XX. Army Corps (Wehrmacht)

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The XX. Army Corps was a major military association of the German Wehrmacht . From June 1941 it took part in the attack on the Soviet Union . The advance to Moscow was followed by a long position battle on the Central Eastern Front and in 1945 the encirclement and destruction in East Prussia . The rescued General Command XX. was used in the last months of the war in 1945 to rebuild and relieve the Halbe boiler .

history

Lineup

The list of the XX. Army Corps took place on October 17, 1940 through the military replacement inspection in Berlin .

1941

In April 1941 the General Command XX moved to Poland and was initially subordinated to the 18th Army .

At the beginning of Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, attacking in the section of Panzer Group 3 and 9th Army (Colonel General Strauss ) from the Suwalki summit, the XX. Corps assigned to the 129th , 162nd and 256th Infantry Divisions . The advance was made from Augustow over the Bobr in the direction of Sokolka . In the encirclement battle of Bialystok and Minsk , the General Command against the Soviet stood 10th Army in close cooperation with the space in Grodno standing VIII. Army Corps on the northern encirclement.

At the end of July tactically subordinated to Panzer Group 2 (Colonel General Guderian ) for a short time , the General Command moved to the 4th Army command area in mid-August . The XX. Corps was established after the Kesselschlacht near Smolensk in the eastern arc at Jelnja , subordinated initially to the 15th , 268th and 292nd Infantry Divisions . On August 28th, the IX. Army Corps one section, from left to right the 263rd, 137th, 15th, 78th, 292nd, 268th and 7th Infantry Divisions were now in the front arc. Strong counter-attacks of the newly brought Soviet 24th Army (General Rakutin ) forced the 4th Army after the Yelnya Offensive in early September to evacuate Elnya and the transition in the trench warfare . During Operation Typhoon , the 7th , 78th and 268th Infantry Divisions were assigned to the corps .

On October 22nd, the XX. Corps occupied the Moscow protective position and occupied Naro-Fominsk in battle with the Soviet 3rd Army (General Yefremov) . The 3rd Motorized Division , which was briefly subordinate to it, built an eastern bridgehead over the Nara and was cleared on November 8th by the 258th Infantry Division . Counterattacks by the Soviet 5th , 33rd and 43rd Armies tore a gap between the VII and IX. Army Corps and forced the XX. Corps (3rd Motorized, 183rd and 292nd Infantry Divisions) to retreat to the Rusa position from December 12th, Moshaisk and Naro-Fominsk were lost again.

1942/43

From January 1942 to February 1943 the XX. Army corps in the Gschatsk area and east of Vyazma initially as part of the 4th and from April the 3rd Panzer Army in trench warfare, initially subordinated to the 20th Panzer Division , the 17th, 183rd , 255th , 258th and 292nd Infantry Division . In autumn, after the northern section was transferred to the IX. Army Corps the 31st Infantry Division as a new association in the corps area. After the abandonment of the Rzhev front arc (buffalo movement) in March 1943, General Command XX in the Spas-Demensk area was vacated and made available to the 2nd Panzer Army . From April, the command posted itself between Komaritschi and Sevsk on the western arc of the Kursk front , initially subordinated to the 45th , 72nd , 137th and 251st Infantry Divisions . During the Battle of Kursk it was XX. Corps to cover the right wing of the 9th Army assigned to lead the northern attacking forces . After the offensive failed, the 9th Army withdrew behind the Desna until August . The XX. Army Corps went back to the Trubchevsk area and maintained contact with the 2nd Army to the right . In October 1943 the remains of the 6th, 31st and 102nd Infantry Divisions were assigned to the corps. Subordinated to the 2nd Army in the further retreat and pushed behind the Sosch section with the 102nd and 292nd Infantry Divisions , Gomel had to be evacuated from Soviet pressure on November 26th .

1944

Since the end of 1943, the XX. Army Corps along the Pripet Marshes and in the Pinsk - Luninez area together with Hungarian units the right wing of the 2nd Army and the access to Brest-Litovsk . After Operation Bagration (from June 22, 1944) smashed the front of Army Group Center, the XX. Corps (Corps Department E, 137th and 251st Inf.-div.) In the war against Soviet partisans the connection to the declining LV. and XXIII. Maintain Army Corps . Until July 13th, the XX. Corps with the subordinate 7th Infantry Division, 203rd Security Division and Corps Division E on the Jasiolda, as well as the remnants of the 86th, 137th and 251st Infantry Divisions along the Pripjet to secure the eastern front arc to Pinsk. Left of the XXIII. and to the right of the brought up VIII. Army Corps , retreat battles followed on the Bug , with the XX. Corps was assigned the defense of the Brest-Litovsk fortress. In August, the Corps was pushed back by the 1st Belarusian Front via Siedlce to the northeastern Warsaw area; the 7th , 102nd and 211th Infantry Divisions were subordinate to the new line on both sides of Węgrów . In December, the XX. Corps after the relocation of the XXXXI. Panzer Corps (Group Weidling) to Goldap , whose previously held Narew section on both sides of Ostrolenka , was now subordinated to the 35th , 252nd Infantry and 542nd Volksgrenadier Divisions.

1945

On January 12th and 13th, the 1st and 3rd Byelorussian Fronts began their simultaneous offensive towards East Prussia . After the Memel - like the Narew line - had fallen, the XX. Army Corps withdraw in the direction of Olsztyn , the Bobr positions of LV on the left . and VI. Army corps became untenable. At the beginning of February 1945 pushed back to the Heilsberg-Bartenstein line, the corps was subordinated to the 4th Army . Until the destruction at the end of March 1945, only a narrow strip of land on the Baltic Sea was held. In the so-called Heiligenbeiler Kessel were the XX. Corps only subordinated the remains of the broken divisions 21 , 102 and 292 and the combat group to the 558th Volksgrenadier Division .

After the General Command XX, rescued by sea, arrived in Swinoujscie , it was immediately assigned to the newly established 12th Army in the Magdeburg area, which received the order to advance towards Potsdam in order to relieve the enclosed Berlin . On April 23, the General Command was assigned the divisions Körner, Hutten, Schill and Scharnhorst, which were mostly composed of RAD units.

During the operation on April 29th, around 25,000 German soldiers and around 5,000 civilians of the 9th Army, which had been cut off in the Halbe pocket , broke near Beelitz for the XX. Corps through. On the evening of May 1, the withdrawal movement began via Wollin to the Elbe bridgehead, the remaining artillery supported the rearguard, which was formed by the Hutten division . The Körner division gave up its positions between Niemegk and Treuenbrietzen and followed via Belzig to Schönhausen. On May 1st, the XX. Corps also subordinated the Jahn division, which broke out in the Potsdam area . The Plauer Canal was crossed on May 2nd and on May 5th a defensive front was deployed again between Schmetzdorf and Wusterdamm. The staff of the General Command XX. moved to Fischbeck on the Elbe on May 6th . Without strong Soviet persecution, the troops were able to reach the destroyed bridge in Tangermünde and go into western captivity.

guide

Commanding generals

Chiefs of the General Staff

  • Colonel Emil Vogel October 25, 1940 to June 20, 1942
  • Colonel Franz Haas June 20, 1942 to July 21, 1943
  • Colonel Adalbert Election July 21 to November 10, 1943
  • Colonel Hermann Wagner November 10, 1943 to January 1, 1945
  • Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Binder January 1 to March 1945
  • Colonel Walter Knauff (April 1945)
  • Colonel Peter von Butler April 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.
  • Günther W. Gellermann : The Wenck , Bernard and Graefe Army in the Mönch Verlagsgesellschaft Bonn 2007.
  • Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945 , Frankfurt / Main and Osnabrück 1966.
  • Kurt Dieckert , Horst Großmann : The fight for East Prussia , Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1994.
  • Rolf Hinze: The Army Group collapsed in mid-1944 , Motorbuch Verlag Stuttgart 1992.
  • Rolf Hinze: Das Ostfront Drama 1944 , Motorbuch Verlag Stuttgart 1987.

Web links

  • XX. Army Corps on archivesportaleurope.net (assumptions in the introduction)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gellermann: The Wenck Army, pp. 102–116 f.