XI. Army Corps (Wehrmacht)

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The XI. Army Corps was a major unit of the German Wehrmacht in World War II , the general command was in Poland in 1939 and in France in 1940. Still deployed against Yugoslavia in April 1941 , the command remained on the Eastern Front from May 1941 until the end of the war in 1945 . During the invasion of the Soviet Union , the corps in the area of Army Group South was replaced by the respective commanding general as the Kortzfleisch group and the Strecker group, and after the reorganization in January 1943 as the general command z b. V. Cramer (from March 1943 as Gen. Kdo. Z. B. V. Raus ). On July 20, 1943 as XI. Army corps re-budgeted, the corps was broken up twice in March 1944 and then re-established.

history

Lineup

The general command was set up on October 6, 1936 in the new military district XI (Hanover) .

1939/40

Even before the outbreak of war, the General Command on 26 August 1939, mobilized and marched to the beginning of the invasion of Poland under the Commanding General of artillery Emil Leeb on the left flank of the 10th Army (Reichenau) as part of the Army Group South at the Oder at Brieg on . The subordinate 18th and 19th infantry divisions advanced to the Vistula via Petrikau at the beginning of September 1939 . After participating in the fighting in the Battle of the Bzura , the corps closed the northeast front around Warsaw . In October 1939, the general command of Army Group B was transported to the Rhine. In the case of Gelb (May 1940), the XI. Corps in the center of the 6th Army , crossed the Meuse near Heerlen and moved into Belgium with the 14th and 31st Infantry Divisions . During the second phase of the French campaign ( Fall Rot ), the General Command stood as an army reserve of the 12th Army on the Sambre . Only after Army Group A's general breakthrough across the Aisne did the assigned 7th , 211th , 253rd and 269th Infantry Divisions follow the advance of III. Mot. Army Corps in the direction of Bar-sur-Seine .

1941

The General Command remained as an occupying force in western France until February 1941 and was deployed in the 12th Army in the Balkan campaign from April 1941 . This was followed by the break-in of the XIV Panzer Corps in Serbia to Pirot from the Bulgarian border, with the 76th and 198th Infantry Divisions assigned to the command.

Then transported to Romania for Operation Barbarossa , the XI. Corps under the commanding general of the infantry von Kortzfleisch subordinated to the 11th Army ( von Schobert ) of Army Group South standing on the border of Bessarabia . The 22nd , 76th and 239th Infantry Divisions were assigned . On July 2, the 11th Army in Operation Munich began the attack across the Prut to the east, with the Romanian cavalry corps covering the left wing. On the right wing of the XI. Corps accompanied the German XXX. Army Corps pushed the thrust towards Mogilev-Podolski , which was reached on July 7th.

During the Kesselschlacht near Uman advancing northwards over the bow section, the XI. Corps in the command area of ​​the 17th Army in mid-August . At the beginning of September, during the Battle of Kiev , the General Command was assigned the 125th , 257th and 239th Infantry Divisions. It secured the Dnieper section near Kremenchug , where Panzer Group 1 (von Kleist) struck a northern bridgehead, which was the starting point for the beginning of the cutting off of the Russian south-western front (Army General Kirponos ). End of October 1941 in the short term the 6th Army transferred, the corps was in the trench warfare in space Slavyansk on Donets section.

1942

At the beginning of 1942, the command of the 1st Panzer Army was concentrated in the Taganrog area on the Mius Front , subordinate to the 73rd Infantry Division and the Romanian 5th and 6th Cavalry Brigade. The corps intervened in May 1942 during the Kesselschlacht south of Kharkov , in the Losowaya area, to remove the Soviet indentation in the front.

After the start of the German summer offensive ( blue case ), the corps were not only the 454th security division but also the Romanian VI. Corps (1st Infantry and Mountain Division) was tactically subordinated. In the course of the advance of the 6th Army (Colonel General Paulus ) in the direction of Kalatsch , the corps secured against the Don bridgehead of the Soviet 65th Army (General Batow ) at Kremenskaya, subordinate to the 44th and 376th Infantry Divisions . After the Soviet breakthrough at Serafimowitsch and Kletskaya, the retreat to the western apron of Stalingrad became necessary. In Stalingrad crowded, the general took command together with the VIII. Corps , the defense of the northern section of the boiler front against the Soviet 66th Army (General Schadow). At the beginning of February, General of the Infantry Strecker put down his weapons in the split-off northern basin with the remains of the 16th and 24th Panzer and 60th motorized divisions .

1943

As a successor association in January 1943 as Gen. Kdo. zbV Cramer established, which after the collapse of the Italian 8th Army within the Lanz Army Detachment tried to stop the Soviets that had broken through by working together on the Stary Oskol - Nowy Oskol - Volchansk line . In the unsuccessful attempt to cover the threatened Kharkov , the division Großdeutschland and the 2nd SS division "Das Reich" were added to the corps at the end of January . In March the command in Gen. Kdo. zbV Raus renamed and was now subordinate to the Army Department Kempf . After the troops had been thrown back by the Soviets as far as Poltava, Kharkov was retaken in cooperation with the II. SS Panzer Corps ( General of the Waffen SS Hausser ) . During the Battle of Kursk (July 1943) in the area south of Belgorod on the side of III. Panzer Corps attacking, the Corps Raus were subordinate to the 106th and 320th Infantry Divisions .

On July 20, 1943, the command under the old name as XI. Army corps budgeted. During the Belgorod-Kharkov operation , the Soviet 5th Guards Panzer Army tried in vain until mid-August to block the evacuation routes of the German units from Kharkov. On August 23, Kharkov was finally liberated by the Red Army , the XI. Corps had to join forces with the XXXXII. retreat behind the Dnieper at Kremenchug . End of December 1943, the command on the Dnieper-section between Kanev and Cherkassy the 57th and 72nd Infantry Division , part of the 167th Infantry Division , the SS brigade Wallonia and the 5th SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Wiking" subordinated .

1944

In January 1944, the 8th Army was cut off by the Soviets in the Korsun area on the Dnieper. In the Cherkassy pocket, General Stemmermann took over command of the German troops pushed away in the Schanderowka area . In addition to his own corps, the entire XXXXII was also there . Army corps been encircled. After the death of the commanding general in the attempt to escape on February 18, the remains of the IX. Army corps at Gniloi Tilkitsch again smashed by the Soviets.

After the re-establishment in the Generalgouvernement , the command in the section of the Hungarian 1st Army in the Stanislau area was reorganized in August 1944 and placed under the 1st Panzer Army . From mid-July to the end of August, the corps was involved in the Lviv-Sandomierz operation (Lemberg-Sandomir operation) and fought retreat against the Soviet 1st Guard Army. In mid-September 1944, the 96th , 168th and 254th Infantry Divisions were assigned to the Corps on the Carpathian Front . After the withdrawal from the Dukla Pass to the Slovakian border, which was forced by the Eastern Carpathians , defensive battles followed in the area of Army Group A in the western Beskids .

1945

At the beginning of March 1945, the General Command, which was relocated to Silesia and standing in the area of Ratibor on the Oder , was subordinate to the combat group of the 371st Infantry Division and 1st Skijäger Division as well as the 97th Jäger - and the remnants of the 344th Infantry Division . After the Corps Group Silesia (General of the Koch-Erpach Cavalry) was broken up as part of the Upper Silesian Operation (March 15–30), General von Bünau in command was temporarily replaced by General von Mellenthin . After the retreat into the Jeseníky Mountains at the end of April 1945, the remnants of the 16th and 17th Panzer Divisions were also in the area of ​​command of the XI. Corps. The third destruction of the command took place in May 1945 as part of the capitulation of Army Group Center in the pocket east of Prague .

guide

Commanding generals

Chiefs of the General Staff

  • Major General Georg von Apell, October 6, 1936 to October 12, 1937
  • Major General Erwin Vierow , October 12, 1937 to September 15, 1939
  • Colonel Johannes Baeßler, September 10, 1939 to February 18, 1942
  • Colonel Helmuth Groscurth , February 18, 1942 to 1943
  • Major General Eberhard Kinzel , January to January 22, 1943
  • Colonel Hellmuth Schultze, (July 20, 1943) to December 7, 1943
  • Major General Heinz Gaedcke , December 7, 1943 to February 25, 1944
  • Colonel Hellmuth Schultze, February 25, 1944 to May 1945

literature

  • Percy Ernst Schramm (Ed.): War diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht , Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1965.
    • Volume I: 1940/41 edited by Hans-Adolf Jacobsen .
    • Volume II: 1942 edited by Andreas Hillgruber , Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1965.
    • Volume III: 1943 edited by Walther Hubatsch , Bernard & Graefe Verlag für Wehrwesen, Frankfurt am Main 1965.
  • Carl Wagener : Army Group South 1941–1945 , Podzun Verlag, Bad Nauheim 1972.
  • Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945 , Volume 3, Frankfurt / Main and Osnabrück 1966, pp. 194–196.

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