Generals shot in a sand quarry. Generals of the Red Army in German captivity during the Great Patriotic War

On October 28, 1941, when war was raging throughout the country, a train arrived at the railway station in the village of Barysh. The train was hastily driven to a dead end and surrounded by a cordon of NKVD officers. Some time later, dull shots were heard in the ravine near the station. This is how they dealt with the military and economic-political elite of the Soviet Union.

The Aviators' Case

This page in the history of the Ulyanovsk region has not yet been written. In the meantime, we will tell you what is known about the execution in Barysh now...

Shortly before the attack of Nazi Germany on Soviet lines, another purge began in the ranks of the Red Army. The internal organs of the Air Force began to search for “enemies of the people” with particular zeal, because our aircraft were seriously inferior to the German ones. Stalin personally instructed Lavrentiy Beria, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, to supervise the Soviet aircraft industry. However, he was unable to correct the situation. But in order not to fall out of favor, Beria ordered his department to identify “enemies of the people” among the largest heads of the Air Force. The defeat of our aviation in the first months of the war added fuel to the fire, and then the denunciations of envious people did not take long to come - the positions of those arrested were of the highest order. This is how the “military-fascist conspiracy in the Air Force” was fabricated - another bloody page in the book of extermination of the Soviet military elite.

One by one, 20 people are arrested on suspicion of spying. In October 1941, all of them were sent straight from prisons by train to Kuibyshev, where according to the plan, if the Germans captured Moscow, the entire Soviet government and various departments were to be evacuated. But one of the train cars did not arrive at its destination. Just in our region, near the Barysh station, he was overtaken by an urgent telegram from Beria: stop the investigation immediately, shoot all twenty without trial. The sentence was carried out on the spot...

Of the two dozen prisoners shot in Barysh (whose remains are not interred to this day, moreover, the exact place of their burial is not known) - four Heroes of the Soviet Union, two colonel generals, four lieutenant generals, four major generals, heads of people's commissariats , world-famous aviators and designers. The color of the air force, the elite of aviation, the best of the best. First they were tortured in prison dungeons, then they were brutally finished off on the road and, finally, they were thrown with earth in a dusty quarry near the village station...

Interrupted flight

Among those executed was Grigory Mikhailovich Stern, Colonel General, Chief of Staff of the Far Eastern Front. A renowned hero of the fighting on Lake Khasan and the Khalkhin Gol River in 1938, adjutant to Klim Voroshilov himself, and before his arrest, head of the Main Air Defense Directorate of the People's Commissariat of Defense. A brilliant career built by exemplary courage and bravery!

During the investigation, Hero of the Soviet Union Stern will be reminded of his criticism of the report of Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov shortly before his arrest. Unheard of: a colonel general dared to speak out, albeit to the point, but to whom?! Previous achievements were immediately forgotten. And later one of the investigators will write in his testimony: “...they treated Stern especially brutally. There was no living space left on it. During each interrogation he lost consciousness several times.”

The day after Stern’s arrest, June 8, 1941, Yakov Vladimirovich Smushkevich, an aviation lieutenant general, one of the few in the country twice awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, was arrested. The commander of the aviation group in the battles on the Khalkhin Gol River in 1939, the head of the Red Army Air Force, and before the arrest, the assistant chief of the General Staff for aviation, underwent a serious operation three days before the arrest. They took the lieutenant general straight from the hospital, and after interrogating the exhausted man, they beat him on fresh bandages, on wounds obtained in battles for his homeland.

All those arrested were interrogated with passion: 19 of them confessed to sabotage under torture. Except for one thing - Alexander Dmitrievich Loktionov. The Colonel General, commander of the Red Army Air Force, Deputy People's Commissar of Defense for Aviation, and since 1940, commander of the Baltic Special Military District, were interrogated by the three of them. But the investigators failed to extract a confession of a non-existent conspiracy with the Nazis: “Loktionov roared in pain, rolled on the floor, but did not agree...”. He was a hero in the sky, he remained a hero in dungeons.

Aviation Lieutenant General, Hero of the Soviet Union Pavel Vasilievich Rychagov is also on the list of those executed. His lightning-fast career was the envy of many: at the age of 29 he headed the Main Directorate of the Red Army Air Force, and a couple of years later rose to the rank of Deputy People's Commissar of Defense! Many people wanted to take Rychagov’s place, but honor and valor are not given out in the workplace... A day after Rychagov’s arrest, his wife Maria Nesterenko, deputy commander of a special-purpose regiment, was also arrested. Shortly before her arrest, Maria Nesterenko made a world record for long-distance flights, falling several kilometers short of reaching her destination. The plane became icy, and Major Nesterenko was forced to land the plane, but the world record had already been broken. Beria recalled to the wife of the ousted lieutenant general those kilometers of “underflight”, without even taking into account the record itself. Maria Nesterenko was executed along with her husband. On the morning of the execution, they continued to beat her in the train carriage, extorting her testimony, although the verdict had already been received.

Among those executed was the former first secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Kazakhstan, and before his arrest, the Chief State Arbiter of the USSR, Philip Isaevich Goloshchekin. A man of amazing destiny: he was one of those who, on the night of July 17, 1918, shot the royal family in the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, and after the revolution he restored the economy of the Samara region.

Here are just a few of the most vivid and complete biographies to date of those who were shot point-blank in the Barysh ravine. Among them were Aviation Lieutenant General Fedor Konstantinovich Arzhenukhin, head of the Military Academy of Command and Navigation Staff of the Air Force, Aviation Lieutenant General Ivan Iosifovich Proskurov, head of the intelligence department of the Red Army, Hero of the Soviet Union, as well as Yakov Grigorievich Taubin, a weapons designer, creator of the first in the world of automatic grenade launcher. Together with their husbands, the wives of Artillery Major General G.K. Savchenko, A.I., were executed. Fibich and Deputy People's Commissar of Trade D.A. Rozov - Z.P. Egorov.

That night, in the Barysh ravine, aviation major generals I.F. Sakrier and P.S. Volodin, technical troops major general M.M. Kayukov, artillery colonels S.O. Sklizkov and I.I. Zasosov, chief experimental design bureau of the People's Commissariat of Armaments M.N. Sobornov and the first secretary of the Omsk Regional Committee D.A. Bulatov.

All of them were rehabilitated posthumously.

Evgeniy SHURMELYOV, Ekaterina POZDNYAKOVA

P.S. Until recently, this execution at the Barysh railway station was classified as “Top Secret”. Little is known about this story even today; even the exact reason for such a rush to execute is not clear. According to one version, the country’s leadership expected the Volga region to be captured by the Nazis, and therefore feared that “enemies of the people”, also aces of the aviation command, would provide all possible assistance to the enemy. The exact location of the execution is not known, but it can be assumed that due to the haste They did not take the doomed to the depths of the forest, and therefore they chose a quarry not far from the station as the place of execution. There are still steep slopes around the ravine, so it was almost impossible for people exhausted and mutilated by torture and interrogation to escape.

There are still many mysteries in this tragedy. So far, only the power of this brutal extermination of the real heroes of their country is obvious, for whom, to this day, a foreign land, without a single mark of that terrible October day, has not become peace.

The Great Patriotic War brought a lot of grief and suffering to every home in Russia. The only thing worse than death was captivity. After all, the deceased could have been buried with dignity in the ground. The prisoner forever became a “stranger among his own,” even if he managed to escape from the clutches of the enemy. The most unenviable fate awaited the captured generals. And not so much German as Soviet. The fate of some of them will be discussed.

Vlasov was captured in Czechoslovakia. He was subjected to a show trial, and in mid-1946 he was hanged in the courtyard of Butyrka prison. General Bunyachenko followed him. Who initially supported Vlasov’s ideas, but when he realized that the Reich’s song was finished, he decided to bargain for his freedom by pretending to be a supporter of the British and starting a revolt in Prague against German soldiers. However, traitors were not liked in His Majesty's armed forces either. Therefore, at the end of hostilities, he was also sent to Moscow.

But not all generals fell into disgrace. So, Major General of Tank Forces Potapov was one of these rare cases. After his release from captivity, his homeland was not only greeted with open arms, but also awarded the Order of Lenin, promoted, and then made commander of a military district. Representatives of the General Staff and even several marshals attended his funeral.

GENERAL EXECUTIONS, AFTER THE WWII. In 1950, shots rang out loudly in the execution cellars of Moscow. Although the death penalty was abolished in the USSR in May 1947, on January 12, 1950, “meeting”, as usual, “the numerous requests of the working people,” the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR decided to allow the use of the death penalty “for traitors to the motherland, spies, subversives and saboteurs.” " On August 24, 1950, Hero of the Soviet Union, Marshal of the Soviet Union Grigory Kulik (formally Kulik was stripped of these titles back in 1942, but in 1957 he was posthumously restored to the ranks of marshal and hero) and Hero of the Soviet Union, Colonel General Vasily Gordov, were executed. The next day, August 25, Major Generals Filipp Rybalchenko, Nikolai Kirillov and Pavel Ponedelin were shot. On August 26, 1950, the KGB bullets were taken by another troika of generals - Aviation Major General Mikhail Beleshev, Major General Mikhail Belyanchik and Brigade Commander Nikolai Lazutin. On August 28, Major Generals Ivan Krupennikov, Maxim Sivaev and Vladimir Kirpichnikov were taken to the basement. Another high-ranking military man, brigade doctor (corresponding to the rank of “brigade commander”) Ivan Naumov, almost did not live up to the KGB bullet “alleged” to him - he died on August 23, 1950 from torture in Butyrka. In total, according to Vyacheslav Zvyagintsev, who worked with the materials of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR, only from August 18 to August 30, 1950, 20 generals and marshals were sentenced to death. However, the general’s extermination did not begin in August, nor did it end in August (or even 1950). For example, on June 10, 1950, Major General Pavel Artemenko was shot, and on October 28, 1950, in the Sukhanovskaya prison of the MGB, the deputy commander of the Black Sea Fleet for political affairs, Rear Admiral Pyotr Bondarenko, received a bullet in the back of the head. On the same day and in the same Sukhanovka, Lieutenant General of the Tank Forces Vladimir Tamruchi, who had been imprisoned since 1943, died after being beaten to death by security officers. The “pioneer” of the application of the decree of January 12, 1950 was Air Marshal Sergei Khudyakov, who was arrested back in December 1945: he was shot on April 18, 1950, accusing, as usual, of “treason.” By the same decree, at least six more military leaders were then shot: brigade commanders Ivan Bessonov and Mikhail Bogdanov and four major generals - Alexander Budykho, Andrei Naumov, Pavel Bogdanov and Evgeniy Egorov. But here the story is special: these six, according to the documents, paid for their collaboration with the Germans in captivity. Let's say, brigade commander Bessonov - a career security officer, on the eve of the war, due to discreditable circumstances and with a demotion, was transferred to the Red Army - he was the head of the combat training department of the Main Directorate of the Border Troops of the NKVD of the USSR and then the commander of the Trans-Baikal Border District, and became the chief of staff of the 102nd Infantry Division. At the end of August 1941, brigade commander Bessonov was captured. Almost immediately he began to collaborate with the Germans, and there he even offered them his services in creating punitive units and false partisan detachments - to discredit real partisans in the eyes of the population. Here, undoubtedly, the KGB school and the rich practice of Bessonov himself had an impact: he participated in the OGPU special operation of 1933–1934 in the province of Xinjiang (now the Uyghur Autonomous Region - Ed.) - when several brigades and regiments of the OGPU, dressed in White Guard and Chinese uniforms, fought against the “Chinese Muslims” and the troops of Chiang Kai-shek. But the most interesting thing: Bessonov proposed that the Germans drop a landing party of former prisoners of war in the areas of the NKVD camps - up to 50 thousand paratroopers, who were supposed to destroy the camp guards and raise Gulag prisoners to revolt in the Soviet rear. The energetic security officer also managed to work in his specialty - as a “mother hen” in Yakov Dzhugashvili’s cell... Major General Pavel Bogdanov, commander of the 48th Infantry Division, truly surrendered voluntarily and, according to the documents, handed over his political workers to the Germans, simultaneously offering his services in fight against the Red Army. In 1942 he joined the “Russian SS squad”, took part in punitive operations, in 1943 he headed the counterintelligence of Gil-Rodionov’s “1st Russian National SS Brigade”, but... was handed over to the partisans. Major General Alexander Budykho, former commander of the 171st Rifle Division, was captured in the fall of 1941, collaborated with the Germans - joined the ROA (Russian Liberation Army - Ed.), formed the “eastern battalions”. The commander of the 13th Infantry Division, Major General Andrei Naumov, was also captured in the fall of 1941. He agreed to work for the Germans, recruited prisoners of war into the “eastern battalions” and, as documented, wrote a denunciation against the captured generals who led anti-German agitation - Tkhor and Shepetov... The Germans shot them based on that denunciation. The commander of the 4th Corps of the 3rd Army of the Western Front, Major General Yevgeny Egorov, has been in captivity since the end of June 1941: MGB documents claimed that he conducted “pro-fascist agitation” among prisoners of war. It is difficult to verify, but he was not posthumously rehabilitated. Brigade commander Mikhail Bogdanov was captured in August 1941, being the chief of artillery of the 8th Rifle Corps of the 26th Army of the Southwestern Front. He worked in Todt's organization, joined the ROA, rising there to the rank of chief of artillery. It would seem that everything is clear with these particular military leaders: if you betrayed them, answer. But there are also a lot of mysteries. For example, what prevented them from being convicted much earlier, why were they kept “in the stash” for so long, only to be taken out of there in 1950? But generals Artemenko, Kirillov, Ponedelin, Beleshev, Krupennikov, Sivaev, Kirpichnikov and brigade commander Lazutin no longer fit into this company. Although they were captured, they did not cooperate with the enemy. However, for Stalin, Major General of Aviation Mikhail Beleshev was apparently to blame for the fact that he was the commander of the Air Force of the 2nd Shock Army - the same one that Vlasov commanded. Although there is no information about his cooperation with the Germans. Major General Pavel Artemenko, deputy commander of the 37th Army for logistics, was captured in the “Kiev cauldron.” When the Americans freed him, the general was literally dying of dystrophy. He passed the security check successfully: already in 1945, Artemenko was reinstated in the USSR Armed Forces with the rank of major general. Moreover, in addition to the Order of the Red Banner, which he already had since 1938, in 1946 General Artemenko was awarded two more orders: the Red Banner - for 20 years of impeccable service and Lenin - for 25 years of service. If the security officers had even a shadow of doubt about the impeccability of Artemenko’s behavior in captivity, such an award would be out of the question! However, perhaps it was his speeches that let him down - for example, discussions about the reasons for the defeat in 1941... The chief of artillery of the 61st Rifle Corps of the 13th Army of the Western Front, brigade commander Nikolai Lazutin, was captured in July 1941. If there had been real dirt on the brigade commander, he would not have been rehabilitated in 1956. The head of military communications of the 24th Army of the Reserve Front, Major General Maxim Sivaev, was captured after the army was encircled in October 1941 near Vyazma. The security officers accused him of treason to his homeland in the form of voluntary surrender and betraying the secrets of military transportation to the Germans, but not a single fact proving this was ever discovered, as evidenced by the posthumous rehabilitation of the general in 1957. Major General Ivan Krupennikov, chief of staff of the 3rd Guards Army of the Southwestern Front, was captured at the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, in December 1942: German units breaking out of encirclement on the Middle Don captured the headquarters of the 3rd Guards Army. But the captured general did not cooperate with the Germans. Nor did Major General Vladimir Kirpichnikov, commander of the 43rd Infantry Division, cooperate with the Finns who captured him. The combat commander, who received the Order of the Red Star for Spain and the Order of the Red Banner for the Finnish War, “messed up” only in one thing: when he was interrogated by the Finns, he spoke too well of the Finnish army. As Abakumov later wrote in a note to Stalin, “he slandered the Soviet government, the Red Army, its high command and praised the actions of the Finnish troops.” With such a “diagnosis” it was impossible to survive. And with generals Ponedelin, the former commander of the 12th Army of the Southern Front that perished near Uman, and Kirillov, commander of the 13th Rifle Corps of the same army, it is even more difficult - Comrade Stalin personally had a grudge against them. Back on August 16, 1941, the infamous order No. 270 of the Headquarters of the Supreme High Command was signed by him, which read: Generals Ponedelin and Kirillov are traitors, traitors and deserters who voluntarily surrendered and violated the oath. According to Stalin (if not the entire order, then the main part of it was written or dictated by him), Ponedelin allegedly “had every opportunity to break through to his own people, as the overwhelming majority of parts of his army did. But Ponedelin did not show the necessary persistence and will to win, succumbed to panic, became cowardly and surrendered to the enemy, deserted to the enemy, thus committing a crime against the Motherland as a violator of the military oath.” Here the leader openly and blatantly lies: the “overwhelming majority” perished in the “Uman cauldron”, being captured, so in this case the army commander, who shared the fate of the soldiers of his army, was captured while trying to break out of the encirclement. As well as Major General Kirillov. About whom Stalin’s order stated that he, “instead of fulfilling his duty to the Motherland, organizing the units entrusted to him to staunchly repel the enemy and escape from encirclement, deserted from the battlefield and surrendered to the enemy. As a result of this, units of the 13th Rifle Corps were defeated, and some of them surrendered without serious resistance.” The order also mentioned the commander of the 28th Army, Lieutenant General Vladimir Kachalov, whose headquarters “came out of encirclement,” but he himself allegedly “showed cowardice and surrendered to the German fascists ... chose to surrender, chose to desert to the enemy.” In fact, Lieutenant General Kachalov died almost two weeks before this order was issued - near Roslavl, from a direct hit by a shell on a tank in which the commander, at the head of the remnants of his army, was making a breakthrough. But, as we know, the leader was interested in reality only when it suited him. Therefore, the heroically deceased general was not only slandered personally by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, but on September 26, 1941, he was sentenced to death in absentia (and posthumously!), and his family was repressed. On October 13, 1941, Ponedelin and Kachalov were sentenced to death in absentia, and their families were also subjected to repression. In full accordance with that same Stalinist order No. 270, which stated that the families of these generals “are subject to arrest as families of deserters who violated the oath and betrayed their homeland.” The order actually said: everyone who was captured are traitors. And therefore everyone is obliged to “destroy them by all means, both ground and air, and deprive the families of the Red Army soldiers who surrendered of state benefits and assistance.” And although this cannibalistic document was not published then, it contained the following words: “The order is to be read in all companies, squadrons, batteries, squadrons, commands and headquarters.” And since 1941, the entire active (and inactive) army knew: Ponedelin and Kirillov were traitors and traitors, sentenced to death in absentia. What added fuel to the fire was that the Germans tried to take full advantage of the fact that the generals were captured, photographing Ponedelin and Kirillov together with German officers and then scattering leaflets with these photographs at the location of the Soviet troops. And after the Victory, it suddenly became clear that everything was wrong and the generals behaved courageously in captivity, refusing any cooperation with the Germans and Vlasov, although they knew very well that they had been declared cowards, traitors, traitors and had already been sentenced to death in absentia. But could the infallible Comrade Stalin admit that he was so cruelly mistaken in calling them traitors? Could he “forgive” them, thereby acknowledging that he bears the lion’s share of the blame for the terrible tragedy of 1941? But it would seem, what does it have to do with Khudyakov, Kulik, Gordov, Rybalchenko, Belyanchik, Bondarenko, or, for example, Tamruchi, who was executed in 1950? None of them were captured, but they were all destroyed on charges of mythical “treason,” anti-Soviet slander, terrorist intent against the Soviet leadership, etc. and so on. It is pointless to look for formal logic here: Stalin, even after the war, continued to destroy his military leaders for the same reasons for which he destroyed them before the war and at the height of it. The executions of 1950 became a natural development of the pogrom of the marshal-general group that Stalin began immediately after the Victory - as part of a whole series of cases unfolded at that time. Stalin needed to besiege the military leaders, who not only imagined themselves to be victors (and, of course, only Comrade Stalin could be such!), but also dared to chat in vain and about nothing in their circle. The first lesson was given to the obstinate by arresting Air Marshal Khudyakov in December 1945, and in 1946 a full-fledged “aviation case” unfolded, costing the posts (and freedom) of a bunch of air marshals and generals. In the summer of 1946, a “trophy case” was initiated against Marshal Zhukov; in addition, the marshal was accused of “Bonapartism” and inflating merits in the defeat of Germany, and was removed from the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, sent to a low-honorable exile - to the Odessa Military District. Then there was the “case of the admirals” - and the legendary Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Kuznetsov fell into disgrace... True, Comrade Stalin considered it premature to shoot the same Marshal Zhukov: he (like a number of other military leaders) was still needed by the leader - in view of his planned war against the United States. In 1950, preparations for this war were in full swing, and, as one might assume, Comrade. Stalin needed to again show the slightly “softened” military elite that his hand was firm, as in the unforgettable 1937. That’s why he began to mercilessly shoot the “chatterboxes” who turned up under this hand - such as Kulik and Gordov, the recording of whose conversations showed how they cursed Comrade. Stalin! With the executions of that August, and indeed the whole of 1950, Stalin seemed to make it clear to the military that this was a traditional purge on the eve of the next big war. And during this war, there will be no concessions for anyone - neither the chatterboxes who doubt the wisdom of the leader, nor those who are thinking of “sitting in captivity” or, like Vlasov, hoping, on occasion, to take aim at the sacred - Soviet power (read, Stalin’s personal dictatorship), going over to the side of the “democracies”. It is no coincidence that the death sentence of Major General Filipp Rybalchenko, who was held together with Kulik and Gordov, stated that he was “a supporter of the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, declared the need to overthrow the Soviet regime,” and “for enemy purposes, he sought to abolish the political apparatus in the Soviet Army." And Comrade Stalin cannot be denied a certain logic: he understood perfectly well that only the military could really threaten his power. Therefore, it permanently damaged their corporate cohesion. In 1950, he believed that in the war with the United States he would not be able to cope with the second edition of Vlasov and the Vlasovism. The Master had no doubt that the new prisoners of the new war (and there are no wars without them) will certainly become the backbone of the anti-Stalin army, which will be supported by both the exhausted population of the country and... a considerable part of the army elite. That’s why he protected himself as best he could and was able to, crushing the backs of the general’s heads with KGB bullets in August 1950. Source

In the 1960s-1990s, domestic publications cited different figures for the losses of Soviet generals and admirals in 1941-1945. In 1991-1994. an updated list containing 416 names of senior officers of the army and navy 1 was published in the Military Historical Journal; military historian A.A. Shabaev wrote about 438 generals and admirals who died during the war 2, and finally, I.I. Kuznetsov provided new data - 442 people 3 .

The study of military historical literature, documents of the Russian State Military Archive (RGVA) and the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (TsAMO RF) allowed the author to include in the list, in addition to 416, 42 more names of generals and admirals who died in 1941-1945. Taking into account the identified names, a more complete list of generals and admirals (458 people) was compiled and published, indicating the last name, first name, patronymic, rank, last position, date and circumstances of death 4 . It should be noted that in military-historical and memoir literature other names of fallen generals are also named. Since writers and memoirists sometimes give erroneous information about the time and circumstances of the death of a particular general, each name had to be checked against documents from the RGVA and TsAMO of the Russian Federation, eliminating obvious errors and making the necessary clarifications.

Having established the total number of losses, it is necessary to consider them by period of the war and the circumstances of death. According to the order of the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense dated February 4, 1944, irretrievable losses include those killed in battle, missing at the front, those who died from wounds on the battlefield and in medical institutions, those who died from diseases acquired at the front, or those who died at the front from other causes. who were captured. By their nature, losses are divided into combat and non-combat. Combatants are those killed on the battlefield, those who died from wounds during medical evacuation and in hospitals, those who went missing in action and those who were captured. Non-combat losses include those not associated with the direct performance of a combat mission, including those in troops conducting combat operations: those who died due to careless handling of weapons, in accidents, catastrophes and as a result of other incidents, who died from illness in medical institutions (at home) who committed suicide, were executed by sentence of military tribunals for various military and criminal crimes 5.

In 1993 and 2001 a statistical study on the losses of the Soviet Armed Forces in the twentieth century was published in two editions 6 . If in the first edition the figure was 421 generals, then in the second it was reduced to 416 people, although it should have been the other way around, since during the time that elapsed between the two editions, additional information was revealed about the generals killed in the war 7 and the total number of losses should have increased. However, the authors of the statistical study, citing the figure of 416 people, stated that “this number did not include Colonel General A.D. who did not take part in the war. Loktionov, G.M. Stern, Lieutenant General P.A. Alekseev, F.K. Arzhenukhin, I.I. Proskurov, E.S. Ptukhin, P.I. Pumpur, K.P. Pyadyshev, P.V. Rychagov, Ya.V. Smushkevich, Major General P.S. Volodin, M.M. Kayukov, A.A. Levin, repressed before the war and executed during the war” 8.

But, firstly, generals Volodin, Proskurov, Ptukhin and Pyadyshev were arrested not before the war, but at the beginning of the war, i.e. took part in it. Secondly, in my opinion, there is no reason to exclude generals who died or were killed during the war from the number of non-combat losses under the pretext of their non-participation in hostilities. Therefore, in accordance with the mentioned order, it is apparently advisable to include in the list of irretrievable losses all generals and admirals whose lives were cut short between June 22, 1941 and May 9, 1945. Of course, some of them will be included in the category of combat losses, others - non-combat losses.

The results of calculating the irretrievable losses of the Soviet senior officers are presented in table. 1.

Table 1.

* Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century. Losses of the Armed Forces: A Statistical Study. M.: OLMA-PRESS, 2001. P. 432.

As we can see, the major generals suffered the greatest losses - 372 people, i.e. more than 80 percent, 66 lieutenant generals died (about 14 percent), colonel generals - 6 (1.3 percent), rear admirals - 7 (1.5 percent), the rest (marshals, army generals and vice admirals) - less than 1 percent.

It is natural that the greatest combat losses occurred in 1941, when the Red Army was retreating, entire armies were surrounded, hundreds of thousands of people were captured, including dozens of generals. If during the 46 months of the war 15 generals went missing, then over 73 percent. this amount occurred in the first six months. Combat losses during this time (June 22 - December 31, 1941) amounted to 74 people, i.e. 12-13 generals died monthly (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Combat losses of senior officers in the Great Patriotic War

Already on the second day of the war, June 23, 1941, the Soviet generals suffered their first losses. During a German air raid on the command post, the assistant commander of the Western Front, Major General I.P., was killed by a fragment of an aerial bomb. Mikhailin. Until the end of June 1941, division commanders, Major General V.P., died in battle. Puganov and D.P. Safonov, corps commanders S.M. Kondrusev, M.G. Khatskilevich, V.B. Borisov and other formation commanders. On July 8, a Messerschmitt fired at the car of the commander of the 13th Army P.M. Filatova. The seriously wounded general was evacuated to a Moscow hospital, where he died. Lieutenant General Filatov became the first army commander to die in the Great Patriotic War.

The difficult situation of retreat often forced generals to mind their own business. There are known cases when military leaders, instead of leading the battle from a command post, personally led soldiers into an attack and died on the battlefield. When surrounded, many of them found themselves under enemy fire and died like ordinary soldiers. As an example, we can cite the death of the commander of the Southwestern Front, Colonel General M.P. Kirponos and the chief of staff of the front, Major General V.I. Tupikov, who died in the Shumeikovo tract on September 20, 1941.

Division and corps commanders and army commanders died in dozens. In the first year of the war, 4 generals, finding themselves surrounded and not wanting to surrender, shot themselves: the commander of the 33rd Army, Lieutenant General M.G. Efremov, Chief of Staff of the 57th Army, Major General A.F. Anisov, generals S.V. Verzin and P.S. Ivanov.

During the war years, over 70 Soviet generals were captured (the vast majority in 1941-1942). Well-known generals in the army were captured: former commander of the Ural Military District, Lieutenant General F.A. Ershakov, head of the department of the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army, Lieutenant General of the Engineering Troops D.M. Karbyshev, several army commanders and dozens of corps and division commanders. The vast majority of captured generals behaved with dignity and remained faithful to their oath. Only a few agreed to cooperate with the enemy. In total, 23 Soviet generals died in German captivity.

Several generals, finding themselves in enemy-occupied territory, continued to fight as part of partisan detachments. On December 10, 1941, the head of the Bakhchisarai partisan region, Major General D.I., died. Averkin, previously commander of the 48th Cavalry Division. In June 1942, the commander of the partisan detachment, General N.V., died in hand-to-hand combat. Kornev (former chief of staff of the Air Force of the 20th Army of the Western Front). Commander of the 10th Tank Division of the Southwestern Front, General S.Ya. Ogurtsov was captured in August 1941, and in April 1942 he escaped from captivity, fought in a partisan detachment and died in battle in October 1942.

Unfortunately, a number of losses are explained by ordinary carelessness. So, on November 9, 1943, the commander of the 44th Army, Lieutenant General

V. A. Khomenko and the chief of artillery of this army, Major General S. A. Bobkov, having lost their orientation, drove a car into the enemy’s location and were shot at point-blank range 9 .

In the section of combat losses, the proportion of those killed in battle and those who died from wounds ranged from 77 to 90 percent. About 5 percent total losses (or about 8 percent of combat losses) were losses in captivity. 11 generals went missing in 1941 (about 15 percent of combat losses), in 1942 and 1943. two generals each (less than 1 percent). Of the 458 total casualties, combat losses for the entire period of the war amounted to 296 people (64.6 percent).

Thus, irretrievable losses among the Soviet generals amounted to 107 people in 1941, 100 in 1942, 94 in 1943, 108 in 1944, 49 in 1945; only 458 people.

An analysis of non-combat losses (see Table 3) shows that in 1941, out of 33 people, three died from illness, two shot themselves, one died in a disaster, and 27 generals (almost 82 percent) were shot. In 1942, the share of repressed generals in the number of non-combat losses decreased to 56.8 percent. This is also a lot of 10. In 1943-1945. the picture has changed. The bulk of non-combat losses were already those who died from disease. Moreover, these were not always elderly people. Many of the deceased generals (about 60 percent) were under 50 years of age. In addition, there were losses as a result of various accidents and accidents. Thus, the commander of the Baltic Fleet squadron, Vice Admiral V.P. Drozd died on January 29, 1943, while driving in a car on the ice of the Gulf of Finland. The car fell into a hole in the ice, and the honored admiral died. Head of the Scientific and Technical Directorate of the Navy, Engineer Vice Admiral A.G. Orlov died in a plane crash on April 28, 1945. In 1944 and 1945, 15 people died in car and plane accidents, and a total of 19 generals and admirals died during the war.

Non-combat losses of senior officers in the Great Patriotic War

Table4

Distribution of losses of senior officers by year and military rank

Table 5

Distribution of losses of senior officers by position

Share of non-combat losses in 1941-1943 fluctuated between 27-30 percent, and in 1944-1945. - 36-39 percent. If at the beginning of the war there were many repressed generals, then at the end of it the mortality rate from disease increased, amounting to 85 percent in 1943, 75 percent in 1944, and 66.6 percent in 1945. non-combat losses of the corresponding year.

During 46 and a half months of the war, 458 senior command personnel were killed and died, i.e. on average about 10 people per month (see Table 4). But these losses were distributed unevenly over the years of the war. They were the highest in 1941 - 107 people in 6 months, i.e. about 18 people monthly. IN

1942-1944 losses were halved (8 - 9 people per month). And in the last months of the war, January-May 1945, there was again an increase in losses: 49 people in 4 months (12 per month). However, in 1945, this figure increased mainly due to the increased number of deaths from disease and fatalities in disasters.

The largest number of irretrievable losses of senior officers in the army and navy occurred in the first year and a half of the war. So, the losses of 1941-1942. amounted to more than 45 percent. all losses of generals and admirals during the war. In 1943, 94 generals died (about 20 percent), two-thirds of this number were combat losses. In 1944, with an increase in overall losses, there was a noticeable decrease in the number of combat losses of general officers, which was the result of an increase in the technical equipment of the army and an increase in combat skill and organizational abilities of command personnel. However, even then the losses continued to be large. During the year, our army and navy lost 65 generals killed. The total losses of generals in 1944, including those who died from disease and those killed in accidents, amounted to 108 people.

In the last 4 months of the war (January-April 1945), an increase in combat losses was again observed - 31 generals (that’s more than 7 people per month) 11 .

It is important to analyze what positions the deceased Soviet generals held and under what circumstances they died (see Table 5).

Thus, during the war, 4 front commanders, 22 army commanders and 8 their deputies, 55 corps commanders and 21 deputy corps commanders, 127 division commanders and 8 brigade commanders were killed (died from wounds and illnesses). If combat commanders died mainly on the battlefields (85 percent of all irretrievable losses), then the main causes of death for generals who served in the central apparatus of the People's Commissariat of Defense, in military educational institutions, design bureaus, research institutes and other institutions located in the rear were illness (about 60 percent) and repression (over 20 percent). Every third general of the central apparatus of NGOs was repressed or died of illness, 16 percent. died in disasters and only 20 percent. - during combat operations (during business trips to the fronts).

The losses of senior officers of the Navy were relatively small - 17 people, of which 12 people were non-combat losses. Over the entire period of the war, the Navy lost two vice admirals and seven rear admirals. Both vice admirals died in accidents. Four rear admirals died of disease, and one shot himself. The combat losses included three naval aviation generals (F.G. Korobkov, N.A. Ostryakov, N.A. Tokarev) and two rear admirals (B.V. Khoroshkhin and N.I. Zuikov).

In total, during the war, 458 people, or about 10 percent, died, died from wounds and illnesses, went missing, died in captivity, in car and plane accidents, and were shot. the total number of generals and admirals who were in military service in the Armed Forces of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

The combat losses of generals (those killed in battle, in captivity, died of wounds, missing in action, blown up by mines and shot to avoid capture) amounted to 64.6 percent, while 44.5 percent were lost in battles. (182 out of 458), 62 people died from wounds (13.5 percent) and 5 percent died in captivity. Non-combat losses reached 35.4 percent, of which 17.9 percent. (82 people) - died from disease. The greatest monthly losses occurred in June-December 1941 and January-April 1945.

The irretrievable losses of generals and admirals by composition, types and branches of troops (services) were distributed in the following ratio: command personnel - 88.9 percent, political - less than 2 percent, technical - 2.8 percent, administrative - 4.6 percent ., medical - about 1 percent, legal - 0.65 percent. The distribution of general losses by type of Armed Forces is shown in Table. 6.

Analyzing the data presented, we can conclude that of the number of dead and missing senior officers, a large share falls on the command staff of the active army and navy, commanders of fronts and armies, their deputies and chiefs of staff of formations and formations, commanders of corps, divisions, brigades , and most of all - on division commanders.

Table 6

Losses of senior officers of the Ground Forces, Navy and Air Force

Table 7

Losses of generals and admirals of Nazi Germany

Compiled from: Yakovlev B. New data on human losses of the German armed forces in the Second World War // Military History. magazine. 1962. No. 12. P. 78.

Table 8

Losses of generals and admirals of Nazi Germany (by rank)

In this regard, it is interesting to compare the scale of losses of Soviet and German generals. The fact is that half a century ago the Germans summed up the losses of their generals and admirals. In 1957, a study by Foltmann and Müller-Witten on this topic was published in Berlin 12 . In the early 60s, in the works of L.A. Bezymensky 13 and B. Yakovlev used figures from this book, including the publication of a final table on the losses of the German generals.

As can be seen from table. 7 and 8, the total losses of the German generals are twice the number of killed Soviet senior officers: 963 versus 458. Moreover, for certain categories of losses the excess was significantly greater. For example, as a result of accidents of German generals
two and a half times more died, 3.2 times more went missing, and eight times more died in captivity than Soviets. Finally, 110 German generals committed suicide, which is 11 times (!) more than Soviet generals. This indicates a catastrophic decline in the morale of Hitler's generals at the end of the war. I believe that these figures indicate the superiority of our generals over the enemy generals, the higher level of Soviet military art, especially at the final stage of the war.

NOTES

1 Military history magazine. 1991. No. 9-12; 1992. No. 6-12; 1993. No. 1-12; 1994. No. 1-6.

2 Shabaev A.A. Losses of officers of the Red Army in the Great Patriotic War // Military Historical Archive. 1998. No. 3. P. 180.

3 Kuznetsov I.I. The destinies of generals. Higher command cadres of the Red Army in 1940-1953. Irkutsk: Irkutsk University Publishing House, 2000. P. 182.

4 Pechenkin A.A. The senior command staff of the Red Army during the Second World War. M.: Prometheus, 2002. P. 247-275.

5 Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century. Losses of the Armed Forces: A Statistical Study. M.: OLMA-PRESS, 2001. P. 8.

6 Classified as classified: Losses of the USSR Armed Forces in wars, hostilities and military conflicts: Statistical research / V.M. Andronikov, P.D. Burikov, V.V. Gurkin et al.; Under general ed. G.F. Krivosheeva. M.: Voenizdat, 1993. P. 321; Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century... P. 430.

7 They gave their lives for their Motherland // Military history. magazine. 2000. No. 5. P. 24-28; Kuznetsov I.I. Decree. Op. P. 182; Shabaev A.A. Decree. Op. P. 180.

8 Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century... P. 432.

9 Kuznetsov I.I. Decree. Op. P. 68.

10 If out of 72 captured generals in Hitler’s camps every third died, then out of a hundred generals arrested by the NKVD, almost two thirds died - 63 generals, of whom 47 were shot, and 16 died in prison in 1942-1953. Calculated by the author.

11 The dynamics of losses among Wehrmacht generals was completely different: in 1941-1942. Only a few German generals died, and in 1943-1945. 553 Nazi generals and admirals were captured; These same years accounted for the vast majority of irretrievable losses of senior officers of the “Third Reich.”

12 Folttmann J., Moller-Witten H. Opfergang der Generale. Die Verluste der Generale und Admirale und der im gleichen Dienstgrad stehenden sonstigen Offiziere und Beamten im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Berlin, 1957.

13 Bezymensky L.A. German generals - with and without Hitler. M., 1964. pp. 399-400.

War is always a cruel test; it spares no one, even generals and marshals. Every military leader has ups and downs during military operations, each has his own destiny. As one American president rightly noted, war is a dangerous place. The statistics of deaths of high-ranking officers during the fighting of the Second World War is clear proof of this.

While quite a lot has been written about the military fates and losses of the Red Army generals during the Great Patriotic War in recent years, much less is known about their German “counterparts” who died on the Eastern Front. At least, the authors do not know of a book or article published in Russian on the topic in the title. Therefore, we hope that our work will be useful for readers interested in the history of the Great Patriotic War.

Before going directly to the story, it is necessary to make a small note. The practice of posthumously assigning general ranks was widespread in the German army. We do not consider such cases and we will talk exclusively about persons who had the rank of general at the time of their death. So let's get started.

1941

The first German general killed on the Eastern Front was the commander of the 121st East Prussian Infantry Division, Major General Otto LANCELLE, who died on July 3, 1941 east of Kraslava.

Soviet military historical literature provided various information about the circumstances of the death of this general, including a version about the involvement of Soviet partisans in this episode. In fact, Lanzelle became the victim of a rather typical incident for an offensive operation. Here is an excerpt from the history of the 121st Infantry Division: “ When the main body of the 407th Infantry Regiment reached the forested area, General Lanzelle left his command post. Together with the division headquarters officer, Lieutenant Steller, he went to the command post of the 407th regiment. Having reached the advanced units of the battalion advancing to the left of the road, the general did not notice that the right battalion had fallen behind... the Red Army soldiers retreating in front of this battalion suddenly appeared from the rear. In the ensuing close battle, the general was killed...».

On July 20, 1941, the acting commander of the 17th Panzer Division, Major General Karl Ritter von WEBER, died in a field hospital in the city of Krasny. He had been wounded the day before during artillery shelling from Soviet shell fragments in the Smolensk area.

On August 10, 1941, the first SS general, SS Gruppenführer and Police Lieutenant General, commander of the SS Polizei division, Arthur MULVERSTEDT, died on the Soviet-German front.

The division commander was at the forefront when units of his division broke through the Luga defensive line. This is how the death of the general is described on the pages of the division chronicle: “ Enemy fire paralyzed the attack, it was losing strength, and was in danger of stopping completely. The general instantly assessed the situation. He rose to resume promotion by example. "Go ahead, guys!" In such a situation, it doesn’t matter who sets the example. The main thing is that one carries away the other, almost like a law of nature. A lieutenant can raise a rifleman to attack, or a whole battalion can be a general. Attack, forward! The general looked around and gave the order to the nearest machine-gun crew: “Cover us from the side of that spruce forest over there!” The machine gunner fired a long burst in the indicated direction, and General Mülverstedt again moved forward into a small ravine overgrown with alder bushes. There he knelt down to get a better look around. His adjutant, Lieutenant Reimer, was lying on the ground, changing the magazine of his submachine gun. A mortar crew was changing positions nearby. The general jumped up, and his command “Forward!” was heard again. At that moment, a shell explosion threw the general to the ground, fragments pierced his chest...

A non-commissioned officer and three soldiers were taken toIljishe Proroge. A dressing station for the 2nd medical company was organized there under the leadership of senior physician Dr. Ott. When the soldiers delivered their cargo, the only thing the doctors could do was to confirm the death of the division commander».

According to some reports, the general’s presence directly in the infantry combat formations was caused by the dissatisfaction of the higher command with the not very successful actions of the division.

A few days after Mülverstedt, on August 13, the explosion of a Soviet anti-tank mine put an end to the career of the commander of the 31st Infantry Division, Major General Kurt KALMUKOFF. He, along with his adjutant, was blown up in a car during a trip to the front line.

Colonel General Eugen Ritter von SCHOBERT, commander of the 11th German Field Army, became the highest-ranking Wehrmacht officer to die on the Soviet-German front in 1941. He also had the fate of becoming the first German army commander to die in World War II.

On September 12, Schobert flew on a connected Fisiler-Storch Fi156 from the 7th courier detachment (Kurierst. 7), led by pilot Captain Suvelak, to one of the divisional command posts. For an unknown reason, the plane landed before reaching its destination. It is possible that the car received combat damage along the way. The landing site for the “physicaler” (with serial number 5287) turned out to be a Soviet minefield near Dmitrievka, in the area of ​​the Kakhovka-Antonovka road. The pilot and his high-ranking passenger were killed.

It is curious that in Soviet times, a heroic story was written by T.S. "based on" this event. According to its plot, a German general watched as his subordinates forced Soviet prisoners to clear a minefield. At the same time, it was announced to the prisoners that the general had lost his watch on this very field. One of the captured sailors who participated in demining, with a freshly removed mine in his hands, approached the surprised Germans with a message that the watch had allegedly been found. And, approaching, he blew himself up and his enemies. However, it may be that the source of inspiration for the author of this work was completely different.

On September 29, 1941, Lieutenant General Rudolf KRANTZ, commander of the 454th Security Division, was wounded. On October 22 of the same year, he died in a hospital in Dresden.

On October 28, 1941, on the Valki-Kovyagi road (Kharkov region), the car of Lieutenant General Erich BERNECKER, commander of the 124th Artillery Command, was blown up by an anti-tank mine. During the explosion, the artillery general was mortally wounded and died on the same day.

In the early morning of November 14, 1941, Lieutenant General Georg BRAUN, commander of the 68th Infantry Division, took off from a mansion on 17 Dzerzhinsky Street in Kharkov. This was triggered by a radio-controlled landmine planted by miners from the operational engineering group of Colonel I.G. Starinova in preparation for the evacuation of the city. Although by this time the enemy had already more or less successfully learned to fight Soviet special equipment, in this case the German sappers made a mistake. Together with the general, two headquarters officers of the 68th division and “almost all the clerks” (more precisely, 4 non-commissioned officers and 6 privates) died under the rubble, as the entry in German documents says. In total, 13 people were killed in the explosion, and, in addition, the head of the division's intelligence department, an interpreter and a sergeant major were seriously injured.

In retaliation, the Germans, without any investigation, hanged the first seven townspeople who came to hand in front of the explosion site, and by the evening of November 14, stunned by the explosions of radio-controlled land mines that thundered throughout Kharkov, they took hostages from among the local population. Of these, 50 people were shot on the same day, and another 1000 had to pay with their lives if sabotage was repeated.

The death of General of Infantry Kurt von BRIESEN, commander of the 52nd Army Corps, opened the account of the losses of senior Wehrmacht officers from the actions of Soviet aviation. On November 20, 1941, around noon, the general left for Malaya Kamyshevakha to assign the task to his subordinate units to capture the city of Izyum. At that moment, a pair of Soviet planes appeared over the road. The pilots attacked very competently, gliding with the engines running at low gas. Fire was opened on the target from a height of no more than 50 meters. The Germans sitting in the general's car discovered the danger only by the roar of the engines again operating at full power and the whistle of flying bullets. Two officers accompanying the general managed to jump out of the car, one of them was wounded. The driver remained completely unharmed. But von Briesen received as many as twelve bullet wounds in the chest, from which he died on the spot.

It is unknown who was the author of this queue mark. Let us note that, according to the operational report of the Air Force headquarters of the Southwestern Front, on November 20, our aviation operated limitedly due to bad weather. However, units of the 6th Army Air Force, operating just above the area where von Briesen was killed, reported the destruction of five vehicles during the attack on enemy troops moving along the roads.

Interestingly, the father of the deceased von Briesen, Alfred, was also a general and also met his death on the Eastern Front in 1914.

On December 8, 1941, near Artemovsk, the commander of the 295th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Herbert GEITNER, was wounded. The general was evacuated from the front line, but the wound turned out to be fatal, and he died on January 22, 1942 in a hospital in Germany.

Very unusual for the Wehrmacht of the “1941 model” was the death of Lieutenant General Conrad von COCHENHAUSEN, commander of the 134th Infantry Division. The general's division, together with the 45th Infantry Division, was surrounded by units of the Southwestern Front in the Yelets area. In winter conditions, the Germans had to fight their way out of the resulting “cauldron” to join the rest of their army. Kochenhausen could not stand the nervous tension and on December 13, considering the situation hopeless, he shot himself.

Most likely, such a tragic outcome was predetermined by the general’s character traits. Here is what he wrote about this: “ Already when I met Lieutenant General von Kochenhausen on September 30, 1941, he spoke very pessimistically about the general military situation on the Eastern Front" Of course, being surrounded is not a pleasant thing and the German losses were great. We do not know exactly the losses of the 134th Division, but its “neighbor”, the 45th Infantry Division, lost over a thousand people from December 5 to 17, including 233 killed and 232 missing. The losses in material terms were also great. Only 22 light field howitzers were left by the 45th Division during the retreat. But, in the end, the Germans still managed to break through.

The remaining Wehrmacht divisions in the central sector of the Soviet-German front found themselves in similar situations more than once or twice. The losses were also quite significant. But their division commanders, nevertheless, did not lose their cool. How can one not remember the popular wisdom - “all diseases come from nerves.”

The penultimate Wehrmacht general to die on the Eastern Front in 1941 was the commander of the 137th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Friedrich BERGMANN. The division lost its commander on December 21 during the Kaluga operation of the Western Front. Trying to prevent the mobile group of the 50th Soviet Army from reaching Kaluga, units of the 137th Division launched a series of counterattacks. General Bergman arrived at the command post of the 2nd battalion of the 449th Infantry Regiment, located in the forest north of the village of Syavki (25 kilometers southeast of Kaluga). Trying to personally assess the situation on the battlefield, Bergman moved with the battalion reserve to the edge of the forest. Soviet tanks, supporting their infantry, immediately opened fire on the Germans. One of the machine gun bursts mortally wounded the general.

The last to die in battle in 1941 (December 27) was the commander of the 1st SS Motorized Brigade, SS Brigadeführer and Major General of the SS troops Richard HERMANN. This is how this episode is reflected in the combat log of the 2nd Field Army: “ 12/27/1941. From the very early morning, the enemy, with a force of up to two reinforced rifle regiments, with artillery and 3-4 cavalry squadrons, began an attack south through Aleksandrovskoye and Trudy. By noon he managed to advance to Vysokoye and break into the village. SS Major General Hermann was killed there».

Two more episodes should be mentioned that are directly related to the topic raised in this article. A number of publications provide information about the death of the veterinarian general of the 38th Army Corps, Erich BARTSCH, on October 9, 1941, on the Soviet-German front. However, Dr. Bartsch, who died from a mine explosion, at the time of his death had the title of oberst veterinarian, i.e. has nothing to do with purely general losses.

In some sources, the commander of the 2nd SS Police Regiment, Hans Christian SCHULZE, is also considered an SS Brigadeführer and Police Major General. In fact, Schulze was a colonel both at the time of his injury near Gatchina on September 9, 1941, and at the time of his death on September 13.

So, let's summarize. In total, twelve Wehrmacht and SS generals were killed on the Soviet-German front in 1941 (including the commander of the 295th Infantry Division who died in 1942), and another general committed suicide.

German generals who died on the Soviet-German front in 1941

1942

In the new year of 1942, the bloody battles that eventually engulfed the entire Eastern Front could not help but result in a steady increase in irretrievable losses among senior Wehrmacht officers.

True, the Wehrmacht generals suffered their first loss in the second year of the war on the Soviet-German front for a non-combat reason. On January 18, 1942, Lieutenant General Georg HEWELKE, commander of the 339th Infantry Division, died of a heart attack in Bryansk.

Let us now fast forward to the southernmost section of the Soviet-German front, to Crimea. Stubborn fighting is taking place on the isthmus connecting the Kerch Peninsula with the rest of Crimea. Warships of the Black Sea Fleet provide all possible assistance to the ground forces of the Red Army.

On the night of March 21, 1942, the battleship Paris Commune and the leader Tashkent, maneuvering in the Gulf of Feodosia, fired at concentrations of enemy troops in the area of ​​​​Vladislavovka and Novo-Mikhailovka. The battleship fired 131 main-caliber shells, the leader - 120. According to the chronicle of the 46th Infantry Division, units located in Vladislavovka suffered serious losses. Among the seriously wounded was the division commander, Lieutenant General Kurt HIMER. In the hospital, his leg was amputated, but German doctors were unable to save the general’s life. On April 4, 1942, he died in the military hospital 2/610 in Simferopol.

On March 22, Soviet pilots achieved new success. During an air raid on a command post in the village of Mikhailovka, the commander of the 294th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Otto GABCKE, was killed. This is what Stefan Heinzel, the author of a book about the 294th Division, said about this episode: “ The division command post was located in the school in the village of Mikhailovka. At 13.55 two so-called “rats”on a low-level flight they dropped four bombs on the school. Along with General Gabke, Major Jarosz von Schwedler, two sergeant majors, one senior corporal and one corporal were killed" Interestingly, Major Jarosz von Schwedler, who died in the bombing, was the chief of staff of the neighboring 79th Infantry Division, temporarily assigned to the headquarters of the 294th.

On March 23, 1942, the head of Einsatzgruppe A, the head of the order police and security service of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, Walter STAHLECKER, completed his bloody journey. While the biography of the SS Brigadeführer and Police Major General is known quite well, the circumstances of his death are quite contradictory. The most plausible version is that the brigadeführer was seriously wounded in a battle with Soviet partisans, leading a detachment of Latvian policemen, and died while being transported to a rear hospital. But at the same time, the area indicated in all sources without exception in which the military clash with the partisans took place - Krasnogvardeysk - looks very doubtful.

Krasnogvardeysk in March 1942 is the front-line zone of the 18th Army, which was besieging Leningrad, occasionally falling under Soviet railway artillery shells. It is unlikely that in those conditions the partisans could wage open battle with the Germans. The chances of them surviving in such a battle were close to zero. Most likely, Krasnogvardeysk is a more or less conditional point (like “Ryazan, which is near Moscow”), to which events are “attached”, but in reality everything happened much further from the front line. There is also no clarity on the date of the battle in which Stahlecker was wounded. There is an assumption that it happened a little earlier on March 23.

In the introductory part of the article, the principle was declared - not to include in the list of losses officers who received the rank of general posthumously. However, based on common sense, we decided to make several deviations from this principle. We will justify ourselves by the fact that the officers mentioned in these retreats were not only posthumously promoted to the rank of general, but, and this is most important, at the time of their death they held general positions as division commanders.

The first exception will be Colonel Bruno HIPPLER, commander of the 329th Infantry Division.

So, the 329th Infantry Division, transferred to the Eastern Front from Germany in late February 1942, took part in Operation Brückenschlag, the result of which was supposed to be the release of the six divisions of the 16th Wehrmacht Army encircled in the Demyansk area.

At dusk on March 23, 1942, the division commander, Colonel Hippler, accompanied by an adjutant, rode out in a tank to conduct reconnaissance. After some time, the crew of the car radioed: “ The tank hit a mine. The Russians are already nearby. Get help soon b". After this the connection was interrupted. Since the exact location was not indicated, the searches carried out the next day remained unsuccessful. Only on March 25, a reinforced reconnaissance group found a blown up tank, the bodies of the division commander and his companions on one of the forest roads. Colonel Hippler, his adjutant and the tank crew apparently died in close combat.

The Wehrmacht lost another “fake” general, but the division commander, on March 31, 1942. True, this time Colonel Karl Fischer, commander of the 267th Infantry Division, did not die from a Soviet bullet, but died from typhus.

On April 7, 1942, west of the village of Glushitsa, a well-aimed shot from a Soviet sniper put an end to the career of Colonel Franz SCHEIDIES, commander of the 61st Infantry Division. Shaidis took command of the division only on March 27, leading a “team” of various units and subunits that repelled the attacks of the Red Army north of Chudov.

On April 14, 1942, near the village of Korolevka, the commander of the 31st Infantry Division, Major General Gerhard Berthold, died. Apparently, the general personally led the attack of the 3rd Battalion of the 17th Infantry Regiment on Soviet positions at Zaitsevaya Mountain on the Yukhnov-Roslavl highway.

On April 28, 1942, the commander of the 127th Artillery Command, Major General Friedrich KAMMEL, shot himself in the village of Parkkina. This is the only German general who died in Northern Finland during the Great Patriotic War. The reason for his suicide is unknown to us.

The beginning of the summer campaign of 1942 was marked, as the Germans like to write, by the “spectacular” success of Soviet anti-aircraft gunners. As a result, the first Luftwaffe general died on the Soviet-German front.

So, in order. On May 12, 1942, Soviet anti-aircraft artillery shot down a German Junkers-52 transport plane from the 300th Transport Group in the Kharkov area. Sergeant Major Leopold Stefan, who survived and was captured, said during interrogation that there were four crew members, ten passengers and mail on board the plane. The car lost its orientation and was hit. However, the captured sergeant major during interrogation did not mention a very significant detail - there was a whole German general among the passengers. This was the commander of the 6th Luftwaffe construction brigade, Major General Walter HELING. It should be noted that since Sergeant Major Stefan was able to escape, Heling could well have become the first Wehrmacht general to be captured.

On July 12, 1942, the habit of using the advantages of flying on a communications plane ended tragically for another Wehrmacht general. On this day, the Chief of Staff of the 4th Panzer Army, Major General Julius von BERNUTH, flew to the headquarters of the 40th Panzer Corps in a Fisiler-Storch plane. It was assumed that the flight would pass over territory that was not controlled by Soviet troops. However, the “Stork” never arrived at its destination. Only on July 14, a search group of the 79th Infantry Division found a wrecked car, as well as the bodies of a general and a pilot, in the area of ​​the village of Sokhrannaya. Apparently, the plane was hit by fire from the ground and made an emergency landing. The passenger and pilot were killed in the shootout.

During the summer campaign of 1942, heavy fighting took place not only on the southern flank of the huge Soviet-German front. The troops of the Western and Kalinin fronts tried to knock out of the hands of the Wehrmacht “the pistol pointed to the heart of Russia” - the Rzhev-Vyazemsky ledge. The combat operations on it quickly took on the character of bloody battles within the line of defense, and therefore these operations were not distinguished by quick and deep breakthroughs, leading to disruption of the enemy’s control system and, as a consequence, to losses among the senior command personnel. Therefore, among the losses of German generals in 1942, there was only one who died in the central sector of the front. This is the commander of the 129th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Stephan RITTAU.

This is how the death of the division commander on August 22, 1942 is described in the division chronicle: “ At 10.00, the commander of the 129th Infantry Regiment, accompanied by an adjutant on an all-terrain vehicle, went to the command post of the 427th Infantry Regiment, located in the forest between Tabakovo and Markovo. From there, the division commander intended to personally reconnoiter the battlefield. However, after 15 minutes, a liaison motorcyclist arrived at the division command post, who reported that the division commander, Lieutenant General Rittau, his adjutant, Dr. Marschner and the driver were killed. Their all-terrain vehicle received a direct hit from an artillery shell at the southern exit from Martynovo».

On August 26, 1942, another Wehrmacht general added to the list of losses, this time again on the southern flank of the Soviet-German front. On this day, the commander of the 23rd Armored Division, Major General Erwin MACK, with a small task force, went to the advanced units of the division, which were repelling fierce attacks by Soviet troops. Further events are reflected in the dry lines of the “Journal of Combat Operations” of the 23rd TD: “ At 08.30, the division commander arrived at the command post of the 2nd battalion of the 128th motorized infantry regiment, located on a collective farm south of Urvan. He wanted to personally find out the situation at the Urvan bridgehead. Shortly after the discussion began, a mortar shell exploded in the middle of the participants. The division commander, commander of the 2nd battalion, Major von Unger, the adjutant of the 128th regiment, Captain Count von Hagen, and Oberleutnant von Puttkamer, who accompanied the division commander, were mortally wounded. They died on the spot or on the way to the hospital. Miraculously, the commander of the 128th regiment, Colonel Bachmann, survived, receiving only a slight wound.» .

On August 27, 1942, General of the Medical Service Dr. Walter HANSPACH, corps doctor (chief of medical service) of the 14th Panzer Corps, was included in the list of irretrievable losses. True, we have not yet found information about how and under what circumstances this German general died.

The authors, who grew up on Soviet military-patriotic literature and cinema, have repeatedly read and watched how Soviet military intelligence officers penetrated behind enemy lines, set up an ambush, and then successfully destroyed a German general riding in a car. It would seem that such stories are just the fruit of the activity of a sophisticated writer’s mind, but in the reality of the war there really were such episodes, although of course there were not many of them. During the Battle of the Caucasus, it was in such an ambush that our soldiers managed to destroy the commander and chief of staff of the 198th Wehrmacht Infantry Division.

On September 6, 1942, around noon, an Opel passenger car with a commander’s flag on the hood was driving along the road leading northeast from the village of Klyuchevaya to Saratovskaya. In the car were the commander of the 198th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Albert BUCK, the chief of staff of the division, Major Buhl, and the driver. As the car approached the bridge, it slowed down. At that moment, explosions of two anti-tank grenades were heard. The general was killed on the spot, the major was thrown out of the car, and the seriously wounded driver turned the Opel into a ditch. The soldiers of the construction company working on the bridge heard explosions and shots, were able to quickly organize the pursuit of Soviet intelligence officers and were able to capture several of them. It became known from the prisoners that the reconnaissance and sabotage group consisted of military personnel from the reconnaissance and mortar companies of the 723rd Infantry Regiment. The scouts set up an ambush, taking advantage of the fact that the thick bushes in this place approached the road itself.

On September 8, 1942, the list of Wehrmacht losses was supplemented by the general of the medical service from the 40th Panzer Corps, Dr. SCHOLL. On September 23, 1942, Major General Ulrich SCHUTZE, commander of the 144th Artillery Command, was on the same lists. As in the case of Medical General Hanspach, we have not yet been able to find information under what circumstances these two generals died.

On October 5, 1942, the Wehrmacht command issued an official message that stated: “ On October 3, 1942, on the front line on the Don River, the commander of the tank corps, General of the Tank Forces, Baron Langermann und Erlenkamp, ​​holder of the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, died. Colonel Nagy, commander of one of the Hungarian divisions, died shoulder to shoulder with him. They fell in battles for the freedom of Europe" The message was about the commander of the 24th Panzer Corps, General Willibald Freiherr von LANGERMANN UND ERLENCAMP. The general came under Soviet artillery fire while traveling to the front line near the Storozhevsky bridgehead on the Don.

At the beginning of October 1942, the German command decided to withdraw the 96th Infantry Division to the reserve of Army Group North. The division commander, Lieutenant General Baron Joachim von SCHLEINITZ, went to the corps command post to receive the appropriate orders. On the night of October 5, 1942, on the way back to the division, an accident occurred. The division commander and Oberleutnant Koch, who accompanied him, died in a car accident.

On November 19, 1942, hurricane fire from Soviet artillery heralded the beginning of the winter offensive of the Red Army and the imminent turning point in the course of the war. In relation to the topic of our article, it should be said that it was then that the first German generals appeared and went missing. The first of them was Major General Rudolf MORAWETZ, head of the prisoner of war transit camp No. 151. He went missing on November 23, 1942 in the area of ​​Chir station and opened a list of losses of German generals during the winter campaign of 1942-1943.

On December 22, 1942, near the village of Bokovskaya, the commander of the 62nd Infantry Division, Major General Richard-Heinrich von REUSS, died. The general tried to rush through the columns of Soviet troops rushing behind enemy lines after breaking through German positions during Operation Little Saturn.

It is noteworthy that 1942, which began with a heart attack in General Gewelke, ended with a heart attack in another German division commander. On December 22, 1942, Major General Viktor KOCH, commander of the 323rd Infantry Division, occupying the defense in the Voronezh region, died. A number of sources claim that Koch was killed in action.

On December 29, 1942, General Medical Officer Dr. Josef EBBERT, corps physician of the 29th Army Corps, committed suicide.

Thus, in 1942, losses among German generals amounted to 23 people. Of these, 16 people died in battle (counting two colonels - division commanders, who were awarded the rank of general posthumously: Hippler and Schaidies). Interestingly, the number of German generals killed in battle in 1942 was only slightly higher than in 1941, although the duration of hostilities doubled.

The remaining irretrievable losses of the generals occurred for non-combat reasons: one person died in an accident, two committed suicide, three died as a result of illness, one went missing.

German generals who died on the Soviet-German front in 1942

As we see, in 1942, there were no prisoners among the German generals. But everything would change dramatically just a month later, at the end of January 1943, in Stalingrad.

1943

Of course, the most important event of the third year of the war was the surrender of the German 6th Field Army in Stalingrad and the surrender of its command led by Field Marshal Paulus. But, besides them, in 1943, quite a lot of other senior German officers who were little known to fans of military history fell under the “Russian steam roller”.

Although the Wehrmacht generals began to suffer losses in 1943 even before the end of the Battle of Stalingrad, we will start with it, or rather with the long list of captured senior officers of the 6th Army. For convenience, this list is presented in chronological order in table form.

German generals captured at Stalingrad in January-February 1943

One note needs to be made about this table. The German bureaucracy seemed intent on doing everything to make life as difficult as possible for future researchers and military historians. There are countless examples of this. Stalingrad was no exception in this regard. According to some reports, the commander of the 60th Motorized Division, Major General Hans-Adolf von Arenstorff, became a general in October 1943, i.e. after he spent six months in Soviet captivity. But that's not all. He was awarded the rank of general on January 1, 1943 (the practice of assigning ranks “retroactively” was not so rare among the Germans). So it turns out that in February 1943 we captured 22 German generals, and six months later there was one more!

The German group surrounded in Stalingrad lost its generals not only as prisoners. Several more senior officers died in the “cauldron” under various circumstances.

On January 26, the commander of the 71st Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Alexander von HARTMANN, died south of the Tsaritsa River. According to some reports, the general deliberately sought his death - he climbed onto the railway embankment and began firing a rifle towards the positions occupied by Soviet troops.

On the same day, Lieutenant General Richard STEMPEL, commander of the 371st Infantry Division, died. On February 2, the commander of the 16th Panzer Division, Lieutenant General Gunter ANGERN, added to the list of irretrievable losses. Both generals committed suicide, not wanting to surrender.

Now, from the grandiose battle on the Volga, let us return to a chronological presentation of the events of the winter campaign of the third war year.

A full-fledged pestilence attacked the commanders of the 24th Tank Corps in January 1943, when parts of the corps came under attack from advancing Soviet formations during the Ostrogozh-Rossoshansky operation of the Voronezh Front troops.

On January 14, corps commander Lieutenant General Martin WANDEL died at his command post in the Sotnitskaya area. The commander of the 387th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Arno JAHR, took command of the corps. But on January 20, he too suffered the fate of Vandel. According to some reports, General Yaar committed suicide, not wanting to be captured by the Soviets.

For only one day, January 21, the 24th Panzer Corps was commanded by Lieutenant General Karl EIBL, commander of the 385th Infantry Division. In the confusion of the retreat, the column in which his car was located stumbled upon the Italians. They mistook the allies for Russians and opened fire. In the quick battle it came down to hand grenades. The general was seriously wounded by shrapnel from one of them and died a few hours later from heavy loss of blood. Thus, within one week, the 24th Tank Corps lost its regular commander and the commanders of both infantry divisions that were part of the formation.

The Voronezh-Kastornensk operation carried out by troops of the Voronezh and Bryansk fronts, which completed the defeat of the southern flank of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, was a “harvest” in terms of general losses.

The German 82nd Infantry Division came under the first blow of the advancing Soviet troops. Its commander, Lieutenant General Alfred Bentsch (Alfred BAENTSCH), is listed as having died of wounds on January 27, 1943. The confusion that reigned in the German headquarters was such that on February 14 the general was still considered missing along with his chief of staff, Major Allmer. The division itself was categorized as defeated by the command of the 2nd Field Army of the Wehrmacht.

Due to the rapid advance of Soviet units to the Kastornoye railway junction, the headquarters of the 13th Army Corps was cut off from the rest of the troops of the German 2nd Army, and its two divisions, in turn, were cut off from the corps headquarters. The corps headquarters decided to fight their way to the west. The commander of the 377th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Adolf LECHNER, chose a different solution. On January 29, while trying to break through in a south-eastern direction, to parts of his formation, he and most of the division headquarters went missing. Only the chief of staff of the division, Oberst-Lieutenant Schmidt, came out to his own by mid-February, but he soon died of pneumonia in a hospital in the city of Oboyan.

The German divisions that found themselves surrounded began to attempt a breakthrough. On February 1, the 88th Infantry Division broke through to the outskirts of Stary Oskol. Units of the 323rd Infantry Division moved behind it. The road was under constant fire from the Soviet troops, and on February 2, the division headquarters following the lead battalion was ambushed. The commander of the 323rd PD, General Andreas NEBAUER, and his chief of staff, Lieutenant Colonel Naude, were killed.

Despite the fact that in the North Caucasus, Soviet troops failed to inflict the same crushing defeat on the German Army Group A as on the Volga and Don, the battles there were no less fierce. On the so-called “Hubertus Line”, on February 11, 1943, the commander of the 46th Infantry Division, Major General Ernst HACCIUS, died. It was chalked up by Soviet pilots, most likely attack aircraft (the division chronicle says “low-level attack”). Posthumously, the general was awarded the following rank and given the Knight's Cross. Hazzius became the second commander of the 46th Infantry Division to be killed on the Eastern Front.

On February 18, 1943, the commander of the 12th Army Corps, Infantry General Walter GRAESSNER, was wounded in the central sector of the front. The general was sent to the rear, was treated for a long time, but finally died on July 16, 1943 in a hospital in the city of Troppau.

On February 26, 1943, not far from Novomoskovsk, a “Fisiler-Storch” disappeared, on board of which was the commander of the SS Panzer-Grenadier Division “Totenkopf”, SS-Obergruppenführer Theodor EICKE. One of the reconnaissance groups sent to search for Eicke discovered a downed plane and the corpse of the Obergruppenführer.

On April 2, plane SH104 (factory 0026) from Flugbereitschaft Luftflotte1 crashed in the Pillau area. The crash killed two crew members and two passengers on board. Among the latter was General Engineer Hans FISCHER from the headquarters of the 1st Air Fleet.

On May 14, 1943, the commander of the 39th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Ludwig LOEWENECK, died north of Pecheneg. According to some sources, the general became the victim of an ordinary traffic accident, according to others, he ended up in a minefield.

On May 30, 1943, Soviet aviation dealt a powerful blow to the German defenses on the Kuban bridgehead. But according to our data, from 16.23 to 16.41, enemy positions were stormed and bombed by 18 groups of Il-2 attack aircraft and five groups of Petlyakovs. During the raid, one of the groups “caught” the command post of the 97th Jaeger Division. The division commander, Lieutenant General Ernst RUPP, was killed.

On June 26, 1943, the Germans suffered another loss at the Kuban bridgehead. In the first half of this day, the commander of the 50th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Friedrich SCHMIDT, went to the position of one of the battalions of the 121st Infantry Regiment. On the way, his car near the village of Kurchanskaya hit a mine. The general and his driver were killed.

In the Battle of Kursk, which began on July 5, 1943, the German generals did not suffer major losses. Although there were cases of division commanders being wounded, only one division commander died. On July 14, 1943, during a trip to the front line north of Belgorod, the commander of the 6th Panzer Division, Major General Walter von HUEHNERSDORF, was mortally wounded. He was seriously wounded in the head by a well-aimed shot from a Soviet sniper. Despite the many-hour operation in Kharkov, where the general was taken, he died on July 17.

The offensive of the troops of the Soviet fronts in the Oryol direction, which began on July 12, 1943, was not replete with deep breakthroughs, in which enemy headquarters came under attack. But there were nevertheless losses in the generals. On July 16, the commander of the 211th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Richard MUELLER, died.

On July 20, 1943, near Izyum, the commander of the 17th Panzer Division, Lieutenant General Walter SCHILLING, died. We were unable to establish the details of the death of both generals.

On August 2, the commander of the 46th Panzer Corps, Infantry General Hans ZORN, died. South-west of Krom, his car came under a bomb attack by Soviet planes.

On August 7, in the midst of our counteroffensive near Kharkov, the commander of the 19th Tank Division, Lieutenant General Gustav SCHMIDT, familiar to everyone who watched the film “Arc of Fire” from the famous Soviet film epic “Liberation,” died. True, in life everything was not as spectacular as in the movies. General Schmidt did not shoot himself in front of Army Group South commander Erich von Manstein and his staff officers. He died during the defeat of the 19th Division column by tankmen of the Soviet 1st Tank Army. The general was buried in the village of Berezovka by the crew members of the command tank who survived and were captured by the Soviets.

On August 11, 1943, at about six o'clock in the morning Berlin time, Soviet snipers again distinguished themselves. A well-aimed bullet overtook the commander of the 4th Mountain Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Hermann KRESS. The general at that moment was in the trenches of the Romanian units blockading Myskhako, the legendary “Little Land” near Novorossiysk.

On August 13, 1943, Major General Karl Schuchardt, commander of the 10th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Brigade, died. Details of the death of the anti-aircraft gunner general could not be found, but he definitely died in the zone of the 2nd field army of the Wehrmacht. According to the documents of this association, on August 12, Shuchard reported to army headquarters about the transfer of the brigade to operational subordination.

On August 15, 1943, Lieutenant General Heinrich RECKE, commander of the 161st Infantry Division, went missing. The general personally raised his soldiers in a counterattack in the area south of Krasnaya Polyana. The division's chronicle provides information from eyewitnesses who allegedly saw how Soviet infantrymen surrounded the general. At this point his traces were lost. However, in the Soviet sources available to us there is no mention of the capture of General Recke.

On August 26, near the Polish city of Ozarow, the commander of the 174th reserve division, Lieutenant General Kurt RENNER, was killed. Renner was ambushed by Polish partisans. Along with the general, two officers and five privates were killed.

The 161st Division mentioned above was received by Major General Karl-Albrecht von GRODDECK. But the division did not fight with the new commander for even two weeks. On August 28, von Groddeck was wounded by shrapnel from an aerial bomb. The wounded man was evacuated to Poltava, then to the Reich. Despite the efforts of doctors, the general died on January 10, 1944 in Breslau.

On October 15, 1943, the offensive of the 65th Army of the Central Front began in the Loyev direction. Powerful Soviet artillery fire disrupted the communication lines of the German troops defending in this area. Lieutenant General Hans KAMECKE, commander of the 137th Infantry Division, went to the command post of the 447th Infantry Regiment to personally navigate the situation that was emerging during the large-scale Russian offensive that had begun. On the way back south of the village of Kolpen, the general’s car was attacked by Soviet attack aircraft. Kameke and the liaison officer Oberleutnant Mayer accompanying him were seriously injured. The next morning the general died in a field hospital. Interestingly, Lieutenant General Kameke was the second and last full-time commander of the 137th Division in World War II. Let us recall that the first commander, Lieutenant General Friedrich Bergmann, was killed in December 1941 near Kaluga. And all the other officers who commanded the divisions wore the prefix “acting” until the formation was finally disbanded on December 9, 1943.

On October 29, 1943, German troops fought stubborn battles in the Krivoy Rog area. During one of the counterattacks, the commander of the 14th Panzer Division, Lieutenant General Friedrich SIEBERG, and his chief of staff, Oberst-Lieutenant von der Planitz, were wounded by shrapnel from an exploding shell. If Planitz's wound turned out to be minor, then the general was unlucky. Although he was urgently taken by Fisiler-Storch plane to hospital No. 3/610, despite all the efforts of the doctors, Siberg died on November 2.

On November 6, 1943, the commander of the 88th Infantry Division, Lieutenant General Heinrich ROTH, died from a wound received the day before. His division at that time was fighting heavy battles with Soviet troops storming the capital of Soviet Ukraine - Kyiv.

Major General Max ILGEN, commander of the 740th formation of the “eastern” troops, was listed as missing on November 15, 1943 in the Rivne region. As a result of a daring operation, the general was kidnapped from his own mansion in Rovno by the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai Ivanovich Kuznetsov, acting under the name of Lieutenant Paul Siebert. Due to the impossibility of transporting the captive Ilgen to Soviet territory, after interrogation he was killed in one of the surrounding farms.

On November 19, 1943, aviation from the Black Sea Fleet and the 4th Air Army launched the most powerful strike on an enemy naval base since the beginning of the war. This base was the port of Kamysh-Burun on the Crimean shore of the Kerch Strait. From 10.10 to 16.50, six “petlyakov” and 95 attack aircraft worked at the base, whose operations were supported by 105 fighters. Several fast landing barges were damaged as a result of the raid. But the enemy’s losses from our strike were not limited to this. It was on this day that the commander of the German Navy on the Black Sea (“Admiral of the Black Sea”), Vice Admiral Gustav KIESERITZKY, decided to visit Kamysh-Burun and reward the crews of the BDB who successfully blocked the Soviet bridgehead in the Eltigen area. At the entrance to the base, a car, in which, in addition to the admiral, his adjutant and the driver, there were two more naval officers, was attacked by four “silts”. Three, including Kieseritzki, died on the spot, two were seriously injured. According to A.Ya. Kuznetsov, author of the book “The Big Landing,” the enemy fleet on the Black Sea was beheaded by one of the four fours of the 7th Guards Assault Regiment of the 230th ShAD of the 4th Air Army. We also note that Kieseritzky became the first Kriegsmarine admiral to die on the Eastern Front.

On November 27, 1943, the acting commander of the 9th Panzer Division, Colonel Johannes SCHULZ, died north of Krivoy Rog. He was posthumously awarded the rank of major general.

On December 9, 1943, the combat career of Lieutenant General Arnold ZELINSKI, commander of the 376th Infantry Division, ended. We have not established the details of his death.

The third war year brought both quantitative and qualitative changes in the structure of losses of German generals on the Soviet-German front. In 1943, these losses amounted to 33 people killed and 22 people captured (all captured in Stalingrad).

Of the irretrievable losses, 24 people died in battle (including Colonel Schultz, the division commander, who was awarded the rank of general posthumously). It is noteworthy that if in 1941 and 1942 only one German general was killed by air strikes, then in 1943 there were already as many as six!

In the remaining nine cases, the causes were: accidents - two people, suicides - three people, "friendly fire" - one person, two were missing, and another was killed after being captured behind German lines by partisans.

Note that among the losses due to non-combat reasons there were no deaths due to illness, and the reason for all three suicides was the reluctance to be captured by the Soviets.

German generals who died on the Soviet-German front in 1943

– Geschichte der 121. ostpreussischen Infanterie-Division 1940-1945/Tradizionverband der Division – Muenster/Frankfurt/Berlin, 1970 – S. 24-25

We were unable to make an adequate reverse translation of the name of the mentioned settlement from German into Russian.

Husemann F. Die guten Glaubens waren – Osnabrueck – S. 53-54

US National Archives T-314 roll 1368 frame 1062

US National Archives T-314 roll 1368 frame 1096

Vokhmyanin V.K., Podoprigora A.I. Kharkov, 1941. Part 2: City on fire. – Kharkov, 2009 – P.115

TsAMO F. 229 Op. 161 storage units 160 “Air Force Headquarters of the Southwestern Front. Operational report by 04.00 11/21/1941.”

Hartmann Ch. Wehrmacht im Ostkrieg – Oldenburg, 2010 – S. 371

Ibid.

Meyer – Detring W. Die 137. Infanterie – Division im Mittelabschnitt der Ostfront – Eggolsheim, o.J. – S.105-106

US National Archives T-312 roll 1654 frame 00579

For some reason, the wrong hull number is indicated - 37th Ak.

US National Archives T-311 roll 106 “Name losses of officers Gr. And “North” from October 1, 1941 to March 15, 1942.”

This is exactly how Schulze’s rank is indicated in the document, in army style, and not as the rank of the SS troops.

US National Archives T-311 roll 108 “Losses of the 18th Army and 4th Tank Group from June 22 to October 31, 1941.”

Chronicle of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union at the Black Sea Theater - Vol. 2 – M., 1946 – P.125

Scherzer V. 46. Infanterie-Division – Jena 2009 – S.367

It should be noted that the Germans could call any Soviet aircraft a “army”, not just the I-16

Saenger H. Die 79. Infanterie– Division, 1939 – 1945 – o.O, o.J. – S. 58

Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD - special purpose task force of the SD security service. On the territory of the USSR, the tasks of operational and special groups included: identifying and liquidating party and Komsomol activists, conducting search activities and arrests, exterminating Soviet party workers, NKVD employees, army political workers and officers, combating manifestations of anti-German activities, seizing institutions with file cabinets and archives, etc.

Colonel Hippler was promoted to the rank of major general on April 8, 1942

Pape K. 329. Infanterie-Division – Jena 2007 – S.28

Colonel Fischer was promoted to the rank of major general on April 8, 1942

Hinze R.: Bug – Moskwa – Beresina – Preußisch Oldendorf,1992 – S.306

Spektakular – sensational, attention-grabbing

Ju-52 (serial number 5752, tail number NJ+CU) from KGrzbV300, pilot non-commissioned officer Gerhard Otto.

Zablotsky A.N., Larintsev R.I. “Air Bridges” of the Third Reich – M., 2013 – P.71

In German documents on this day, Fi156 from the 62nd Signal Detachment (serial number 5196), pilot Oberfeldwebel Erhard Zemke - VA-MA RL 2 III/1182 S. 197, is listed as lost from enemy action. However, in some sources the surname The pilot is given differently - Linke.

Boucsein H. Halten oder Sterben. Die hessische 129. ID in Russland und Ostpreussen 1941-1945 – Potsdam, 1999 – S.259

US National Archives T-315 roll791 frame00720

Graser G. Zwischen Kattegat und Kaukasus. Weg und Kaempfe der 198. Infanterie-Divivsion – Tubingen, 1961 – S. 184-185

Pohlman H. Die Geschichte der 96. Infanterie-Division 1939-1945 – Bad Nacheim, 1959 – S.171

Durchgangslager (Dulag) 151

Schafer R.-A. Die Mondschein – Division – Morsbach, 2005 – S. 133

US National Archives T-314 Roll357 Frame0269

Die 71.Infanterie-Division 1939 – 1945 – Eggolsheim, o.J. – S.296

US National Archives NARA T-314 roll 518 fram 0448

Scherzer V. 46.Infanterie – Division – Jena, 2009 – S.453

Zablotsky A., Larintsev R. Losses of German generals on the Soviet-German front in 1942. “Arsenal-Collection”. 2014, No. 5 – P.2

Military archive of Germany BA-MA RL 2 III/1188 S. 421-422

Time indicated is Moscow

US National Archives NARA T-312 roll 723

US National Archives NARA T-314 roll 1219 fram 0532

Zamulin V.N. The forgotten battle on the Kursk Bulge - M., 2009 - P.584-585

Ibid – pp.585-586

Braun J. Enzian und Edelweiss – Bad Nauheim, 1955 – S.44

Kippar G. Die Kampfgescheen der 161. (ostpr.) Infanterie – Division von der Aufstellund 1939 bis zum Ende – o.O., 1994 – S. 521, 523

Kippar G. Op.cit., S. 578

Zablotsky A., Larintsev R. “The Devil’s Dozen” Losses of Wehrmacht generals on the Soviet-German front in 1941. “Arsenal-Collection”. 2014, No. 3 – P.18

Meyer– Detring W. Die 137. Infanterie – Division im Mittelabschnitt dr Ostfront – Eggolsheim, o.J. – S. 186-187

Grams R. Die 14. Panzer-Division 1940 – 1945 –Bad Nauheim, 1957 -S. 131

Time indicated is Moscow

Kuznetsov A.Ya. Big landing - M., 2011 - pp. 257-258