Lothar Rendulic

General Lothar Rendulic. Official recording for the award of the swords for the oak leaves of the Knight's Cross in January 1945

Lothar Rendulic (right) (December 1944)

Rendulic when sentenced in 1948

Lothar Rendulic (born October 25, 1887 in Wiener Neustadt ; † January 18, 1971 in Eferding ) was an Austrian officer of Croatian descent . After the annexation of Austria he made a career in the Wehrmacht and was most recently Colonel General of the Wehrmacht in World War II . Alongside Alexander Löhr and Erhard Raus, he was one of three Austrians who rose to become Colonel General in the Wehrmacht. Rendulic's rise was due not least to the fact that he was a staunch National Socialist who joined the NSDAP as an Austrian and received the Golden Party Badge from Hitler in 1944 . For involvement in war crimes, Rendulic was convicted as a war criminal in the Generals trial in Southeastern Europe in 1948.

Career

After studying law, Lothar Rendulic chose a military career and entered the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt in 1907 . On August 8, 1910, he was promoted to lieutenant . Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War , he became a first lieutenant . He fought in Galicia , on the Eastern Front and in Italy . He ended the war as a captain and general staff officer at the XXI. Corps Command.

1920 doctorate Rendulic to Dr. jur. and was also included in the newly created Austrian Armed Forces in 1920 . This was followed by uses, including in the presidential office of the Ministry of the Army . In May 1932 he became a member of the National Socialist Party. From September 1933 to December 1934 he was the Austrian military attaché in Paris . Subsequently, in December 1934, he took over command of the newly formed "Rapid Brigade" in Vienna, the first fully motorized unit of the army.

Due to his membership in the NSDAP , he was temporarily retired in February 1936. After the " Anschluss of Austria " to the German Reich in March 1938, he was reactivated and on April 1, 1938, he was accepted into the Wehrmacht as a colonel in the general staff . After participating in the attack on Poland as Chief of Staff of the XVII. Army Corps he was promoted to major general on December 1, 1939 . In June 1940 entrusted with the leadership of the 14th Infantry Division , he was then given command of the 52nd Infantry Division . With the unit he took part in Operation Barbarossa , the attack on the Soviet Union, and was promoted to lieutenant general on December 1, 1941 . In November 1942 he took command of the XXXV. Army Corps on the Eastern Front and was promoted to General of the Infantry on December 1 . In August 1943 he was the new commander of the 2nd Panzer Army in Yugoslavia and on April 1, 1944 promoted to Colonel General. Since June 28, 1944 he was in command of the 20th Mountain Army in Finland . During the withdrawal of the German troops from Finland, in the so-called Lapland War , Rendulic used the scorched earth tactic . From January 1945 he was in command of Army Groups North ( East Prussia ) and Courland and from April of Army Group South / Ostmark .

In 1945 he became a US prisoner of war . In 1948 he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for war crimes and crimes against humanity against the civilian population in Yugoslavia in the hostage murder trial. After a petition for clemency, the sentence was reduced to ten years on January 31, 1951 by the American High Commissioner John Jay McCloy . In the same year, like most convicted war criminals , Rendulic was released  early from prison in Landsberg prison.

After his release, he worked as a writer and wrote several books that helped make the post-war image of the “ clean Wehrmacht ”, which always remained “decent” and fought “honorably”, socially acceptable in broad sections of the population. The autobiographical work Soldat in Falling Reichen from 1965 was accompanied by a modified version of a photo taken when the swords were awarded to the Oak Leaves of the Knight's Cross in January 1945. The original photo from 1945 shows Rendulic wearing a Hitler mustache , the version from 1965 shows a classic mustache like the one Rendulic wore at the beginning of the war. The historian John Zimmermann interprets this as a sign of “radicalization on the outside too”, about which Rendulic “probably didn't want to know anything more ex post ”.

In 1957/58 he was discussed as a possible federal party leader of the FPÖ .

Awards

• Iron Cross (1914) 2nd and 1st class
• Order of the Iron Crown III. Class with the war decorations and swords
• Austrian Military Merit Cross III. Class with the war decorations and swords
• Military Merit Medal in bronze and silver with swords
• Karl-Troop Cross
• Austrian wounded medal
• Clasp for the Iron Cross, 2nd and 1st class
• Wound badge (1939) in black
• German cross in gold on December 26, 1941
• Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with oak leaves and swords
  • Knight's Cross on March 6, 1942
  • Oak leaves on August 15, 1943 (271st award)
  • Swords on January 18, 1945 (122nd award)
• Medal Winter Battle in the East 1941/42
• Kurland cuff
• Golden party badge of the NSDAP on September 19, 1944
• Mentioned in the Wehrmacht report on June 6, 1944; December 28, 1944; March 14, 1945 and May 9, 1945

Works

• Fought, won, defeated. 1952.
• Glasenbach – Nuremberg – Landsberg. The fate of the soldiers after the war. 1953.
• Dangerous limits of politics. 1954.
• The creepy weapons. Nuclear missiles above us. Guided missiles, missiles, atomic bombs. 1957.
• Neither war nor peace. A question of power. 1961.
• Soldier in falling empires. 1965.
• Basics of military leadership. 1967.

Web links

Commons : Lothar Rendulic  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Lothar Rendulic in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Lothar Rendulic in the Austria Forum  (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ John Zimmermann: Duty to Downfall. The German warfare in the west of the Reich 1944/45. Schöningh, Paderborn 2009, ISBN 978-3-506-76783-7 , p. 457.
2. ↑ Kurt Piringer: The story of the freedom. Orac Verlag, Vienna 1982, p. 55.
3. ↑ ^{a b} Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearer 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. 623.
4. ^ Klaus D. Patzwall : The Golden Party Badge and its honorary awards 1934-1944. Studies of the history of awards. Volume 4. Verlag Klaus D. Patzwall, Norderstedt 2004, ISBN 3-931533-50-6 , p. 13.