Royal Bavarian 16th Reserve Infantry Regiment

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 16 was set up as an infantry regiment of the Bavarian Army at the beginning of the war in 1914 and as part of the 6th Bay during the First World War . Reserve Division on the Western Front , initially deployed off Ypres . In this First Battle of Flanders on October 31, 1914, the regiment commander, Colonel Julius List , fell , whereupon the regiment was given the honorary name "List". When the Bavarian Army was disbanded, the regiment stood in Lagerlechfeld between Augsburg and Landsberg .

Due to the propaganda of the Third Reich, but also in more recent publications, the regiment is often referred to as a volunteer regiment, although this does not correspond to the facts.

Known members of the regiment

Adolf Hitler (seated right) with comrades in the First World War

The regiment is best known because Adolf Hitler belonged to it. After the mobilization on August 3, 1914, the Austrian submitted a request to King Ludwig III. of Bavaria for entry into the Bavarian army. On August 16, Hitler was accepted as a war volunteer and assigned to the Royal Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 16 (List). Soon promoted to private , he was employed as a regimental staff reporter until the end of the war. Historian Thomas Weber doubts Hitler's claim that he received special permission from the Bavarian king. It is more likely that the mass of volunteers in the military office was not even asked about Hitler's nationality or that he lied to this question.

From November 9, 1914 until the end of the war, Hitler served as a messenger between regimental staff and battalion staff at a distance of 1.5 to 5 kilometers from the main battle line of the western front . Research and publications by the historian Thomas Weber made new facts from this period known in 2010/11 and refuted the propaganda of the National Socialists, which reverberated up to the present, that Hitler was a battle-tested and extremely brave soldier.

Other well-known members of the regiment were the poet Eugen Roth , the painter Albert Weisgerber , who died as a lieutenant and company commander west of Lille on May 10, 1915 , and the painter Adalbert Wimmenauer , and Fritz Wiedemann , later Hitler's adjutant, Max Amann , a National Socialist functionary and publicist, as well as Hugo Gutmann (later Henry G. Grant), who, as a Jewish officer during the First World War, was involved in the fact that Private Hitler was awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class, and who later became the target of the Nazi regime .

literature

  • Fridolin Solleder: Four years of the Western Front: History of the List RIR16 regiment . Munich 1932. (Readable online [1] )
  • Adolf Meyer: With Adolf Hitler in the Bayr. RIR 16 List. Georg Aupperle, Neustadt an der Aisch 1934.
  • Friedrichfranz Feeser u. a .: The Bavaria Book of the World War 1914–1918 (2 volumes). Stuttgart 1930.
  • Thomas Weber : Hitler's First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War. Oxford University Press, USA; 1st ed. (November 28, 2010), ISBN 978-0-19-923320-5 .
  • German translation: Hitler's First War: The Private Hitler in the First World War - Myth and Truth , Propylaeen Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-549-07405-3 (or paperback 2012)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ian Kershaw: Hitler. 1889-1936. Stuttgart 1998, p. 130 f.
  2. ↑ welt.de, September 16, 2010: Adolf Hitler was a coward in World War I , Thomas Weber: Hitler's First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (German: Hitler's First War: Der Gefreite Hitler in World War I - Myth and Truth , Propylaeen Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-549-07405-3 ).