Otto Carius

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Otto Carius, autograph photo with knight's cross and oak leaves from 1944

Otto Carius (born May 27, 1922 in Zweibrücken , † January 24, 2015 in Herschweiler-Pettersheim ) was an officer in the Wehrmacht and one of the most successful tank commanders of the Second World War . After the war he was a pharmacist all his life . He became known as the author of his book Tiger in the Mud , published in 1960 , in which he describes his memories of the war effort from 1940 to 1945 and which is one of the more successful titles in war memorial literature.

Life

Carius attended elementary school from 1928 and then from 1932 to 1940 the humanistic high school in Zweibrücken. After graduating from high school, he volunteered for the Wehrmacht and took part in the Second World War from 1941 to 1945. After the war, he completed a preliminary internship and pre-examination as a pharmacist's assistant and studied pharmacy in Freiburg im Breisgau from 1948 to 1951 . From 1952 he was employed as a pharmacist, in 1956 he took over the Hirsch pharmacy in Herschweiler-Pettersheim , West Palatinate , which he renamed the Tiger Pharmacy and which he managed until 2011.

War effort

After being rejected twice because he was underweight, after graduating from high school shortly before his 18th birthday in May 1940, he volunteered for anti-tank service . His father and later his younger brother took part in the Second World War as officers of the Wehrmacht. Because there was no need for personnel in the anti-tank defense, Carius was assigned to the 104th Infantry Replacement Battalion ( Posen ). From there he volunteered for the tank weapon and was transferred to Panzer-Ersatz -teilung 7 in Vaihingen .

After completing his military training, he took part in the fighting. When the German attack on the Soviet Union began on June 22, 1941 , Carius was a loader on a Panzer 38 (t) of the Panzer Regiment 21, which was part of the 20th Panzer Division . He was promoted to sergeant and accepted as an officer candidate in August 1941 .

After the officer training Carius came as platoon leader of the III. Division of the 21st Panzer Regiment back to the front. For Lieutenant promoted, he led in June 1943, the second company of the heavy tank battalion 502 in Leningrad , the one of the first with the new Tiger I was equipped. In the battle for the bridgehead at Narva , Carius , who had meanwhile been promoted to lieutenant , destroyed several Soviet SU-85 tanks in spring 1944 , as well as on July 22nd in the village of Malinava near Dünaburg . A serious wound in hand-to-hand combat on July 24, 1944 ended Carius, who had been appointed company commander , on the Eastern Front.

After a long hospital stay, Carius was transferred to the western front in 1945 and appointed chief of the 2nd company of the heavy tank destroyer division 512, which was equipped with the Jagdtiger . In April 1945 he got into the Ruhr basin and took part in the fighting at Friedrich-Wilhelm-Höhe near the Bismarck Tower in Unna . On April 15, Lieutenant General Fritz Bayerlein , to whom Carius was subordinate, ordered the cessation of all fighting. Carius came a day before the war ended in circle Iserlohn in US captivity , from which he has been dismissed on May 21, 1945th

With 150 kills, he is one of the most successful tank commanders of the Second World War, together with Michael Wittmann and Kurt Knispel , became part of German propaganda and received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves as the highest award .

Book and reception

In 1960 Carius published his only book, Tiger in the Mud . In it he describes his memories as a tank commander in World War II. The work belongs to the typical war memory literature and was published in its first edition by Buchkameradschaft Scharnhorst in Vowinckel-Verlag , which also published the four subsequent editions within the series Landser am Feind up to 2006. The book was most recently self-published and was distributed by Carius directly through the Tiger pharmacy . With six editions, the book is one of the more successful titles in war memorial literature. The book has also been translated into several languages, including English, Estonian and Russian. The well-known Japanese draftsman Hayao Miyazaki created a manga from it . To this day Carius is popular in predominantly militaristic circles and is z. B. thematized in computer games. Carius protested against criticism of the warfare of the Wehrmacht and saw his book as a source and justification against the defamation of the soldiers of the Wehrmacht he felt and against the alleged campaign of lies through which the German population had been reeducated. At the same time he justified the war against the Soviet Union as a defensive struggle against communism. Carius advertised and sold his book in his pharmacy well into old age, where he also signed it and had himself photographed with his medals.

Fonts

  • Otto Carius: Tiger in the mud: The 2./schw.Pz.-Abt. 502 before Narwa and Dünaburg. ( Landser am Feind , Volume 8), Kurt Vowinckel Verlag , Neckargemünd 1960. (Further editions: 3rd edition Neckargemünd: Vowinckel, 1967; 5th edition Berg am See: Vowinckel, 1985; 6th revised edition Tiger in the mud: a tiger commander reports from Stegen am Ammersee: Druffel and Vowinckel, 2007; 6th completely revised edition Saarbrücken: Selbstverlag, 2012, ISBN 978-3-00-037404-3 .

literature

  • Düsterberg, Rolf: Soldier and war experience. German military memorial literature (1945–1961) on the Second World War. Motives, terms, evaluations. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2000, ISBN 3-484-35078-4 .
  • Erwin Lenfeld, Franz Thomas: The oak leaves 1940-1945. Weilburg, Wiener Neustadt 1983, ISBN 3-900100-07-1 .
  • Viktor Carl: Lexicon of the Palatinate personalities. Henning, Edenkoben 1995, ISBN 3-9804668-0-9 .
  • Ronald M. Smelser , Edward J. Davies (II): The Myth of the Eastern Front. The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, MA 2001, p. 206, ISBN 978-0-521-71231-6 .
  • Feist, Uwe (Ed.): Otto Carius. My service time. My Military Service 1940–1945. 90th Birthday Edition. Feist Books 2012. ISBN 978-0-9855212-1-9 .

Web links

Commons : Otto Carius  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Otto Carius: Tiger in the mud : The 2nd heavy tank department 502 in front of Narwa and Dünaburg, 6th completely revised edition, Saarbrücken 2012, ISBN 978-3-00-037404-3 .
  2. ↑ Düsterberg, Rolf: Soldier and war experience. German military memorial literature (1945–1961) on the Second World War. Tübingen 2000, p. 46 f.
  3. ^ Otto Carius - The Times. In: thetimes.co.uk. February 12, 2015, accessed November 26, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Peter Stockert: The oak leaves 1939-1945. Volume 6. OCLC 76072662. page 124.
  5. ↑ George Forty: Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II . ISBN 978-0760330494 . Page 103.
  6. ↑ 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. 257.
  7. ↑ Düsterberg, Rolf: Soldier and war experience. German military memorial literature (1945–1961) on the Second World War. Tübingen 2000, p. 18.
  8. ↑ Düsterberg, Rolf: Soldier and war experience. German military memorial literature (1945–1961) on the Second World War. Tübingen 2000, p. 46f.
  9. ↑ Tigers in the mud: the combat career of German Panzer Commander Otto Carius , translated by Robert J. Edwards, JJ Fedorowicz, 1993, ISBN 0-921991-14-2 .
  10. ↑ "Tiigrid Poris" ISBN 978-9949-448-34-0 .
  11. ↑ "Тигры" в грязи: воспоминания немецкого танкиста (tigry v grjazi: vospominanija nemeckogo tankista), Centrpoligraf, Moscow, 2009, ISBN 978-5-9524-4092-0 .
  12. ↑ "Otto Carius: Doromamire no tora (tiger Covered With Mud)" , published in Model Graphix between December 1998 and May 1999 edition in 2002, ISBN 4-499-22790-9 .
  13. ↑ . P. 40 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
  14. ↑ a b Carius, Tiger in the mud, pp. XI-XIII, Smelser / Davies, p. 206.
  15. ↑ [1] archive from warrelics.eu
personal data
SURNAME Carius, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, tank commander in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Zweibrücken
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 2015
Place of death Herschweiler-Pettersheim