Rainer Stahel

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Rainer Stahel, 1944

Rainer Stahel (born January 15, 1892 in Bielefeld , † November 30, 1955 in prisoner-of-war camp 5110/48 Woikowo in Tschernzy near Iwanowo , Soviet Union ) was a German officer , most recently Lieutenant General in the Air Force in World War II .

Life

Stahel came on 1 April 1911 as a cadet in the first Lothringische Infantry Regiment. 130 , where he on 19 December 1911. Ensign was promoted. After attending the Hersfeld War School , he was promoted to lieutenant on October 18, 1912 .

Rainer Stahel, 1917

With the outbreak of World War I , Stahel and his regiment were deployed on the Western Front , where he served as a company commander from August 1, 1915 and was promoted to lieutenant on January 27, 1916 . On May 1, 1916, he was transferred to the regiment's replacement battalion. The end of May 1916, Stahel as head of the machine gun - company in the Prussian 27 Royal Rifle Battalion (Finnish hunters) was added. The Finnish fighters, who were initially deployed in the Latvian Courland , later formed the core of the Finnish army . When the Finnish Civil War broke out in 1918, he and his company were transferred to Finland .

In the spring of 1918, Stahel switched to the Finnish Army (also known as the White Army ) as a captain , in which he was quickly promoted to lieutenant colonel. In the summer of 1918 he was appointed chief of staff of the 1st division , and in early September he was appointed regimental commander. In November 1919 he was retired from the Finnish Army. In the spring of 1920, Stahel began his service with the Finnish Border Guard , where he was used for five years as the commander of the protection corps in Turku on the south-west coast of Finland. From 1922 to 1934 he was also listed as a reserve officer in the Finnish Army.

At the beginning of 1934, Stahel joined the Reichswehr as a state protection officer and was appointed to the rank of captain as a consultant in the Army Weapons Office of the Reichswehr Ministry in Berlin . In the spring of 1935 he was accepted into the supplementary officer corps. From June 1, 1935, Stahel joined the Air Force and worked in the Reich Aviation Ministry in the development of the anti-aircraft cartillery . On April 1, 1936, he was promoted to major . In mid-November 1938, Stahel took over the position of battery chief in the new Light Flak Department 73 in Leipzig . In the course of mobilization for the Second World War , he was appointed in the summer of 1939 (as of November 1, 1939 as Lieutenant Colonel ) commander of the Light Reserve Flak Department 731, which was also stationed in Leipzig, and in mid-February 1940 commander of the Reserve Flak Department 226 . In February and March 1940, Stahel took part in a course for department commanders at the Flak Artillery School I in Rerik on the Wustrow peninsula . On May 1, 1940, he took over command of Reserve Flak Department 151 in Augsburg for three months .

On August 1, 1940, Stahel was transferred as Air Force Control Officer to Control Commission I in the unoccupied part of France to Bourges , where he was Chief of Staff from the beginning of January 1941. Stahel was now taken into active service with the rank of lieutenant colonel . As such, he was appointed commander of the new Flak Regiment 34 ( 18th Flak Division ) at the end of March 1941 , which was deployed in the German-Soviet War during the attack on Central Russia at the beginning of the summer of 1941 . On March 1, 1942, Stahel was promoted to colonel and in mid-April 1942 handed over his command to Colonel Hermann Rudhardt . At the same time he was appointed as the successor to the then Colonel and later Lieutenant General Adolf Pirmann as commander of the Flak Regiment 99 in the southern section of the Eastern Front . He handed this command over to Lieutenant Colonel Eduard Obergerthmann in the summer of 1942 and was instead charged with setting up and commanding the 4th Air Force Field Division .

In the defensive battles at the end of 1942, Stahel defended his front section in the Stalingrad area as the leader of an air force combat group in the southern section of the eastern front . On January 21, 1943 he was promoted to major general and then assigned to Air Fleet 4 . At the end of May 1943 he was appointed commander of the new 22nd Flak Brigade in Italy and was entrusted with protecting the Strait of Messina .

From September 1943 to December 1943 Stahel was combat commander in Rome . In the run-up to the deportation of Roman Jews in 1943 , Pope Pius XII tried . over the city command to stop the upcoming raid. He sent his liaison to the German offices, including Stahel. He also rejected the request with the remark that he had nothing to do with it; the action was solely a matter for the SS .

In early July 1944, Stahel was appointed commander of the Vilnius (Vilnius) fixed square in Lithuania . On July 14, 1944, he was mentioned by name in the Wehrmacht report: “The brave garrison of the old Lithuanian capital Wilna under the leadership of their commander, Lieutenant General Stahel, broke through the Soviet ring of containment according to orders after five days of resistance against superior enemy forces and fought their way to the west under Colonel Tolsdorff troops standing by. ”In July 1944 he was promoted to lieutenant general for“ binding strong enemy forces in front of the fortress ” .

Stahel after his arrest in 1944
Stahl's grave in the Cherntsy military cemetery near Ivanovo

At the end of July 1944, Stahel was appointed City Commander of Warsaw , Poland for a month , and was surrounded by the Polish Home Army at his headquarters during the Warsaw Uprising . The uprising was ultimately suppressed and the city was almost completely destroyed.

At the end of August 1944, the Wehrmacht High Command sent Stahel to Bucharest as combat commanders after the royal coup and Romania's change of sides . There he and Lieutenant General Alfred Gerstenberg were taken prisoner by the Soviets after a few days , which he spent in various camps until his death.

In captivity he was arrested as a war criminal by the Ministry of State Security of the USSR (MGB) in August 1951 . In February 1952 the MGB military tribunal sentenced him to 25 years in prison.

Rainer Stahel died on November 30, 1955 in the prisoner-of-war camp 5110/48 Woikowo near Iwanowo of a heart attack and was buried in the nearby Tschernzy military cemetery.

Awards

Fonts

  • The 1st Lorraine Infantry Regiment No. 130: After d. official war diaries and personal Recording; With 4 kt., 7 signed by the author. Sketches (on 3 sheets), Volume 99 of the memorial sheets of German regiments . Gerh. Stalling, Oldenburg in Oldenburg 1924, p. 115 pp; 8 + u. 7 plants .
  • The night attack on Heippes on 9/10 Sept. 1914 . Association of Former Officers of the 1st Lorraine Infantry Regiment No. 130, 1937.

literature

  • Samuel W. Mitcham : The German Defeat in the East, 1944-45 . Stackpole Books, Stackpole Military History, 2007, ISBN 0-8117-3371-8 , pp. 296, here p. 57, p. 89 with biography, p. 191 .

Web links

Commons : Rainer Stahel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Saul Friedländer , Martin Pfeiffer: The Third Reich and the Jews, Volume 2: The Years of Destruction, 1939–1945 . CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-54966-7 , p. 869, here p. 591 .
  2. ^ Actes et documents du Saint-Siège relatifs à la Seconde Guerre mondiale IX, Doc. 383, p. 519 (Note d'office).
  3. ↑ Joachim Tauber, Ralph Tuchtenhagen: Vilnius: a small history of the city . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar 2007, ISBN 3-412-20204-5 , pp. 284, here p. 204 .
  4. ↑ Erich Murawski (Ed.), High Command of the Wehrmacht: The German Wehrmacht Report, 1939–1945. Volume 9 of publications of the Federal Archives, Sn. 1962, p. 194.
  5. ^ Włodzimierz Borodziej: The Warsaw Uprising 1944 . Fischer, 2001, ISBN 3-10-007806-3 , pp. 251, here pp. 142–144 .
  6. ^ Norman Davies: Rising '44: the battle for Warsaw . Viking, London 2004, ISBN 0-670-03284-0 , pp. 752, here p. 249 and 249 .
  7. ^ Hans Kissel: The catastrophe in Romania 1944, Volumes 5-6 of contributions to defense research . Defense and Knowledge, Koblenz 1964, p. 287, here pp. 143-144 .
  8. ↑ Eugen Bantea, Constantin Nicolae Gheorghe Zaharia: Romania in the war against Hitler's Germany, August 1944-May 1945 . Meridiane Publishing House, 1970, p. 291, here pp. 46 and 47 .
  9. ^ Vasilij Stepanowitsch Christoforow, Vladimir Gennadjewitsch Makarow, Matthias Uhl: Verhört. The questioning of German generals and officers by the Soviet secret services 1945-1952. Volume 6 of publications of the German Historical Institute Moscow. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 2015, ISBN 3-11041-618-2 , p. 208.
  10. ↑ 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. 716.
personal data
SURNAME Stahel, Rainer
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, most recently lieutenant general in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH January 15, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Bielefeld
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 1955
Place of death POW camp 5110/48 Woikowo in Tschernzy, Soviet Union