Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke

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Ramcke, Kurt Student and Hans Kroh , 1941
Ramcke walking off a company of paratroopers, Crete, end of May 1941
Ramcke at the awarding of the medal to a sergeant of the paratroopers, Crete, end of May 1941
Ramcke in Libya 1942
Bernhard-Hermann Ramcke next to a parachute on Crete, May 1941
Ramcke in Trent Park (back center)

Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke (born January 24, 1889 in Schleswig ; † July 5, 1968 in Kappeln ) was a German officer convicted of war crimes , most recently a general of the parachute force of the Wehrmacht .

Life

Ramcke was one of eight children of the hereditary farmer Hermann Ramcke and joined the Imperial Navy as a cabin boy in 1905 . When the First World War began, he was boatswain's mate and served on the large cruiser SMS Prinz Adalbert . In 1915 he was assigned to the marine infantry in Flanders , where he served in the 2nd Sailor Regiment. In 1916, as a deputy officer , Ramcke received, among other things, the Iron Cross 1st Class and the Prussian Golden Military Merit Cross , the highest military awards for NCOs and men in the First World War. In 1918 he was promoted to lieutenant .

After the war he fought in 1919 in Kurland including in Bauska , Siauliai and Old Rahden in Freikorps Cordt von Brandis , the conquerors of Douaumont , where he was severely wounded twice easily in a day and a time. His comrade in arms was the then non-commissioned officer and later Reich Governor and SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Hildebrandt .

On March 10, 1919, he joined the army and was accepted into the Provisional Reichswehr , where he served as platoon leader and later as a company officer in the 1st (Prussian) Infantry Regiment . After attending intelligence courses at the Jüterbog Artillery School , he served as an intelligence officer in his regiment. From 1923 to 1925 he was adjutant to the commandant of the Arys military training area . This was followed by his change to the 2nd (Prussian) Infantry Regiment , where he was on the staff of the III. Battalion and from 1927 while being promoted to captain as a company commander . Shortly after the promotion to major in September 1934, he was appointed commander of the III. Battalions. From 1936 to 1938 he served in the staff of the commandant of the Groß Born military training area , and then, now a lieutenant colonel , himself became the commandant of the Zeithain military training area.

During the attack on Poland he was the XXII. (motorized) army corps under Ewald von Kleist assigned as observer. From January 16 to July 18, 1940 he was in command of the 69 Infantry Replacement Regiment and was promoted to colonel on March 1, 1940 .

On August 1, 1940, he switched to the parachute troops of the Air Force and, after completing the parachute training course in Broitzem, was assigned to the staff of Parachute Regiment 1. After the establishment of the XI. Fliegerkorps under Kurt Student on January 1, 1941, the associated supplementary units and schools were subordinated to him. In this role he was also involved in the air landing on Crete (Operation Merkur).

After the commander of Luftlande-Sturm-Regiment 1, Major General Eugen Meindl , was wounded on the first day of the Battle of Crete , he was put in charge of the regiment and the West Group in his place. With this he succeeded in securing the airfield and the surrounding area of Maleme over the next few days , whereupon the British decided to give up the island and withdraw. In the days following the battle, Airborne Assault Regiment troops retaliated against Cretan civilians in Kandanos and Kondomari on Student's orders . After the conquest of Crete, Ramcke was promoted to major general on August 1, 1941 and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on August 21, 1941 .

In March 1942 Ramcke was assigned to the Italian Comando Supremo to support the preparation of the paratrooper division "Folgore" for the Hercules operation , the planned conquest of Malta . In April 1942 he was commissioned to lead the Paratrooper Brigade 1 (Ramcke), which was intended for the Hercules company. After the company was canceled, he and his brigade were relocated to North Africa to reinforce the German-Italian tank army in Africa in the Africa campaign . During the second Battle of El Alamein in November 1942, his brigade was cut off from the rest of the tank army. Ramcke and his men marched 130 km to their own lines and freed 100 prisoners on the way. For this he was awarded the Knight's Cross Oak Leaves on November 13, 1942. On December 21st he was promoted to lieutenant general.

On February 12, 1943 he was appointed commander of the newly established 2nd Parachute Division . With this he was flown near Rome after the fall of Benito Mussolini on July 26, 1943 , because it was feared that the Italian ally would break away. After the announcement of the Armistice of Cassibile and the triggering of the Axis case on September 8, 1943, the division became involved in fighting with the Italian Corpo d'armata motocorazzato . Parts of Ramcke's division carried out several commando operations during this time , including the attempted capture of the Italian general staff in Monte Rotondo and the company Eiche , the liberation of Mussolini from Gran Sasso . Ramcke himself was injured in a low-flying attack in September and had to give up command of the division.

After his recovery, Ramcke was given special leave to write the book Vom Schiffsjungen zum Fallschirmjägergeneral , which was published during the war. He was spared from being used on the Eastern Front and only took over the badly battered 2nd Paratrooper Division again in May 1944, when it was relocated to Germany to refresh after six months of combat in the Ukraine.

After the Allied landings in Normandy , the division was moved to Brittany and tasked with defending the fortress of Brest during the Battle of Brittany . In January 1944, Hitler had declared all important port cities in the west - including Brest - to be “fortresses” - an above all symbolic act. On August 11th, Ramcke was appointed fortress commander. In addition to the 2nd Parachute Division, the fortress also contained the 266th and 343rd Infantry Divisions and troops of the sea ​​commander . 40,000 Germans defended the city of Brest and the war port against an American tank division, several artillery brigades and an armada of bombers and fighter-bombers . For the defense of Brest, Ramcke was awarded both swords and diamonds for the Knight's Cross on September 19, 1944. He received this extraordinary double award in recognition of his supposedly great services to the defense of Brest and also to create enough "distance" to the officers subordinate to him ( Rear Admiral Otto Kähler , Major General Hans von der Mosel , who received the oak leaves, and Major General Hans Kroh who was awarded the Swords for Oak Leaves of the Knight's Cross). In addition, Ramcke was promoted to General of the Parachute Force with effect from September 1, 1944.

His command post surrendered as the last bunker of the “fortress” Brest on September 19, 1944. The city of Brest and its port were - apart from a few medieval buildings - completely destroyed during the fighting. More than 1,000 German soldiers died, 4,000 were wounded, and 35,000 were taken prisoners of war. The German soldiers, however, did not fight as fanatically "to the last man" as was required, for example, in OKW orders of February 1944 for the defense of fortresses. The request never to surrender was not complied with in any of the port cities. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels expressed disappointment that Ramcke "so little sense of immortality has" and surrendered rather than suicide to commit.

He was brought to the USA after a six-month stopover in Trent Park / England . He broke out of strictly secured camps there twice to draw attention to the bad treatment of his men. In both outbreaks, he sent a letter to the US Senate and then voluntarily returned to the camp.

In December 1946 he was extradited to France and for war crimes to the battle for Brest on 21 March 1951 imprisonment convicted of five and a half years. He was convicted of taking hostages and killing French civilians, looting private property, and deliberately destroying and burning down civilian homes. On 24 June he was - taking into account of his detention dismissed on grounds of age - of 57 months. After his release, he worked as a manager in an industrial company and wrote a book about his war experiences and the subsequent imprisonment of war.

In October 1952, Ramcke took part in a meeting of members of the former Waffen SS in Verden and gave a speech that stated that members of the Waffen SS could be proud to have been on “black lists”. It cannot be ruled out that these “black lists” would become honorary lists again. According to the British secret service , he had contacts with the Naumann Circle , a group of former National Socialists around ex-State Secretary Werner Naumann who wanted to infiltrate the FDP . Ramcke's lawsuit against Erich Kuby in 1959 for his portrayal of the events in Brest (in a radio play) ended in Kuby's acquittal. Kuby had seen the destruction of Brest himself as a soldier.

Ramcke died on July 5, 1968 in Kappeln on a cancer . That at the funeral company of the army was present, was debated in the German and international press. At the funeral, greetings from the order community of knight cross bearers , the HIAG and other "traditional military communities" were brought. Kurt Student was one of the speakers.

reception

The right-wing national newspaper portrayed Ramcke in July 1999 in its series "Great German soldiers - immortal heroes". Ramcke is described as an excellent German soldier who “passed the toughest tests” and distinguished himself through “bravado, bravery and tenacity”, for example in the “spectacular conquest of Crete”. In the series, only soldiers loyal to the Nazi regime were honored, sometimes using the linguistic formulas of the Wehrmacht and Nazi propaganda . The political scientist Fabian Virchow classifies the series in “the imagination of the extreme right of the men who are oriented towards the deed and who shape the course of events / history in the interest of the 'national' or ' folkish ' collective”. The characterizations referred “at the same time to a conceptualization of masculinity , the profile of which - very unified - would be marked by characteristics such as 'hardness', 'willingness to sacrifice', 'courage to death', 'bravery', 'tenacity', 'cutting' or 'standing qualities' ".

Awards

Publications

  • From the knight's cross to the defendant. Nation-Europa-Verlag , Coburg 2001, ISBN 3-920677-57-9 .
  • Paratroopers. Schütz, Preußisch Oldendorf 1973.
  • Paratroopers, then and after. Lorch, Frankfurt am Main 1951.
  • From cabin boy to paratrooper general. Publishing house Die Wehrmacht, Berlin 1943.

literature

  • Sönke Neitzel : bugged. German generals in British captivity 1942–1945. Propylaen, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-549-07261-9 (edition of intercepted conversations in the prisoner of war camp [selection]).
  • Bernhard Ramcke , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 31/1968 of July 22, 1968, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Web links

Commons : Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 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. 612.
  2. ↑ Peter Lieb : Conventional war or ideological war? Warfare and the fight against partisans in France 1943/44. Oldenbourg Verlag 2007, p. 486 ( see Google Books ).
  3. ^ Letter from Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke to Mr. Byron Price, The Capitol, Washington, DC In: Kilroy Was Here, Remembering the War Years .
  4. ↑ 254. Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, October 28, 1952. [B] General's speech a. D. Ramcke. In: Federal Archives . Quoted in: Die Neue Zeitung . October 27, 1952 and in Keesing's contemporary archive . 1952 p. 3718 A.
  5. ^ Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. Second, updated edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, p. 478, source BA N 1080/272.
  6. ^ Charges against will . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 1959, pp. 24 ( Online - Jan. 28, 1959 ).
  7. ↑ Old braid - newly plaited . In: Der Spiegel . No. 10 , 1969, p. 36 ( Online - Mar. 3, 1969 ).
  8. ↑ rst: On the death of General of the paratroopers Bernhard Ramcke. In: The Volunteer. August 1968, p. 15 f.
  9. ^ National newspaper. 27/1999 (July 2, 1999), p. 10. Quoted in: Fabian Virchow: Against civilism. International relations and the military in the political conceptions of the extreme right. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 978-3-531-15007-9 , p. 396.
  10. ↑ Virchow: Against civilism. 2006, p. 347.
  11. ↑ Virchow: Against civilism. 2006, p. 394.
  12. ↑ Ranking list of the German Imperial Army. Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin, p. 144.
personal data
SURNAME Ramcke, Hermann-Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, most recently General of the Parachute Troops (Wehrmacht)
DATE OF BIRTH January 24, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Schleswig
DATE OF DEATH 5th July 1968
Place of death Kappeln