Hermann Balck

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Hermann Balck 1943

Georg Otto Hermann Balck (born December 7, 1893 in Danzig - Langfuhr ; † November 28, 1982 in Eberbach-Rockenau ) was a German officer , most recently a general of the armored forces and army group commander in World War II .

Life

Hermann Balck was the son of the future Prussian Lieutenant General William Balck and his wife Mathilde. He joined on 10 April 1913 as a cadet in the Hannoversche Rifle Battalion. 10 in Goslar one. From February 12, 1914 until the outbreak of the First World War , he attended the Hanover War School. He then returned to his battalion and moved with them as platoon leader to the front, where he was promoted to lieutenant on August 10, 1914 . At times Balck served as a battalion adjutant from August 12 to October 30, 1914. Due to an injury sustained on October 30, 1914, he was subsequently incapacitated until February 6, 1915. After his recovery he served in Reserve Jäger Battalion No. 22 until he was wounded again on June 28, 1915.

In January 1922 he joined the Reichswehr with this rank , was assigned to the 18th Cavalry Regiment and there on May 1, 1924 Lieutenant . He then took part in a general staff course. At the beginning of the Second World War he was a lieutenant colonel and clerk in the Army High Command . As commander of the 1st Rifle Regiment, he took part in the battle of Sedan in the western campaign (May / June 1940) and received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for this , before returning to the Army High Command for a year. In the summer of 1942 he was appointed major general and commanded the 11th Panzer Division on the Eastern Front . Balck took over from April 3 to June 10, 1943 the motorized infantry division "Greater Germany" .

This was followed by an unusually fast career , during which Balck was promoted prematurely several times ; he received numerous high awards including the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds (which was only awarded 27 times). By the end of 1943 he was General of the Panzer Force and Commanding General of the XXXXVIII. Panzer Corps . In August 1944, Balck was appointed Commander in Chief of the 4th Panzer Army , but already moved to the Western Front in September and succeeded Colonel General Johannes Blaskowitz as Commander in Chief of Army Group G in Alsace . In November 1944 he ordered the systematic destruction of the cities of Anould , Gérardmer , La Bresse and Saint-Dié-des-Vosges , and the male population between 15 and 60 years of age should be deported across the Rhine for forced labor . Since Balck could not stop the advance of the Americans under George S. Patton to the imperial border (see Battle for Alsace-Lorraine (1944) ), Blaskowitz was reinstated in his old command in December, and Balck returned to the Eastern Front, where he was up commanded the 6th Army in Hungary at the end of the war .

From 1945 to 1947 Balck was a US prisoner of war . Then Balck became a warehouse worker, but arrested in 1948 and sentenced by a Stuttgart jury to three years in prison, of which he served eighteen months. In November 1944, Balck had the artillery commander, Lieutenant Colonel Johann Schottke shot . He was found completely drunk in his bunker and could no longer remember the positions of his guns. The shooting had taken place without a court martial and was therefore illegal. In 1950, Balck was sentenced in absentia to 20 years of forced labor by the Paris military tribunal, which held him responsible for the destruction of the French town of Gérardmer in the Vosges .

Balck was one of the few commanders captured by US forces who refused to participate in the US Army's postwar historical debriefing program in the late 1940s and early 1950s. At the end of the 1970s he expressed himself publicly: He and Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellenthin took part in some symposia - together with former US generals - at the "US Army War College".

He was buried in the Hasefriedhof in Osnabrück in 1982 .

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hermann Balck in the Munzinger archive
  2. ^ Ludger Tewes , The Panzergrenadierdivision Grossdeutschland in the campaign against the Soviet Union 1942 to 1945 , Verlag Klartext Essen 2020, ISBN 978-3-8375-2089-7 , pp. 317–322.
  3. ↑ Scorched Earth on gedenkorte-europa.eu, the homepage of Gedenkorte Europa 1939–1945 , accessed May 29, 2015
  4. ^ Biography of Balck in the Federal Archives ( Memento from March 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) in the Internet Archive , as of March 28, 2007, on archive.org, viewed May 6, 2010
  5. ↑ http://www.historynet.com/the-greatest-german-general-no-one-ever-heard-of.htm/5
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m data according to information in the estate ( memento of the original dated November 9, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and biographical data in the holdings of the Federal Archives @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / startext.net-build.de
personal data
SURNAME Balck, Hermann
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Balck, Georg Otto Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, most recently General of the Panzer Force and Army Group Commander in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH December 7, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Danzig - Langfuhr
DATE OF DEATH November 28, 1982
Place of death Eberbach-Rockenau