Hans-Joachim Marseille

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Hans-Joachim Marseille (propaganda recording from 1942)

Hans-Joachim Walter Rudolf Siegfried Marseille (born December 13, 1919 in Charlottenburg near Berlin ; † September 30, 1942 seven kilometers south of Sidi Abdel Rahman , Egypt ) was a German fighter pilot and officer in World War II . As the flying ace with the most kills in the North African theater of war , he became known as the Star of Africa through National Socialist propaganda .

Life

Hans-Joachim Marseille (usually called "Jochen" in private) came from an old Huguenot family on his father's side . His parents were Siegfried Georg Martin Marseille and Charlotte Marie Johanna Pauline Gertrud Riemer. He had a sister. After his parents divorced, he grew up with his mother. Because of the divorce of the parents, the relationship with the father was disturbed all his life. The father was an officer during the First World War and switched to the police force shortly before the birth of his son. He was taken over as a colonel in the army in 1935 and was appointed commander of the Bremen II military district until June 1942. In 1941 he was promoted to major general. From June 1942 he was in command of the location command office 324 in Kursk on the Eastern Front . In January 1944 he was killed by partisans .

Marseille attended the Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium in Berlin-Schöneberg , which he successfully completed at the age of 17. In 1938 he volunteered for the Air Force. During his training in the Fighter Pilot School C (FFS C, later FFS C8), which was stationed at the Wiener Neustadt / West airfield , he was under the command of ex-kuk flying ace Captain Julius Arigi . His flying talent was already evident during his training, but he had problems with discipline.

In August 1940, after intensive pre-war training , Marseille was transferred to Lehrgeschwader 2 on the Channel Coast as a senior ensign , where he had his first enemy contact. During the Battle of Britain on August 24, 1940, his first day of combat, he announced his first aerial victory. On his second day of the fight he shot down his second machine and received the Iron Cross 2nd Class for it, after his fifth shot down, three days later, he received the Iron Cross 1st Class. He ended up at JG 52, but where he could n't get along with his boss, Johannes Steinhoff . During his time on the Channel Coast, he received two disciplinary sentences , including five days' arrest . In February 1941, Marseille was finally transferred to Jagdgeschwader 27, initially to the Döberitz Aviation School . From there it went to North Africa in April 1941, to the Gazala airfield . From then on he flew a Bf 109 with the "Yellow 14" on its side.

During his first enemy flight over Libya , he was able to record his first kill in Africa. In the following weeks more were added, but he drew the displeasure of his immediate superior, Lieutenant Gerhard Homuth , because Marseille broke away from the unit as soon as he saw enemy aircraft and attacked the enemy on his own initiative. This contradicted any rule for dogfights. His group commander, Captain Neumann, also disliked this, but recognized the great flying talent of Marseille.

North Africa.- Lieutenant Ernst-Wilhelm Reinert (left) and Sergeant Maximilian Volke (right) stand next to Hans-Joachim Marseille's Kübelwagen, which he named "Otto" (Italian for 8)

In May 1941, after Marseille had recorded 13 kills, he was finally promoted to lieutenant . Shortly afterwards he had to make an emergency landing in no man's land after heavy hits and only reached his own lines unharmed after a long walk. In the months that followed, Marseille became more and more aware of his duties as a soldier and aviator. He cooperated more and more with his comrades in aerial battles and largely accepted basic military rules. Appointed as Rottenführer , he acquired a remarkable accuracy of hits in countless missions. He belonged to the group of so-called snipers, that is, he tried to hit the enemy by cleverly choosing a lead angle in the staggered movement and, if necessary, from his own movement, which he succeeded more and more often. As a result, he achieved his later victories with very little damage to his own machine and an exceptionally low consumption of ammunition. It continued to hit the opponent's cabin particularly often from the less protected side, which often led to the opposing pilot being sidelined due to death or injury. In December 1941 he received the German Cross in Gold.

Marseille next to a hurricane he shot down in March 1942
German war cemetery Tobruk in which Marseille is buried after being reburied
Grave of the Reuter-Marseille family, cemetery of the Schöneberg village church

On February 22, 1942, Marseille, the most successful pilot in his squadron , scored his 50th kill, for which he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and promoted to lieutenant . When Homuth took over the entire group in May, Marseille moved up to become the squadron leader . In the following months he usually scored two to five enemy kills per aerial combat. Marseille had become a celebrity not only in Germany, but also among its opponents.

In June 1942, Marseille was the second pilot of his fighter squadron to receive the Knight's Cross after 75 victories in the air. At that time he was the 97th soldier to receive this award. On June 17, Jagdgeschwader 27 announced the 100th shooting down of Marseille. This made him the first fighter pilot to hit the 100 mark against Western Allied pilots. The subsequent awarding of the swords to the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves took place in Berlin . Until then, this high honor had only been given to 12 soldiers.

After returning to his squadron, Marseille found a completely different situation: The Air Force had been pushed back on the defensive in Africa. The German pilots faced a sixfold superior opponent, which increased the losses of the squadron. After he was able to record his 126th kill on September 2nd, he was personally awarded the diamonds for the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords by Adolf Hitler . He was only the fourth recipient of this award. In the days that followed, there were more aerial victories and he was mentioned for the fifth time in the Wehrmacht report. On September 24, 1942, at the age of 22, he was promoted to the rank of youngest captain in the Air Force. The superior strength of the enemy and the associated continuous operations also had an effect on Marseille: He was often overtired and exhausted, whereupon Field Marshal Erwin Rommel personally offered him leave from the front. However, Marseille refused, he did not want to leave his season and would rather spend Christmas with his fiancée later.

A Messerschmitt Bf 109 F-4 / Trop (W.Nr. 8673) of the 3./JG 27 flown from Marseille in 1942

On September 30, 1942, the squadron returned from a mission when the machine from Marseille, a Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-2 , caught fire due to a technical defect. Since the windows of the cabin were smeared with oil, he was directed by his comrades to escape to territory controlled by Germany. However, when a jump was finally required, he turned the plane half a roll in a supine position so as not to run the risk of being hit by the tail unit. Because of the heavy smoke development, Marseille did not notice, however, that the machine had gone into a dive while he was freeing himself from the seat belts, so that he was hit by the tail unit when he jumped despite his precautionary measures. He was either dead instantly, or at least passed out; he couldn't pull the parachute cord. Hans-Joachim Marseille was then buried with military honors in Derna .

After the war, Marseilles body was exhumed, transferred to Tobruk to the Africa Corps memorial there and buried there.

Hans-Joachim Marseille achieved 158 victories in 388 enemy flights by the time he died.

Marseille pyramid: memorial at the site of his crash site in Sidi Abd el-Rahman

Marseille pyramid

At the crash site , the 3rd Squadron and their Italian allies of the squadron erected a small pyramid as a cenotaph . On the bronze plaque of the pyramid was written: Here, Captain Hans Joachim Marseille died undefeated . In 1986 his former teammates around Gustav Rödel and Eduard Neumann discovered the Marseille pyramid, which had long been lost. Three years later, his old squad members built a new pyramid (approx. 5 × 5 m base area) on the original site with the original, but now multilingual (German, Italian, Arabic) inscription. In addition to Neumann and other survivors of the relay, representatives of the Egyptian government attended the inauguration of the new pyramid. This pyramid is under the coordinates ' "30 ° 53 26.8  N , 43.3 28 ° 41'"  O coordinates: 30 ° 53 '26.8 "  N , 28 ° 41' 43.3"  O to find.

Awards

reception

Honor

The Air Force of the Federal Republic of Germany honored the fighter pilot by naming a barracks in Appen after him on October 24, 1975 . The Air Force NCO School is located in the Marseille barracks . In May 2017, Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen criticized the naming of barracks after Wehrmacht soldiers as "no longer meaningful for today's Bundeswehr".

filming

documentation

  • Hans-Joachim Marseille - The Star of Africa - In the footsteps of a flying legend (Elisa Film, Distribution Soulfood Music Distribution, 2012)

Biographies

See also

literature

  • Jochen Prien, Peter Rodeike, Gerhard Stemmer: Messerschmitt Bf 109 in use with staff and I./Jagdgeschwader 27 1939–1945. Struve-Druck, Eutin 1998, ISBN 3-923457-46-4 .
  • John Weal: Jagdgeschwader 27 'Africa'. Osprey Publishing, London 2003, ISBN 1-84176-538-4 . (English).

Web links

Commons : Hans-Joachim Marseille  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikivoyage: Marseille Pyramid  - Travel Guide

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Walter A. Musciano: The famous Me-109 and their pilots. ISBN 3-89350-557-1 , p. 133.
  2. ↑ Will the Marseille barracks become the Europa barracks? Abendblatt.de
  3. ^ A b c Hans-Joachim Marseille Library for Huguenot History
  4. ^ Tomb of Hans-Joachim Marseille
  5. ^ SA's remarkable black war heroes , Sunday Independent , June 19, 2016
  6. ↑ a b Gustav Siegfried Rödel - Service in two air forces Air Force Revue, Volume 58 - No. 2 - June 2010, page 14
  7. ↑ Mantelli, Brown, Kittel, Graf: The Messerschmitt Bf 109 , Edizioni REI France, 2019, ISBN 978-2-37297-359-5 , limited preview in Google Book Search
  8. ↑ Jakob Knab : Falsche Glorie: the understanding of tradition of the Bundeswehr, Ch. Links Verlag, 1995, p. 77 [1]
  9. ↑ a b 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 , p. 528.
  10. ^ Günter Fraschka : With swords and diamonds: The bearers of the highest German valor award. 10th edition. Universitas Verlag, Wiesbaden / Munich 2002, ISBN 3-8004-1435-X , p. 58.
  11. ^ Jörg Nimmergut : German medals and decorations until 1945. Volume 4. Württemberg II - German Empire. Central Office for Scientific Order Studies, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-00-001396-2 , p. 2441.
  12. ↑ see database on the website of the Italian President
  13. ↑ MDR website ( Memento from May 27, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
  14. ↑ From: Verfassungsschutz Report 2006. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, May 25, 2007, p. 142 , archived from the original on August 6, 2009 ; accessed on March 22, 2014 .
  15. ↑ Saxon State Ministry of the Interior (ed.): Verfassungsschutzbericht 2000 . Dresden 2001, p. 57 f.
personal data
SURNAME Marseille, Hans-Joachim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Marseille, Hans-Joachim Walter Rudolf Siegfried (full name); Africa, star of; Marseille, Jochen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German fighter pilot in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH December 13, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Charlottenburg b. Berlin
DATE OF DEATH September 30, 1942
Place of death at Sidi Abdel Rahman , Egypt