Kurt student

Kurt Student (1941)

Kurt Arthur Benno Student (born May 12, 1890 in Birkholz , Neumark , Brandenburg Province , † July 1, 1978 in Lemgo ) was a German Colonel General in the Air Force in World War II and the highest-ranking officer in the Wehrmacht's parachute troops .

Life

Military career until 1939

At the age of eleven, Student entered the cadet institute in Potsdam and in 1910 was transferred as an ensign to the Jäger Battalion "Graf Yorck von Wartenburg" (East Prussian) No. 1 of the Prussian Army . After just a few weeks, he was transferred to the newly opened Johannisthal airfield in order to complete an aircraft pilot training course. In 1913 he received his military pilot's certificate after passing the field pilot's exam. In the First World War, initially in the field of pilots and fighter planes used, it was the leadership of the October 1916 Hunting Season 9 transmitted. He was promoted to captain in June 1918 . With six confirmed kills, he was a successful fighter pilot and, after a serious wound, saw the end of the war at home.

After the First World War, Student was included in the planning for the construction of a new air force, although the Reichswehr was not allowed to own aircraft after the Peace Treaty of Versailles . From 1922 to 1928 a student in the inspection for armament and equipment was active in the field of aircraft development, which was subordinate to the Army Weapons Office . He played a key role in setting up the Secret Aviation School and testing facility for the Reichswehr in the Soviet Union .

In 1933 a student was accepted into the Air Force and initially worked in training. From 1933 he was commander of the technical school in Jüterbog , from 1935 commander of the pilot's test centers and commander of the Rechlin test center , from 1936 commander of the aviation school and chief of staff at the command of the pilot's school. In April 1938 he was appointed commander of the 3rd Aviation Division and made major general . As early as July 1938, he was commissioned to set up the 7th Aviation Division , in which the parachute troops of the Air Force, which were under construction , were to be combined. From February 1939 he also acted as inspector of the parachute and airborne troops in the Reich Aviation Ministry .

Second World War

Promoted to Lieutenant General on January 1, 1940 , Student and his troops took part in the raid on Belgium and the Netherlands at the beginning of May, with his troops taking on the important task of occupying strategic points such as bridges and airfields.

Because the German parachute troops played a key role in conquering the Belgian-Dutch bridges and border fortifications (e.g. Fort Eben Emael ), Student received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on May 12 and promoted to general two weeks later der Flieger (renamed General der Fallschirmtruppe on May 1, 1943 ).

When, after the surrender of Rotterdam , he wanted to order a unit of the Waffen-SS to stop their untargeted fire, he was hit in the head by a ricochet and seriously wounded.

On January 1, 1941 Student became Commanding General of the XI. Fliegerkorps , to which the parachute force had meanwhile been expanded. He was also the commander of the German troops in the airborne battle for Crete in May 1941 and briefly commanding the island after its capture. As such, on May 31, he ordered retaliation for the resistance of the island's population. This led to the condomari and kandanos massacres at the Merkur company .

Due to the high, slowly replaceable losses of the paratroopers when taking Crete, Hitler forbade further use of these valuable troops in larger jump landings . In 1941, for example, there was no action against British positions in the Middle East or in Cyprus . Instead, after the Wehrmacht's first setbacks in the war against the Soviet Union in the winter of 1941/42, paratroopers had to be deployed to close gaps in the front. (Since this was recognized as a misuse of these highly specialized troops, it was later switched to the establishment of air force field units from excess ground personnel.)

Students Fliegerkorps remained stationed as reserve of Air Fleet 2 of Albert Kesselring in the Mediterranean area and devoted itself to the further training and reinforcement of the parachute troops. When the opportunity to conquer the island fortress arose after an air offensive against Malta in 1942 , Student was given the task of planning the German-Italian company Hercules , which, however, was soon abandoned due to Hitler's concerns. The troops provided for this purpose were instead used to reinforce Erwin Rommel's Panzer Army Africa in the Africa campaign .

When the Italian campaign began with the invasion of Sicily in mid-1943 , it was again Students' paratroopers who were used to supplement the insufficient ground troops. After the Badoglio government left the Axis alliance in September 1943, paratroopers were deployed to command operations such as the liberation of Mussolini (→  Company Eiche ) and the occupation of Rome . In November of that year, Student was commissioned by Luftwaffe chief Goering to set up a parachute army until April 1944.

From March to November 1944 Student was Commander in Chief of the 1st Parachute Army , then Army Group H in the West (promotion to Colonel General on July 13, 1944), whose leadership he relinquished at the end of January 1945 on instructions from Hitler, to again the 1st Parachute Army to take over, a command which he held until April 28, 1945. From April 28, 1945, in the last days of the war, Kurt Student was entrusted with the supreme command of the Vistula Army Group on the Eastern Front instead of Gotthard Heinrici . By May 2, 1945, however, Student was no longer able to organize the severely decimated and disbanding army. Student too finally set off on foot west to Schleswig-Holstein, where he saw the end of the war.

Merkur company

The operational planning for the attack on Crete on May 20, 1941 was up to Student. 10,000 men were to jump off with parachutes, 750 men to land with gliders and, after taking the most important airfields, a further 5,000 men with Ju 52 , including mountain troops under General Julius Ringel . According to Hitler, Crete was suitable for the British as a base for bombing planes from which the Romanian oil fields could be attacked. There were 42,640 Allied troops, including 11,000 Greek soldiers , ready on the island.

High losses on the German side and partisans who intervened in the conflict and were supported or tolerated by the civilian population exacerbated the forms of conflict. As the first and provisional island commander of occupied Crete, Kurt Student contributed to an escalation of violence and counter-violence. The historian Hagen Fleischer points out that the German “retaliation” for attacks by partisans is “of a severity that until then had only been used in Slavic populated areas (Poland).” The accompanying atrocity propaganda, often fueled by expedient exaggerations like the attack on Poland, created a climate in which war crimes became possible. On May 31, 1941, Student issued an order for retaliation:

“It is now a matter of carrying out all measures as quickly as possible, leaving aside all formalities and deliberately eliminating special courts. With the whole situation, this is a matter for the troops and not for the ordinary courts. They are out of the question for beasts and murderers. "

Civilians shot dead in Kondomari, June 2, 1941

Student also ordered that the retaliation should, if possible, be carried out by the unit that had previously suffered from attacks. The retaliatory measures ranged from contribution payments to shootings and the burning of villages to the "extermination of the male population of entire areas". The approval of the general had to be obtained for the last two measures. In accordance with this order, for example, the village of Kandanos was destroyed and numerous male civilians in the village of Kondomari were arbitrarily seized and shot.

After attacks by Greek partisans, Student ordered collective liability in Greece. The partisans who carried out attacks or the "guilty civilian population" should be punished. The differentiation between “guilty” and “innocent” has been defined in the internal armed forces discussion, if at all, almost exclusively through tactical considerations.

Oak company

One day after Mussolini's fall and arrest on July 25, 1943, Student received instructions from Hitler for the Eiche company . A commando operation using German paratroopers was planned to free Mussolini. The operational planning was in the hands of General Student, the execution was the responsibility of the paratrooper training battalion and its commander. SS-Hauptsturmführer Otto Skorzeny received permission to join the company. On September 12, 1943 the enterprise was carried out. Mussolini was freed from a hotel on the Gran Sasso and then flown out. On September 14, 1943, he and Skorzeny arrived at Hitler's headquarters in Rastenburg.

post war period

After the war ended, Student was arrested on May 28, 1945 and sentenced to five years in prison by a military tribunal. In autumn 1947 Greece applied for his extradition. In 1948, Student was released from captivity after a successful appointment.

“In a war crimes trial before a British military tribunal in Lüneburg in May 1946 , St. was sentenced to five years in prison on May 10, but the judge in charge, General Galloway, refused to uphold the sentence because St. Attitude was known. "

- International Biographical Archive (Munzinger Archive)

In the Nuremberg war crimes trials , especially in the trials against the German generals "Süd-Ost" , no charges were brought against Student.

Through the establishment of the traditional association “ Bund Deutscher Fallschirmjäger ”, of which he was president from 1952 to 1954, the student was one of the leading figures in the traditional associations of the Wehrmacht and later the Bundeswehr . When former members of the armed forces every year on 20 May in the Old City to Crete-day committed, a student was among the guests of honor.

At the funeral of the convicted war criminal Hermann-Bernhard Ramcke in 1968, Student gave an eulogy.

Student died on July 1, 1978 at the age of 88.

Aftermath

Since autumn 1998 the Federal Ministry of Defense has denied that General Student is worthy of tradition. In the Franz-Josef-Strauss barracks in Altenstadt (near Schongau), the "Generaloberst-Student-Straße" was renamed on October 16, 1998 along with other street names that were named after people from the Nazi era. On the same day the “Colonel General Student Hall” was renamed “Tower Hall”. In 2010, the former head of the Bundeswehr Military History Research Office , Brigadier General a. D. Günter Roth , presented a study in which, according to the judgment of the historian Rainer F. Schmidt , “that student was ready to the bitter end, without any insight into the hopelessness of the war, without a sense of responsibility and moral ethos that gave him to sacrifice subordinate soldiers on the altar to the ideology of 'final victory'. "

Awards

• Prussian military pilot badge on February 27, 1914
• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class on September 26, 1914 and August 29, 1915, respectively
• Honor goblet for the winner in the dogfight
• Knight's Cross of the Order of Albrecht II Class with Swords on June 21, 1915
• Knight's Cross of the Royal House Order of Hohenzollern with swords on June 5, 1916
• Wound badge (1918) in black
• Prussian aviator commemorative badge on September 10, 1919
• Pilot badge on May 21, 1935
• Wehrmacht service award IV. To I. class
• Medal in memory of October 1, 1938 with a clasp Prague Castle on June 5, 1939
• Clasp for the Iron Cross 2nd and 1st class on September 20, 1939
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with oak leaves
  • Knight's Cross on May 12, 1940
  • Oak leaves on September 27, 1943 (305th award)
• Pilot and observer badge in gold with diamonds on September 2, 1940
• Wound badge (1939) in silver
• Cuff bracelet Crete

literature

• Günter Roth : The German parachute force 1936–1945. The Commander in Chief Colonel General Kurt Student. Strategic, operational head or craftsman and the soldier's ethos - appreciation. Criticism. Lesson. Verlag ES Mittler & Sohn , Hamburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8132-0906-8 .
• Gerhard Schreiber : The Second World War. Beck , Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-44764-3 .
• Gerhard Schreiber: The Italian military internees in the German sphere of influence 1943 to 1945. Munich 1990, ISBN 3-486-55391-7 . (= Contributions to military history 28)
• Marlen von Xylander: The German occupation in Crete 1941-1945. (Individual writings on military history, Volume 32). Freiburg 1989, ISBN 3-7930-0192-X .
• Karl-Heinz Golla: "The German Parachute Troop 1936–1941." Verlag ES Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg 2006, ISBN 3-8132-0684-X .
• Hans-Martin Stimpel: "The German parachute troop 1942–1945." Verlag ES Mittler & Sohn, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-8132-0683-1 .

Web links

Commons : Kurt Student  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Colonel General Kurt Arthur Benno Student on specialcamp11.co.uk

References and comments

1. ↑ Kurt Student in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
2. ^ From: The secret flying school and test site of the Reichswehr in the Soviet Union. Federal Archives
3. ↑ stimulus; Hans-Martin: Die deutsche Fallschirmtruppe 1942-1945, Verlag ES Mittler, Hamburg 2001, p. 434 f.
4. ↑ The term “partisans” was understood to mean all persons “who were even roughly suspected of committing hostile acts against persons and property of the German military power”. Cf. Eberhard Rondholz : Finding justice or protecting offenders? The German judiciary and the "coping with" the terror of the occupation in Greece . In: Loukia Droulia, Hagen Fleischer (ed.): From Lidice to Kalavryta. Resistance and Terror of Occupation. Studies on reprisals in World War II. (National Socialist Occupation Policy in Europe 1939–1945, Volume 8). Berlin 1999, p. 243.
5. ↑ ^{a b} Cf. Hagen Fleischer: German 'Order' in Greece 1941–1944. In: Loukia Droulia, Hagen Fleischer (ed.): From Lidice to Kalavryta. Resistance and Terror of Occupation. Studies on reprisals in World War II. (National Socialist Occupation Policy in Europe 1939–1945, Volume 8). Berlin 1999, p. 154.
6. ↑ “The phenomenon often cited by the Germans 'typically Balkan', d. H. 'Superfluous' atrocities against captured occupiers - such as the mutilation of the fallen or even the living - are reported by name from the Yugoslav partisan war [...] the few cases that appear in the contemporary Wehrmacht files, however, were generalized by the defense in the Nuremberg trial against the southeast generals in order to justify even the bloodiest reprisals. ”From: Hagen Fleischer: German 'Order' in Greece 1941–1944. In: Loukia Droulia, Hagen Fleischer (ed.): From Lidice to Kalavryta. Resistance and Terror of Occupation. Studies on reprisals in World War II. (National Socialist Occupation Policy in Europe 1939–1945, Volume 8). Berlin 1999, p. 201.
7. ↑ Hans Werbik, Theory of Violence. A new basis for aggression research
8. ↑ Gen. Kdo. XI. Fliegerkorps, Der Kom. Gen., May 31, 1941, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg, RH 28-5 / 4, Bl. 412 f. Excerpts from Xylander, Marlen from: The German occupation of Crete . Freiburg i. B. 1989, p. 32. Full text of the student order of May 31, 1941 in the kreta-wiki.
9. ^ Hagen Fleischer: German 'Order' in Greece 1941–1944. In: Loukia Droulia, Hagen Fleischer (ed.): From Lidice to Kalavryta. Resistance and Terror of Occupation. Studies on reprisals in World War II. (National Socialist Occupation Policy in Europe 1939–1945, Volume 8). Berlin 1999, p. 173
10. ^ Kurt Student . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 1947, p. 13 ( Online - Nov. 8, 1947 ).
11. ↑ Christian Zentner (ed.): The Second World War - A Lexicon. Heyne, Munich, ISBN 3-85001-863-6 , p. 515.
12. ↑ "rst": On the death of General of the paratroopers, Bernhard Ramcke. In: The Volunteer. August 1968, p. 15 f.
13. ^ Rainer F. Schmidt. The yes-man as a failure. Colonel-General Kurt Student and the parachutists of the Wehrmacht (= review of the study by Günter Roth: The German Parachute Troop 1936–1945. The Commander-in-Chief Kurt Student. Hamburg 2010). In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung No. 170 of July 26, 2010, p. 8.
14. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Ranking list of the German Imperial Army. Mittler & Sohn, Berlin, p. 128.
15. ↑ 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 , p. 732.
16. ^ Fellgiebel, Walther-Peer; The bearers of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939–1945, Podzun-Pallas-Verlag, Friedberg, 1986; P. 416.
17. ^ Fellgiebel, Walther-Peer; The bearers of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939–1945, Podzun-Pallas-Verlag, Friedberg, 1986; P. 73.
18. ^ Jörg Nimmergut : German medals and decorations until 1945. Volume 4. Württemberg II - German Empire. Central Office for Scientific Order Studies, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-00-001396-2 , p. 2441.