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Gotthard Heinrici

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Gotthard Heinrici.

Gotthard Heinrici (December 25, 1886 – December 13, 1971) was a general in the German Army during World War II.

Contents

[edit] Personal life

Born in Gumbinnen, East Prussia (now Gusev, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia), on Christmas Day, 1886, few details are known about his personal life. He was a cousin of Gerd von Rundstedt, and married to Gertrude Heinrici, a half-Jew, though the family received a German Blood Certificate from Adolf Hitler himself. The Heinricis had two children: a girl and a boy. The son of a Lutheran-Protestant minister, Heinrici was a religious man who attended church regularly. His religiosity made him unpopular among the Nazi hierarchy and he was on unfavourable terms with Hermann Göring and Hitler, probably due to his refusal to join the Nazi Party.

[edit] Early army career

The Heinrici family had been soldiers since the 12th century, and Gotthard Heinrici continued the tradition by joining the 95th Infantry Regiment on March 8, 1905, at the age of 19. He saw action on both the Eastern and Western fronts in the First World War and won numerous awards, including the Black Wound Badge for being wounded in battle and both the Second Class and First Class Iron Crosses in 1914 and 1915, respectively. He participated in the Battle of Tannenberg.

[edit] Second World War

Heinrici greeting Hitler in 1937.

Heinrici served throughout World War II, again serving on both fronts. He built up a reputation as one of the best defensive tacticians in the Wehrmacht and was renowned for his tenacity. For this reason, his officers and men nicknamed him Unser Giftzwerg: "our tough little bastard" or more specifically, "our poison dwarf".

During the Blitzkrieg into France, Heinrici commanded the 12th Corps and succeeded in breaking through the Maginot Line on June 14, 1940. During Operation Barbarossa in 1941, Heinrici served in the Second Panzer Army under Heinz Guderian and, as the commanding general of the 43rd Army Corps, received the Knight's Cross.

On January 26, 1942, Heinrici was given command of the Fourth Army, the kingpin of the rapidly crumbling German line directly facing Moscow. He held out for 10 weeks, his forces sometimes outnumbered 12 to 1. Here he developed one of his most famous tactics: when he knew a Soviet attack was imminent, he would pull his troops back from the line until the Soviet artillery barrage subsided and then immediately redeploy them unharmed.

Heinrici had been a victim of poison gas in World War I, and in late 1943 Göring had him placed in a convalescent home in Karlsbad on the pretext of "ill health". It was actually punishment for refusing to set fire to Smolensk in accordance with the Nazi "scorched earth" policy. However, it should be noted that Heinrici went on a two-month leave of absence twice during WWII, from June 6 to July 13, 1942, and then a year later from June 1 to July 31, 1943. One of these leaves was believed to be due to his contracting hepatitis.

In the summer of 1944, after 8 months of enforced retirement, he was placed in command of the First Panzer and Hungarian First Armies in Hungary. He retreated into Czechoslovakia, but fought so tenaciously that he was awarded the Swords to the Oak Leaves of his Knight's Cross on March 3, 1945.

[edit] Retreat from the Oder

On March 20, 1945 Heinrici replaced Heinrich Himmler as Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Vistula on the Eastern Front. At this time, the front was less than 50 miles from Berlin. He commanded two armies: the Third Panzer Army led by General Hasso von Manteuffel and the Ninth Army led by General Theodor Busse. Heinrici was tasked with preventing a Soviet attack across the Oder River, but he faced shortages of manpower and material and Hitler's conviction that the Red Army would not attack Berlin.

Led by Marshals Georgi Zhukov and Ivan Konev, the Soviets had advanced rapidly west from the USSR and had been stalled east of the Oder for months. As Anglo-American armies approached Berlin from the West, however, Stalin became convinced that they intended to take Berlin for themselves and ordered Zhukov and Konev to seize the city without further delays. In the early morning of April 16, 1945 Zhukov's army crossed the Oder and assaulted Heinrici's positions on the western bank. Simultaneously, Konev attacked Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner's command further south. This began the Battle of Berlin. Combined, the Soviets attacked with over 1,500,000 men.

Heinrici realized that he could not halt the advance. After days of intense fighting, he ordered the retreat of the army from Wollin back across the Oder River, despite Hitler's orders that no retreats be authorized without his personal approval. At his midnight conference that night, Hitler learned of the grave situation after a puzzling request by General Heinrici — for permission to transfer his army group HQ to a new site which Hitler found, after much searching on the map, to be to the rear of Berlin and thus behind Hitler's own headquarters. On April 29 Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel relieved him of his command. His post was then offered to Manteuffel who declined the promotion, citing protest of the treatment of Heinrici. Kurt von Tippelskirch was then named interim replacement until General Kurt Student could arrive and assume control.

After losing his command, Heinrici retired to Plön, where he surrendered to British forces on May 28 1945.

[edit] After the war

After his capture, Heinrici was held at Island Farm where he remained, other than a three-week transfer to a camp in the United States in October 1947, until his eventual release on May 19, 1948.

Throughout the war, Heinrici was opposed to Hitler's scorched earth policy, whereby everything of use had been ordered destroyed so as not to fall into the hands of the advancing enemy. He refused to lay waste to Smolensk as Göring had ordered, and late in the war he supported Minister of Armaments Albert Speer who worked to save Berlin from total destruction. When he was briefly put in charge of the defense of Berlin itself, Heinrici's first command was that nothing be purposely destroyed.

After the war, Heinrici's diary entries and letters were collected into a book entitled Morals and behaviour here are like those in the Thirty Years’ War. The First Year of the German-Soviet War as Shown in the Papers of Gnl. Gotthard Heinrici.

[edit] Ranks held

[edit] Decorations

  • Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross: 18 September 1941, General der Infanterie, Commanding General of XXXXIII Army Corps on the Eastern Front.
  • Oakleaves (No. 333): 24 November 1943, Generaloberst, Commander-in-Chief of the 4th Army on the Eastern Front.
  • Swords (No. 136): 3 March 1945, Generaloberst, Commander-in-Chief of the 1st Panzer Army on the Eastern Front.
  • Prussian Royal Hohenzollern House Order, Knight's Cross with Swords: 9 August 1918.
  • Prussian Iron Cross 1st Class (1914): 24 July 1915.
  • Prussian Iron Cross 2nd Class (1914): 27 September 1914.
  • 1939 Bar to the Prussian Iron Cross 1st Class (1914): 16 May 1940.
  • 1939 Bar to the Prussian Iron Cross 2nd Class (1914): 13 May 1940.
  • Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Carl Eduard War Cross
  • Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Duke Carl Eduard Medal, 2nd Class with Swords and Date
  • Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach House Order of Vigilance or the White Falcon, Knight 2nd Class with Swords
  • Saxe-Ernestine Ducal House Order, Knight 2nd Class with Swords
  • Reuß Honor Cross, 3rd Class with Swords
  • Schwarzburg Honor Cross, 3rd Class with Swords
  • Hamburg Hanseatic Cross
  • Cross of Honor for Combatants 1914-1918
  • Armed Forces Long Service Award, 1st Class (25-year Service Cross)
  • Armed Forces Long Service Award, 3rd Class (12-year Service Medal)
  • Austrian Military Merit Cross, 3rd Class with War Decoration
  • Medal for the Winter Campaign in Russia 1941/1942de:Gotthard Heinrici

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