Ralph from Oriola

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Ralph Georg Edgar Joachim Eddo Lobo da Silveira Count of Oriola (born August 9, 1895 in Herischdorf , † April 28, 1970 in Nuremberg ) was a German infantry general in World War II .

Life

origin

Ralph was a member of the Prussian Counts of Oriola and a son of the later lieutenant colonel Eduard Joachim Heinrich Graf von Oriola (1863-1927) and his wife Margarethe, née Freiin von Lüttwitz (1863-1940). His great-grandfather was Joaquim von Oriola (1775–1848).

Military career

Oriola occurred on March 5, 1914 as a cadet in the field artillery regiment "of Peucker" (1st Silesian) no. 6 of the Prussian army and was promoted after the start of World War I on November 2, 1914 Pat from 19 February 1913 to the lieutenant . With his regiment he took part in the 11th Division in the Battle of Neufchâteau , the trench warfare in Champagne and the Battle of the Somme . In April 1917 Oriola was appointed orderly officer of the 235th Infantry Division after his regiment was subordinated to this large formation . The division was involved in the Third Battle of Flanders and finally in the positional battles between the Meuse and the Moselle , on the Meuse heights southeast of Verdun . In April 1918 he came to the Army Group Duke Albrecht as an orderly officer , which was active in the southern sector. On June 20, 1918 he was promoted to lieutenant there . During the war, Oriola was wounded and awarded both classes of the Iron Cross .

After the war he was accepted into the Reichswehr and used as a battery officer in the 1st battery of the newly established 3rd (Prussian) Artillery Regiment . Reinhard Gehlen, who later became the chief of the intelligence service, joined this battery on January 1, 1921, and met Oriola as the oldest battery officer. It was there that Gehlen experienced his first time as a lieutenant. Oriola was promoted to captain on July 1, 1927 . After various other uses in artillery regiments he was on October 1, 1934 as a major in command of the III. Department of the 18th Artillery Regiment of the 18th Infantry Division in Glogau . In the summer of 1939, the department commander Oriola organized a car trip with all officers via Prague , which was currently occupied by German troops, as a "farewell to peace time" .

During the mobilization on the occasion of the Second World War, Oriola gave up his command and was appointed commander of the newly established Artillery Regiment 252 on August 26, 1939. The regiment was subordinate to the 252nd Infantry Division and initially deployed in the second row during the attack on Poland . In the spring of 1940 he led the regiment in the western campaign , where the division took part in the breakthrough of the Maginot Line and in the encirclement of 400,000 soldiers of the French 2nd Army Group in Alsace-Lorraine . On June 1, 1940, he was promoted to colonel.

As commander of Artillery Regiment 252, he went back to Poland in July 1941 to wage war against the Soviet Union . The division occupied Bjelostock ), fought in the double battle of Vyazma and Bryansk and in the battle of Moscow . On November 22, 1941 he was awarded the German Cross in Gold . At the beginning of 1942, they withdrew to the Nara and the  Gshatsk position . On February 20, 1942 he gave up his command and was appointed  Artillery Commander 7 (Arko 7) of the XVII. Army Corps appointed. The corps was involved in the counter-offensive near Kharkov and took part in the German summer offensive " Fall Blau " in July 1942 .

On February 17, 1943 Oriola was commissioned to lead the  72nd Infantry Division . Since the autumn of 1942 this division had been ordered to clean up local crises after Rshew and later at Kursk . On May 1, 1943, he was promoted to major general. On that day he took over as commander of the 299th Infantry Division , which was also deployed on the Eastern Front. At the beginning of 1944, the division was mainly part of the 3rd Panzer Army on the Orsha - Vitebsk road . The division held a section near Livny , east of Oryol . As part of the Oryol Operation , the Red Army tried to repel the German troops as part of the Battle of the Kursk Arch from July 12 to August 18, 1943. On August 5, 1943, the city of Oryol fell into the hands of the Soviet 63rd Army . The 299th Infantry Division withdrew to a reception position in Zhlobin in the Gomel region. On November 1, 1943, Oriola was promoted to lieutenant general and was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on December 23, 1943 for his leadership and successes with the division .

Zhlobin was evacuated after heavy defensive fighting on 13 July 1944 by the German troops and the division in July 1944 in the boiler of Minsk during the middle of the collapse of Army Group destroyed. Oriola was one of the few generals in the 3rd Panzer Army who did not die, was not wounded, or was not captured. On February 12, 1945 he was with the leadership of the XIII. Army Corps commissioned, which was used on the Western Front .

After a few weeks he was captured by the Americans on March 31, 1945 while on a reconnaissance mission at the front. The Americans handed him over to the British forces, which released him from captivity on May 12, 1948. He had previously been held in Trent Park Camp 11 and then in Island Farm Special Camp 11 . High-ranking officers of the Wehrmacht were housed in these camps. In Trent Park the premises of the camp were bugged by the British secret service .

family

Oriola married Elisabeth Trampe-Agner (* 1893) in Leipzig on April 17, 1928. She was previously married to the public prosecutor Ludwig Wilhelm Trampe, with whom she was the owner of the Niedermölen manor in what is now Bennewitz , which was expropriated with the land reform . Oriola divorced his wife in 1949 after returning from captivity in 1947. In Hanover he married Edith Gertrud Müller (1909–1979) on February 5, 1949.

Oriola has the following children:

  • Barbara-Elisabeth Margarethe (* 1925)
  • Irina (* 1945)

Irena was born out of wedlock to Edith Gertrud Müller, who married Ralph von Oriola in 1949 after divorcing his first wife.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Samuel W. Mitcham Jr .: German Order of Battle: 1st-290th Infantry Divisions in WWII. Stackpole Books, 2007 - 400 pages (without page number) Keyword: "252nd INFANTRY DIVISION"
  2. ^ Sönke Neitzel : bugged: German generals in British captivity. 1942-1945. 2005, p. 464, snippet view, [1]
  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 Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 .
  4. ↑ Volker Jäger: Rittergut Niederschmölen. In: Official Gazette of the Bennewitz community. February 23, 2018, Volume 26, No. 2, p. 15 [2]
personal data
SURNAME Oriola, Ralph from
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Oriola, Ralph Georg Edgar Joachim Eddo Lobo da Silveira Graf von (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German infantry general in World War II
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Herischdorf
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 1970
Place of death Nuremberg