Helmuth von Pannwitz

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Helmuth von Pannwitz (born October 14, 1898 in Botzanowitz , † January 16, 1947 in Moscow ) was a German lieutenant general and commanding general of the XV. Cossack cavalry corps of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II .

Helmuth von Pannwitz (1943);
Third from the left in the first row

Life

family

Helmuth von Pannwitz came from the Prussian noble family Pannwitz , who were wealthy in Lusatia and Silesia . He was the second son of the Prussian senior official Wilhelm von Pannwitz (1854-1931), tenant of the Botzanowitz domain, and his wife Hertha, née Retter (1876-1963). He was married to Ingeborg Neuland (1916–1997). The marriage resulted in two daughters and one son.

Career

Empire

At the age of twelve he attended the cadet school in Wahlstatt as a cadet . a. Paul von Hindenburg and Manfred von Richthofen belonged, and later moved to the main cadet institute in Lichterfelde near Berlin.

Shortly after the outbreak of World War I , he volunteered in the Uhlan regiment “Kaiser Alexander III. von Russland ”(West Prussian) No. 1 of the Prussian Army and took part in the fighting in France and the Carpathians . Because of "bravery in front of the enemy" he was appointed lieutenant in March 1915 at the age of 16 , then wounded several times and awarded both classes of the Iron Cross .

Interwar period

After the First World War, Pannwitz joined the Aulock Freikorps , which was used during the Polish uprisings in connection with the Upper Silesian referendum and later became famous and notorious during the Kapp Putsch in Breslau .

He evaded an arrest warrant because of an urgent suspicion of murdering the editor of the Schlesische Arbeiter-Zeitung Bernhard Schottländer by fleeing to Poland . Under a false name he became one of the leaders of the Black Reichswehr in 1923 and was involved in several female murders. After the failure of the Küstriner putsch , Pannwitz fled to Poland again and only returned after the amnesty in 1931. In Poland, Pannwitz worked as a farmer , most recently as the goods director for Princess Radziwill in Młochów near Warsaw .

In Germany, he joined the NSDAP and, as SA leader in Silesia, was involved in the intra-party murder and persecution against the group around Röhm ( called the suppression of the Röhm putsch by Hitler's propaganda ).

Reactivated in 1935, Pannwitz resigned as captain and Schwadronchef in the Reiter Regiment 2 in Angerburg and was in July 1938 after the annexation of Austria as a departmental commander in the Cavalry Regiment 11 in Stockerau in Vienna added.

Second World War

At the beginning of the Second World War he commanded the reconnaissance department of the 45th Infantry Division in Poland - France - and during the advance in the Russian campaign until he was transferred to the OKH in Lötzen in East Prussia in December 1941 as a consultant to the General of the Rapid Troops .

In November 1942 he received approval from the Chief of Staff Kurt Zeitzler in the OKH to set up the large unit of the 1st Cossack Division , installation site Mielau (Polish: Mława ) in occupied Poland . All Don, Kuban and Terek Cossacks who were already in German service, as well as Cossacks fit for war from a reception camp in Kherson in the Ukraine , were sent to the division.

The preparation time was interrupted by several frontline missions in the Crimea and around Stalingrad as commander of the Pannwitz Combat Group in the period from November 1942 to early 1943, until the division was given the order to relocate to Croatia in order to relocate the supply lines to Greece in the fight against the Tito -Secure partisans .

The Cossack units deployed there committed looting, rape and shootings in the Yugoslav rebellion area in this partisan war. During the first two months in Croatia, special courts-martial of the division passed at least 20 death sentences in each of the four regiments.

In mid-1944 efforts were made to integrate the Cossack division into the Waffen SS . On August 26, 1944, Heinrich Himmler and von Pannwitz had a conversation . It was decided to transfer the Cossack Division to the Waffen SS. Pannwitz expected better supplies, more modern weapons, with a higher morale. Himmler promised to gradually place all other combat units of the Cossacks under the command of Pannwitz. After taking over the division in November 1944, a second Cossack division was set up from other Cossack units of the army and the order police and together with the first division to the XV. SS Cossack Cavalry Corps united. On February 1, 1945, the Voluntary Cossack Tribe Regiment finally came. 5 in Döllersheim as a Cossack training and replacement regiment for the Waffen SS. Pannwitz was appointed commander of the new corps. On February 10, 1945 he was released from the Wehrmacht at his own request and transferred to the Waffen SS the following day. He held the rank of lieutenant general of the Waffen SS and an SS group leader. At the "All Cossack Congress" in March 1945 in Virovitica he was elected "Supreme Field Ataman of all Cossack armies".

In the last weeks of the war, the Cossack associations tried to reach the British-occupied territory of Austria in order not to have to surrender to the Soviet and Yugoslav communist partisan associations that followed. On May 9, 1945, General von Pannwitz took in the room Lavamünd connection to the 11th British Armored Division, which then on 12 May 1945 in the room. Klagenfurt - St. Veit - Feldkirchen the surrender of the XV. Cossack cavalry corps with a strength of approx. 25,000 men received.

While the British Army in Judenburg at the end of May 1945 surrendered a large part of the corps with their families, who were encamped with the Cossack Stans near Lienz , to the Red Army in Operation Keelhaul in the " Tragedy on the Drava " , von Pannwitz was also killed on 27. Arrested in Mülln by British General Stephen Weir on May 28, 1945, transferred to Griffen and extradited to the Soviets in Judenburg the following day. He remained imprisoned in Graz until the beginning of July 1945, then in Moscow.

Helmuth von Pannwitz, along with eleven other Cossack atamans and generals, including Pyotr Nikolajewitsch Krasnow , Andrei Grigoryevich Shkuro , Girej Klytsch, Krasnows son SP Krasnow and TI Domanow, was sentenced to death on January 16, 1947 and on the same day in Moscow Executed in Lefortovo prison .

Memorial grave

Almost five decades after his death, von Pannwitz was temporarily rehabilitated by the Russian Public Prosecutor's Office in Moscow on April 23, 1996 at the instigation of his family . On June 28, 2001, however, this was revoked by the Supreme Military Prosecutor of the Russian Federation: “The analysis of this criminal case showed that the earlier decision to rehabilitate von Pannwitz was wrong and contrary to the evidence in the file of his guilt Crimes against the peoples of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia stood. Therefore, the military chief prosecutor overturned this decision as unfounded. The judgment against von Pannwitz, passed in 1947 by the Military College of the Supreme Court after the decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on April 19, 1943, was recognized as lawful and well-founded. "

In the south-west cemetery of Stahnsdorf, a memorial today commemorates him on the family grave.

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernhard Sauer: “'Auf nach Oberschlesien' - The battles of the German Freikorps 1921 in Oberschlesien and the other former German eastern provinces”, in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft 58th year 2010, issue 4, pp. 297-320. ( PDF, 7 , 6 Mbyte )
  2. ↑ Military History Research Office (ed.): The German Reich and the Second World War , Vol. 5/2: Organization and mobilization of the German sphere of influence, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-421-06499-7 , p. 160.
  3. ^ Jozo Tomasevich: War and Revolution in Yugoslavia: 1941–1945, Occupation and Collaboration . Stanford UP, Stanford 2001, ISBN 978-0-8047-3615-2 , p. 306.
  4. ^ Samuel J. Newland: Cossacks in the German Army 1941-1945 . Frank Cass, London 1991, pp. 143-145.
  5. ^ Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in World War II 1939–1945. Vol. 1, The Armed Forces - Complete Overview . Biblio, Osnabrück 1977, p. 400.
  6. ↑ a b Andreas Weigelt: Short biographies . In: Andreas Weigelt, Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Saarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner (eds.): Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947): A historical-biographical study . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-647-36968-6 , p. 505.
  7. ↑ Jan von Flocken in Focus of December 2, 1996, Ed. 49, pp. 98-102.
  8. ↑ Leonid P. Kopalin: To rehabilitate German citizens who were repressed by Soviet authorities for political motives, in: Klaus-Peter Graffius / Horst Hennig (ed.): Between Bautzen and Vorkuta. Totalitarian tyranny and the consequences of imprisonment. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2004, pp. 184–209.
  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. 582.
personal data
SURNAME Pannwitz, Helmuth von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Lieutenant General in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH October 14, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Domain Botzanowitz
DATE OF DEATH January 16, 1947
Place of death Moscow , Soviet Union