IX. Army Corps (Wehrmacht)

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The IX. Army Corps was a major unit of the German Wehrmacht , which was used during the Second World War , on the western campaign (1940) and then on the central and northern eastern front until the end of the war .

history

Lineup

A predecessor association was established on October 1, 1934 under the camouflage name Heeresdienststelle Kassel in Wehrkreis V (Stuttgart) . After the formation of the new military district IX (Kassel) , the previous camouflaged staff was transferred to the regular General Command IX in June 1936. Army Corps renamed. The first commanding general was General of the Artillery Friedrich Dollmann .

1939/40

On August 26, 1939, the mobilization started, the team has not been used for the invasion of Poland but was during the Sitzkrieg in Army Group C as a reserve command of the 1st Army with the 246th Infantry Division in the space between Speyer and Worms focused . On October 25, 1939, General of the Infantry Hermann Geyer took over the command, Colonel Maximilian Grimmeiß acted as Chief of the General Staff, and Colonel Hans Speidel was the first General Staff officer (Ia) . In May 1940, the general command for the attack against the Netherlands was transferred to Army Group B and concentrated in the Venloo area on the right wing of the 6th Army , the headquarters were located northwest of Oberhausen. In the case of yellow , the command was assigned the 30th , 56th and 216th Infantry Divisions . Right neighbor was the XXVI. Army Corps of the 18th Army, on the left accompanied the XI. Army Corps defeated the Hoeppner Panzer Corps by breaking into the northern Belgian area. The Belgians were in cooperation with the XI. and XXVI. Corps pursued to the Lys and driven to Dunkirk . In the second phase of the attack (Red Case), the command (294th and 295th Infantry Division ) of the 2nd Army was assigned to the second meeting on the Aisne sector. The XXVI. Corps following the breakthrough south of Auxerre , the Nevers area was reached at the armistice with the newly assigned 15th and 205th Infantry Divisions . Remaining as a crew in Normandy until September 1940, after the cancellation of Operation Sea Lion , the command was transported to southern Poland together with AOK 12 (renamed AOK 17 from the beginning of 1941). At the end of the year, the 56th, 262nd and 299th Infantry Divisions were subordinate to the command.

1941/42

After the start of Operation Barbarossa , the 137th , 263rd and 292nd Infantry Divisions were subordinate to the General Command in the area of ​​the 4th Army (Field Marshal von Kluge ) . During the Battle of Bialystok and Minsk , the assigned troops crossed the Bug between Granne and Drohiczyn , advanced between the Białowieża Primeval Forest and the Narew in the direction of Gródek and, together with the VII Army Corps, formed the southern front against the Soviet troops enclosed around Wolkowysk . At the beginning of July, the area north of Minsk was secured and the general command at Borissov was secured behind XXXXVI, which was already operating on the eastern shore of Beresina . and XXXXVII. Panzer Corps . In mid-August, the corps took part on the southern bank of the Dnieper in the Battle of Smolensk and then fought back together with the XX. Army Corps launched strong Russian counter-attacks in the Yelnya front arc . On August 28th, the IX. Corps led, from left to right the 263rd , 137th , 15th , 78th , 292nd , 268th and 7th Infantry Divisions stood in the front arc. Strong counter-attacks of the newly brought Soviet 24th Army (General Rakutin ) forced the 4th Army during the Yelnya Offensive in early September to evacuate Elnya and the transition in the trench warfare .

On October 2, the IX. Corps after the start of Operation Typhoon at the Vyazma Kesselschlacht , Jelnja was occupied by the 292nd Infantry Division on October 6th. Together with the XX. In the area between Dorogobusch and the Ugra sector, the southern front of the basin forming near Vyazma was dammed up in the area between Dorogobusch and the VII. Army Corps . In another push towards Moscow was north Moskwa space advancing the end of November Zvenigorod reached, were subordinated to this, the 78th , 87th and 252nd Infantry Division . After the Russian counter-offensive, the corps had to return to the Gschatsk area, where a positional war of years began. At the end of 1942 until the so-called buffalo movement in the following spring 1943, the 7th , 35th , 98th , 252nd , 258th and 292nd Infantry Divisions were subordinate to the Corps Command .

1943

As a result of the disengagement that took place in the spring, the front arch at Rzhev was evacuated and the 3rd Panzer and 4th Army were withdrawn to the Dukhovshchina - Spas-Demensk line. The IX. Corps went back via Vyazma to the area southeast of Dorogobusch to Krucha, during the retreat and until the summer of 1943 the 35th, 252nd and 342nd Infantry Divisions were assigned to the command. Between August and September 1943, the front collapsed after the offensive of the Soviet Western Front (General Sokolowski ) in the Smolensk Operation . On August 30th Jelnja was liberated by the Soviet 33rd Army and on September 1st Dorogobusch was liberated by the Soviet 5th Army . On September 23, the German 4th Army also had to give up Smolensk . The General Command IX first went on Pronya River section back and established itself at the end of the northern Dvina -Ufer in the area northwest of Vitebsk back.

1944

Used on June 22, 1944 during Operation Bagration on the northern wing of the 3rd Panzer Army , the left corps section in the Sirotino area was attacked by seven Soviet divisions of the Soviet 4th Shock Army (General Malyshev ). The front of the 252nd Infantry Division (Lieutenant General Melzer ) was broken through between Pligowki and Ssavtschenski, Corps Department D under Lieutenant General Pamberg and the Assault Gun Brigade 245 provisionally secured the southern flank along the railway line to Vitebsk and had to face the 6th Guards army (General Chistyakov ) on Sludysch - Ulla - Beshenkovichi behind the Dvina decline. As a result, the right neighbor, the LIII. Army corps trapped in Vitebsk pocket. From the space Polotsk was the 24th Infantry Division used over the railway line on the right flank by Obol. The attack focus of the 1st Baltic Front was aimed at the Lepel traffic junction , where the 212th Infantry Division arrived as reinforcements. The front of the IX. Corps, which had received the order to stop the OKW, was rolled up in the direction of Tetscha. The breakthrough of the 5th Guards Panzer Army ( Solomatin Group ) aimed directly at Vilna . The retreat of the IX. Corps opposite the Soviet troops took place via Plissa-Koziany and reached Ukmerge in mid-July . After the breakthrough of the Soviets in the so-called "Baltic Hole" (between Schaulen and Bauske ), the IX. Corps pushed south to Kelmė - Raseinen. In October 1944, fighting followed behind the Dubysa in the direction of Tauroggen . At the end of 1944, three newly established Volksgrenadier divisions (551st, 548th, 561st) with the 56th and 69th infantry divisions were in position in the command area on the Memel .

1945

The Memel had frozen over since December 20, 1944, and the river was no longer an obstacle. Opposite the Soviets was the IX. Army Corps of the 3rd Panzer Army . The Soviet 43rd Army under General Beloborodow opened the battle for East Prussia in mid-January 1945 between Ruß and Schmalleningken . On January 20, the resistance of the IX. Corps together, Tilsit was lost. The 69th Division had to fight back over Tapiau . The remnants of the 56th Infantry Division under Major General Blaurock flooded back on Königsberg . In uninterrupted skirmishes of retreat, the three Volksgrenadier divisions managed to reach the Deime and build up a new defensive barrier. The final fighting in March 1945 against the Soviet 39th Army and 2nd Guard Army took place together with the XXVI. Army corps in the area of ​​the also encircled Königsberg in Samland .

Before the break-up in April 1945, the following units were assigned to the General Command, which was subordinate to the Samland Army Department (General Gollnick ):

guide

Commanding generals

Chiefs of the General Staff

  • Colonel Bodewin Keitel , June 1, 1936 to October 12, 1937
  • Major General Carl Hilpert , October 12, 1937 to October 1, 1939
  • Colonel Maximilian Grimmeiß , October 1, 1939 to January 1941
  • Lieutenant Colonel Hans Otfried von Linstow , January to December 22, 1941
  • Colonel Paul Reichelt , December 22, 1941 to August 17, 1943
  • Colonel Herbert Koestlin, August 17 to October 1943
  • Colonel Robert Praefke, October 1943 to April 1945
  • Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Binder, April to May 1945

literature

  • Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in the Second World War 1939 - 1945 ", Volume 3, Frankfurt / Main and Osnabrück 1966, pp. 194–196.
  • Percy Ernst Schramm (Ed.): War diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht , Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1965.
    • Volume I: 1940/41 edited by Hans-Adolf Jacobsen .
    • Volume II: 1942 edited by Andreas Hillgruber , Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1965.
    • Volume III: 1943 edited by Walther Hubatsch , Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1965.
  • Rolf Hinze : The collapse of the Army Group in mid-1944, Motorbuch Verlag Stuttgart 1992.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rolf Hinze: Collapse of the Army Group in mid-1944, 1992, p. 42 f.

Web links