CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SIX – Part Three
Summer 1941 – The Summer of Broadened Horizons
Despite the fall of Berlin to British Paras and the capture of Hitler at the end of April, time was not provided for the troops to take time for tea.
Generalfeldmarschall von Rundstedt as
Oberbefehlshaber West and de facto
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht had ordered a cease fire for all German troops in the West on April 30, yet the only field command that complied with the order was
Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein’s
Armee-Oberkommando Manstein that had only arrived from the Eastern Front in the weeks before the fall of Berlin. The rest of the
Wehrmacht, having just begun to recreate a unified defensive stance against the British Army, fragmented into division and regimental sized pockets of resistance as portions of units threw down their arms and surrendered to the British. The remaining portions, generally comprised of those who refused to believe in the capture of Hitler, were joined by fleeing members of the Nazi Party and large numbers of
Waffen-SS troops, who had been organized to follow the orders of the Nazi Party rather than the
Wehrmacht, continued to dispute the British occupation and made preparations for a tenacious and drawn out defense of the remaining portions of the Reich. Likewise German field commanders in southwestern Poland, eastern Austria and northern Yugoslavia, disregarded von Rundstedt’s orders and claimed them as misinformation by the British. These field commanders undertook a counter-offensive that marched westward into Austria in an attempt to drive the French from Austria and flank the southern wing of the British Army.
Generalfeldmarschall
von Rundstedt, Oberbefehlshaber West
and Oberkommando der Wehrmacht.
von Rundstedt struggled in the hours and days following the fall of Berlin to limit the damage of the fragmenting Wehrmacht.
The
Wehrmacht’s Austrian Counter-offensive, code named
Feuerzauber ("Fire Magic"), was quite successful in the early stages as the French Army, having very few reserves due to the over eager demobilization of the French Army in late March and early April by an increasingly rogue-like Paris, was forced back as far as Bavaria and Switzerland with all of Austria once more coming under the control of the Germans. Having been granted the freedom to maneuver to safeguard their flanks as well as prosecute the continuation of the war until the surrender of Germany was official the field commanders on the southern flank of the British lines launched their own coordinated counter-attack. Led of by General Sir Percy C. S. Hobart’s Royal Armoured Cavalry Army, the British drove into western Czechoslovakia, overrunning the meager defenses erected by
Wehrkreis Böhmen-Mähren (Military District Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia) commanding general,
General der Infanterie Erich Friderici, and quickly captured Pilsen before turning to support General Augustus K. Fergusson’s newly renamed British Army of the Rhine (formerly known as 1st Army, Motorised or the British Motorised Army and was in the initial stages of converting to a mechanised formation from a motorised one) march into Lower Silesia. The ramifications of the fall of Berlin had torn apart
General der Infanterie Hans Halm’s
Wehrkreis VIII with Halm’s defenses rife with troops unwilling to resist the British attacks and Fergusson’s troops quickly marched through Silesia, the Sudetenland districts of Bohemia and Moravia and subsequently captured General Halm and his entire
Militärische Bereich Befehl Hauptsitze (Military Area Command Headquarters) staff as they stormed the city of Breslau.
Dedicated to holding their ground, the German commanders of
Wehrkreis XIII,
Wehrkreis XVII and
Wehrkreis XVIII (
General der Artillerie Friedrich von Cochenhausen,
General der Artillerie Alfred Streccius and
General der Infanterie Hubert Schaller-Kalide respectfully, headquarter in Nürnberg, Vienna and Salzburg again respectfully), brought up reinforcements that consisted of the last of the German reserves and Hungarian and Romanian troops fresh from fighting against the Soviets in southern Ukraine.
Hungarian infantry belonging to the 2nd Battalion, Gyorshadtest
(Fast Moving Army Corps) of the Magyar Királyi Honvédség (
Royal Hungarian Army) preparing to continue their march toward the front lines and the onrushing British Armies
While the numbers provided to the
Wehrkreis commanders by these additional troops were impressive, in reality there was a great deal of discord within the German reserves being sent forward. This discord also infected the Hungarian and Romanian troops also attempting to deflect the Imperial offensive. While there was no clear organized mutiny within either the
Wehrmacht formations nor the Hungarian or Romanian units, there was a significant break down of unit cohesion which prevented the German defenses from holding the attacks being inflicted by the Imperial troops of Generals Hobart and Fergusson, and when they were joined by Lord Mountbatten’s First Royal Marine Expeditionary Unit, the crumbling defenses gave way with mass surrenders by German troops and bitter withdrawals by Hungarian and Romanian troops. Advancing into the Silesian highlands between the upper Oder and Vistula rivers, the British Army of the Rhine captured the Upper Silesian capital of Oppeln on May 3 while the Royal Marines assaulting Romanian positions further in the Sudeten Mountains, captured Reichenberg, known to the Czechs as Liberec, on the same day.
The Royal Armoured Cavalry also continued their onslaught into southern Bohemia, fighting a German kampfgruppe that was formed around a regiment of
Waffen-SS troops (SS-Volunteer
Gebirgsjäger-Regiment 13) and the Romanian 1st Guard Division, commanded by the Romanian division’s commander Lieutenant-General Nicolae Şova (thus
Kampfgruppe Şova). Despite a very tenacious defense, the German SS
Gebirgsjäger and Romanian
Infanterie Garda were unable to prevent the British Armoured Cavalrymen from securing Strakonice on May 4 and having been pushed out of position by the armoured formations were also unable to prevent General Hobart from striking across the former Czech frontier into Austria proper and leading the Prince of Wales' Dragoon Guards Regiment into Linz on May 5.
An anti-tank gun crew from Regimentulul 6 Infanterie Garda Mihai Viteazul, Divizia 1 Garda
(6th Guard Infantry Regiment Mihai Viteazul, 1st Guard Division) attempting to stall the drive of the Gloucestershire Royal Hussars Regiment toward Strakonice early on May 4, 1941
Further to the west, in an effort to assist the French in securing their forward lines, to crush German resistance in Swabia and rush into Bavaria, General George R. Pearkes’ twelve regiment strong Imperial Canadian Army launched Operation
Blockhouse against the German’s
Wehrkreis V (Military District V – Headquartered in Stuttgart and commanded by
General der Infanterie Kurt Liebmann) and of
Wehrkreis VII (Military District VII – Headquartered in Munich and commanded by
General der Artillerie Edmund Wachenfeld). Crossing the River Neckar on May 4, the Imperial Canadians captured Stuttgart on May 6 without damaging the industrial portions of the city to heavily. From a secured and subdued Stuttgart General Pearkes divested his VII Corps (Major-General Rodney “Rod” Keller commanding the Sault Ste. Marie Fusiliers, the Royal Whycocomagh Fusiliers and the King's Quebec Grenadier Regiments) to attack Freiburg while moving southeast with his army’s two remaining corps, XIX Corps (Major-General Harold O.N. Brownfield commanding the Thunderbay Grenadiers, the Royal Toronto Yeomanry, the Royal Chippewa Rifles, the King's Own Wyandot Rifles and the Royal Canadian Fusiliers Regiments) and XV Corps (Major-General Albert Tremain commanding the King’s Iroquois Rifles, the Sherbrooke Light Infantry, the Dauphin Grenadiers and the Royal Ojibway Rifles Regiments). General Keller and his VII Corps captured Freiburg on May 9 while the rest of the Imperial Canadians battled deep into Baden and then Württemberg, reaching Lake Constance on May 14 and capturing the city of Friedrichshafen and the important industrial headquarters of the German firms Dornier Flugzeugwerke and ZF Friedrichshafen AG (Dornier, of course, a major aircraft design and manufacturer for the Luftwaffe and ZF Friedrichshafen a major producer of the
Wehrmacht’s panzers and an innovative driveline and chassis design company). Unlike the
Wehrkreis further to the east, Liebmann and Wachenfeld’s districts had no
Waffen-SS formations and were comprised of recently recruited or reconstituted units. These units, suffering from the same paralysis that was inflicting the entire
Wehrmacht west of Warsaw, were unable to create even a porous defense and as such the Imperial Canadians continued their offensive eastward. Marching east along the River Isar north of the Bavarian Alps, engaging the few resolute troops that attempted to forestall the Imperial advance in a quick three day running battle, the Canadians reached the Bavarian capital of Munich shortly after dawn on May 18. General Wachenfeld, having watched the retreating German troops as they were chased into Munich by General Pearkes’ troops and knowing that any attempt to defend the Bavarian capital would only result in an unmitigated destruction of the city, overrode the recommendations of the
Militärische Bereich Befehl Hauptsitze (Military Area Command Headquarters) staff and surrendered the city to the Imperial Canadians several hours later.
Yet all was not successful for Imperial forces as the shock and confusion relating to the fall of Berlin was relegated to the German forces. The Romanians in particular time and time again conducted themselves very well in defending against the encroaching British troops. The troops of Lieutenant-General Nicolae Macici’s
Armata 1 (1st Army) and specifically the
Divizia 1 Blindata (1st Armoured Division), gained particular notoriety when they counterattacked on May 8 and were able to successfully eject Lord Mountbatten’s First Royal Marine Expeditionary Unit from Liberec (Reichenberg). Seizing upon the initiative of General Macici,
Wehrkreis Generalgouvernement commander
General der Infanterie Siegfried Hänicke, headquartered in Kraków, rushed his own reserves in to support the Romanians and together the German and Romanian troops were able to hold Liberec for seven days against the combined efforts of Lord Mountbatten’s Royal Marines and Fergusson’s Army of the Rhine.
A reconnaissance team from General Macici’s Armata 1
scouting the positions of the attacking Royal Marines and motorised troops of the Army of the Rhine, May 11, 1941
The middle of May would herald a greater chance of doom for the Germans and their allies still fighting against the British Empire and her allies as the British Army of Northumbria was established on May 13 (commanded by General Miles C. Dempsey, the army was a combined arms formation comprised of four armoured regiments, the Denbighshire Hussars, the King's Own Imperial Hussars, the Pretoria Armoured Lancers, and three infantry regiments, the Prince Alfred Guards, the Leeds Rifles, the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, and the Royal Ceylon Fusiliers Regiments, along with two heavy armour brigades and two artillery brigades) followed on May 15 by the establishment of the RAF’s Air Support Command B (Air Vice Marshal William Bostock, OBE, commanding sixteen squadrons divided into four wings. Fourteen of the squadrons flew Hawker Typhoons modified for ground attack/close air support missions while two squadrons flew examples of the Bristol Beaufighter that had been reconfigured from the FAA Torbeau’s back into the original ground attack role. Yet another example of the Imperial General Staff providing prototype weapon systems to front line troops for combat evaluations prior to awarding contracts to the manufacturers). In addition to the establishment of these two formations, General Norrie’s Imperial Armoured Army, having refitted following the conclusion of destroying
Kampfgruppe von Luck during the German counter-offensive following Operation
Dauntless’ capture of Lower Saxony (Operation
Frühlingserwachen or
Spring Awakening), had marched southward from the army’s laager positions near Wolfsburg to attack in to Austria, reaching the banks of the Salzach River at the northern boundary of the Alps on May 20 to capture the city of Salzburg and the commanding general of
Wehrkreis XVIII,
General der Infanterie Hubert Schaller-Kalide. Ten days later, after crossing back over the Salzach and following the Royal Armoured Cavalry out of the region of Linz, General Norrie’s armoured formations marched over the Göllersbach River into Lower Austria to capture Hollabrunn as the Royal Armoured Cavalry smashed the last of
Wehrkreis XVII’s northern defenses and completed the liberation of western Czechoslovakia with the capture of Tábor in southern Bohemia.
The positions of the last two
Wehrkreis of the Greater German Reich were subsequently very untenable.
General der Artillerie Alfred Streccius, commander of
Wehrkreis XVII and headquartered in Vienna, had Imperial armies rapidly marching south toward the Danube as well as from the west. The commander of
Wehrkreis XIII,
General der Artillerie Friedrich von Cochenhausen, was in even a worse position as his entire district save his headquarters in the city of Nürnberg had been completely overrun and more Imperial troops were being landed on the Continent and marching toward the front. For von Cochenhausen the end came quickly as Lieutenant-General Sir Harold Alexander and his Royal Highland Army (comprised of the Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment), the Coldstream Guards, the Gordon Highlanders, the Duke of Albany's Highlanders, the Queen's Own Highlanders, the Fraser's Highlanders, the Cameronians (Scots Rifles), the Scots Guards and the Seaforth Highlanders Regiments), having recently completed an overland march from Finland through the mountains of Sweden and Norway for deployment to Germany, marched through Nürnberg on their way to Bohemia and the capture of Kutná Hora. Streccius, having anticipated being captured by British troops was instead captured by French troops who had advanced northward through the Alps and down the Glan River to capture Vienna on June 3.
General der Artillerie
Friedrich von Cochenhausen and members of his Militärische Bereich Befehl Hauptsitze
(Military Area Command Headquarters) staff reviewing their options in the face of the approaching Royal Highland Army
As both the month of June and the summer of 1941 began to bloom, the once proud Third Reich was over run by the allies, the majority of the Reich in the hands of the armies of the British Empire, one major field army,
Armee-Oberkommando Manstein, completely surrendering to the British while the remaining
Wehrmacht formations in the west (both
Heer and
Waffen-SS troops) were scattered across two
Wehrkreis (General
der Artillerie Walter Petzel’s
Wehrkreis XXI centered around Posen and Litzmannstadt (Łódź), and
General der Infanterie Siegfried Hänicke’s
Wehrkreis Generalgouvernement which was centered in southern Poland around Kraków). The German’s remaining allies, the Romanians, Hungarians, Slovakians and Croats were now more concerned with protecting their own nations rather than assisting the designating
Wehrmacht as British troops began moving into Slovakia and French troops (having finally been reinforced after Paris realized that despite the fall of Berlin the war was still ongoing) began approaching the Hungarian and Croatian frontiers. The summer months loomed as very dark times for those who had elected to wage war against the British Empire and her allies.
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