Josef Gangl (officer)

Josef "Sepp" Gangl (born September 12, 1910 in Obertraubling , Regensburg district ; † May 5, 1945 in Itter Castle , Tyrol ) was a German officer, most recently a major in World War II. He took part with soldiers of the Wehrmacht and the US Army in the defense of Itter Castle against troops of the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Götz von Berlichingen" and lost his life in the process.

Life

youth

Josef Gangl was born in 1910 in Obertraubling, Bavaria, the son of a minor official of the Royal Bavarian State Railways and a former shop assistant. When he was a toddler, the family moved to Peißenberg in Upper Bavaria , where Josef's younger siblings were born.

Reichswehr

Gangl joined the Reichswehr , which was then limited to 100,000 men, on November 1, 1928, in order to begin a career as a professional soldier in the 7th Artillery Regiment in Nuremberg . He stayed here until September 1929, when he served in Artillery Regiment 5 in Ulm .

Wehrmacht

In 1935 he came to the newly established 25th Artillery Regiment in Ludwigsburg , where he married the Ludwigsburg saleswoman Walburga Renz, with whom he later had two children: their daughter Sieglinde was born in 1936.

In November 1938, Gangl was promoted to sergeant major . From October 1939 he was supposed to attend an officer school of the Wehrmacht , but as part of the war preparations he was transferred with his regiment to the Saar-Palatinate on the border with France . There, on September 7, 1939, eleven French divisions crossed the border over a width of 25 km and advanced about 8 km into German territory, but they withdrew within two weeks on Gamelin's orders . This was Gangl's first war effort. In the following months of the “ Sitzkrieg ”, Gangl spent six months in hospitals. On May 14, 1940 he returned to his regiment and took part in the campaign in the west . There he served as commander of a reconnaissance unit of the 25th Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht. After the Armistice of Compiègne he was transferred to the Artillery Replacement Department 25 and in August 1940, after a short leave from home, to their base in Taus in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . On November 25, 1940, he began a month-long training at the artillery school in Jüterbog .

June 22, 1941 Gangl took the motorized artillery regiment 25 as part of Army Group South in the Ukraine on the German-Soviet war , where he in the battle for Kiev in the 3rd Battalion a battery with 105mm howitzers commanded . On August 20, 1941, Gangl was awarded the Iron Cross, 2nd class. In January 1942 he was promoted to first lieutenant and on February 12, 1942 received the Iron Cross 1st class. On April 24, 1942, Gangl became the commander of a Nebelwerfer unit in Artillery Regiment 25. He held this position on the Eastern Front until he was assigned as commander of Thrower Replacement and Training Department 7 in Höchstädt an der Donau in January 1944 . In February he went to the army school for battalion and division commanders in Antwerp for a month . On March 4, 1944, Gangl was sent to the new 83 Throwing Regiment in Celle , which belonged to Throwing Brigade 7. With this he marched to France in May 1944. After the Allied invasion of Normandy , he marched on June 7, 1944 with the throwing brigade to Caen , where it was subordinated to the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth" and played an important role in the defense of the city . Throwing Brigade 7 escaped from the Falaise pocket in August with heavy losses . In November it was re-established in Prüm in the Eifel as Volks-Throwing Brigade 7 with new equipment. Sepp Gangl took part with the brigade in the Ardennes offensive , in the general retreat that followed, and in February 1945 in the unsuccessful defense of Saarbrücken . On March 8, 1945 he was awarded the German Cross in Gold . Shortly afterwards he was promoted to major and was given command of the 2nd Division of the 83rd Throwing Regiment. The 7th Throwing Brigade had meanwhile lost half of its men and had no fog throwers. At the beginning of April, their commander, General Kurt Paape , ordered the commanders of his battalions near Peißenberg to make their way to Tyrol with them and take part in the defense of the Alpine fortress . In mid-April, Gangl met with Lieutenant General Georg Ritter von Hengl , who assigned him with the remnants of his unit to the Giehl Combat Group under Lieutenant Colonel Johann Giehl in Wörgl .

Resistance in Austria

A few days after his arrival in Wörgl, Gangl contacted the local group of the Austrian resistance around Alois Mayr . He provided the resistance fighters with information and weapons. It was decided that the execution of Johann Giehl's order to defend Wörgl against the Americans to the end, by blowing bridges and blocking paths, was to be prevented, as well as to free prominent French prisoners from the nearby Itter Castle . On May 3, 1945, however, parts of the Giehl Combat Group in Niederaudorf were attacked by the US 12th Panzer Division and suffered heavy losses. Von Hengl had his troops withdrawn from Wörgl and Itter, whereupon units of the Waffen-SS moved up. In the meantime, many residents in Wörgl had already hung white flags out of the windows. According to an order from Heinrich Himmler , all male residents of such a house were to be shot. Like Mayr, Gangl saw it as his obligation to stay in the village in order to protect the residents from reprisals with his soldiers. Together with ten comrades from the 83rd throwing regiment, he stayed behind in Wörgl, contrary to Hengls' order to withdraw.

On May 4, 1945 at 11 a.m. , the Czech cook Andreas Krobot came to Gangl on a bicycle from Itter Castle and asked for immediate help for the prisoners there, as the Waffen SS was about to attack the castle. Gangl, who did not want to sacrifice his men in a suicide mission and had promised them to get them through alive, was forced to rush to the Americans under a white flag and ask for help. In Kufstein , 8 km away , he met an American reconnaissance unit under the command of Captain John C. "Jack" Lee. He finally moved with 14 US soldiers as well as Gangl and ten of his former artillerymen to Itter Castle, where the Battle of Itter Castle was possibly the only act of war of World War II in which soldiers from the US Army and the Wehrmacht fought side by side. Gangl called Alois Mayr for help again by phone, whereupon two other Wehrmacht soldiers and the youthful resistance fighter Hans Waltl drove to the castle. The freed French prisoners also took part in the fight. On the morning of May 5, about 100 to 150 men of the 17th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Götz von Berlichingen" attacked . Gangl was fatally hit by a sniper bullet while attempting to get former French Prime Minister Paul Reynaud out of the line of fire . He died as the only one of the defenders of the castle. Around 4 p.m., a relief unit of the 142nd US Infantry Regiment reached the castle and defeated the besiegers, taking about 100 SS men prisoner .

Awards

• Iron Cross 2nd class on August 20, 1941
• Iron Cross 1st Class on February 12, 1942
• German cross in gold on March 8, 1945

Posthumous honors

Gangl was honored as a hero of the Austrian resistance. A street in Wörgl is named after him.

literature

• Stephen Harding: The Last Battle: When US and German Soldiers Joined Forces in the Waning Hours of World War II in Europe. Da Capo Press, Boston (Massachusetts) 2013. ISBN 978-0-306-82209-4
  • German: Stephen Harding: The last battle. When the Wehrmacht and GIs fought against the SS . Translation: Andreas Wirthensohn. Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna 2015, ISBN 978-3-552-05718-0 .
• Martin Eich: He risked his life and saved former enemies. At the end of the war, the German major Josef Gangl allied with Americans to protect French prisoners from SS troops . Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of May 4, 2018, p. 6, No. 193.

Web links

• Short biography with photo of Gangl

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Harding 2013, p. 169.
2. ↑ Sepp Gangl-Strasse in Wörgl • Strasseensuche.at . In: Strassensuche.at .