Gotthard Heinrici
Gotthard Fedor August Heinrici (German:
Early life and career
Heinrici was born in 1886 at
In May 1916, Heinrici took part in the
Heinrici had two children, Hartmut and Gisela, with his wife Gertrude.[4] He was a devout Protestant who regularly went to church. His religious faith and refusal to join the Nazi party made him unpopular with the Nazi hierarchy and led to clashes with Hitler and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, who scorned him.[5] Because Heinrici's wife Gertrude had a Jewish parent, their children were labeled Mischlinge (partly Jewish) under Nazi racial law. However, Heinrici received a "German Blood Certificate" from Hitler himself, which validated their supposed "Aryan" status and protected them from discrimination.
World War II
During the Battle of France, Heinrici's command was part of General Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb's Army Group C. He commanded the XII Army Corps which was part of the 1st Army. Heinrici's forces succeeded in breaking through the Maginot Line south of Saarbrücken on 14 June 1940.
In 1941, during
General Gotthard Heinrici wrote in his diary:
"Hampered by the snow and especially the snowdrifts, often shoveling ourselves out metre by metre, and traveling with vehicles and equipment that are by no means adequate for the Russian winter, behind us the enemy pressing on, concern to bring the troops to safety in time, to carry the wounded along, not to let too many weapons or too much equipment fall into enemy hands, all this was sorely trying for the troops and their leaders...Kitted-out with fabulous winter equipment, the Russians everywhere push through the wide gaps that have opened up in our front...The retreat in snow and ice is absolutely Napoleonic in its manner. The losses are similar."[8]
In 1944, after the previous successes of the Red Army in Ukraine, Heinrici repeatedly argued for the retreat of Army Group Center and a concomitant shortening of the front line; Hitler rejected these plans at a staff meeting on 20 May 1944. On 4 June, Heinrici was relieved of command of the 4th Army, which was later encircled east of Minsk and nearly destroyed during Operation Bagration.[9]
In the summer of 1944, after eight months of forced retirement, Heinrici was sent to
Retreat from the Oder
On 20 March 1945, Adolf Hitler replaced Heinrich Himmler with Heinrici as Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Vistula on the Eastern Front. Indicating that he was ill, Himmler had abandoned his post on 13 March and retired to a sanatorium at Lychen.[10] At this time, Army Group Vistula's front was less than 50 miles from Berlin.
Army Group Vistula consisted of two armies: the
On 16 April, the
Dismissal
On 28 April, Field Marshal
Heinrici was replaced by General
Heinrici was dismissed by Keitel for refusing to save Hitler. He was summoned to Berlin and would have complied had Captain Hellmuth Lang not persuaded him to "drive as slowly as you can" to Plön instead, informing him that he would be murdered in Berlin like Rommel (who had been Heinrici's adjutant, and later Lang's commander).[16][17] Heinrici then gave himself up to British forces at Plön on 28 May.
Post-war life
After his capture, Heinrici was held at
Legacy
Despite being married to a half-Jewish (Mischling) woman,[19] Heinrici supported many Nazi nationalistic and fascistic policies including the Lebensraum concept of territorial expansion,[20][21] but disagreed with many of their racial policies. He was shocked by the anti-Jewish pogroms of Kristallnacht, although this did not lead him to distance himself from the Nazi regime.[22]
On the eve of
As a military commander, historians have described him as the premier defensive expert of the Wehrmacht and a genius admired by his peers, whose present-day obscurity could be due to his being, in the words of
In 2014, Heinrici's private letters and diaries were published in the book A German General on the Eastern Front: The Letters and Diaries of Gotthard Heinrici 1941–1942 edited by Johannes Hürter. In his writings, Heinrici revealed his growing doubts about Hitler's strategy and his mounting concern as the Wehrmacht was implicated in war crimes and the first actions of the Holocaust.[5]
Hürter writes that Heinrici proved to be a tough and capable commander who demanded as much of himself as his soldiers. As an army commander, Heinrici constantly maintained personal contact with combat troops on the front. In doing so, he corresponded to the Prussian-German (and also Hitler's) ideal of a high-ranking troop commander who led "from the front", and combined the skills of a general staff officer with the boldness of the front-line officer. Heinrici's personal writings from the Eastern Front bear eloquent testimony to this, as well as to the empathy and care he had for his soldiers, for whom he felt responsible.[30] Regarding crimes committed in Heinrici's area of command in the Soviet Union, Hürter writes that despite Heinrici's growing respect for the fighting power of the enemy and a burgeoning understanding of the devastated population, it did not change the fact that war crimes such as the execution of commissars also occurred in Heinrici's area of command.[31]
Awards
- Prussian Iron Cross of 1914: 2nd Class (27 September 1914) & 1st Class (24 July 1915)[32]
- Prussian Royal House Order of Hohenzollern, Knight's Cross with Swords (9 August 1918)
- 1939 Clasp to the Iron Cross: 2nd Class (13 May 1940) & 1st Class (16 June 1940)[32]
- Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords
References
Citations
- ^ a b Hürter 2014, p. 10.
- ^ Stockert 1998, pp. 151, 152.
- ^ a b Stockert 1998, p. 152.
- ^ Rigg 2002, p. 433.
- ^ a b Hürter 2014.
- ^ Ziemke 2002, p. 206.
- ^ Seewald 2013.
- ^ EVANS, Richard. "GERMANY AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR: STALINGRAD AND BEYOND 1942-43". www.gresham.ac.uk. Retrieved 2021-07-20.
- ^ Ziemke 2002, pp. 323–325.
- ^ Duffy 1991, p. 241.
- ^ Beevor 2002, p. 287.
- ^ Dollinger 1967, p. 171.
- ^ Beevor 2002, p. 338.
- ^ Dollinger 1967, p. 228.
- ^ Ziemke 1969, p. 128.
- ^ Mitcham 2012, p. 69.
- ^ Ryan 1966, pp. 507–508.
- ^ www.specialcamp11.co.uk
- ^ Rigg 2002, p. 171.
- ^ Hürter 2007, pp. 154–155.
- ^ Steber & Gotto 2014, pp. 261–262.
- ^ Hürter 2007, p. 512.
- ^ Stargardt 2015, p. 171.
- ^ Stahel 2009, p. 155.
- ^ McCormack 2017, p. ?.
- ^ Mitcham 2012, pp. 66–67.
- ^ Papadopoulos & Zabecki 2015, p. 338.
- ^ Editors of Time-Life Books 1989, p. 414.
- B.H. Liddell Hart, The Other Side of the Hill, pp.267-268, Pan Books1983.
- ^ Hürter 2014, p. 23-37.
- ^ Hürter 2014, p. 39-43.
- ^ a b Thomas 1997, p. 263.
- ^ a b c Scherzer 2007, p. 377.
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-0-670-03041-5.
- Dollinger, Hans (1967) [1965]. The Decline and Fall of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. New York: Bonanza Books. ISBN 978-0-517-01313-7.
- ISBN 978-0-306-80505-9.
- Editors of Time-Life Books (1989). WWII: Time-Life History of the Second World War. Barnes & Noble Books. )
- ISBN 978-0-14-311671-4.
- )
- Hürter, Johannes (1 January 2007). Hitlers Heerführer: Die deutschen Oberbefehlshaber im Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion 1941/42. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-486-70744-1.
- Hürter, Johannes (2014). A German General on the Eastern Front. The Letters and Diaries of Gotthard Heinrici 1941–1942. Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword Military. ISBN 978-1-78159-396-7.
- McCormack, David (2017). The Berlin 1945 Battlefield Guide:: Part 1: The Battle of the Oder-Neisse, Part 1. Stroud: Fonthill Media. ISBN 978-1781556078.
- Mitcham, Samuel (2012). Hitler's Commanders: Officers of the Wehrmacht, the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine, and the Waffen-SS. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 69. ISBN 978-1-4422-1154-4.
- Papadopoulos, Randy; Zabecki, David T. (2015). World War II in Europe: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. p. 338. ISBN 978-1-135-81242-3.
- ISBN 0-7006-1178-9.
- Ryan, Cornelius (1995). Slutstriden. Slaget om Berlin 16 april - 2 maj 1945. Stockholm, Sweden: Albert Bonniers Förlag. ISBN 978-91-0-056032-4.
- Ryan, Cornelius (1966). The last battle. Simon and Schuster. pp. 507–508. ISBN 978-1-4736-2008-7.
- Scherzer, Veit (2007). Die Ritterkreuzträger 1939–1945 Die Inhaber des Ritterkreuzes des Eisernen Kreuzes 1939 von Heer, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm sowie mit Deutschland verbündeter Streitkräfte nach den Unterlagen des Bundesarchives [The Knight's Cross Bearers 1939–1945 The Holders of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross 1939 by Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and Allied Forces with Germany According to the Documents of the Federal Archives] (in German). Jena, Germany: Scherzers Militaer-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2.
- Seewald, Berthold (7 November 2013). "Das Inferno der Autobahnschlachten in Russland". Die Welt (in German). Retrieved 8 June 2020.
- Stahel, David (2009). Operation Barbarossa and Germany's Defeat in the East. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521768474.
- Stargardt, Nicholas (2015). The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-45. London: Random House. ISBN 978-1-4735-2373-9.
- Steber, Martina; Gotto, Bernhard (8 May 2014). Visions of Community in Nazi Germany: Social Engineering and Private Lives. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-100373-8.
- Stockert, Peter (1998). Die Eichenlaubträger 1939–1945 Band 4 [The Oak Leaves Bearers 1939–1945 Volume 4] (in German). Bad Friedrichshall, Germany: Friedrichshaller Rundblick. ISBN 978-3-932915-03-1.
- Thomas, Franz (1997). Die Eichenlaubträger 1939–1945 Band 1: A–K [The Oak Leaves Bearers 1939–1945 Volume 1: A–K] (in German). Osnabrück, Germany: Biblio-Verlag. ISBN 978-3-7648-2299-6.
- Ziemke, Earl F. (1969). Battle for Berlin End of the Third Reich Ballantine's Illustrated History of World War II (Battle Book #6). Ballantine Books.
- Ziemke, Earl F. (2002). Stalingrad to Berlin: The German Defeat in the East. Washington D.C.: Center of Military History, US Army. ISBN 978-1-78039-287-5.
External links
- Gotthard Heinrici in the German National Library catalogue
- Ullrich, Volker (7 September 2013). "Orgien der Gewalt" [Orgies of Violence: The records of General Gotthard Heinrici shed new light on the role of the German military elite in the war of annihilation against the Soviet Union]. ISSN 0044-2070. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
- "Die deutschen Heeresgruppen Teil 2, Zweiter Weltkrieg". German Federal Archives - Freiburg im Breisgau. Archived from the original on 9 March 2016. Retrieved 15 February 2016.