Found this on Wikipaedia the other day and thought it was quite interesting. I was wondering if anyone knew if his memoirs were published and if so where I might get a copy? anyway here is the biography of my favourite WWII General: Born in Gumbinnen, Germany, on Christmas Day 1886, there are few details about Heinrici's personal life. He was married to Gertrude Heinrici, a half-Jew, though the family received a German Blood Certificate from Adolf Hitler himself. The Heinricis had two children: a girl and a boy. The son of a Protestant minister, Heinrici was a religious man who attended church regularly. His religiosity made him unpopular among the Nazi hierarchy and he was on unfavourable terms with Hermann Goering and Hitler. He was never a member of the Nazi Party. The Heinrici family had been soldiers since the 12th century, and Gotthard Heinrici continued the tradition by joining the 95th Infantry Regiment on March 8, 1905 at the age of 19. He saw action on both the Eastern and Western fronts in the first World War and won numerous awards, including the Black Verwundetenabzeichen for being wounded in battle and both the Second Class and First Class Iron Crosses in 1914 and 1915, respectively. In the Great War, Heinrici participated in the Battle of Tannenberg Heinrici served throughout World War II, again serving on both fronts. He built up a reputation as one of the best defensive tacticians in the Wehrmacht and was renowned for his tenacity. For this reason, his officers and men nicknamed him Unser Giftzwerg: "our tough little *******". During the Blitzkrieg into France, Heinrici commanded the 12th Corps and succeeded in breaking through the Maginot Line on June 14, 1940. During Operation Barbarossa in 1941, Heinrici served in the Second Panzer Army under Heinz Guderian and, as the commanding general of the 43rd Army Corps, received the Knight's Cross. On January 26, 1942, Heinrici was given command of the Fourth Army, the kingpin of the rapidly crumbling German line directly facing Moscow. He held out for 10 weeks, his forces sometimes outnumbered 12 to 1. Here he developed one of his most famous strategies: when he knew a Russian attack was imminent, he would pull his troops back from the line until the Russian artillary barrage subsided and then immediately redeploy them unharmed. Heinrici had been a victim of poison gas in WWI, and in late 1943 Goering had him placed in a convalescent home in Karlsbad on the pretext of "ill health". In the summer of 1944, after 8 months of enforced retirement, he was placed in command of the First Panzer and Hungarian First Armies in Hungary. He retreated into Czechoslovakia, but fought so tenaciously that he was awarded the Swords to the Oak Leaves of his Knight's Cross on March 3, 1945. Retreat from the Oder On March 20, 1945 Heinrici replaced Heinrich Himmler as Commander-in-Chief of the Army Group Vistula (or Army Group Weichsel) on the Eastern Front. At this time, the front was less than 50 miles from Berlin. He commanded two armies: the Third Panzer Army led by General Hasso von Manteuffel and the Ninth Army led by General Theodor Busse. Heinrici was tasked with preventing a Russian attack across the Oder River, but he faced shortages of manpower and material and Hitler's conviction that the Russian army would not attack Berlin. Led by Marshals Georgi Zhukov and Ivan Koniev, the Russians had advanced rapidly west from the USSR and had been stalled East of the Oder for months. As Anglo-American armies approached Berlin from the West, however, Stalin became convinced that they intended to take Berlin for themselves and ordered Zhukov and Koniev to seize the city with all dispatch. In the early morning of April 16, 1945 Zhukov's army crossed the Oder and assaulted Heinrici's positions on the western bank. Simultaneously, Koniev attacked Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner's command further south. This began the Battle of Berlin. Combined, the Russians attacked with over 1,500,000 men. Heinrici realized that he could not halt the advance. After days of intense fighting, he ordered the retreat of the army from Wollin back across the Oder River, despite Hitler's orders that no retreats be authorized without his personal approval. It proved an unpopular order with Heinrici's superiors, and on April 29 Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel relieved him of his command. His post was then offered to Manteuffel who declined the promotion citing protest of the treatment of Heinrici. Kurt von Tippelskirch was then named interim replacement until General Student could arrive and assume control. After losing his command, Heinrici retired to Plön, where he surrendered to British forces on May 28. He was held at Island Farm Special Camp 11 for three years and was released for repatriation on May 19, 1948. Throughout the war, Heinrici was opposed to Hitler's scorched earth policy, whereby everything of use had been ordered destroyed so as not to fall into the hands of the advancing enemy. He refused to lay waste to Smolensk as ordered, and late in the war he supported Minister of Armaments Albert Speer who worked to save Berlin from total destruction. When he was briefly put in charge of the defense of Berlin itself, Heinrici's first command was that nothing be purposefully destroyed. It should be noted that Heinrici went on two-month Leave of Absence twice during WWII, from June 6th to July 13th, 1942, and then a year later from June 1st to July 31st, 1943. Ranks Held • Fahnenjunker-Unteroffizier(19 Jul 1905) • Fähnrich (19 Dec 1905) • Leutnant (18 Aug 1906) • Oberleutnant (17 Feb 1914) • Hauptmann (18 Jun 1915) • Major (01 Feb 1926) • Oberstleutnant (01 Aug 1930) • Oberst (01 Mar 1933) • Generalmajor (01 Jan 1936) • Generalleutnant (01 Mar 1938) • General der Infanterie (01 Jun 1940) • Generaloberst (30 Jan 1943) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gotthard_Heinrici"
You left out that he was the son of a Lutheran pastor, and not thrilled with Nazism as a result, continued church parades for his troops despite Nazi ideology, and was married to a "mischlinge." Otherwise, great biography!
I've been reading up on my namesake on Armchair General's forums. I'm never one to bring that up as a source but the poster over there Richard armstrong is an author who specialises in the Russian army so I guess he knows what he's talking about. He has a draft of the closest thing we may get to a biography of Col-Gen Heinrici. The thread is here: Gotthard Heinrici - Wehrmacht Master of Defense - Page 2 - Armchair General and HistoryNet >> The Best Forums in History Here are a comment or two about him: The military historian, Earl Ziemke, called Heinrici the "prophet of catastrophe,: but he recognized that Heinrici "had never failed to bring his corps out of the tightest spot." Heinrici should have been promoted to Colonel General, but he was not with the in-group of the German high command, particularly Hitler. "Somebody told Hitler that when I was at home, I always went to church with my whole family--that was the end of me. I was not a party man either." "In Hungary, Heinrici resumed his old ways, recalled a subordinate commander. At the height of the battle there, Colonel General Ferdinand Schorner, Hitler's protege, and Heinrici's superior in Hungary issued a directive that any soldier found behind the front without orders was to be "executed immediately and his body exhibited as a warning." Heinrici, disgusted by the command, retorted, "Such methods have never been used under my command and never shall be." Word of his reply spread rapidly to his troops over the informal soldiers' telegraph." Just some random tit-bits from a really good thread detailing his military campaigns. I really do hope that a book will be written about him. He deserves it.
Sounds like he was a good commander and was probably respected by his men for his action. He was lucky to have survived the war in view of the high ranking enemies he made! Tom
