Otto Hartmann (officer)

Otto Hartmann (born September 11, 1884 in Munich , † July 10, 1952 in Miesbach ) was a German artillery general in World War II .

Life

family

Otto Hartmann was the son of Major General Richard Hartmann. He married Franziska Steger in 1911. The marriage had two children.

Military career

After visiting the cadet corps , Hartmann joined the 10th field artillery regiment of the Bavarian Army in Erlangen on July 6, 1903 as an ensign . After being assigned to the war school , Hartmann was promoted to lieutenant on March 8, 1905 . He was then assigned to the artillery and engineering school in October 1907, which he graduated on July 6, 1908. He served as a regimental adjutant and was promoted to first lieutenant at the end of October 1912 . His training at the War Academy , which began in October 1913 , he had to break early on July 31, 1914 because of the outbreak of the First World War . On August 8, 1914, his regiment moved to France to the front. Hartmann worked here briefly as an orderly officer with the staff of the 5th Field Artillery Brigade and then as the 2nd adjutant of the 5th Infantry Division . On January 14, 1916 he was promoted to captain and from June he was commanded as 2nd General Staff Officer of the 1st Landwehr Division . In the following year he was used from September 11th as an imperial-Ottoman major in the general staff of Army Group Command F and from November 1917 in Turkish Army Command 6 as a general staff officer. In July 1918 Hartmann was a general staff officer with the Turkish Army Command "East" before he was transferred back to the front in France from October 1918. Here he was from November 3rd General Staff Officer at the General Command of the XV. Reserve Corps .

After the end of the war, Hartmann moved to the Reichswehr and worked as a commander and general staff officer , including with the staff of the Möhl High Command and the Reichswehr Brigade 4. Shortly afterwards, in 1920 he was assigned as a general staff officer to military district command VII. From here he changed from October 1921 to the staff of the city commandant of Munich and in the following year to the staff of the 7th Division . From 1924 he was head of the Abwehrstelle on the staff. Promoted to major in February 1925, he changed to Group Command 2, leaving his previous assignment. From October 1, 1926, Hartmann was transferred to the Reichswehr Ministry, where he was employed as a consultant in the Defense Department, which at that time was still at the Troop Office as T 3 for camouflage reasons - Army Statistics Department was led. At that time, the head of the defense was Colonel Friedrich Gempp (1871–1947). In total, Hartmann's activity as head of the defense department lasted five years and during this time he was promoted to lieutenant colonel in November 1930 . He was only briefly reassigned to the staff of the 7th (Bavarian) Artillery Regiment in October 1931 . In October 1932 he returned to this area of ​​work, now as the " Foreign Armies " department . During this time, the department head was Colonel Herbert Fischer (1882-1939) under whose leadership the renaming and reallocation of the areas of responsibility of the former T 3 had taken place. During his renewed activity in the Abwehr, Hartmann prepared for a new assignment in the position of a military attaché. From April 1, 1933, after 22 years, he was transferred to the German embassy in Moscow as the first military attaché . His area of ​​responsibility extended to the German representations in Moscow and Kovno (Kaunas) with headquarters in Moscow. By March 1933, this task was carried out by Ernst-August Köstring (1876–1953) in the role of military advisor to the embassy. The German ambassador at this time was Rudolf Nadolny (1873–1953). Since October 1933 Hartmann had Hauptmann Krebs on his side as an assistant to the military attaché. The task for the military attaché in Moscow was quite difficult from two perspectives. On the one hand, since Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 against the USSR, there has been open anti-Soviet agitation by the Nazi leadership. This attitude ultimately led to Rudolf Nadolny resigning his post as ambassador prematurely on June 16, 1934. Second, in 1933, the military cooperation between the Red Army and the Reichswehr , which began in 1920, still existed . Some of the working bodies were still in the country, but were in the process of being wound up. This resulted in a clear double track, especially with regard to the military priorities in the first years of the work of the military attaché. Nevertheless, the main task for him was the procurement and evaluation of all military information about the Soviet Union and its political-strategic and armaments-economic development that could be obtained in his position. From 1934 onwards, in the area of ​​the attachés' reporting obligations, the USSR was classified in the category of "foreign armies" - that is, in the series of "potential opponents". In 1934 Reichswehr Minister Werner von Blomberg removed the Red Army from the list of friendly armies and added it to the list of foreign armies. From July 4, 1935, the Foreign Office also assigned Hartmann the tasks of the German air force attaché at the embassy, ​​with responsibilities also for Moscow and Kovno. On September 30, his activity in Moscow ended and he handed over the post to his successor Ernst-August Köstring, who assumed the office from October 1, 1935.

On his return to Germany, Hartmann was initially at the special disposal of the Commander-in-Chief of the Army from October 1, 1935 and was appointed Artillery Leader I on October 15. Promoted to major general in April 1936 , he led the 7th Infantry Division from that year . In March 1938 he was promoted to lieutenant general and from August 26, 1939 he was commanding general of the XXX. Army corps that was established at this time and transferred to Army Department A on the Lower Rhine. After the beginning of the Second World War, Hartmann was promoted to general of the artillery in April 1940 and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on August 5, 1940 .

When he became seriously ill the following year, he was transferred to the OKH's Führerreserve from March 1941. Not until 1943 was he fit for duty again and from January 1, 1943, he was commanding general of the security groups and commander in Army Area A. On September 17, he was reassigned to the Führerreserve. His last position was from February 1944 as commander of the Hartmann special staff at OB Südwest and at the same time of Army Group C. On May 2, 1945, he was taken prisoner of war, from which he was released on January 4, 1947.

Hartmann died on July 10, 1952 in Miesbach.

literature

• Olaf Groehler: Suicidal Alliance, German-Russian Military Relations 1920-1941. Visia Verlag, Berlin 1992.
• Othmar Hackl : The Bavarian War Academy (1867-1914). CH Beck´sche publishing house bookstore. Munich 1989. ISBN 3-406-10490-8 . P. 462.
• Klaus Mehnert: A German in the world. Deutsche Verlags Anstalt GmbH, Stuttgart 1981.
• Hermann Teske: General Ernst Köstring. The military mediator between the German Reich and the Soviet Union 1921-1941. ESMittler & Son, Frankfurt 1966.
• Manfred Zeidler: Reichwehr and Red Army 1920-1933. R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1993.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Olaf Groehler: Suicidal Alliance. German-Russian military relations 1920-1941. Berlin 1992, p. 76 f.
2. ↑ Manfred Kehring: The re-establishment of the German military attaché service after the First World War (1919-1933). Harald Boldt Verlag, Boppard am Rhein 1966, p. 227 f.
3. ↑ 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 Militär-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 .