József Heszlényi

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József Heszlényi , Hungarian Vitéz Heszlényi József , b. Heyszl (born July 24, 1890 in Igló (Neudorf), Kingdom of Hungary (now Slovakia ); † June 2, 1945 in the Soviet Union , according to other sources May 8, 1945 in Zwettl ) was an Austro-Hungarian and Hungarian officer in the Hungarian armed forces in First and Second World War . Most recently he held the rank of colonel general . Heszlényi was the holder of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross .

Life

Austria-Hungary and World War I

Heszlényi's maiden name was Heystl . He was the son of an artillery major . The young Heystl passed his school leaving examination with excellent results. Then Heszlényi attended the Imperial and Royal Technical University in Mödling . On August 18, 1911 he was promoted to lieutenant and on September 1, 1911 he was assigned to the Austro-Hungarian 6th Field Artillery Regiment . In this he remained until the end of 1912. During this time he was a student at the artillery school in Hajmáskér from April to June 1912 . In 1913 he was transferred to the Royal Hungarian 1st Field Artillery Regiment . Here he attended the artillery school again from October 1913 to the end of April 1914. In May 1914, Heszlényi returned to his regiment.

Promoted to first lieutenant on August 1, 1914 , his field artillery regiment was transferred to the Serbian front after the outbreak of the First World War . There Heszlényi was involved in the fighting on the Drinian Passage and in the trench warfare on the banks of the Drina . Here Heszlényi was badly wounded on December 5, 1914 by artillery fire in his chest. After a three-month hospital stay in Budapest , Heszlényi returned to field service on March 8, 1915. There he was used in the command of the artillery brigade until April 1, 1915. On April 2, 1915, Heszlényi returned to the Royal Hungarian 1st Field Artillery Regiment , which was used on the Eastern Front. On September 1, 1915, Heszlényi was transferred to the Royal Hungarian 2nd Field Artillery Regiment , where he served as battery chief until mid-November 1915 . On November 17, 1915, he was appointed commander of the Royal Hungarian 1st Field Artillery Department , which he commanded until the end of March 1917. Then Heszlényi was again a student from April to May 1917. This time at the Higher Artillery Officers School in Przemyśl . From June to the beginning of December 1917 , Heszlényi , promoted to captain on November 1, 1917 , served as a staff officer in the kuk 71st field artillery brigade . The following months he was a student at the artillery engineering school in Hajmáskér. He also attended a troop leadership course and, in September 1918, a poison gas course in Berlin .

Horthy era and World War II

After the First World War, Heszlényi held the status of reservist from November 21 to December 14, 1918 . He then worked until mid-January 1919 as an artillery clerk in the district command of Kassa . After a short guest performance as chief of the 2nd battery of the 140th Field Artillery Regiment , Heszlényi transferred to the War Ministry in Budapest on April 2, 1919. There he initially acted as head of the 50th department and then until the end of August 1930 as a clerk in various departments; last as inspector from September 1926. During this time, Heszlényi had been promoted to major on May 1, 1926 , had given up his maiden name in 1923 and was consecrated with the name Vitez . Then Heszlényi acted from September 1930 to the beginning of August 1933 as a professor at the Hungarian Military Academy and taught the subjects of weapons and shooting. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel on November 1, 1931. On August 1, 1933, Heszlényi moved to the War Ministry in Budapest. There Heszlényi , promoted to colonel on November 1, 1935 , held various department heads until August 21, 1936. He was then from August 21, 1936 to January 15, 1939 Adjutant of the Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Hungarian Honved Hugó Sóny .

On January 15, 1939, Heszlényi took over as commanding officer of the Royal Hungarian 23rd Honved Infantry Brigade , which he then commanded until the end of February 1940. He then commanded the Royal Hungarian 2nd Motorized Brigade from March to early November 1940 . Here Heszlényi was promoted to major general on July 1, 1940 . In November 1940, Heszlényi returned to the War Ministry in Budapest. There he was a group leader until mid-November 1942 and finally an upper group leader. In the role of Obergruppenführer Heszlényi was promoted to Lieutenant General on September 29, 1942 .

In January 1942, during a meeting in Berlin , which was also attended by representatives of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and the Reich Security Main Office , Heszlényi submitted the wish of the Hungarian government to the high command of the Wehrmacht to continue sending Jews who had fled illegally to Hungary to areas east of the To be allowed to deport the Dniester . In similar deportations that led to the Kamenez-Podolsk massacre with 23,000 dead, there had been coordination problems between the Germans and the Hungarians in August 1941. In July 1942, the Hungarian military attaché in Berlin, Major General Sándor Homlok , asked for a definitive solution to the matter .

On November 15, 1942, Heszlényi was appointed commanding general of the IV Corps , which he led until September 19, 1944. He took over the corps on December 6, 1942, which was in service on the Don at that time . The corps was divided into the 7th, 10th and 13th Infantry Divisions in the Association of the 2nd Army . The 2nd Army and with it the IV Corps were effectively destroyed in January 1943 in the course of the Ostrogoschsk-Rossosh operation . The remnants of the corps gathered in the Pécs area for reassembly . The corps under Heszlényi was only able to intervene sporadically in further fighting until September 1944.

On September 20, 1944, it was decided to set up the 3rd Army , Heszlényi became its commander-in-chief on September 19, 1944. The 3rd Army was divided into the IV Corps and the VIII Corps and, like the 1st and 2nd Hungarian Army, was subject to German command authorities. The army received only one task from the German leadership: preventing further territorial losses to the Red Army. On October 6th, 1944, the 53rd Army attacked and broke through this front. The 3rd Army under Heszlényi then withdrew behind the Tisza , with the army suffering heavy losses. The Hungarian specialist literature blames Colonel-General Johannes Frießner for the losses of the 3rd Army , who knew about the excessive front of the 3rd Army and did nothing to reinforce it with other units. The Red Army then took advantage of the 3rd Army's “thin” defensive position .

Large parts of the remaining 3rd Army withdrew into the Danube bridgeheads after the Red Army broke through. Heszlényi was not informed about the proclamation made by Miklós Horthy on October 15, 1944 . As contradicting orders were received by his high command, Heszlényi decided to put his army on hold. On October 16, 1944, Ferenc Szálasi , a member of the Arrow Cross, was appointed Hungarian Prime Minister, who called for the continued fight against the Soviet Union on the side of the Wehrmacht . The 3rd Army under Heszlényi continued to withdraw from the Red Army until mid-October 1944, under selective attacks. On October 28, 1944, Heszlényi was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross . He got it among other things as army commander-in-chief and his hesitant tactical leadership, whose time gain made it possible to prepare Budapest for the coming battle. On November 1, 1944 he was promoted to colonel general by the defense minister and chief of staff Károly Beregfy .

Parts of the 3rd Army fought in the last months of the war in the Battle of Budapest . Still other parts, including Heszlényi, withdrew to the west. In the end, Heszlényi's troops only acted as construction battalions to set up defensive positions. On 8 May 1945 Heszlényi came in the room Linz - Salzburg in US captivity . Including his son, Ensign József Heszlényi junior, who served on his father's staff. After his capture, Heszlényi was taken to the military training area in Döllersheim and a little later extradited to the Soviet Union .

Of these Heszlényi was taken to an unknown camp in the Soviet Union, where he on 19 June 1945 by cutting his wrists with a razor blade suicide committed. Veit Scherzer named the day of his death May 8, 1945 by suicide in Zwettl .

On June 19, 1945, Heszlényi was posthumously demoted by a military tribunal and dishonorably discharged from the Hungarian army .

Review

In the People's Republic of Hungary, Heszlényi was seen as a war criminal , a sympathizer and a supporter of the fascist Arrow Cross members . Still other books published after the collapse of the communist regime cannot confirm this information. The author of the book The Hungarian Owners of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross Attila Ótott Kovács came to the conclusion in the course of his research on his book that Heszlényi was actually German-friendly and can also be regarded as a supporter of the Arrow Cross members.

Awards

National awards

Foreign awards

literature

  • Attilla Ótott Kovács: The Hungarian holders of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. Scherzer-Militaer-Verlag 2006, ISBN 978-3-938845-02-8 , pp. 73-91.
  • 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 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h Kovács p. 73.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Kovács p. 89.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Kovács p. 91.
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Kovács p. 90.
  5. ↑ a b Kovács p. 75.
  6. ^ A b René Geoffroy: Hungary as a place of refuge and place of work for German-speaking emigrants (1933 - 1938/39) . Frankfurt am Main: Lang 2001, p. 125
  7. ↑ Kovács p. 76.
  8. ↑ Kovács p. 79.
  9. ↑ Kovács p. 80.
  10. ↑ a b c Kovács p. 82.
  11. ↑ a b Kovács p. 83.
  12. ↑ Kovács p. 84.
  13. ↑ a b c d e f g Kovács p. 85.
  14. ↑ Scherzer p. 388.
  15. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Kovács p. 88.
personal data
SURNAME Heszlényi, József
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vitéz Heszlényi József; Heyszl, József
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian military, most recently colonel general in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH July 24, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Igló , Slovakia
DATE OF DEATH June 2, 1945
Place of death Soviet Union