the General Staff. When his regiment was mobilized , he returned to the latter and was deployed as a squadron chief on the western front . After he was promoted to Rittmeister here at the end of November 1914 , he transferred to the General Staff of the Posen Corps on December 6th . This was followed by assignments in the General Staff of the Guard Reserve Corps (February 3, 1915), Army High Command 12 (June 7, 1915) on the Eastern Front , Army High Command 11 (October 29, 1915) in the Balkans and the VII Reserve Corps (March 31, 1916) and Army High Command 1 (July 19, 1916) on the Western Front. On January 12, 1917, Lindemann became Chief of Staff of the 220th Infantry Division , until he was transferred to the Army Group of Crown Prince Rupprecht of Bavaria on May 16, 1918 as an "Army officer" . In August 1918 he was slightly wounded. On September 2, 1918, Lindemann again took over the post of Chief of Staff, this time with the 200th Infantry Division . During the First World War, Lindemann was only briefly on the frontline, but despite incomplete staff training, he served in various staffs.

During the war he received the Iron Cross of the 2nd class on September 9, 1914 and that of the 1st class on July 28, 1915. On May 20, 1917, he was also awarded the Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with Swords.

Revolution time

Freikorps in Bavaria 1919

The year 1919 was a serious turning point for Lindemann. He summed up in a later essay: “With the overthrow of all the concepts of the form of government, national honor and dignity, of duty and law, of decency and morals, which had hitherto been considered irrevocable, a worldview broke for the officer.” In the conviction “the Reich "First of all as an empire in some form to be saved from the abyss," he took part in the suppression of communist uprisings in Munich , Halle , the Ruhr area and Hamburg that year .

Soon after the signing of the Armistice of Compiègne (11 November 1918) and the outbreak of the November Revolution came Lindemann such as an officer of the army on 10 January 1919th b. V. as Commander in Chief East . At the same time he belonged to the General Staff of the XXII. Reserve Corps that belonged to the Eastern Border Guard . But only a few weeks later he was transferred back to his main troop unit, the 13th Hunter Regiment on Horseback , which was meanwhile in Colmar . However, this only served to demobilize the unit, which was to be dissolved shortly afterwards. Lindemann therefore joined the Grenadier Regiment on Horseback No. 3 as squadron chief on March 10, 1919 . Almost simultaneously on March 23, 1919 he was assigned to the Guard Cavalry Rifle Division and thus also to the General Staff of the Volunteer Division of Lettow-Vorbeck . With this association, Lindemann took part in the suppression of the Munich Soviet Republic in early May 1919 and marched with him on July 1, 1919 because of the " Sülze riots " in Hamburg. Here Lindemann left the Freikorps formations . In August 1919 he was commanded as a general staff officer to the garrison elder in Hamburg, Altona and Wandsbek . At the same time, he was also a member of Military District Command II from October 1 . On November 30, 1919, he received another command, this time as a teacher at the infantry school in Munich.

Career in the Reichswehr and Wehrmacht

A squadron of the Reichswehr in 1928

Lindemann was accepted into the Reichswehr in 1921 and initially left in his post as a teacher. On September 15, 1922, he took over as a troop officer in the 2nd Squadron in the 7th Cavalry Regiment in Breslau , before moving to the staff of the 2nd Cavalry Division (also in Breslau) on March 1, 1925 . Here he was promoted to major on April 1, 1926 . This was Lindemann's first promotion in almost twelve years. Two years later he became a course director at the cavalry school in Hanover . After Lindemann was promoted to lieutenant colonel on February 1, 1931 , he took over command of the 13th Reiter Regiment on October 1 of that year . In this function he became a colonel on June 1, 1933 and commander of the Hanover War School on October 1, 1934 . On April 20, 1936, Lindemann was promoted to major general and on October 6, he was appointed commander of the 36th Infantry Division , which was just being reorganized in Kaiserslautern . This was followed on April 1, 1938, when he was promoted to lieutenant general .

In these years Lindemann was also active as a military writer; he wrote several essays. In 1936, the essay Die Staatserhaltende Kraft des Deutschen Soldierentums appeared in the first year of the Military Scientific Review . In this he saw in the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) and the Prussian defeat of 1806/07 examples that only the will to persevere and the ethos of the officers can save a state from collapse in times of crisis, as happened from 1918 to 1923 . With quotes from Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf , he spoke several times of the "threatening specter of Bolshevism [...] with its incalculable consequences for our culture in relation to the events of the November Revolution."

In another essay, Lindemann made a name for himself as an advocate of the war of movement . However, he did not want to allow the motorized troops to have a decisive effect. He argued that motorized troops in a modern war would always encounter the motorized troops of the opponent and therefore they could not bring any innovation to operational warfare . Even armored vehicles would hardly be able to break through an enemy position independently after the development of anti-tank weapons . He therefore advocated using the tanks to support the infantry and only tactically, but not operationally in larger units. This attitude met with the decided rejection of Major General Heinz Guderian , the commander of the 2nd Panzer Division and "creator of the German armored weapon". In the same year Guderian replied to Lindemann's essay with his own text.

Second World War

General Lindemann on a visit to the front (March 1942)

Division commander and commanding general of an army corps

At the beginning of the Second World War , the 36th Infantry Division was also mobilized. It was subordinated to the 1st Army (Colonel General Erwin von Witzleben ) and moved to the western border in the Mörsbach area during the seat of the war , in which there was little contact with the opposing French troops . At the beginning of the western campaign on May 10, 1940, Lindemann's division was subordinate to the VII Army Corps ( General of the Infantry Eugen von Schobert ), which in turn was attached to the Army High Command 16 of Colonel General Ernst Busch . Schobert and Busch were both of the same seniority, possibly even younger than Lindemann, and were nevertheless already higher in rank. The historian John Hürter ruled: "Georg von Lindemann was [...] continues to be significantly ahead of only division commander and limped age-mates as bush or Reichenau behind." From the 14th June 1940 participated the 36th Infantry Division at the breakthrough of Army Group C through the French Maginot Line . For his careful management, Lindemann was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on August 5, 1940 .

On October 1, 1940, Lindemann was promoted to commanding general of the newly established L. Army Corps and a month later to the rank of general of the cavalry . The L. Army Corps was relocated to Bulgaria in the spring of 1941 and from there deployed under the command of the 12th Army ( Field Marshal Wilhelm List ) from April 6 to 23, 1941 in the Balkan campaign . The corps here belonged to the army reserve for the greater part of the time and rarely got into combat. Following the Balkan campaign, Lindemann's General Command was relocated to East Prussia in the area of Army Group North (Field Marshal Ritter von Leeb ) in order to take part in the attack on the Soviet Union . Lindemann's office was not involved in the immediate preparation for the attack. He himself later stated that he only found out about the planned " Operation Barbarossa " a few days before June 22, 1941 .

The L. Army Corps returned to command of the 16th Army in July 1941 and advanced with it on the southern flank of Army Group North in the direction of Velikiye Luki . On July 28, 1941, Lindemann's corps was briefly subordinated to the 9th Army of Army Group Center . On August 2, there was bitter fighting over the heights southwest of Velikiye Luki, in the course of which the 251st Infantry Division of the L. Army Corps suffered heavy losses and had to move behind the Lovat after running out of ammunition. Lindemann shifted the blame for the failure on the commander of the division Lieutenant General Hans Kratzert , who was dismissed from his post as a result. An investigation absolved Kratzert of any guilt and reinstated him as a higher artillery commander in the 18th Army . The chief of staff of the 251st Infantry Division and later head of the Military History Research Office of the Bundeswehr Major Hans Meier-Welcker wrote about Lindemann's leadership in a letter on August 5, 1941:

“For some time now we have been subordinate to a command authority that is so unfavorably composed and therefore unpleasant as I have hardly ever seen a staff. This spoils us a lot. "

- Letter from Major Hans Meier-Welcker on August 5, 1941

Under the leadership of Panzer Group Command 4 , Lindemann's L. Army Corps took part in the advance on Leningrad in September 1941 . For some time the corps was scheduled to march into Leningrad, and it was supposed to work closely with Einsatzgruppe A. Lindemann himself was to become city commander. Panzer Group 4 was withdrawn in the second half of September for the planned offensive against Moscow (→ Company Taifun ). Lindemann's L. Army Corps remained south of Pushkino and maintained the " Leningrad Blockade ". It was under the command of the 18th Army under Colonel General Georg von Küchler, whom Lindemann had known since 1914.

In the winter of 1941/42, during the defense of the Soviet counter-offensives on the Volkhov (→ Battle of the Volkhov ) and south of Lake Ilmen (→ Kesselschlacht von Demjansk ) in the area of Army Group North, there was a leadership crisis. On January 17, 1942, Hitler accepted Ritter von Leeb's offer of departure. In his place, Colonel General von Küchler took over command of Army Group North . The choice of a new commander in chief of the 18th Army fell on Georg Lindemann, who took up this post on January 18, 1942. General of the Cavalry Philipp Kleffel took over command of the L. Army Corps .

Army and Army Group Commander

Combat area of ​​the 18th Army (May 1942 – January 1943)

Under Lindemann's leadership, the 18th Army succeeded in enclosing the Soviet 2nd Shock Army on the Volkhov and rubbing them up by the end of June 1942. Lindemann was promoted to Colonel General on July 5, 1942. In the following weeks, on the instructions of the High Command of the Army (OKH), parts of the 11th Army under General Field Marshal Erich von Manstein were moved to the area of ​​Lindemann's troops. Their mission consisted of taking Leningrad as part of the "Northern Lights Operation". When, at the end of August 1942, a Soviet offensive began to relieve the city in the area of ​​the 18th Army (→ First Ladoga Battle ), Hitler again instructed Manstein to defend it. Manstein was "a little embarrassing" Lindemann's "this obvious resetting", he called Lindemann "an old friend from the First World War". In autumn 1942 AOK 11 was withdrawn again because the "Operation Northern Lights" had been postponed for an indefinite period. Lindemann was now again responsible for maintaining the blockade of Leningrad.

“The cradle of the Bolshevik Revolution, as the city of Lenin, it is the second capital of the Soviets. Their liberation will always remain one of the main goals of the Bolsheviks. For the Soviet regime, the liberation of Leningrad would have the same significance as the defense of Moscow or the battle for Stalingrad. "

- General Lindemann's order of the day

In January 1943, however, Lindemann only partially managed to fend off another Soviet relief offensive (→ Second Ladoga Battle ). The Soviet Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts managed to break the blockade of the city on January 18, 1943 and gain a narrow corridor. However, when they tried to expand this success in the summer of 1943 (→ Third Ladoga Battle ), they were rejected by Lindemann's associations. For this success he was awarded the Knight's Cross Oak Leaves on August 21, 1943.

According to the American historians Samuel W. Mitcham and Gene Mueller, General Field Marshal von Küchler applied for the withdrawal of his army group in the following months. Lindemann, who was asked by Hitler to comment on this, is said to have expressed confidence that he would be able to fend off further offensives by the Red Army. Nevertheless, the Army Group was then prohibited from withdrawing early. However , the 18th Army was hardly able to counter the major Soviet offensive in January 1944 (→ Leningrad-Novgorod Operation ) . After their position on the flanks had been breached, the army finally received permission on January 28 to evade the Luga . Colonel-General Walter Model took over the command of Army Group North on January 31, 1944 . He pushed through Hitler's decision to retreat further into the expanded " panther position " which the 18th Army took up on February 17th. On March 1, 1944, she made the front again in her new position. The collapse of the Army Group was thus avoided for the time being. Model was transferred to the head of Army Group Northern Ukraine. His successor in the command of Army Group North was on March 31, 1944 Georg Lindemann. At first he was only given the task of leading the Army Group, and it was not until May 6, 1944 that he was officially appointed Commander-in-Chief.

When Lindemann took over the command, the army group was far inferior to the opposing Red Army units. It consisted only of 30 infantry divisions with 110,248 men, 30 battle tanks and 206 assault guns . The Soviet superiority was estimated at 8: 1. When the Red Army began its expected summer offensive ( Operation Bagration ) and quickly made deep incursions into the neighboring Army Group Center , the connection between the Army groups was broken. A gap more than 40 km wide was created between them, through which Soviet units advanced towards the Baltic Sea . Only the " fixed place " Polotsk could still be held. Lindemann vehemently advocated abandoning the city and withdrawing the entire Northern Army Group to the Daugava . With the evacuation of the Baltic region , the front was to be shortened and the units that had become free were used for operational counter-attacks. However, Hitler forbade such a movement and ordered that Polotsk be held and the original situation restored by a counterattack. Lindemann then offered his resignation, which was not granted. Only two divisions with eight battalions and 44 assault guns could be made available for the ordered counterattack , which were to advance 60 km through two Soviet armies. The attack south of Polotsk began on July 2nd and was unsuccessful. At the same time, the situation was made worse by the fact that the Soviet 4th Shock Army hit a deep break north of Polotsk and threatened to enclose the entire German group. Lindemann therefore ordered the counterattack to be stopped and also requested the evacuation of the city, which was also approved, whereupon Hitler finally accepted his offer of resignation. On July 4, 1944, he handed over command of Army Group North to General of the Infantry Johannes Frießner . According to the military historian Karl-Heinz Frieser , Lindemann saved his "troops from a catastrophe" through his unauthorized action .

Wehrmacht commander in Denmark

Remaining German sphere of influence in May 1945 (blue)

Lindemann spent the following months without further employment in the Führerreserve . His second marriage also took place at this time; he married Maria Woller. On January 27, 1945, Lindemann was deployed as " Wehrmacht commander Denmark" to mobilize mainly available military resources for the "final battle". The German occupying power in Denmark was largely thinned out in favor of the western front until, in an emergency, it would not even have been able to defend larger cities like Copenhagen. Lindemann now concentrated on the preparation of “ locking positions ” on the Great and Little Belt . On February 26, 1945, a bomb exploded under a train that Lindemann was traveling on in Denmark. Some people died, Lindemann was uninjured. His sleeping car derailed from the explosion. When the end of the war became apparent, Lindemann judged the defense of Denmark to be hopeless against Hitler's successor and new head of government, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz . In a briefing between the German civilian and military heads of the occupation troops of Denmark and Norway with the new Reich government on May 3, 1945 in Flensburg - Mürwik , Lindemann was then, similar to Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel , Colonel General Alfred Jodl and the Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Norway Franz Böhme , not averse to the idea of ​​a final "final battle". Even after Hitler's suicide, Lindemann wanted to fight the “last decent battle of this war”. Dönitz refused and so on May 4th near Lüneburg - Wendisch Evern there was a partial surrender to the British armed forces. Lindemann was also unable to assert himself with his demand to keep the Hitler salute.

When the rumor arose that the authorized representative in Denmark, SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Best , had placed himself under the protection of the Danish freedom movement, Lindemann reported to Dönitz that he wanted to shoot Best "as a traitor [...]." The Grand Admiral only allowed his arrest. The rumor turned out to be false and Werner Best was not arrested. Dönitz even asked Lindemann to cooperate with the British associations. The British Field Marshal Bernard L. Montgomery demanded the withdrawal of all German troops from Denmark with the exception of refugees, wounded, sick and foreign aid workers. Thereupon the "Army Group Lindemann" was formed from the German units on May 6, 1945 and placed under General Field Marshal Ernst Busch's Commander-in-Chief Northwest . Lindemann coordinated the details of the planned repatriation of the military units in the following days with the British General Richard Dewing . During the withdrawal, Danish civilians and British soldiers attacked members of the Wehrmacht, against which Lindemann protested sharply. The historian John Zimmermann wrote in 2006 that Lindemann had wanted to burn his soldiers in a senseless "final battle" just days before; Lindemann's behavior was either a sign of “particular naivety or shamelessness”.

post war period

During the repatriation of his units, Lindemann remained at large at his headquarters in Silkeborg, Denmark ; he was captured by British forces on June 6, 1945. He was released from prison on July 21, 1947. During this time he testified several times in interviews for the Nuremberg trials . He was not charged himself. However, on September 26th that year he was arrested again and extradited to Denmark to be charged there. However, no charges were made. Lindemann was released from Danish captivity on May 15, 1948. He then lived in seclusion in Freudenstadt , where he died in 1963.

According to his own statement, Lindemann did not pass on the notorious " Commissar's order " to his subordinates during the war against the Soviet Union . In a survey during the Nuremberg trials , he said: "Orders are orders, but still the older leaders have not run any command, and I was one of them." Similarly, he behaved later in his own words and in terms of the " Military Jurisdiction Decree " of May 13, 1941, which lifted the obligation to persecute members of the Wehrmacht for crimes against the civilian population. As Commander-in-Chief of the 18th Army , he confirmed death sentences imposed on German soldiers. In one case this concerned a field post secretary who had killed a Russian girl, in another a private man who had killed a Russian man because he was against his sister's relationship with the German soldier.

Charles Whiting yet described Lindemann as "ardent Nazi" ( " a fervent Nazi ") . Richard Brett-Smith countered this by saying that Lindemann himself had been in a dispute with the Reich Main Security Office of the SS in the summer of 1942 because he had complained about the shooting of prisoners by the 2nd SS Infantry Brigade. He therefore sees no evidence for the claim that Lindemann was a Nazi. Lindemann self-insured in 1948 in a statement that he had given to understand Nazi party leaders: "I do not interfere in the political affairs of the party, do not mix yourself in my military affairs, or I'm going hostile." In addition, the former Air Force general expressed Herbert Rieckhoff 1945: “Was one z. If, for example, a guest at the table of Colonel General Georg Lindemann of the 18th Army, then, with a strict view, almost every word was treason as soon as the 'higher command' was spoken of. "

Later, Samuel W. Mitcham and Gene Mueller attempted to provide evidence of Lindemann's positive attitude towards National Socialism. They explained that only Lindemann's "pro-Nazi attitude" ( " pro-Nazi attitude ") , he was appointed commander of the 18th Army could explain because he had otherwise done nothing to particularly distinguish. In fact, of the three other corps commanders in the army, two (General of the Artillery Albert Wodrig and General of the Infantry Kuno-Hans von Both ) were senior than Lindemann and the third (General of the Infantry Mauritz von Wiktorin ) were at least equal. In addition, Lindemann had received an impressive donation of 200,000 Reichsmarks from Hitler in the autumn of 1943 .

literature

• Richard Brett-Smith: Hitler's Generals . Osprey Publishing, London 1976, ISBN 0-85045-073-X .
• Karl-Heinz Frieser (Ed.): The Eastern Front 1943/44 - The War in the East and on the Side Fronts . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt , Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-421-06235-2 , pp. 278–339 (= The German Reich and the Second World War . Vol. 8), Ed .: Military History Research Office .
• Johannes Hürter : Hitler's Army Leader - The German Supreme Commanders in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42 . 2nd Edition. R. Oldenbourg Verlag , Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-486-58341-0 (= sources and representations on contemporary history . Vol. 66).
• Georg Lindemann: The state-preserving force of the German soldiery . In: Military Scientific Review . No. 1, 1936, pp. 291-308.
• Georg Lindemann: Fire and Movement in the Land War of the Present . In: Military Scientific Review . No. 2, 1937, pp. 362-377.
• Samuel W. Mitcham , Gene Mueller: Hitler's Commanders . Scarborough House, London 1992, ISBN 0-8128-4014-3 .
• John Zimmermann : The German military warfare in the west 1944/45 . In: Rolf-Dieter Müller (Ed.): The collapse of the German Reich in 1945 and the consequences of the Second World War . Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, Munich 2008, ISBN 3-421-06237-4 , pp. 277-489 (= The German Reich and the Second World War . Vol. 10/1).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Dermot Bradley (ed.): Die Generale des Heeres 1921–1945 . Volume 7, Bissendorf 2004, p. 536 f.
2. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Johannes Hürter : Hitler's Army Leader - The German Commanders-in-Chief in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42 . Munich 2007, p. 644 f.
3. ↑ Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Army Leader - The German Commanders-in-Chief in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42 . Munich 2007, p. 58, footnote 144 and p. 156, footnote 132.
4. ^ Georg Lindemann: The state-sustaining power of the German soldiery . In: Military Scientific Review . No. 1, 1936, p. 299.
5. ^ Georg Lindemann: The state-sustaining power of the German soldiery . In: Military Scientific Review . No. 1, 1936, p. 300.
6. ↑ Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Army Leader - The German Commanders-in-Chief in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42 . Munich 2007, p. 89.
7. ^ Georg Lindemann: The state-sustaining power of the German soldiery . In: Military Scientific Review . No. 1, 1936, pp. 291 and 300.
8. ^ Georg Lindemann: Fire and Movement in Land Warfare of the Present . In: Militärwissenschaftliche Rundschau 2 (1937), pp. 362–377.
9. ↑ Heinz Guderian: The tank attack in motion and fire . In: Journal of the Reich Association of German Officers 16 (1937).
10. ↑ Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Army Leader - The German Commanders-in-Chief in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42 . Munich 2007, p. 171.
11. ↑ Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Army Leader - The German Commanders-in-Chief in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42 . Munich 2007, p. 225, footnote 109.
12. ^ Hans Meier-Welcker: Notes of a General Staff Officer 1939–1942 . Freiburg / Breisgau 1982, p. 125 f.
13. ^ Hans Meier-Welcker: Notes of a General Staff Officer 1939–1942 . Freiburg / Breisgau 1982, p. 127.
14. ↑ Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Army Leader - The German Commanders-in-Chief in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42 . Munich 2007, p. 545.
15. ↑ Ernst Klink: The operation management . In: Horst Boog, Jürgen Förster, Joachim Hoffmann , Ernst Klink, Rolf-Dieter Müller , Gerd R. Ueberschär : The attack on the Soviet Union (= Military History Research Office [ed.]: The German Reich and the Second World War . Volume 4 ). 2nd Edition. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-421-06098-3 , pp. 630 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
16. ↑ Erich von Manstein: Lost victories . Munich 1976, pp. 200 and 296.
17. ^ Harrison E. Salisbury: 900 Days - The Siege of Leningrad . Frankfurt / Main 1970, p. 536.
18. ↑ Samuel W. Mitcham, Gene Mueller: Hitler's Commanders . London 1992, p. 59 f.
19. ^ Karl-Heinz Frieser: The retreat battles of Army Group North to Courland . In: ders. (Ed.): The Eastern Front 1943/44 - The War in the East and on the Side Fronts . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2007, p. 623 f.
20. ^ Karl-Heinz Frieser: The retreat battles of Army Group North to Courland . In: ders. (Ed.): The Eastern Front 1943/44 - The War in the East and on the Side Fronts . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2007, pp. 626–630.
21. ^ Karl-Heinz Frieser: The retreat battles of Army Group North to Courland . In: ders. (Ed.): The Eastern Front 1943/44 - The War in the East and on the Side Fronts . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2007, p. 665.
22. ↑ John Zimmermann: The German military warfare in the west 1944/45 . In: Rolf-Dieter Müller (Ed.): The collapse of the German Reich in 1945 and the consequences of the Second World War . Munich 2008, pp. 382–385.
23. ↑ FAZ.net: the last weeks of the war
24. ↑ Bernd Wegner : The end of the war in Scandinavia . In: Karl-Heinz Frieser : (Ed.): The Eastern Front 1943/44 - The War in the East and on the Side Fronts . Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2007, p. 1004.
25. ↑ John Zimmermann : The German military warfare in the west 1944/45 . Pp. 402 and 468.
26. ^ Heinrich Schwendemann : Strategy of self-destruction. The Wehrmacht leadership in the "final battle" for the "Third Reich" , in: Rolf-Dieter Müller / Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), The Wehrmacht. Myth and Reality , Oldenbourg 1999, pp. 224–244, here: 243.
27. ↑ Ian Kershaw : The End. London 2011, ISBN 978-0-14-101421-0 , p. 367. Kershaw describes Lindemann as Commander-in-Chief in Norway.
28. ↑ John Zimmermann: The German military warfare in the west 1944/45 . P. 385 f.
29. ↑ John Zimmermann: The German military warfare in the west 1944/45 . P. 386 f.
30. ↑ John Zimmermann: Duty to Downfall. German military warfare in the west 1944/45 . P. 393.
31. ↑ In detail: Karl Christian Lammers : Late trials and mild sentences - the war crimes trials against Germans in Denmark . In: Norbert Frei (Hrsg.): Transnational Politics of the Past - Dealing with German war criminals after the Second World War . Göttingen 2006, pp. 351-370, here p. 361.
32. ^ Statement by Lindemann on September 29, 1947 (IfZ Nuremberg), cf. Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Army Leader - The German Supreme Commanders in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42 . Munich 2007, p. 65.
33. ↑ Lindemann's affidavit in Neu-Ulm on June 21, 1946, quoted in: Alfred de Zayas : The Wehrmacht Investigation Center . 3. Edition. Munich 1980, p. 73.
34. ^ Charles Whiting: The End of the War - Europe, April 15 – May 23, 1945 . Stein & Day Pub, 1973, p. 90.
35. ↑ Richard Brett-Smith: Hitler's Generals . London 1976, p. 173 f.
36. ↑ Johannes Hürter: Hitler's Army Leader - The German Commanders-in-Chief in the War against the Soviet Union 1941/42 . Munich 2007, p. 133 f fn. 62.
37. ↑ Quoted from: Georg Meyer: Effects of July 20, 1944 on the internal structure of the Wehrmacht until the end of the war and on the soldier's self-image in the run-up to the West German defense contribution until 1950/51 . In: Thomas Vogel (Ed.): Uprising of conscience - Military resistance against Hitler and the Nazi regime 1933–1945 . 6th edition. Hamburg / Berlin / Bonn 2001, p. 302.
38. ↑ Samuel W. Mitcham, Gene Mueller: Hitler's Commanders . London 1992, p. 59.

This article was added to the list of excellent articles on March 30, 2010 in this version .