Karl-Heinz Frieser

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Karl-Heinz Frieser (* 1949 in Pressath , Upper Palatinate ) is a retired Colonel . D. of the army of the German Bundeswehr and military historian .

Life

In 1970, Frieser joined the German Armed Forces and began studying political science and history in 1978. In 1981 he was with Gerhard Ritter . at the University of Würzburg with the dissertation The German Prisoners of War in the Soviet Union and the National Committee Free Germany for Dr. phil. PhD. After that he was used as a company commander .

From 1985 until his retirement in 2009 he worked at the Military History Research Office (MGFA) in Freiburg im Breisgau and Potsdam , where he had been head of the research area “Ages of World Wars” since 2002.

The publication of his dissertation War Behind Barbed Wire. The German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union and the National Committee “Free Germany” followed numerous other publications on military-historical topics. His 1995 work "Blitzkrieg-Legende" on the western campaign of the Wehrmacht is considered a standard work on the (up to then controversial) question of whether the German military leadership and Hitler were pursuing a "Blitzkrieg strategy". According to Frieser, this was not the case, but the campaign in the West was an "operational desperate act" to "get out of a desperate strategic situation". He attributes the German victory to the right decisions by the German military leadership. As the “key scene” of the campaign, he explains General Heinz Guderian's unauthorized breakthrough at Sedan on May 14, 1940 , which triggered an “avalanche effect” and led to the rapid collapse of the French and English armies.

Another research focus is the history of operations in the German-Soviet War 1941–1945 . Among other things, he wrote the section on the Battle of the Kursk Arch in Volume 8 of Das Deutsche Reich and the Second World War . Frieser opposed the (in his own words) formation of myths on the Soviet side in the tank battle of Kursk (Battle of Prokhorovka on July 12, 1943). While one could read in Soviet representations that 800 German met 850 Soviet tanks and 400 German tanks were destroyed, Frieser assumes 186 German against 672 Soviet tanks, with the Soviet armed forces losing at least 235 tanks due to serious tactical errors in their leadership had, the Germans only three.

Fonts

  • War behind barbed wire. The German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union and the National Committee “Free Germany” , Mainz 1981, ISBN 978-3-77581015-9 (Zugl .: Würzburg, Univ., Diss., 1981).
  • Ardennes - Sedan. Military historical guide through a European landscape of fate , (first edition 2000), Frankfurt a. M./Bonn 2006, ISBN 978-3-93238508-7 .
  • Blitzkrieg legend. The Western Campaign 1940 (first edition 1995), Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, 4th edition Munich 2012, ISBN 978-348671544-6 ; the 3rd edition 2005 is identical.
  • The Blitzkrieg Legend . Translated into English by John T. Greenwood and Karl-Heinz Frieser, Naval Institute Press, 2012/2013, ISBN 978-1-59114295-9 .
  • (Ed. On behalf of the Military History Research Office) The Eastern Front 1943/44. The war in the east and on the secondary fronts (=  The German Reich and the Second World War , Volume 8). Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-421-06235-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl-Heinz Frieser: The German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union and the national committee "Free Germany" . Dissertation, University of Würzburg, 1981, no p.
  2. ^ Karl-Heinz Frieser: Blitzkrieg-Legende , p. 435.
  3. ↑ Winfried Mönch: decisive battle "Invasion" 1944? Prognoses and diagnoses. Steiner, Stuttgart 2001, p. 96.
  4. ↑ Sven Kellerhoff: Stalin's tanks launched a kamikaze attack . In: Die Welt , July 15, 2013, interview with Frieser about the tank battle of Kursk.
  5. ↑ Reading sample (table of contents, editor's introduction, preface etc.).
  6. ↑ Table of Contents .
personal data
SURNAME Frieser, Karl-Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer and military historian
DATE OF BIRTH 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Pressath