Gerhard Graf von Schwerin

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General of the armored forces, Count von Schwerin

Gerhard Helmut Detleff Graf von Schwerin (born June 23, 1899 in Hanover , † October 19, 1980 in Tegernsee , Upper Bavaria ) served as a German officer in both world wars. In 1950 he was hired as a "consultant for military and security issues". He played a key role in the rearmament of the Federal Republic of Germany under Konrad Adenauer .

Life

Graf Schwerin was born as the youngest of five children of Kurt Detloff von Schwerin , then police chief in Hanover and later district president in Köslin. He belonged to the noble von Schwerin on, a family of Mecklenburg and Pomeranian Uradels with a long military tradition. He lost his father at the age of eight and grew up practically an only child. After attending grammar schools in Köslin and Anklam , he entered the Kadettenanstalt in Köslin at the age of 15 . When the First World War broke out , he was an ensign in the 2nd Guards Regiment on foot . He was later transferred to the 1st Pomeranian Grenadier Regiment No. 2 . In June 1915 he was promoted to lieutenant and was infantry platoon leader , company commander and battalion adjutant on the eastern and western fronts, most recently with the rank of first lieutenant . After being wounded on September 26, 1918, Count Schwerin experienced the end of the war in the hospital. He was then taken over as a lieutenant in the Reichsheer and served in various free corps , including the Lüttwitz General Command and the Guard Cavalry Rifle Division . In 1920 he left the army.

After a commercial apprenticeship at the coffee trading company in Bremen and a position as head of the transport department of the company for petroleum industry in Berlin, Schwerin returned to the Reichswehr in the summer of 1923 . First he came to the 1st (Prussian) Infantry Regiment in Königsberg , later to the 3rd Infantry Regiment and in 1931 finally to the 18th Infantry Regiment in Paderborn . On May 1, 1933, he was promoted to captain . After two years of general staff training at the Berlin War Academy , he was transferred to the staff of the newly established 22nd Infantry Division in Bremen in October 1935 . After promotion to Major i. G. took over the leadership of the group "USA / England" of the department " Foreign Heere West " at the Army High Command on October 1, 1938 and was promoted to lieutenant colonel on April 1, 1939 in this position . After criticizing Adolf Hitler , he was removed from the General Staff.

Second World War

In October 1939 he took over the 1st Battalion of the Motorized Infantry Regiment "Greater Germany" . In February 1940 he became the regimental commander on his behalf. During the western campaign his regiment fought first in Belgium in the area of Nives , Witry and Neufchâteau , later in France on the Somme .

According to investigations at the beginning of the 21st century, his troops were involved in at least two massacres here. Numerous unarmed Black African members of the French army, so-called Tirailleurs sénégalais , who had already surrendered, were murdered. There is evidence of two massacres of black African soldiers and their European officers. On June 10, 1940, at least 150 Tirailleurs were murdered in the Erquinvillers area on the march to Montdidier (see 24e régiment de tirailleurs sénégalais ). On June 19 and 20, 1940 there was a series of massacres in the Chasselay area , in which the regiment and the SS Totenkopf division murdered around 100 Tirailleurs and their officers. The victims were buried in a specially constructed cemetery of honor in 1942 .

In the spring of 1941 Schwerin was appointed leader of the regimental staff z. b. V. 200 transferred to North Africa. In April 1941 a German-Italian division led by him, the so-called “Kampfgruppe Schwerin”, undertook a long reconnaissance advance into the Fezzan , covering 2,000 km. The "Kampfgruppe Schwerin" was able to take the Mechili oasis and capture over 2,000 British people, including two generals (see Siege of Tobruk ). Schwerin then became commander of the 5th Panzer Regiment of the 5th Light Division , which he briefly led in the fighting in Libya before he was transferred to the Führer Reserve .

On August 1, 1941 he was promoted to colonel and in the same month commander of the 76 motorized infantry regiment of the 20th motorized infantry division on the Eastern Front . There he proved himself in attack and defense on the Volkhov , near Schluesselburg , on the Neva and near Leningrad and received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on January 17, 1942 . In the meantime he was in charge of the 254th Infantry Division . On July 23, 1942, he took command of the 8th Jäger Division .

In October 1942 Schwerin was promoted to major general. From November 1942 he commanded the 16th Infantry Division (motorized) , which was deployed in the southern section of the Eastern Front with the 4th Panzer Army . With this association he fought in the area south of Stalingrad . There his division was the only link between the troops in front of Stalingrad in the north and Army Group A in the Caucasus . In the spring of 1943 the division was withdrawn from the front after heavy losses and replenished and in June 1943 it was reclassified to the Panzergrenadierdivision . Then the division was again subordinated to Army Group South . On May 17, 1943 Schwerin was awarded the Knight's Cross for the services of his division during the retreat . This was followed by heavy fighting at Isjum , Slovyansk , Stepanowsk and Krivoy Rog . For this Schwerin received on November 4, 1943 the swords for the oak leaves of the knight's cross. In March 1944 the division in the Uman area was broken up; their remnants were transferred to France, where the 116th Panzer Division was formed from them under Schwerin's command .

When American , British, French and Canadian forces landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944 (see Operation Overlord ), Schwerin's 116th Panzer Division was north of La Roche-Guyon . Until July 19, General Hans Speidel kept the division in the Paris area as a reserve; then the division moved towards Normandy. Schwerin was deposed as commander of the 116th Panzer Division on August 7, during the Liège operation , after disputes with his immediate superior Hans Freiherr von Funck . The division then escaped the Falaise pocket under the leadership of its first general staff officer , Heinz Günther Guderian . Schwerin took over the command again on August 23.

Schwerin and Heinrich von Lüttwitz , the commander of the 2nd Panzer Division , wrote a memorandum in which he called for the end of the war.

After heavy fighting in retreats in France and Belgium, Schwerin and his division reached Aachen on September 12, 1944 , at which point Aachen had already been evacuated. Aachen lay between the first and second defensive positions of the west wall and was the first major German city to be attacked by the Allies. Schwerin's division was charged with defending the city.

Schwerin was relieved of his command on September 14th because he had allegedly obstructed the evacuation of the population. A court martial was initiated and Schwerin was initially, as it was officially called, transferred to the Führerreserve to “restore his health” . The proceedings against him were closed in November 1944 with a warning.

After the war, the Aachen city administration thanked him, who wanted to save the city from destruction by naming a street after him in 1963. As early as 1957, Schwerin was allowed to register in the city's Golden Book . The City Council of Aachen renamed the street Kornelimünsterweg by a large majority on August 22, 2007 (as the street was called in the following) after an expert report by RWTH Aachen University could not provide any evidence of a "heroic deed" by Schwerin in Aachen. In addition, there was the charge that Schwerin was responsible for the fact that on September 13, 1944, two fourteen-year-old boys were shot in the city as alleged looters.

At the beginning of December 1944, Schwerin took over the 90th Panzer Grenadier Division in Italy. On December 26, 1944, he became the leader of the LXXVI. Armored Corps of Army Group C in Northern Italy. On April 1, 1945 he was promoted to General of the Panzer Troops and at the same time was appointed Commanding General of the LXXVI. Panzer Corps. On April 25, 1945 he was taken prisoner by the British , from which he was released in 1947.

post war period

On May 24, 1950, Schwerin was hired by the Adenauer government (the first cabinet after the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany ) as an "advisor for military and security issues". Adenauer commissioned him with the planning of a “mobile federal gendarmerie” as well as with the processing of security issues of the federal and state authorities. The Schwerin office carried the code name " Central Office for Home Service " (ZfH). Since the beginning of the Korean crisis in June 1950, the United States in particular had been demanding a German defense contribution for Western Europe, which made the plan for a "Republican Guard" appear ineffective. The Schwerins office became the first official institution in the Federal Republic of Germany to systematically deal with all questions relating to a West German military contribution. Schwerin was commissioned by Adenauer to prepare for the expert conference from October 5th to 9th, 1950; this summarized the result of relevant investigations in the Himmeroder memorandum (named after the conference location) , which formulated basic planning projects for the later Bundeswehr . Schwerin himself was not a member of the expert conference. This was the first step towards German rearmament under the control of the Western powers . Schwerin criticized that Adenauer's informal advisory group of former generals defamed precisely those officers as traitors who had resisted the Nazi regime. With the dissolution of the "Central Office for Homeland Service" at the end of October 1950, Schwerin was dismissed by Adenauer (shortly after Schwerin had told journalists that the Federal Republic was preparing a conscription law). The duties of the ZfH were now taken over by Blank .

Schwerin was active as a CIA agent in West Germany during this time .

When the Bundeswehr was established, Schwerin became a defense policy advisor to the FDP in the German Bundestag . He stayed that way until shortly before his death.

In the last months of his life, Schwerin suffered from the effects of a stroke . He died in the Tegernsee Hospital and was buried on November 7, 1980 in Rottach-Egern .

Awards

literature

  • Peter M. Quadflieg : Gerhard Graf von Schwerin . Wehrmacht general, chancellor advisor, lobbyist. 1st edition. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2015, ISBN 978-3-506-78229-8 .
  • Peter M. Quadflieg : Gerhard Graf von Schwerin (1899–1980): Career paths of a general between the German Empire and the Federal Republic , Diss. RWTH Aachen 2014.
  • Christoph Rass, René Rohrkamp and Peter M. Quadflieg: General Graf von Schwerin and the end of the war in Aachen. Event, myth, analysis. Shaker, Aachen 2007, ISBN 978-3-8322-6623-3 , pdf (118 pages)
  • Guido Baumann, Otto Bönnemann and Meven Walter: The tragedy of Aachen. Documentation about the execution of Karl Schwartz and Johann Herren. Aachen 2003, ISBN 3-921295-51-3 .
  • Fritz Memminger, family association of former members of the Greyhound Division eV (Hrsg.): The war history of the Greyhound Division. Bochum 1962–1980

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Peter M. Quadflieg: Gerhard Graf von Schwerin. Wehrmacht general, chancellor advisor, lobbyist , p. 294.
  2. ^ Ludger Tewes , The Panzergrenadierdivision Grossdeutschland in the campaign against the Soviet Union from 1942 to 1945 , Verlag Klartext Essen 2020, ISBN 978-3-8375-2089-7 , pp. 40–43.
  3. ^ Raffael Scheck: Hitler's African victims. The German Army massacres of Black French soldiers in 1940. Cambridge UP 2006, ISBN 978-0-521-85799-4 , here especially pp. 124–126 and 154–157; German: Hitler's African victims. The Wehrmacht massacre of black French soldiers. Association A, Berlin 2009
  4. ^ Christoph Rass, René Rohrkamp, ​​Peter M. Quadflieg: Gerhard Graf von Schwerin and the end of the war in Aachen - event, myth, analysis. Aachen 2007. Full text ( Memento from November 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (118 pages)
  5. ^ German Federal Archives : On the way to the Ministry of Defense: The Central Office for Homeland Service and the "Blank Office" 1950 - 1955 ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).
  6. ↑ Alaric Searle (2012): Internecine Secret Service Wars Revisited. The Intelligence Career of Count Gerhard von Schwerin, 1945–1956 . Military History Journal : Vol. 71, No. 1, pp. 25-55.
  7. ↑ Source: Obituary in SPIEGEL, see web links
  8. ↑ a b c Ranking list of the German Reichsheeres , Ed .: Reichswehrministerium , Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin 1925, p. 188.
  9. ↑ 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. 6979.
  10. ↑ rwth-aachen.de
  11. ↑ Three volumes: 16th Infantry Division (motorized) 7/1/40 - 10/1/41; 16th Panzer Grenadier Division October 2, 41st - March 30, 44; 116th Panzer Division 3/30/44 - 3/18/45, 2198 pages

Remarks

  1. ↑ He never became an honorary citizen, although this is often claimed.
personal data
SURNAME Schwerin, Gerhard Graf von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schwerin, Gerhard Helmut Detleff Graf von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, most recently General of the Armored Force in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanover
DATE OF DEATH October 19, 1980
Place of death Tegernsee