XXXXIX. Mountain Corps (Wehrmacht)

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The XXXXIX. Gebirgs-Korps was a major unit of the German Wehrmacht , which was used during the Second World War in France (1940), in the Balkans (1941) and the remainder of the war on the Eastern Front.

history

Lineup

In the course of the western campaign on June 20, 1940, the General Command of the XXXXIX. Mountain Corps set up. Even before the final line-up, the staff was disbanded on July 1st as a result of the Compiegne armistice that was quickly achieved . Finally, at the end of October 1940, the General Command in the Besançon area was formed from parts of the XVIII. Army corps formed again. The quartermaster's department and parts of the corps troops of the XVIII. Army corps was used for formation and on October 25, 1940 the General Command was subordinated to the first Commander Lieutenant General Ludwig Kübler .

1941

During the Balkan campaign , the corps was subordinate to the 2nd Army and deployed between Völkermarkt and St. Paul at the beginning of April 1941 . On April 9, parts of the corps advanced across the Drava to Yugoslavia , on April 11 the assigned 1st Mountain Division advanced to Zagreb and reached Karlovac on April 13 and Bihać on April 15 .

In May 1941 the XXXXIX. Mountain Corps for Operation Barbarossa of the 17th Army (General of the Infantry Stülpnagel) in Galicia . The staff first moved into the castle of Count Potocki in Lancut , where Lieutenant General Kübler received the instructions for June 22, the day of the attack on the Soviet Union. The following were subordinate to the General Command: 1st Mountain Division, 68th and 257th Infantry Division , and later also the 4th Mountain Division . After the border fighting, Kübler's corps advanced via Oleszyce to Lemberg , which was captured on June 30th. On July 4th the advance continued via Vinniki to the southwest in the direction of Hussyatyn . The Stalin line was reached in mid-July and the attack was launched there on July 15. The 1st Mountain Division reached Vinnitsa on July 18 . The advance continued via Brazlaw and Gaissin to Ternowka , which was reached on July 27th. At the beginning of August the division approached the Uman area . On August 2, an advance division intervened in the Kesselschlacht near Uman and made the connection to the XXXXVIII at Sinjucha , south of Ternowka . Panzer Corps . In the fighting that followed near Podvysskoye, 22,000 prisoners were brought in. After fighting at Volodymyrivka, the corps reached the Dnieper. The corps changed to the command area of ​​the 11th Army (General of the Infantry von Manstein ), on September 8th the Dnieper was crossed. In the Battle of the Sea of ​​Azov (October 4-10) the Soviet 9th and 18th Armies were crushed. On October 21, the industrial center of Stalino in the Donets Basin was occupied together with the Italian CSIR . In constant contact with the 1st Panzer Army, the corps advanced to the Mius at the end of October 1941 via Stepanowka , Amwrossijewka and Dmitrijewka . In a loss-making battle in the Mius section, Dmitrijewka was captured and a bridgehead was formed on the other side of the river on November 2nd. On November 3, you had to at Miu trench warfare pass. In addition to the 1st and 4th Mountain Divisions, the 198th Infantry Division and the Italian 3rd Division "Celere" were also assigned to the command during this period .

1942

On January 3, 1942, General Rudolf Konrad took over the management of XXXXIX, which is on the northern Mius front. Mountain Corps. On May 17, 1942, the resumption of the German attack operations on the southern eastern front. At the end of June 1942, Voroshilovgrad was reached by the 1st Panzer Army from the north and crossed the Donets at Kamensk. At the end of July, the Mountain Corps was part of the Ruoff Army Group after the start of the Braunschweig company together with the LVI. Panzer and V Army Corps attacking Rostov-on-Don . After the invasion of the Caucasus, the Cherkessk bridge was captured undestroyed on August 11 , thus securing the crossing over the Kuban. In the period from August 12 to 21, 1942 the mountain troops took possession of the high passes of the Caucasus between the Elbrus, Maruch, Bgala and Adsapsch passes. However, an attack on Tuapse failed due to a lack of strength. On August 21, 1942, a high mountain range made up of soldiers from the 1st and 4th Mountain Divisions reached the summit of Elbrus . In mid-September 1942, units were transferred via Maikop to the Pontic Caucasus and tried in vain to break through to the Black Sea coast. At the turn of 1942/43 the corps moved from the Forest Caucasus to the Kuban bridgehead.

1943/44

Until February 1943 the corps was pushed back to the Taman Peninsula via Krasnodar in combat with the armies of the North Caucasian Front on the northern bank of the Kuban . Between the LII. and XXXXIV. Army Corps (Group Angelis) deployed in the Ustj-Labinskaya area on the Kuban , the 46th Infantry and 4th Mountain Divisions were subordinate to the corps after the 1st Mountain Division had been surrendered . In March, the General Command in the northern sector of the Kuban bridgehead was assigned to the 97th Jäger Division , the 79th and 125th Infantry Divisions . After the departure of the LII General Command. AK, the Konrad group took over the leadership of their divisions 50th and 370th ID in the Temryuk area . With the evacuation of the Kuban bridgehead (September / October 1943), the withdrawal took place via the Kerch peninsula to the Crimea . After the translation, General Konrad immediately started the construction of the destroyed fortifications of Sevastopol and prepared three containment positions between the Siwash section and the port fortress. At the end of October 1943, the corps succeeded in closing the Isthmus of Perekop in good time before the appearance of the Soviet forces and intercepted the first enemy tank breakthrough. After the 17th Army's retreat in Sevastopol, most of the corps' troops were crushed in the fighting for the fortress in April 1944.

1945

After the general command was reorganized, it was made available as a reserve to Army Group South Ukraine in May 1944 . From mid-September the General Command supported the defensive battles in the Carpathians with the 100th and 101st Jäger Divisions in the area of ​​the Hungarian 1st Army (General Miklós , later General Laszlo) . From October 1944 until the end of the war in May 1945, the corps under General Le Suire was subordinate to the 1st Panzer Army (General Nehring) in the Beskids and Moravia . The fighting to retreat through the High Tatras to Upper Silesia unified the 3rd and 4th Mountain Divisions in the Schwarzwasser and Troppau area in close cooperation with the northern defending LIX. Army Corps . In February 1945, the corps fighting south in the Javornik Mountains to the northern Waag section was subordinate to the 320th and 544th Grenadier Divisions , as well as the Hungarian 16th Division. In May 1945, the troops overrun by troops from the 4th Ukrainian Front in the Olomouc area and pushed away fell into Soviet captivity in the pocket east of Prague in the Deutsch Brod area .

guide

Commanding generals

Chiefs of the General Staff

  • Colonel Ferdinand Jodl October 25, 1940 to January 6, 1942
  • Major General Josef Kübler January 6, 1942 to January 19, 1943
  • Colonel Wolf-Dietrich von Xylander January 19 to June 1, 1943
  • Colonel Ernst Michael June 1 to August 5, 1943
  • Colonel Wilhelm Haidlen August 5, 1943 to May 30, 1944
  • Colonel Kurt from May 30th to August 5th 1944
  • Colonel Wilhelm Haidlen August 5, 1944 to February 1, 1945
  • Lieutenant Colonel Ludwig von Eimannsberger February 1 to April 5, 1945
  • Lieutenant Colonel Werner Vogl April 5 to May 1945

literature

  • Percy E. 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.
  • Roland Kaltenegger : The German Mountain Troop 1939-1945 , Bechtermünz Verlag, Augsburg 1999, p. 59/60.
  • Roland Kaltenegger: Ludwig Kübler - General of the Mountain Troops , Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1998.
  • Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in the Second World War 1939–1945 Volume 5, Frankfurt / Main and Osnabrück 1966, p. 155.

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