Company Felix

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Felix company was a plan of the German military leadership during World War II , which envisaged the capture of the British naval base on Gibraltar in 1941 in order to gain control of the sea connection between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean . In addition, the Germans would have severely disrupted, if not prevented, the connections between Great Britain and its bases in the south.

The plan for Operation Felix was - apart from covert reconnaissance measures from Spanish territory and troop exercises for the conquest of Gibraltar - not implemented.

Starting position

On May 10, 1940, the Wehrmacht began the western campaign ; on June 22, France signed the Compiegne surrender-like armistice . From then on, the German sphere of influence bordered directly on fascist Spain . Building on relations during the Spanish Civil War , Adolf Hitler and the Spanish ruler Francisco Franco met in October 1940 in the French border town of Hendaye and discussed the circumstances under which Spain would enter the war. Franco demanded excessive German help with the expansion of the infrastructure , the supply of food and oil and the arming of the Spanish armed forces .

planning

Despite the lack of clarity about the status of Spain in the further course of the war, concrete attack operations on the Rock of Gibraltar were planned at the High Command of the Wehrmacht. The results of a reconnaissance trip in July 1940 by officers of the Abwehr office turned out sobering, but the conquest of the rock was considered fundamentally possible. The attack plan subsequently drawn up estimated the duration of the fighting at three days, with an extraordinarily lossy action being expected, since the British were in favorable defensive positions and there was no surprise advantage because from crossing the Franco-Spanish border to the attack at 38 Days. On August 24, 1940, Hitler approved the draft plan for the conquest of Gibraltar.

On October 26, 1940, the commander of the 1st Mountain Division , Colonel Hubert Lanz , was ordered to prepare for the attack on Gibraltar. In order to be able to practice the attack under realistic conditions, the 1st Mountain Division, the Infantry Regiment Greater Germany and some special units in the mountainous French Jura near Valdahon , near the Swiss border , were brought together and assault exercises were carried out in November / December 1940. The "Sturmdivision" put together for this special task had the following structure:

  • Division staff: Staff of the 1st Mountain Division;
  • GebJgRegt 98 with 3 battalions of 5 companies each ;
  • Grenadier Regiment "Greater Germany" with 5 battalions, including 2 heavy battalions
  • Mountain Artillery Regiment 79 with 2 mountain cannons, a 10.5 cm mountain howitzer and a 15 cm motorized howitzer division;
  • Pioneer - Regiment "Geiger" with three battalions ;
  • 1 to 2 Nebelwerfer - departments ;
  • 1 Mountain News Department and
  • Medical and supply associations.

This division had a staff of around 460 officers and 16,000 men. They had good, sometimes even very modern, armament that was adapted to the company. All associations were selected troops.

For the attack on Gibraltar two army corps of the Wehrmacht , the XXXIX. (39th) motorized army corps under General Rudolf Schmidt and the XXXXIX. (49th) Mountain Corps under General Ludwig Kübler advance south over Spanish territory on January 10, 1941. Schmidts XXXIX. Army Corps should take up positions at Valladolid , Cáceres and Seville to secure the flank of the attack against possible British intervention. Kübler's army corps would carry out the actual attack, for which not only the "Sturmdivision", but also a department of the Brandenburg special unit and a special defense unit were subordinate to him. Two other divisions were intended after the successful attack by North Africa to ferry and then to Vichy France belonging Morocco to occupy.

Postponement and abandonment of the project

Since Franco refused to consent to the Felix company , the date of the attack was initially postponed and finally set on January 10, 1941 as part of the preparations for the attack on the Soviet Union . As the Felix Heinrich company , the plan should be implemented again if the campaign against the Soviet Union was successful. In fact, however, no more concrete operations were prepared, only plans for a possible landing of the Allies in Spain were still being drawn up.

The negative decision of Franco is still not finally clarified in historical research. It is true that he said several times to Hitler and Mussolini that he was not opposed to joining the war on the part of the Axis powers; However, he made such obviously unfulfillable economic demands on the empire that they can also be seen as an expression of the endeavor to evade war under the pretext that his country is not ready yet. Maybe Madrid was also subject to the final misjudgment that Germany would win the war and that Gibraltar would then fall to Spain without a fight.

See also

literature

  • Charles Burton Burdick: Germany's military Strategy and Spain in World War II.Syracuse University Press, Syracuse 1968.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Klaus Urner : Switzerland still has to be swallowed! Hitler's plans of action against Switzerland . Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 1991. p. 84. ISBN 3-506-79212-1 .
  2. ↑ Percy Ernst Schramm (Ed.) War Diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht 1940-1041 Part I , Bernard & Graefe Verlag, Munich (1982), p. 259.