Charles of Le Suire

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Karl Hans Maximilian von Le Suire (born November 8, 1898 in Unterwössen , † June 18, 1954 near Stalingrad ) was a German general in the mountain troops in World War II .

Life

origin

Karl was the second son of the landscape painter Hermann von Le Suire (1861–1933) and his wife Dorothea, née Neff (* 1869).

Military career

Le Suire served as a lieutenant in the 1st Infantry Regiment "König" of the Bavarian Army during the First World War and was awarded both classes of the Iron Cross and the Bavarian Order of Merit IV. After the end of the war, he initially worked in a volunteer corps and was accepted into the Reichswehr .

During the Second World War, Le Suire received the German Cross in Gold on April 25, 1942 and led the 117th Jäger Division in occupied Greece since 1943 . In November 1943, the division began the "Operation Kalavryta" with the aim of encircling and destroying Greek partisans in the mountainous surroundings of Kalavryta . During the operation, some German soldiers were killed and 77 of them captured and executed by the Greek partisans. On December 10, 1943, Le Suire signed the order to level the "places Mazeika and Kalawrita" to the ground. A total of around 700 men between the ages of 15 and 65 were shot in retaliation for the murder of the captured Wehrmacht soldiers, and 24 villages and three monasteries were destroyed. Le Suire was never prosecuted for war crimes.

At the beginning of 1944, Le Suire was transferred to the Führerreserve and, from August 1944, commissioned as commanding general to lead the XXIV Panzer Corps . From October 1944, Le Suire served as commanding general of the XXXXIX. Mountain Corps and received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross in this capacity on November 26, 1944 . At the end of the war he was taken prisoner by the Soviets , in which he died.

literature

  • Walter Manoschek : Kraljevo - Kragujevac - Kalavryta. The massacres of the 717th Infantry Division and 117th Jäger Division in the Balkans. In: Loukia Droulia, Hagen Fleischer : From Lidice to Kalavryta. Resistance and Terror of Occupation. Studies on reprisals in World War II. Metropol, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-932482-10-7 . Pp. 93-104.
  • Hermann Frank Meyer : From Vienna to Kalavryta. The bloody trail of the 117th Jäger Division through Serbia and Greece. Bibliopolis, Mannheim / Möhnesee 2002, ISBN 3-933925-22-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gothaisches Genealogisches Taschenbuch der Briefadeligen houses. 1919. Thirteenth year, Justus Perthes, Gotha 1918, p. 504.
  2. ↑ Reichswehr Ministry (Ed.): Ranking list of the German Reichsheeres. Mittler & Sohn, Berlin 1924, p. 192.
  3. ↑ Eberhard Rondholz : Kalavryta 1943. In: Gerd R. Ueberschär (Hrsg.): Places of horror. Crimes in World War II. Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2003. pp. 60–70, here p. 63.
  4. ↑ Kaspar Dreidoppel: The Greek Demon: Resistance and Civil War in Occupied Greece 1941-1944. (Balkanological publications of the Eastern European Institute at the Free University Berlin 46), Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-447-05929-9 , p. 344.
  5. ↑ 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 .
personal data
SURNAME Le Suire, Karl von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Le Suire, Karl Hans Maximilian von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German general of the mountain troops in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH November 8, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Underweave
DATE OF DEATH June 18, 1954
Place of death at Stalingrad