Willy Rohr

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Captain Rohr (1917)
Willy Rohr at the Ehrenfriedhof in Lübeck

Willy Martin Ernst Rohr (* 19th May 1877 in Metz , † 8. March 1930 in Lübeck ) was a Prussian officer , the major contribution to the development of the assault battalions in World War I had.

Life

Willy Rohr, who was actually called Wilhelm Rohr, first visited the cadet institutes in Bensberg and Karlsruhe before he switched to the main cadet institute in Lichterfelde . As a secondary lieutenant he joined the 3rd Magdeburg Infantry Regiment No. 66 of the Prussian Army in 1896 , was assigned to the NCO school in Potsdam from 1899 to 1903 and was then a battalion and later regimental adjutant. In 1906 he was later promoted to first lieutenant . After working as a teacher at the infantry shooting school in Wünsdorf in 1911/12 , he was transferred to the 10th Rhenish Infantry Regiment No. 161 in Trier , where he was promoted to captain . In 1913 he was transferred to the Guard Rifle Battalion in Groß-Lichterfelde, where Rohr acted as chief of the 3rd Company.

First World War

In the First World War he fought with the 3rd Company on the Aisne , in the Champagne and on the Hartmannsweiler Kopf . In 1915, Rohr was transferred to Major Calsow's division, which consisted of two engineer units, on the Loretto Front. Since this acted very lossy, the leadership of the battalion of the Gaede Army Department, renamed "Sturmabteilung Calsow", found another use. The heavily decimated Sturmabteilung was moved to the Kaiserstuhl as a training location. On August 30, 1915, on the orders of General Erich von Falkenhayn , Captain Rohr, from the Guard Rifle Battalion, was entrusted with their leadership. The " raiding party " department was reinforced by retrofitting with machine guns and flamethrowers and, like the other side, equipped with steel helmets . Rohr's "shock troop tactics" were based on his experience at the front and referred to previous flamethrower troops.

The Hirzstein

The successful testing of the method took place by the Infantry Regiment No. 187 west of Colmar in the Vosges , where the Rohr Sturmabteilung was used to recapture the Hartmannsweiler Kopf in December 1915. After the successful deployment of the Sturmabteilung on various sections of the front, training courses were held in December 1915 in the presence of General Hans Gaede on the Schlossberg near Achkarren . The department was then transferred to the 5th Army ( Crown Prince Wilhelm ) in February 1916 to take part in the offensive off Verdun . Due to the inadequate interaction of the units, the department had to be withdrawn after a short time in view of its high losses.

Rohr spoke to General Ewald von Lochow , Chief of Staff, Colonel Georg Wetzell and the Ia Major Otto von Stülpnagel at the command post of General Command 3 in Nouillon-Pont on March 13, 1916 . Rohr attributed the failures of the infantry primarily to their inexperience in the use of close combat equipment and accompanying weapons such as machine guns and light mortars. He was given the task of repeating his remarks in person to AOK 5 as soon as possible ; there he was given the task of training the army's divisions in “modern hand-to-hand combat”. After the inspection by the Crown Prince and the order of the Minister of War, the storm department was reinforced to a battalion and given the name "Storm Battalion".

For teaching purposes, the battalion set up a training exercise in the forest of the destroyed village of Doncourt . Thousands of German and Austrian officers were trained here by the end of the war. In addition to its work as a teaching force, the battalion was repeatedly sent to hot spots on the Western Front . Rohr reported directly to Kaiser Wilhelm II about the storm on the Souville Gorge on September 3, 1916 .

At the request of the German Crown Prince Army Group , the battalion was named Sturm-Battalion No. 5 (Rohr) by the War Ministry on February 7, 1917 . At the same time, Rohr became head of training.

Since it was the first and most successful assault battalion, the number "5" instead of the "1" may seem strange. The number resulted from the fact that the storm battalion belonged to the 5th Army.

In January 1918 they were assigned the first “German Sturm-Panzer-Kraftwagen-Department”. The slowness as well as the clumsiness were found to be deficiencies.

On March 11, 1918, Rohr drove to AOK 18 in Leschelle to make preparations for the German spring offensive . His battalion was due to arrive there on the night of March 19th. In April, Commander Rohr was promoted to major .

The battalion was ordered to Spa by secret marching orders in mid-October 1918 . The main task there was to protect the Great Headquarters and the Supreme Army Command (OHL) . When the Kaiser fled 48 hours later, Major Rohr obtained permission from the OHL to leave Spa for Germany with his battalion . A large part of the battalion was demobilized in Schwelm .

post war period

Residence of the director of the Lübecker Getreidebank

After the war, Rohr was transferred to the Reichswehr Infantry Regiment 29 of the Provisional Reichswehr in 1920. With the formation of the 100,000-man army in 1921, he adopted at his request and with the character of a lieutenant colonel for disposition asked, as he got into the Reichswehr as a major no suitable command more and had to take material stocks in the bar. The Reichswehr thus renounced one of its most capable soldiers.

He found his new home in Lübeck and died there as director of the Lübeck grain bank .

family

Honoring the dead in 1937. In the foreground from left: the eldest son, his widow, Reichskameradschaftsführer Kirchhofer

Rohr was married to Elisabeth Höschel (* August 5, 1891, † June 7, 1980 in Lübeck). The marriage resulted in the son Heinz and the daughter Margot. His widow and son took part in the posthumous meetings of the former members of the storm battalion in Bochum in 1937 and in Essen in 1938 .

Trivia

In his farewell speech in Lübeck at the grave of Lieutenant Colonel a. D. pointed out to the adjutant, Eberhard Graf von Schwerin, that “you had been offered to exchange command over us for that of one of the old, traditional Jäger battalions of Prussia covered by war glory” and Rohr refused.

Awards

Fonts

  • Instruction for training with the Storm Battalion. 1916

swell

  • Hermann Cron: History of the German Army in the World War 1914–1918. siegismund, Berlin 1937. (History of the Royal Prussian Army and the German Imperial Army; Volume 5)
  • Lübeck General-Anzeiger of March 13, 1930: Obituary. written by Count v. Schwerin, editor of the Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung in Essen, on behalf of the members of the former royal pr. Storm Battalion No. 5 (Rohr)
  • Bruce Gudmundsson: Stormtroop Tactics. Innovation in the German Army. 1914-1918. Praeger Paperback, 1995, ISBN 0-275-95401-3 .
  • Herbert Jäger: German Artillery of World War One. Crowood Press (UK), 2001, ISBN 1-86126-403-8 .

literature

  • Paul Koch: The Lower Silesian Pioneer Battalion No. 5 and its war organizations in World War 1914/18. Sporn, Zeulenroda (Thuringia) 1928.
  • Hesse Pascal, Laparra Jean-Claude: Le Sturmbataillon No. 5 pipe 1916-1918. Histoire & Collections (France), 2011, ISBN 978-2-35250-166-4 .
  • Werner Lacoste: German storm battalions 1915-1918. Helios-Verlag, 2nd edition, Aachen 2010, ISBN 978-3-86933-013-6 .
  • Eberhard Graf von Schwerin: Royal Prussian Storm Battalion No. 5 (pipe). (From Germany's great times; Volume 116) recorded after the memory with the help of the diary of Lieutenant Colonel a. D. Willi Rohr, Count of Schwerin. Sporn, Zeulenroda 1939.
  • Bernhard Reddemann: History of the German Flamethrower Troop. Felgentreff, Berlin-Schöneberg approx. 1933.

Web links

Commons : Willy Rohr  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ After the First World War, the name Wilhelm, they had been named after the Kaiser, was changed to Willy for many people. After the Second World War, if they were still alive, Willy became Wilhelm again.
  2. ↑ The Book of Honor of the German Pioneers. Berlin 1931.
  3. ^ Otto Dziobek : History of the Infantry Regiment Lübeck (3rd Hanseatic) No. 162. Verlag Gerhard Stalling, Oldenburg i. D. 1922. Officers' Association formerly 162.
  4. ↑ Hermann Cron: History of the German Army in the World War 1914-1918. Berlin 1937, p. 23.
  5. ↑ Hellmuth Gruss: The German storm battalions in the world war. Structure and use. Berlin 1939, pp. 26-27, 149.
  6. ↑ Eberhard von Schwerin: Königl. prussia. Storm Battalion No. 5 (pipe). Sporn, Zeulenroda in Thuringia 1939.
  7. ↑ Hellmuth Gruss: The German storm battalions in the world war. Structure and use. Berlin 1939, p. 189.
  8. ↑ Hermann Cron: History of the German Army in the World War 1914-1918. Berlin 1937, p. 126.
  9. ↑ Hellmuth Gruss: The German storm battalions in the world war. Structure and use. Berlin 1939, p. 61.
  10. ↑ The Book of Honor of the German Pioneers. Berlin 1931, pp. 561-562. "It cannot be ruled out that this unique case of indiscipline was personally chalked up in Btl. Major Rohr."
  11. ↑ Werner Lacoste: German Storm Battalions 1915-1918. Helios-Verlag, 2nd edition, Aachen 2010, ISBN 978-3-86933-013-6 . P. 17.
  12. ↑ Obituary. in: From Lübeck's towers. No. 12, Lübeck March 15, 1930
  13. ^ Obituary in: Lübecker Nachrichten of June 10, 1980.
  14. ↑ a b c d Prussian War Ministry (ed.): Ranking list of the Royal Prussian Army and the XIII. (Royal Wuerttemberg) Army Corps for 1914. ES Mittler & Sohn , Berlin 1914, p. 161.
  15. ^ Military weekly paper No. 95/96 of November 25, 1916, p. 2240.
personal data
SURNAME Rohr, Willy
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rohr, Willy Martin Ernst (full name); Rohr, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prussian officer, commander of the Prussian Storm Battalion 5 (Rohr) in the First World War
DATE OF BIRTH May 19, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Metz
DATE OF DEATH March 8, 1930
Place of death Lübeck