LI. Army Corps (Wehrmacht)

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The LI. Army Corps was a major association of the German armed forces during the Second World War . He was deployed in April 1941 on the Balkans and from June 1941 until it was destroyed in the Stalingrad pocket in February 1943 on the Eastern Front. In August 1943, a completely reorganized LI. Mountain Corps activated, which was used in Italy until the end of the war.

history

First formation 1941/43

The general command LI. Army Corps was set up on November 25, 1940 in Military District XVII (Vienna) .

During the Balkan campaign (April 1941) assigned to the 2nd Army , the General Command was subordinate to the 101st light division, the 132nd and 183rd infantry divisions . The first attack across the Styrian border was directed towards Marburg an der Drau .

The LI. Corps was assigned to the 6th Army of Army Group South during Operation Barbarossa in July 1941 . In mid-July, the LI were pushed into the front on the Toporishche-Sokolow line. Corps subordinate the 71st , 262nd and 296th Infantry Divisions . Advancing northeast of Zhitomir on Radomyshl , the subordinate troops on the Teterew section in the northern Malin bridgehead withstood strong Soviet attacks. At the end of July, the General Command was assigned not only the 98th but also the 111th and 113th Infantry Divisions . After crossing the Irpen , the association was set up to attack Kiev, but could not take the city in the first attack. During the battle of Kiev the corps held an eastern Dnieper bridgehead at Gornostaipol and bridged the Desna at Oster . After heavy fighting with the Soviet 5th Army (General Potapov ) in the bridgehead between Dnieper and Desna, the corps and the Kienitz group ( XVII Army Corps ) were able to enclose strong Soviet forces in Kiev until mid-September after the advance on Borispol . The further advance into the area north of Kharkov was already hampered by the autumn mud period.

At the beginning of December heavy defensive battles followed southeast of Kharkov, where the corps held the town of Balakleja during the winter fighting and thus contained the Soviet breakthrough on both sides of the Isjum along the Donets . The resulting 100 km deep front bulge was until May 1942 in the Battle of Kharkov by a counterattack by III. and XXXX. Tank corps eliminated from the north and south. At the beginning of May General von Seydlitz took over command of the corps, which consisted of the 44th and 297th Infantry Divisions .

With the German summer offensive ( blue case ) on June 28, 1942, the corps, briefly assigned to the 1st Panzer Army , attacked the Oskol sector from the Kupyansk area . Tactically subordinated to the von Mackensen group (General Command III. Mot. AK) were the now reinforced LI. Corps assigned to 44th, 62nd , 71st , 297th and 384th Infantry Divisions . After reaching the Aidar section, a pursuit march to the Don Arch until July 20 reached Morozovskaya and the Tschir section was forced along the railway line to Kalach . On July 26th, the LI. Army Corps with the 71st Infantry Division reached the Don at Nizhne-Tschirskaja and crossed the Tschir east of the Liska estuary with the 297th Infantry Division. By August 11, the Kessel Battle at Kalatsch was successfully fought in the 6th Army. During the following attack on Stalingrad , the LI General Command coordinated. AK the operations during house-to-house fighting ( Operation Hubertus ), during which General von Seydlitz was also assigned the 14th Panzer Division . On November 19, 1942, the Red Army broke through the positions of the Romanian 3rd Army to the west on the Don section and cut off the 6th Army on the Volga . In the boiler were the LI, who was stopping at the Volga. Corps subordinated the combat groups and remnants of the 71st , 79th , 100th , 295th , 305th and 389th Infantry Divisions . At the beginning of February 1943 the survivors and the entire corps command in the split-up southern pocket of Stalingrad were taken prisoner by the Soviets.

Second formation 1943/45

On August 25, 1943, the General Command LI. Mountain Corps reorganized in Vienna, Commanding General became General of the Feurstein Mountain Troop . In autumn 1943 the corps was entrusted with securing the northern Italian area. From January 1944 it was used as part of the 14th and temporarily also in the association of the 10th Army in the battle of Monte Cassino . The Austrian 44th Grenadier Division (Lieutenant General von Franek ) held up successfully on Monte Cassino and the Cairo Massif, while the 5th Mountain Division (Generalleutnant Ringel ) to the north held up successfully on Monte Santa Croce, at the height of 1074 and on Monte Cifalco . On January 25, 1944, the US 34th Infantry Division attempted to break through in another attack on Rocca Janula. The French Corps under General Juin attacked the German positions on Monte Belvedere. Due to the steady Allied advances, the catastrophic own losses and the changing overall military situation in Italy, the Commander-in-Chief Kesselring gave the order to abandon Monte Cassino on May 17, 1944.

After the fall of the Cassino position, retreat fights followed in central Italy on the northern Apennines . The General Command led the defensive battles in the Sieve Valley, near Firenzuola , in the Forli area , Florence and in the Serchio Valley . The general command was also used in the retreat via La Spezia on the Ligurian coast. The Hauck group , to which the 148th Infantry Division , the 114th Jäger , 232nd and 334th Infantry Divisions were assigned in mid-April , managed to retreat via Carrara to Castelnovo in the last months of the war . The surrender took place on May 2, 1945 after the retreat to the northern bank of the Po in the association of the 14th Army (General Lemelsen ) in the Brescia area .

guide

Commanding generals
Chiefs of the General Staff
  • Colonel i. G. Wilhelm Ochsner , November 25, 1940 to August 28, 1941
  • Colonel Hans Clausius, August 28, 1941 to January 18, 1943
  • Colonel Hans Georg Schmidt von Altenstadt , August 15, 1943 to January 25, 1944
  • Colonel Karl Heinrich Graf von Klinckowstroem, January 25, 1944 to July 25, 1944
  • Colonel Hermann Berlin, July 25, 1944 to September 15, 1944
  • Colonel Georg Gartmayr , September 15, 1944 to April 3, 1945
  • Lieutenant Colonel Gernot Nagel, April 3, 1945 to May 1945

literature

  • Roland Kaltenegger : Die deutsche Gebirgstruppe 1939–1945 , Bechtermünz Verlag, Augsburg 1999, p. 60.
  • Percy E. Schramm (Ed.): War diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht , Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1965.
    • Volume I: 1940/41, edited by Hans-Adolf Jacobsen .
    • Volume II: 1942, edited by Andreas Hillgruber , Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1965.
    • Volume III: 1943, edited by Walther Hubatsch , Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1965.
  • Georg Tessin: Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in World War II 1939 - 1945 , Volume 5, Frankfurt / Main and Osnabrück 1966, p. 168.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ J. Piekałkiewicz : Stalingrad, Heyne Verlag, Munich 1993, p. 320 f.
  2. ^ J. Piekałkiewicz: The battle of Monte Cassino Bechtermünz Verlag 1997, p. 89 f.