Johannes Frießner

Johannes Frießner

Johannes Frießner even Hans Friessner (* 22. March 1892 in Chemnitz , † 26. June 1971 in Bad Reichenhall ) was a German army officer (since 1944 Colonel General ). During the Second World War he was used as the commander of various large army units in the war against the Soviet Union .

Life

Frießner occurred on 20 March 1911 as a cadet in the Infantry Regiment "Grand Duke Friedrich II. Von Baden" (4th Royal Saxon) no. 103 of the Saxon army one. He was promoted to lieutenant on August 9, 1912 . His officer's license as a lieutenant was backdated to August 25, 1910. During the First World War he was mainly employed in staff positions. During the war he was awarded both classes of the Iron Cross , the Prussian Order of the Crown, IV class and the Saxon Military Order of St. Heinrich .

After the war he was accepted into the Reichswehr and promoted to captain on August 1, 1922 . In the following years Frießner worked as a teacher and training officer at the infantry school in Dresden . The promotion to lieutenant colonel took place on April 1, 1935 and that to colonel on March 1, 1938.

Second World War

At the beginning of the Second World War he was inspector of the education system of the army. Together with his most important colleague and speaker Kurt Hesse, he was considered to be an "essential pillar of the intensifying military school policy" and, in the central organ of the National Socialist Teachers' Union (NSLB), Der Deutsche Erzieher , presented a contribution to school and national defense that had been developed together with Hesse in 1939 , which as a kind of " Curriculum ”and called for a strengthening of military education in schools. In his function as inspector of the education system, he illustrated the totalitarian claim of the National Socialist state on the (male) Germans in the context of the series "War Lectures" at the University of Bonn as follows: "The education of our youth takes place in a churn '. It captured the young German in the earliest years of life and accompanied him until the day he joined the Wehrmacht. Parents' home - school - young people - Hitler Youth - SA and Reich Labor Service are involved in it. After completing military service, maintaining military capability is an important task that the troops and SA military teams have to perform together. With a comprehensive interpretation of the word 'soldier', one can say: the male German becomes a soldier when he is born and only ceases to be one when he is recalled to the 'large army'. "

On August 1, 1940, Frießner was appointed major general. On May 1, 1942 he was given command of the Silesian 102nd Infantry Division in the command area of ​​the 9th Army on the Eastern Front. There, according to eyewitness reports, he is said to have ordered all residents of the village of Cholmez to run down a mined street in order to clear the street of mines; none of the residents survived. After being promoted to Lieutenant General on October 1, 1942, Frießner was on January 19, 1943 at the suggestion of Colonel General Model, who gave him special support, with the leadership of the XXIII. Army Corps , whose commanding general he was on April 1, 1943 while being promoted to General of the Infantry . On July 23, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross .

On February 2, 1944, Frießner was transferred to the northern eastern front, again at the request of Colonel General Model, who now led Army Group North, and received command of the newly formed Army Group Frießner, which was later renamed the Narva Army Division. After he was awarded the 445th Oak Leaves for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on April 9, 1944, he was entrusted with the leadership of Army Group North . Hitler hoped that this change of command would result in the unconditional implementation of his decision to hold the so-called "Ostland" at all costs. However, like his predecessor, Frießner soon declared that a withdrawal of the Army Group would be inevitable, at least as far as the Daugava. Thereupon Hitler decided on July 23, 1944 to swap the commanders-in-chief of the Army Groups North and South Ukraine, but promoted Frießner retrospectively to Colonel General on July 1, 1944. His successor was Colonel General Schörner.

On July 25, 1944, Friessner arrived at the headquarters of Army Group South Ukraine (renamed Army Group South on September 23 ). However, he apparently misjudged the situation of the Army Group in several respects, failed to prepare for the retreat to the Carpathian Rim position in good time and led his Army Group directly before and then after the start of the major Soviet offensive on August 20, 1944, by inactivity and with behavior that was not appropriate to the threatening situation, so that it was almost completely lost in less than two weeks, especially the entire 6th Army with 16 divisions. 286,000 German soldiers were not only lost due to the Soviet superiority, but also favored by strategic mistakes by the top German leadership and numerous tactical and operational mistakes under the commander in chief of the German-Romanian army group, Colonel General Frießner. The offensive of the Soviets under Marshal Rodion Malinowski and his 2nd Ukrainian Front as well as Colonel General Tolbuchin, who was also promoted to Marshal with his 3rd Ukrainian Front , was successful, as both Romania and Bulgaria were forced to the Allied side within a few days and afterwards Bulgaria Wehrmacht troops expelled from these countries with great losses. Nevertheless, Hitler left Frießner in command of the Army Group. The retreat fights led to occasional successes, such as in the tank battle of Debreczen , but it was not possible to prevent the loss of all of Romania with its oil wells and most of Hungary. Shortly before the final encirclement of the capital of Budapest with a further 80,000 soldiers, Hitler replaced Frießner on December 22, 1944 (and at the same time mayor of the 6th Army Fretter-Pico), both of whom were transferred to the Führer Reserve . Frießner's successor was the previous mayor of the 8th Army, General of the Infantry Otto Wöhler . For the remainder of the war, Frießner received no more command.

post war period

From May 1945 to November 1947 Frießner was a US prisoner of war. In September 1951 he was elected chairman of the Association of German Soldiers (VDS), but resigned from this office in December of the same year. Frießner was no longer tenable as chairman of the VDS after he had justified the attack on Poland as a legitimate act "to protect ethnic Germans in Poland" at a press conference on September 21, 1951 and, on the other hand, his declaration of honor for the - according to Frießner - Connected "decently fighting Waffen-SS " with the disqualification of the officers of the military resistance of July 20, 1944 , who, according to him, had chosen a method that was to be rejected "from the military point of view", namely "political murder". In view of these events, Frießner was characterized by Walter Theimer in 1951 as a typical representative of Hitler's military henchmen under the title: " The Devil's General ".

Awards

• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Prussian Crown Order IV class
• Knight's Cross of the Saxon Military Order of St. Heinrich
• Knight's Cross 2nd class of the Saxon Order of Civil Merit with swords
• Knight's Cross II. Class of the Saxon Albrecht Order with Swords
• Clasp for the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class
• German cross in gold on June 9, 1943
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with oak leaves
  • Knight's Cross on July 23, 1943
  • Oak leaves on April 9, 1944 (445th award)
• War Merit Cross (1939) 2nd and 1st class with swords

Fonts (selection)

• Demands of the Wehrmacht on youth education . Verlag Gebr. Scheur (Bonn University printing house), Bonn 1941
• Battles betrayed. The tragedy of the German armed forces in Romania and Hungary . Holstein-Verlag, Hamburg 1956.

literature

• Theimer, Walter: The devil's generals . In: Union monthly journal. Book 10, 1951, pp. 534-540.
• Mazulenko, Viktor Antonovič: The destruction of the Army Group in Southern Ukraine : August - September 1944. Berlin 1959
• Bert-Oliver Manig: The politics of honor. The rehabilitation of professional soldiers in the early Federal Republic . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 978-3-89244-658-3 ; Pp. 401–447 (= chapter The Frießner crisis and the bursting of a political speculative bubble ).
• Schönherr, Klaus: The fighting of withdrawal in Romania and Transylvania in the summer / autumn of 1944 . In: Military History Research Office (Hrsg.): The German Reich and the Second World War. Vol. 8, Munich 2011, pp. 731-848.
• Krisztián Ungváry: Hungarian theater of war . In: Military History Research Office (Hrsg.): The German Reich and the Second World War . Vol. 8, Munich 2011, pp. 849-958.
• Wolf Keilig : The Generals of the Army 1939–1945. Podzun-Pallas-Verlag, Friedberg 1983, page 97.

Web links

• Works by and about Johannes Frießner  in the German Digital Library
• Entry about Frießner, Johannes (1892–1971) in the central database of bequests

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Wolfgang Keilig: The Generals of the Army 1939–1945. Podzun-Pallas-Verlag, Friedberg 1983, p. 97.
2. ^ Franz-Werner Kersting: Military and Youth in the Nazi State. Arms and school policy of the Wehrmacht. Deutscher Universitätsverlag, Wiesbaden 1989, p. 302ff. (also to the following)
3. ^ Frießner, Hans: Demand of the Wehrmacht on youth education . Gebr. Scheur, Bonn 1941, p. 6th f .
4. ↑ Paul Kohl: I am amazed that I am still alive: Soviet eyewitnesses report. Gütersloh 1990, ISBN 3-579-02169-9 , pp. 156 .
5. ↑ Manfred Rauh, History of the Second World War, Berlin 1998, Vol. 3, p. 226.
6. ↑ Federal Archives, Military Archives Department, signature RH 19-V
7. ↑ Schönherr, Klaus: The fighting for withdrawal in Romania and Transylvania in the summer / autumn of 1944 . In: Military History Research Office (Hrsg.): The German Reich and the Second World War . tape 8 . dva, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-421-06235-2 , pp. 731-848 .
8. ↑ Brauers, The FDP in Hamburg 1945 to 1953, page 500 ff.
9. ↑ Bert-Oliver Manig: The politics of honor. The rehabilitation of professional soldiers in the early Federal Republic . Wallstein Verlag, Göttingen 2004, p. 412 f.
10. ↑ Theimer, Walter: The devil's generals . In: Union monthly journal . No. 10 , 1951, pp. 534-540 .
11. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Ranking list of the German Imperial Army , Mittler & Sohn Verlag, Berlin, p. 135.
12. ↑ ^{a b} 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 , p. 321.