Hubert Lanz

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Lanz when he was sentenced in 1948

Hubert Karl Lanz (born May 22, 1896 in Entringen ; † August 12, 1982 in Munich ) was a general in the mountain troops in the Wehrmacht . He gained notoriety as the commander of the massacre on Kefalonia , in which over 5,000 defenseless Italian soldiers were shot. Lanz was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment for war crimes in Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece in 1948 in one of the follow-up proceedings to the Nuremberg Trials , the hostage murder trial or trial of the Southeast Generals . He joined the FDP and was its advisor on military and security policy.

Life

Hubert Lanz was the son of the forestry councilor Otto Lanz (1867–1929) and his wife Berta.

Württemberg Army and Reichswehr

After graduating from high school in Cannstatt , he joined the infantry regiment "Kaiser Friedrich, King of Prussia" (7th Württembergisches) No. 125 in Stuttgart on June 20, 1914 as a flag junior . He was seriously wounded on September 9, 1914, and after several months in the hospital and being promoted to lieutenant , he returned to the Western Front on February 4, 1915 . At the end of the First World War he was first lieutenant and was accepted into the Reichswehr . In 1928 he was promoted to captain and then as a general staff officer in the later general staff of the IX. Army corps deployed.

time of the nationalsocialism

In 1934 Lanz was promoted to major and on March 1, 1937 to lieutenant colonel . November 1938 he took over command of the Mountain Infantry Regiment 100 in Bad Reichenhall . On August 1, 1938 he was promoted to Colonel i. G. promoted, on August 26, 1939 he took over the business of a chief of the general staff at the military district command V in Stuttgart. From February 15, 1940 he was Chief of Staff of the XVIII. Army Corps .

From October 25, 1940 he was in command of the 1st Mountain Division and was promoted to major general on November 1, 1940 . He took part with the mountain division in the Balkan campaign and in the war against the Soviet Union .

In the first hours of June 30, 1941, units of Lanz's division occupied the city of Lemberg . A few hours later, Lviv became the scene of wild riots (see also: Lviv Pogrom ). The Diary of XXXXIX. Mountain Army Corps of the 17th Army noted: "The population is raging bitterness over the atrocities of the Bolsheviks , which airs against the Jews living in the city who have worked with the Bolsheviks." (Source: War Diary of XXXXIX. Mountain Army Corps) An officer of the city command wrote to his wife about the first day of the occupation: "Jews are being slain - slight pogrom mood [,] so among the Ukrainians." But as spontaneous as an act of Ukrainian popular anger, as these testimonies suggest , the events had not developed. Around noon, after an inspection trip from Lanz, posters and leaflets of the German occupiers appeared in the streets. It read who was supposed to have been responsible for the murders: the " Jewish Bolsheviks ". Lanz therefore shared responsibility for the massacres in Lemberg, which were not only motivated by retaliation, but also clearly bore racist features.

On December 1, 1942, Lanz was appointed lieutenant general and on December 17, 1942, he was transferred to the Führerreserve . On January 28, 1943 he was promoted to general of the mountain troops and entrusted with the management of the army department named after him in the Kharkov area . Two days earlier, at a nightly briefing in Wolfsschanze , he had received an order from Hitler to hold Kharkov unconditionally. However, the subordinate SS-Obergruppenführer Paul Hausser ignored this Fuehrer order repeated by Lanz and broke out with his SS Panzer Corps to the southwest. Hitler blamed Lanz for the non-fulfillment of the order and returned him to the Fuehrer's reserve.

From June 25, 1943, Lanz commanded the XXXXIX. Mountain Army Corps, from August 20, 1943 the XXII. Mountain Army Corps.

On Kefalonia and Corfu , the Wehrmacht fought down the Acqui division of the Italian army in September 1943, which had not been disarmed by the Germans after the armistice between Italy and the Allies. There were orders from the High Command of the Wehrmacht from September 18 and 23, 1943, which stated that no prisoners should be made “because of the mean and treasonous behavior” of the Italians. Lanz and Colonel General Löhr were responsible for the military service for the war crimes committed in Kefalonia . Every Italian soldier caught was shot immediately after his capture. All officers of the division were shot a few days later - on instructions from Lanz "in a dignified manner". In total, at least 5170 Italians were murdered on the island. Not only mountain troops but also members of the 104th Jäger Division and the fortress grenadier battalions 909 and 910 were involved.

On September 24, 1943 parts of the 1st Mountain Division landed on the neighboring island of Corfu , and the next day they captured the commander of the Italian troops there, Colonel Luigi Lusignani. After brief negotiations, he ordered his 8,000 men to lay down their arms. Of the 280 Italian officers on the island, 28 were shot immediately after their capture, and the following day, on orders from Lanz, the rest of the officers were shot. On orders from Lanz, the bodies of the officers were "taken out to sea by ship and sunk weighted down in several places".

After the murder of a German officer by members of a Greek resistance group, Lanz demanded a ruthless retaliation within a 20 km radius of the murder site. The village of Lingiades was then shelled with artillery on October 3, 1943, in the following massacre 82 residents were killed, including 34 children up to 11 years of age.

On May 8, 1945, Lanz was taken prisoner by the Americans.

Convicted war criminal

The defendants in the Nuremberg hostage murder trial

In 1947 he was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment in the Nuremberg hostage murder trial for the massacre in Kefalonia and for hostage murders in the Balkans, but was released from the Landsberg war crimes prison in 1951 because of the onset of the Cold War . He joined the FDP and was active in the party as a consultant on military and security issues. In 1952 he became honorary chairman of the comrades' group of the mountain troops and chairman of the traditional association of the 1st mountain division.

When Der Spiegel was the first German medium to report on the mass murder on Kefalonia in 1969, Lanz complained about it in a letter to the magazine's editor-in-chief.

Awards

literature

  • Charles B. Burdick: Hubert Lanz. General of the mountain troops 1896–1982. (= Soldier fates of the twentieth century as a historical source. Volume 9.) Osnabrück 1988, ISBN 3-7648-1736-4 .
  • Hermann Frank Meyer: Bloody edelweiss. The 1st Mountain Division in World War II. Links, Berlin 2008, ISBN 3-86153-447-9 . ( Online )
  • Hermann Frank Meyer: Come on. Narrative reconstruction of a Wehrmacht crime in Greece. Romiosini, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-929889-34-X .
  • Gerd R. Ueberschär (Ed.) Hitler's military elite. From the beginning of the regime to the beginning of the war. Volume 1. Primus, Darmstadt 1998, ISBN 3-89678-083-2 .
  • Gerhard Schreiber: The Italian military internees in the German sphere of influence 1943 to 1945. betrayed - despised - forgotten. (= Contributions to military history. Volume 28.) Munich 1990, ISBN 3-486-55391-7 .
  • Gerhard Schreiber: German war crimes in Italy: perpetrators - victims - prosecution. Beck, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-406-39268-7 .
  • Gerhard Schreiber: Kephalonia 1943. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Hrsg.): Places of horror. Primus, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-232-0 , pp. 92-101.
  • Marlen von Xylander: The German occupation in Crete 1941-1945. (= Individual writings on military history. Volume 32.) Freiburg 1989, ISBN 3-7930-0192-X .
  • Mark Mazower : Inside Hitler's Greece. Yale University Press, New Haven, London 2001, pp. 190-200.
  • Martin Zöller; Kazimirz Leszczyński Ed .: Case 7 - The hostage murder trial ruled by the United States Military Tribunal V. VEB Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1965.

Life memories

"... an incomplete manuscript of Lanz's memoirs and a number of personal documents supplementing the manuscript" are in the main state archive in Stuttgart , "... its use is free."

Web links

Commons : Hubert Lanz  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hannes Heer : Practice in the Holocaust: Lemberg June / July 1941. In: ZfG. 5/2001
  2. ↑ a b Hannes Heer: Bloody Overture. Lviv, June 30, 1941. With the arrival of the Wehrmacht troops of the murder of Jews begins , Time ., No. 26/2001, p.90.
  3. ^ Hermann Frank Meyer : Bloody edelweiss. The 1st Mountain Division in World War II , 2008
  4. ↑ a b The island, the prosecutor and a terrible memory. Tagesspiegel, September 27, 2002, accessed May 21, 2015 .
  5. ^ Paul Hausser , in: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Ed.) Hitler's military elite. Volume 2. Darmstadt 1998, p. 91
  6. ↑ Gerhard Schreiber: The Italian military internees in the German sphere of influence 1943 to 1945. Betrayed - Despised - Forgotten. Munich 1990 (= contributions to military history, vol. 28), p. 156ff.
  7. ↑ Bloody traces 60 years ago German soldiers lived in Greece ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Holger Banse: In the shadow of the military success on the homepage Militärseelsorge-Abschaffen.de
  9. ↑ Katja Iken: "Everything that comes in front of the mouth is knocked down". In: Spiegel Online ( one day section ), September 20, 2018, accessed on the same day.
  10. ↑ a b c d e f Ranking list of the German Imperial Army. ES Mittler & Sohn , Berlin, p. 147.
  11. ↑ Otto von Moser: Die Württemberger in the world war. 2nd edition, Belser, Stuttgart 1928, p. 133
  12. ↑ 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. 494.
  13. ↑ [1]
personal data
SURNAME Lanz, Hubert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lanz, Hubert Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer and general of the mountain troops in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH May 22, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Wrestle
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 1982
Place of death Munich