Eberhard von Mackensen
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Eberhard von Mackensen was a German general and war criminal.
Biography edit
Early life edit
Eberhard von Mackensen was born in Bromber, Posnania, the current Polish city of Bydgoszcz, on the 24th September 1889 in Posnania. Eberhard von Mackensen was the son of Field Marshal August von Mackensen, one of the most prestigious and capable German commanders of the First World War, winner of Serbia and Romania.
Military career edit
Start of his military career edit
The young Eberhard wanted to follow his father's military career, so, in October 1908 he entered the German army as an aspiring officer in a hussar cavalry regiment and in March 1910 he was promoted to leutnant.
Activities during World War I edit
During the First World War he held positions of staff in the headquarters of his cavalry unit and, after being appointed first oberleutnant in August 1915 and then hauptmann, in the "Scholtz" Army Group which controlled the armies of the Central Powers on the Macedonian Front.
After the defeat of Germany in the Great War and the dissolution of the imperial army, von Mackensen remained in service by joining the small Reichswehr framed with the rank of Rittermeister in the 5th Reiter Regiment. Then, in 1922, he was transferred as squadron commander of the old 1. Leibhusaren Regiment. Von Mackensen's career continued later in the cadres of the general staff until in 1933 he became chief of staff of the Kavalleriekorps, the cavalry corps of the Reichswehr, while in May 1935 he took on the same post in the 10th corps. On 1st September 1934, he had already been promoted to oberst. On the eve of the Second World War, von Mackensen was generalmajor, from 1 January 1939, and commander of the 1. Kavaleriebrigade.
Activities during World War II edit
Operations on the Oriental front (1941-1943) edit
During the Polish campaign he was the chief of staff of the 14th Army which was part of Army Group A of General Gerd von Rundstedt, while during the French campaign he became chief of staff of the 12th Army of General Wilhelm List which carried out a very important task in the initial breakthrough phase on the Meuse up to the shores of the Channel. After his victory in the west, von Mackensen was again promoted to the higher rank of general der Kavalerie from 1 August 1940.
On January 15th 1941, von Mackensen finally received an operational command assignment by taking over the leadership of the new 3rd Panzerkorps, an armored formation made up of two Panzer-Divisions assigned to the 1st Panzergruppe of General Ewald von Kleist. This powerful mechanized grouping would have been the spearhead of Field Marshal von Rundstedt's Southern Army Group which, deployed in the southern sector of the Eastern Front, would have taken part in the upcoming Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union.
Starting from June 22nd 1941, the day the Wehrmacht's general offensive began in the east, von Mackensen led his armored forces with remarkable skill, which immediately advanced in depth and repelled the first counterattacks of the Soviet mobile reserves; von Mackensen's units took part in the great battle of Brody-Dubno and claimed the destruction of 267 enemy tanks. The panzers of the 3rd Panzerkorps advanced ahead of the 1st Panzergruppe and first conquered Luc'k and Rivne and then entered Berdičiv on 7 July and Žytomyr on 9 July. For these brilliant victories von Mackensen received on July 27 the prestigious decoration of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.
After the initial successes, von Mackensen advanced the 13th Panzer-Division directly towards Kiev, which went up to thirty kilometers from the great Ukrainian city and crossed the Irpen River. However, the general's leading units were too weak and isolated and the German high command decided to avoid a frontal attack on Kiev defended by growing Soviet forces.
Von Mackensen instead received at the end of July the order to divert his armored forces south to take part in the great encirclement battle of Uman. After the destruction of the Soviet armies encircled in Uman, the advance of the Southern Army Group resumed and von Mackensen led the 3rd Panzerkorps in the direction of the Dnieper which was successfully crossed in Dnipropetrovsk on 25 August 1941 with the help of a bridgehead. In this phase von Mackensen also had operational control of the Italian units of the CSIR sent to reinforce his troops deployed in the bridgehead. From the 1st October 1941, von Mackensen advanced south from Dnipropetrovsk towards the Black Sea coast and occupied Melitopol on 5 October.
On 22nd October 1941, Hitler and the German high command decided to continue the advance in the southern sector with the aim of reaching Rostov-on-Don and the access roads to the Caucasus before the winter. Von Mackensen was charged with marching with his armored units of the 3rd Panzerkorps, the leading formation of General von Kleist's 1st Panzerarmee, towards Rostov and occupying the city. The general began the attack on November 17th 1941 and after violent clashes the leading elements managed to reach Rostov on November 20th and penetrated inside the city. Even the great bridges over the Don were taken by surprise. But yet, the Red Army was determined to prevent the German advance towards the Caucasus and counterattacked on the flank of the 3rd Panzerkorps. On November 25th, von Mackensen was forced to withdraw part of his forces to protect the rear, while the units remaining inside Rostov suffered a series of attacks en masse and found themselves in serious difficulty. On the 1st December 1941, Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau, the new commander of the Southern Army Group, decided to avoid a defeat by ordering von Mackensen, despite Hitler's opposition, to abandon Rostov and retreat to the position of the River Mius. The Germans evacuated the city and retreated with difficulty to the new position where von Mackensen gathered his forces and managed to stabilize the situation by resisting the new Soviet attacks throughout the winter.
In the spring of 1942, von Mackensen maintained command of the 3rd Panzerkorps which remained in the employ of the Southern Army Group which had passed under the command of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock and was charged with playing the main role in the Operation Blue, the new great German summer offensive on the western front. Even before the general attack began, von Mackensen took part in the bitter and bloody second battle of Kharkov which began on May 12th 1942 with a dangerous and unexpected Soviet offensive in the direction of the great Ukrainian city. The general played a decisive role in the battle; the 3rd Panzerkorps launched the counterattack on the southern flank of the Soviet troops on 17 May and contributed with its panzers to enclose two enemy armies in a large pocket; von Mackensen also skillfully directed the final phase of the battle, organizing a barrage that progressively destroyed the encircled Soviet forces. For his brilliant success, von Mackensen received on May 26th 1942 the decoration of the oak leaves of the Knight's Cross.
Then, Operation Blue began on June 28th 1942 and von Mackensen led the deep advance of the General's 1st Panzerarmee von Kleist who was again in charge of marching to Rostov and then to the Caucasus. The Soviet resistance was initially weak and von Mackensen was able to reach the city of Rostov with his armored forces, which was conquered for the second time on 23 July 1942. Soon after, the general crossed the Don and began the advance in the steppe towards the important wells. oil from the Caucasus. On 9th August, von Mackensen occupied Majkop. Despite apparently decisive successes, the German advance towards the Caucasus became increasingly difficult in the face of growing Soviet resistance. Von Mackensen still gained ground with the 3rd Panzerkorps but the German mobile forces were wearing out and at the end of September the German Army Group A had to temporarily halt its march on the northern edge of the mountain range. At the end of October, the German offensive resumed and von Mackensen was charged with launching a pincer attack to take Vladikavkaz. After hard fighting the German armored vehicles conquered a bridgehead on the Terek River and arrived on November the 5th 1942 a few kilometers from the city, but the Soviets counterattacked and von Mackensen's lead units risked being encircled. Only with great difficulty the Germans were able to retreat to the north of the river and on the 12th November they re-established the connection. The general had to go definitively on the defensive and the entire Army Group A was now blocked on the eve of the great Soviet winter offensive.
On the 19th November 1942, the Red Army initiated Operation Uranus. In four days the German-Romanian front was broken south and north of Stalingrad and the 6th Army of General Friedrich Paulus was encircled. The catastrophic progress of operations forced Hitler to reorganize the order of battle in the entire southern sector: Army Group A, which after the dismissal of Field Marshal Wilhelm List, had been directly controlled by the OKW, passed to the command of the general von Kleist, while von Mackensen received command of the 1. Panzerarmee. Initially the German high command believed it could restore the situation and then ordered to maintain the positions reached in the Caucasus, but after the new defeats on the Don, on the night of 27-28 December 1942, Hitler was forced to order the general retreat of the Group of armies A to avoid a new encirclement and von Mackensen then retreated behind the Terek on January 5, 1943 and began the difficult retreat to Rostov, 580 kilometers away, with the 1st Panzerarmee.
The retreat continued for thirty days in prohibitive climatic conditions. Von Mackensen was in command of some of the advanced German forces in the Caucasus and at first Hitler seemed intent on making them fall back towards the Kuban bridgehead. The increasingly difficult situation north of the Don forced them to abandon these optimistic plans and hijack von Mackensen's troops, two Panzer-Divisions, a motorized division, three infantry divisions and the SS "Wiking", to the north to reinforce Group d Army of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein's Don. On January 31st 1943, after numerous rearguard fights, the 1st Panzerarmee, escaped from the Soviet pursuit, reached the great bridges over the Don of Batajsk from where the units flowed safely to Taganrog. On 8th February, the rear departments of the 16th Motorized Division crossed the bridges over the Don, Rostov was evacuated and on 14 February it was liberated by the Red Army.
After the successful retreat, von Mackensen contributed with the 1st Panzerarmee reinforced with other Panzer-Divisions, to the general counterattack launched by Field Marshal von Manstein between Donets and Char'kov. The third battle of Char'kov ended on March 15th 1943 with a significant German success and the general took part in the fighting directing his armored formations towards Slov "jans'k. General Markian Popov's armored group was destroyed and the Germans reached the banks of the Donec where they were forced to stop for the strengthening of the Soviet defenses and for the arrival of the "mud period" caused by the spring thaw.
Eberhard von Mackensen remained in command of the 1st Panzerarmee even during the harsh summer-autumn 1943 campaign on the Eastern Front. He had to face the violent Soviet attack on the line of the river Mius on 17th July. The general had great difficulty in restraining the Soviet advance and only with the intervention of some mechanized reserves sent by field marshal von Manstein, it was possible to re-establish the situation and repel the enemy. Von Mackensen's forces suffered very high losses as a result of these clashes and were irreversibly weakened. Starting from 18th September 1943, the entire Southern Army Group of Field Marshal von Manstein began the general retreat behind the Dnieper and von Mackensen directed the difficult maneuver of the 1st Panzerarmee which was engaged in continuous rearguard fighting before reaching the heads of the bridge of Zaporizhja and Dnipropetrovsk where the river was crossed. The Red Army closely pursued the retreating German columns and immediately attacked the bridgehead of Zaporož'e. Von Mackensen defended the important position east of the Dnieper until mid-October before being forced to evacuate after blowing up the bridge and the large dam on the river with explosives.
After a period of command of over two years on the eastern front, Eberhard von Mackensen, promoted from 6th July 1943 to generaloberst, was finally recalled and handed over the leadership of the 1st Panzerarmee to General Hans-Valentin Hube. He was transferred to Italy and assumed the direction, starting from 3 November 1943, of the new 14th Army, set up, with a command in Verona, to group all the German forces deployed in northern Italy with functions of territorial control and strategic reserve for the Army Group C of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring committed to tenaciously oppose the advance of the Allies south of Rome.
Activity in Italy during WW2 edit
The sudden and unexpected landing of Anzio, carried out by the Anglo-American forces on January 22th 1944 on the south coast of Rome, caused great concern in the German high commands and caused a reorganization of the Wehrmacht deployment in Italy. Field Marshal Kesselring activated emergency measures and reserve troops were brought in from northern Italy and also from other war fronts. Von Mackensen was then ordered to relocate the headquarters of the 14th Army and take command of all assigned German forces to contain and possibly destroy the Allied landing head. On the 23rd January 1944, von Mackensen arrived at the headquarters of Field Marshal Kesselring inside the super-bunker of Mount Soratte and took control of the divisions arriving in the Anzio sector. Furthermore, von Mackensen, in addition to directing the field formations engaged in the landing areas, also became the supreme command authority of the entire war territory of the sector which also included the city of Rome; he then became the direct superior of General Kurt Mälzer, commander of the square in Rome.
Von Mackensen worked with tenacity and skill to contain the allied forces landed at Anzio and to build a solid defensive array. The enemy advance towards Rome was blocked and the German troops also obtained some important local successes by the end of January 1944. Adolf Hitler, however, was determined to inflict a crushing defeat on the Anglo-American divisions and completely annihilate the beachhead on the Lazio beaches, thus, massive reinforcements of motorized troops and heavy artillery were assigned to the 14th Army and von Mackensen received the order to launch a major counter-offensive, the so-called "Fischfang" operation. The plans drawn up by the German high command for the counter-offensive included a massive use of artillery and a concentrated attack by regrouping the bulk of the assault troops on a narrow sector of only six kilometers. These plans, however, were not shared by von Mackensen, who pointed out that the Anglo-American superior air force could have inflicted heavy losses on overly concentrated German divisions; furthermore, the general indicated that he did not have sufficient ammunition to carry out the planned prolonged artillery barrage. Hitler rejected von Mackensen's proposals and criticisms and ordered to launch the attack according to the initial plans studied by the high command.
The German offensive against the Anzio bridgehead began on February 16th 1944 and put the Anglo-American troops in serious difficulty, but in the end von Mackensen was unable to obtain the great victory requested by Hitler. The fire of the powerful Allied artillery and the massive intervention of the Anglo-American air force inflicted heavy losses on the German assault troops and blocked the advance of the divisions of the 14th Army. The Fischfang operation therefore ended in a German strategic failure. Von Mackensen had to return to the defensive and limit himself to consolidating his positions around the bridgehead. The battle at Anzio turned into a long and tiring war of position.
Involvement in the Ardeatine massacre edit
While the bitter battle in the Anzio bridgehead continued, the Roman resistance on 23rd March 1944 struck a company of the "Bozen" Polizeiregiment present in the capital with a bloody attack in via Rasella. The reaction of the German authorities in Rome was immediate and brutal. When General Mälzer arrived at the scene of the attack, he showed great excitement and evoked the need for immediate retaliatory measures. From the supreme headquarters in Rastenburg, Hitler was informed of the attack and demanded a bloody retaliation. According to some officers present in Rastenburg, there was explicit talk of killing "thirty to fifty Italians" for each of the German soldiers who died in via Rasella. Von Mackensen, in addition to directing the troops of the 14th Army engaged in Anzio, was also the supreme authority of the entire war zone which also included Rome. He was informed by Rastenburg in the afternoon of the Führer's violent reaction. The general considered the proportion of the reprisal mentioned at headquarters too high and made contact by telephone with General Mälzer and SS Lieutenant Colonel Herbert Kappler, the commander of the Gestapo in Rome.
Von Mackensen discussed above all with Lieutenant Colonel Kappler and asked for his opinion on the possible retaliation. The general considered the proportion of victims evoked in Rastenburg to be excessive, furthermore von Mackensen accepted the proposal of the head of the Gestapo to carry out retaliation by killing the so-called Todeskandidaten, the Italian prisoners held in Roman prisons already sentenced to death or life imprisonment or accused of crimes in which the death sentence was foreseeable. Von Mackensen then made the first executive decisions: he established that a proportion of ten Italians killed would be adequate for each German soldier killed in via Rasella and stated that all available todeskandidaten would be eliminated in retaliation up to the established number. The general later stated that he believed that the todeskandidaten were only those already sentenced to death; he also allegedly proposed not to extend the search for victims even in the event of an insufficient number of prisoners being held. After these first operational discussions, it was the task of Field Marshal Kesselring, who arrived in the evening at his headquarters in the Soratte bunker and informed of the attack and the request for retaliation, to make the final decisions. He spoke by telephone with General Alfred Jodl. The field marshal agreed with von Mackensen's assessments and proposals, while General Jodl did not object and left the decisions to the commander in Italy. Kesselring then gave orders for "immediate execution" of the retaliation at the ten to one ratio.
Although, von Mackensen didn't actively partecipate in the massacre.
Loss of the command edit
In the spring of 1944, the situation of the German army in Italy became more difficult. Von Mackensen continued tenaciously to defend the Anzio bridgehead sector with the 14th Army, but his troops weakened due to the constant wear and tear of the battle of position and the subtraction of forces by Field Marshal Kesselring to support the Cassino front, subjected to constant enemy attacks. The Allies ,on 1th May 1944, launched the great general offensive, Operation Diadem, and after fierce clashes caused the collapse of the Cassino front defended by the 10th Army of General Heinrich von Vietinghoff. At this stage, there were conflicts of competence within the German command and serious differences of opinion between Kesselring and von Mackensen. The commander-in-chief in Italy urgently requested the dispatch of the reserve divisions of the 14th Army to the Cassino front, but von Mackensen, fearing an enemy attack from the bridgehead, postponed the transfer of his mobile forces. Kesselring felt that von Mackensen had not cooperated promptly and had delayed the dispatch of reservations too much. In this way their belated intervention did not allow to control the situation and the field marshal had to order a general retreat. On the 23rd May, the allied troops of the Anzio sector also attacked, putting von Mackensen's army in difficulty.
Field Marshal Kesselring had not yet given up on blocking the Allied advance on Rome. He then ordered von Mackensen to retreat with the 14th Army to a new rearmost position maintaining the connection with the right wing of the 10th Army which was retreating from the Cassino sector. The difficult maneuver, however, was unsuccessful. Von Mackensen failed to defend Velletri's key sector. The American troops infiltrated an opening in the German defenses and on May 31st 1944 they broke through the new German position by advancing towards Rome which was liberated on June 5th Kesselring again believed that the main responsibility for the defeat fell on von Mackensen due to the lack of defense of the Velletri sector. After new bitter differences between the generals, the field marshal decided to dismiss von Mackensen from the command of the 14th Army which was entrusted to General Joachim Lemelsen. Von Mackensen after the loss of leadership of the 14th Army, was transferred to the Wehrmacht reserve at the disposal of the Führer but no longer held any command post until the end of the war.
Trial at Rome and last years edit
At the end of the Second World War, von Mackensen was captured by the Allies and transferred to Great Bretagn, where he was held together with high-ranking German officers. In November 1946, he was transferred to Italy to be tried in Rome for war crimes in relation to his leadership role in the retaliation of the Fosse Ardeatine. Contrary to the original decisions of the Allied leaders which stipulated that those responsible for serious crimes should be tried and tried directly by the nations victims of such acts, von Mackensen was tried by a British court established in the Italian capital, where he held public hearings at the Palazzo della Sapienza.
During preliminary interviews in Britain and during the trial, von Mackensen firmly rejected the war crimes allegations. He claimed to have taken a restraint action by proposing a limitation of the extent of the retaliation. In the trial, von Mackensen claimed that he was misled by Lieutenant Colonel Kappler and that he believed that only those sentenced to death would actually be placed on the list of victims of the retaliation. Finally, the defense attorneys referred to the provisions of the 1907 Hague Convention to legally justify the occupying power's right of retaliation. The Rome trial ended on November 20th 1946, after ten days of debate with the death sentence by shooting of von Mackensen who received the sentence with impassive coldness.
After, the death sentence was not carried out. On June 29th 1947, General John Harding, commander-in-chief of the British forces in Europe, decided to commute the sentence by condemning von Mackensen to life in prison after the Venice trial. Von Mackensen was imprisoned in the Werl prison.
In the following years, von Mackensen's sentence was further reduced and in 1952 the general was released. He died on May 19th 1969.
Trivia edit
- In 1967, he wrote a book about his military experience in the 3rd Panzerkorps.
- He is the brother of Hans Georg von Mackensen, a Nazi ambassador that worked at Rome.