12th Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)
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12th Infantry Division |
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 Troop identification: "Wild Bull" |
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| active | October 1, 1934 to July 1944 |
| Country |
.svg){kind=small} German Empire
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| Armed forces | Wehrmacht |
| Armed forces | army |
| Branch of service | infantry |
| Type | Infantry Division |
| structure | See: Outline |
| garrison | Schwerin |
| Second World War | 1939/40 |
| Commanders | |
| Please refer: | List of commanders |
The 12th Infantry Division was a large division of the Wehrmacht in the German Reich .
The division staff was formed under the code name Infanterieführer II on October 1, 1934 in Schwerin ( Military District II with headquarters in Stettin ) and renamed the 12th Infantry Division on October 15, 1935. In July 1944 the division near Grodno was destroyed. In August 1944, the division was reorganized as the 12th Volksgrenadier Division .
history
During the attack on Poland , the division fought in the association of "Army Corps Wodrig" ( 3rd Army ) in the East Prussian border area, on the northern course of the Narew and east of the Warsaw Basin.
In May and June 1940, the Division took under the command of the 4th Army on the Western campaign in part. She was deployed in Luxembourg , the Somme , Maubeuge , Nantes and the Vendée .
Eastern Front 1941–1944
During the attack on the Soviet Union , the division took part in the advance battles with the II Army Corps in the northern section of the Eastern Front at Kovno , Oswaja and Narva.
The division was one of the troops that had been encircled by the Soviet winter offensive in the Demyansk area in the winter of 1941/42 . The main part of the division with the 48th Infantry Regiment, deployed between the "SS Group Simon" and the 32nd Infantry Division , fought in the area between Lake Ilmen and Lake Welje in the northeastern area of the basin. The 89 Infantry Regiment was kept ready as a reserve southeast of Demyansk. The reconnaissance division 12 was used in the 123rd Infantry Division in the south. Parts of the division were given to the "SS Group Eicke" in the west of the boiler. The 27th Infantry Regiment, reinforced by battalions of the 225th Infantry Division and deployed between the 123rd Infantry Division and the 32nd Infantry Division, also fought in the southern area.
After the cauldron was cleared at the beginning of 1943, deployments followed at Newel, Vitebsk, the Cherkassy cauldron and defensive attempts at Mogilev and the Pronja bridgehead.
During the great Soviet summer offensive in June 1944, the division received the Führer order to hold the city of Mogilev at all costs, but had to withdraw to the northwest in the face of two attacking Soviet armies and the tank units breaking through south on Minsk . Only remnants of the division reached the German lines near East Prussia. Because of the withdrawal, a review procedure was initiated against all senior officers in the division, but terminated at the initiative of the corps commander responsible. After further fighting, the remnants of the division were withdrawn and relocated to the rear to be reorganized as the 12th Volksgrenadier Division.
Western Front 1944/45
After being re-established in the Danzig area, the 12th Infantry Division was relocated to the Western Front under the command of Colonel Gerhard Engel to close the "hole south of Aachen" where the VII Corps of the 1st US Army in mid-September 1944 through the two Westwall lines near Aachen and Stolberg had achieved a front break in about 15 kilometers deep. The division reached the western front by express transport from September 17th and immediately took on the superior enemy in order to push him out of the Siegfried Line at Stolberg and Mausbach. Regiments 27, 48 and 89 sealed off the American break-in in the Stolberg Corridor on the line between Schevenhütte and Eilendorf in heavy fighting. The hasty attempts by Grenadier Regiment 48 to retake Mausbach and Schevenhütte failed with heavy losses. The rear services and the artillery regiment were deployed in the Merode and Schlich area. The division then took part in the battle in the Huertgen Forest .
In December 1944, the division joined the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler , the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth" and the 3rd Paratrooper Division in the northern section of the Ardennes offensive.
After the offensive was broken off and the subsequent fighting to retreat to the Westwall , the 12th Volksgrenadier Division was deployed under the command of the 7th Army on the Rhine, in Aachen and the Eifel .
After American troops broke through at Remagen , the entire Army Group B with several divisions was finally outflanked in the triangle Dortmund - Düsseldorf - Cologne and enclosed in the Ruhr basin . After an outbreak or outside help was not possible, the division capitulated on April 18, 1945 in Wuppertal .
Insinuation
| date | corps | army | Army Group | Operational area |
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| September 1939 | Gkdo. e.g. V | 3rd Army | North | East Prussia, Poland |
| December 1939 | reserve | B. | Siegburg | |
| May 1940 | reserve | A. | Luxembourg, Maubeuge | |
| June 1940 | II | 4th Army | B. | Somme, Nantes, Vendee |
| August 1940 | 6th Army | Western France | ||
| September 1940 | V | 16th Army | A. | France |
| May 1941 | XXIII | 15th Army | ||
| June 1941 | II | 16th Army | North | East Prussia , Demyansk |
| January 1942 | Demyansk | |||
| January 1943 | Demyansk, Newel | |||
| January 1944 | IX | 3rd Panzer Army | center | Vitebsk |
| March 1944 | XXXIX | 4th Army | Mogilev, Grodno | |
| August 1944 | Danzig | |||
| September 1944 | LXXXI | 7th Army | B. | Aachen, Huertgenwald |
| November 1944 | 5th Panzer Army | Aachen, Ardennes | ||
| December 1944 | I SS | 6th Panzer Army | Ardennes | |
| January 1945 | reserve | |||
| February 1945 | LVIII | 15th Army | Eifel | |
| April 1945 | 5th Panzer Army | Ruhrkessel / Wuppertal |
structure
| 1939 | 1942 | 1943-1944 |
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After it was broken up in the summer of 1944, the division was reorganized as the Volksgrenadier division.
Commanders
| Rank | Surname | date |
|---|---|---|
| General of the artillery | Wilhelm Ulex | August 1, 1935 to October 6, 1936 |
| Lieutenant General | Albrecht Schubert | October 6, 1936 to April 1, 1938 |
| Lieutenant General | Ludwig von der Leyen | April 1, 1938 to March 10, 1940 |
| Lieutenant General | Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach | March 10, 1940 to January 1, 1942 |
| Colonel | Karl Hernekamp | January 1 to March 1, 1942 |
| Major general | Kurt-Jürgen Freiherr von Lützow | March 1 to May 31, 1942 |
| Colonel | Gerhard Müller | June 1 to July 11, 1942 (substitute) |
| Colonel | Wilhelm Lorenz | July 11th to 19th, 1942 (deputy) |
| Major General / Lieutenant General | Kurt-Jürgen Freiherr von Lützow | July 20, 1942 to May 25, 1944 |
| Lieutenant General | Curt Jahn | May 25 to June 1, 1944 |
| Lieutenant General | Rudolf Bamler | June 1st to 28th, 1944 |
| Major general | Gerhard Engel | June 28 to November 1, 1944 |
| Major general | Günther Rohr | November 1st to 15th, 1944 (deputy) |
| Major general | Gerhard Engel | November 15, 1944 to January 1, 1945 |
| Colonel | Rudolf longhouses | January 1 to April 12, 1945 |
| Major general | Ernst King | April 12-18, 1945 |
Well-known members of the division
- Rudolf Bamler (1896–1972), was from 1952 to 1953, as major general of the barracked people's police of the GDR , head of the self-propelled gun school in Erfurt
- Hans-Jürgen Graf von Blumenthal (1907–1944), officer and resistance fighter, executed after the assassination attempt on Hitler on July 20, 1944
- Ernst Ebeling (1919–1991), was from 1972 to 1980 general physician in the Air Force
- Werner Freiherr von Fritsch (1880–1939), officer, honorary colonel of the 12th Artillery Regiment
- Heinz-Georg Lemm (1919–1994), was from 1974 to 1979, as Lieutenant General of the Army of the German Armed Forces , Head of the Army Office
- Gerd Niepold (1913–2007), was from 1968 to 1972, as lieutenant general of the army of the Bundeswehr, commander of the III. Corps .
literature
- Gerhard Donat: Lützow's wild, daring crowd! The Mecklenburg Grenadier Regiment 89 in both world wars.
- Werner Haupt : Demjansk - A bulwark in the east. Bad Nauheim 1963.
- Werner main: Army Group North. Bad Nauheim 1967.
- Werner Haupt: Leningrad, Volkhov, Courland. 1976.
- Franz Kurowski : Demjansk - The cauldron in the ice. Wölfersheim-Berstadt 2001.
- Klaus Pape: 329th Infantry Division: Cholm - Demyansk - Courland. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, ISBN 3-938845-10-4 .
- Hermann Teske: War of movement: leadership problems of an infantry division in the western campaign in 1940.
- Günter von der Weiden: Zerschossene Heimat - The battles of Grenadier Regiment 48 of the 12th Infantry Division east of Stolberg in the area of Gressenich, Schevenhütte, Hamich and near Alsdorf and Jüngersdorf in autumn 1944. Helios Verlag, 2001, ISBN 3-933608-90- 2 .
- Klaus-Ulrich Keubke: On the history of the 12th (meckl.) Infantry Division writings on the history of Mecklenburg, Schwerin 2013, ISBN 978-3-00-044143-1 .
- Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945. Volume 3: The Land Forces 6-14 . 2nd Edition. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1974, ISBN 3-7648-0942-6 .
