Johann-Georg Richert

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Johann-Georg Richert (born April 14, 1890 in Liebau in Silesia , † January 30, 1946 in Minsk ) was a German lieutenant general in the Wehrmacht in World War II .

Life

In autumn 1909 Richert joined the infantry regiment "Graf Dönhoff" (7th East Prussian) No. 44 of the Prussian Army as a flag junior and in March 1911 was promoted to lieutenant . He took part in the First World War, was awarded both classes of the Iron Cross and was accepted into the Reichswehr after the war .

Richert rose to the rank of colonel by mid-1938 and in November 1938 was on the staff of the 50th Infantry Regiment in Landsberg an der Warthe . In 1939 he became commander of the 23rd Infantry Regiment of the 11th Infantry Division . He fought with the regiment after the beginning of the Second World War in northern Russia on the Volkhov . On December 1, 1941, he was awarded the German Cross in Gold. In April 1942 he was promoted to major general and was then from June 1942 to November 1943 as the successor to Kurt Müller in command of the 286th Security Division . In this position he was promoted to lieutenant general on March 1, 1943. He then served with interruptions from April to May 1944, represented by Gustav Gihr , until the end of the war as commander of the 35th Infantry Division . The division fought under his leadership in Russia and was involved in Operation Bagration . For his division leadership in the Mogilew area , he was awarded the Oak Leaves for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (623rd award) at the end of 1944. At the end of the war he took part in the East Prussian operation with the division .

In 1942/43 Richert took part in several operations against partisans as commander of the 286th Security Division , in which civilians were murdered. At the beginning of March 1944, Richerts of the 9th Army of General of the Panzer Troop Josef Harpe, subordinated to the 35th Infantry Division, together with Sonderkommando 7a of SS Einsatzgruppe B drove at least 40,000 Belarusian civilians into the improvised camps of the Osaritschi death camp . After he was captured by the Soviets at the end of the war, Richert and other defendants in the Minsk trial were sentenced to death by hanging by a Soviet military tribunal for war crimes . Precisely because the Soviet war crimes trials, as part of the Soviet jurisprudence, did not correspond to liberal Western legal conceptions, it seems - according to the Eastern European historian Hans-Heinrich Nolte - remarkable that Richert was sentenced solely because of his joint responsibility for the deaths of thousands of people in the camps in Osaritschi during the The prosecution's allegations of joint responsibility for “deliberately biological warfare ” by means of systematically induced typhoid infections were not confirmed in the judgment.

Like 13 other defendants, like Major General Gottfried von Erdmannsdorff , Richert was hanged on January 30, 1946 in front of more than 100,000 people on the Minsk horse racing track .

literature

  • Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944–1947). A historical-biographical study. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-525-36968-5 , short biographies on the accompanying CD, p. 552 there.
  • Wolf Keilig : The German Army 1939–1945. Structure, commitment, staffing. 3 volumes (loose-leaf work), Podzun-Verlag, Bad Nauheim 1956, p. 269.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Military weekly paper . ES Mittler., 1911, p. 870 ( google.com [accessed August 30, 2020]).
  2. ↑ 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 .
  3. ^ A b Samuel W. Mitcham: German Order of Battle: 1st-290th Infantry divisions in World War II . Stackpole Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8117-3416-5 , pp. 336 ( google.de [accessed on May 2, 2019]).
  4. ^ A b Samuel W. Mitcham: German Order of Battle: 1st-290th Infantry divisions in World War II . Stackpole Books, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8117-3416-5 , pp. 84 ( google.de [accessed on May 2, 2019]).
  5. ↑ Klaus-Dieter Müller, Thomas Schaarschmidt, Mike Schmeitzner, Andreas Weigelt: Death sentences of Soviet military tribunals against Germans (1944-1947). A historical-biographical study. , Göttingen 2015, p. 552
  6. ↑ Hans Heinrich Nolte: Osarici 1944. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Ed.): Places of horror. Crimes in World War II. Primus-Verlag, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 3-89678-232-0 , pp. 187-194, here pp. 188-190
  7. ^ Manfred Messerschmidt: The Minsk Trial 1946. In: Destruction War. Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941 to 1944. Ed .: Heer and Naumann, Zweiausendeins 1997, ISBN 3-86150-198-8 , pp. 551-568.
personal data
SURNAME Richert, Johann-Georg
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German Lieutenant General in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH April 14, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Liebau in Silesia
DATE OF DEATH January 30, 1946
Place of death Minsk