Maurice Rose

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Major General (Major General) Maurice Rose

Maurice Rose (born November 26, 1899 in Middletown , Connecticut , † March 30 / March 31, 1945 in Kirchborchen ) was an American major general. He fell upon closing of the Ruhr Pocket at the top in his respective 3rd Armored Division and was the highest-ranking officer in the United States Army , who during the Second World War came to death in the European theater of war by enemy action.

First World War

Rose was the son of Rabbi Samuel Rose and his wife Katherine Rose. His father was married twice and had two sons. Maurice Rose joined the US Army in 1916 and served as a private on the Mexican border. After completing an officer training course at Fort Riley , Kansas, in 1917 , he was assigned to the infantry and shipped to France with the US 89th Infantry Division . There he was wounded in the battle of St. Mihiel , but later took part in the entire Meuse-Argonne offensive .

Interwar period

Rose left the army in 1919 to work as a commercial agent , but returned to the army as a captain in 1920 and continued his military career through the interwar period. During this time he gained experience in armored warfare.

Second World War

On April 7, 1941, Rose was promoted to brigadier general. In North Africa, Rose served in the 1st US Armored Division and was the first officer to accept the unconditional surrender of a major Axis forces.

In 1942 he became chief of staff of the 2nd US Armored Division, which he remained until he was appointed commander of the 3rd US Armored Division in August 1944 . He received his second star as a result of his services during Operation Cobra as part of J. Lawton Collins VII Corps . After taking command of the division, Rose became known for his aggressive leadership. Under his command, the "Spearheads", as his division was called, drove around 101 miles in Germany on March 29, 1945. The division played a central role in all campaigns of the VII. US Corps and was the first to break through the Siegfried Line .

During the Allied advance in the Rhine area, he and his troops advanced to Cologne on March 6, 1945 . After successfully crossing the Rhine, they advanced across the Westerwald in the direction of Marburg , which they reached in the late afternoon of March 28, and from there the following morning to the north in the direction of Paderborn. On the evening of March 30th, he was on a reconnaissance trip to scout the rest of the way to Paderborn, when suddenly four Tiger tanks of the SS tank brigade "Westphalia. Westphalia", formed from training and replacement units on Dörenhagener Strasse near Hamborn Castle near Kirchborchen “Showed up. Rose instructed the driver of his jeep to drive past the tanks at a fast pace. However, the car was pushed aside and hit a tree. Rose, his adjutant and his driver got out of the jeep to surrender to a German tank commander, who asked them to do so from the turret hatch of his tank. When Rose reached for his pistol to take it out of the holster or to remove it with the holster, the German soldier shot him.

He may have lived through the night, as some sources give March 31 as the date of his death. The Nazi propaganda tried to portray the death of Rose as if the " Jewish General had been" captured by Paderborn civilians and then shot. A U.S. Forces investigation later found that Rose had not been the victim of an atrocity.

On April 2, 1945 he was buried in the rear area of ​​the US armed forces in Ittenbach near Königswinter. At the end of 1945 Rose was reburied in the Margraten cemetery in the Netherlands and initially temporarily buried according to the Jewish rite . In his will in 1942 he had requested a burial in Arlington National Cemetery . However, in order to avoid entanglements with his home community on the question of a Jewish or Christian burial, his widow ordered in a telegram dated August 4, 1948 that her husband should remain permanently buried overseas.

Rose was the highest ranking Jewish US officer in World War II and the highest ranking officer in the US armed forces who was killed in the European theater of war. ( Lesley J. McNair was a lieutenant general , but was killed by self-fire .) Rose left two sons in addition to his wife.

Awards and honors

Awards (selection)

Honors

The troop transport , built in 1945 as USS Admiral Hugh Rodmann for the US Navy, was renamed USAT General Maurice Rose on August 1, 1946 when it was taken over by the United States Army Transportation Corps after Rose . In 1950 the ship was transferred to the Navy's Military Sealift Command and was designated USNS General Maurice Rose (T-AP-126) . It was assigned to the reserve in 1967, removed from the register of ships in 1990 and scrapped in 1997. The former military airfield in Frankfurt-Bonames was also named after him and was called Maurice Rose Airfield . Rose was the namesake of the former Hindenburg barracks in Bad Kreuznach , which was converted into the General Rose industrial park after the US Army left in 2008 . The Rose Barracks in Vilseck near the Grafenwöhr military training area are still in military use and house the 2nd Cavalry Regiment . The Rose Medical Center in Denver and the MG Maurice Rose United States Armed Forces Reserve Center in his hometown of Middletown also remember him. The Ruhrkessel (English Ruhr Pocket ) is also known as the Rose Pocket in the USA .

literature

  • Steven L. Ossad, Don R. Marsh: Major General Maurice Rose: World War IIs Greatest Forgotten Commander . Taylor Trade Publishing, Lanham 2003, ISBN 0-87833-308-8
  • Dan Bauer: The Wartime Journal of Major General Maurice Rose . Xlibris Corporation, Philadelphia 2004, ISBN 1-4134-4614-0
  • Mark M. Boatner III: The Biographical Dictionary of World War II. Presidio Press, Novato 1996, ISBN 0-89141-624-2
  • Series of publications by the Paderborn District Archives: “The forever memorable year”. The end of the war in the Paderborn district in 1945 . Paderborn 2008
  • Waldemar Becker: The end of the war in 1945 in the former bishopric of Paderborn . Local history series, No. 25, Paderborn 1994
  • Stefan Westhoff: The end of the war in Paderborn . Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-8370-5587-0

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Association of 3d Armored Division Veterans: Archived copy ( Memento of the original from April 27, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ; Retrieved November 4, 2007 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.3ad.org
  2. ^ Official US Diary , US Army in World War II - European Theater of Operations. The Last Offensive , Chapter 16, pp. 352 f.
  3. ↑ Willi Mues: The big cauldron. Documentation about the end of the Second World War between Lippe and Ruhr / Sieg and Lenne , Erwitte 1984, page 130, with reference to the Westfälische Landeszeitung from April 9, 1945
  4. ↑ Steven L. Ossad, Don R. Marsh: Major General Maurice Rose: World War IIs Greatest Forgotten Commander . Taylor Trade Publishing, Lanham 2003. Therein - in great detail - the chapter The Investigation , pp. 331-348.
  5. ^ Mark M. Boatner III: The Biographical Dictionary of World War II , entry Maurice Rose , p. 472 f. as well as the note there
  6. ^ Army Signal Corps film research by Dan Fong, with editing and sound track by Vic Damon, both of 3AD.com web staff
  7. ↑ Series of publications by the Paderborn District Archives. Issue 1, page 75
personal data
SURNAME Rose, Maurice
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American officer, most recently major general
DATE OF BIRTH November 26, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Middletown , Connecticut
DATE OF DEATH March 31, 1945
Place of death Kirchborchen