Eugen Siegfried Erich Ritter von Schobert (13 March 1883 – 12 September 1941) was a German general during World War II. He commanded the 11th Army during Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. Schobert died when his observation plane crashed in a Soviet minefield.
Schobert was born as Eugen Schobert in Würzburg in the Kingdom of Bavaria, a member state of the German Empire. He was the son of Major Karl Schobert and Anna née Michaely. Schobert entered the Royal Bavarian Army in July 1902. He served primarily in the 1st Bavarian Infantry Regiment "König" and underwent pilot training in 1911.
During World War I, Schobert remained a Bavarian infantry officer, serving the entire war on the Western Front. During the German spring offensive of 1918, he led the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Bavarian Infantry Regiment. For his actions on 23 March 1918, when he personally and successfully led his battalion in the crossing of a canal near Jussy against stiff British resistance, he was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Military Order of Max Joseph. This was Bavaria's highest military honor, comparable to the Prussian Pour le Mérite, and conferred a patent of nobility on a recipient who was a commoner. Hence Eugen Schobert became Eugen Ritter von Schobert.
After World War I, Schobert remained in the Reichswehr and then the Wehrmacht, steadily rising up the ranks. He was Inspector of Infantry from December 1933 to September 1934 and then commanded the 17th Infantry Division from 1935 to 1936 and the 33rd Infantry Division from 1936 to 1938. He took command of the VII Army Corps (VII. Armeekorps) on 4 February 1938.
In September 1939, Schobert led his VII Army Corps in the invasion of Poland as part of the reserve of Army Group South. In May–June 1940, his corps, part of General Ernst Busch's Sixteenth Army of Army Group A, participated in the invasion of Belgium and Luxembourg and the Battle of France. He received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for his leadership of the VII Corps in the breakthrough of the Maginot Line and the capture of Nancy and Toul. He remained in command of the corps during preparations for the invasion of Great Britain.
In September 1940, Schobert was given command of the Eleventh Army. The army was assigned to Army Group South for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. During combat operations in the southern Soviet Union, Schobert was killed when his Fieseler Storch observation aircraft crashed in a Soviet minefield. He was succeeded by Erich von Manstein. A German war correspondent, Leo Leixner, wrote Schobert's biography.
Schobert married Alice Rieder-Gollwitzer in 1921. They had three children: two sons and one daughter. His younger son was killed in combat in 1944 while serving as a fighter pilot for the Luftwaffe.
Source :
https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/m064km4b?hl=en
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Ritter_von_Schobert
Franz Ritter von Epp (born Franz Epp; from 1918 as Ritter von Epp; 16 October 1868 – 31 January 1947) was a German general and politician who started his military career in the Bavarian Army. Successful wartime military service earned him a knighthood in 1916. After the end of World War I and the dissolution of the German Empire, von Epp was a commanding officer in the Freikorps and the Reichswehr. He was a member of Bavarian People's Party, before joining the Nazi Party in 1928, when he was elected as a member of the German parliament or Reichstag, a position he held until the fall of Nazi Germany. He was the Reichskommissar, later Reichsstatthalter, for Bavaria, and a Reichsleiter of the Nazi Party.
Franz Epp was born in Munich in 1868, the son of the painter Rudolph Epp and Katharina Streibel. He spent his school years in Augsburg and after this joined the military academy in Munich. He served as a volunteer in East Asia during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900–01 and then became a company commander in the colony of German South-West Africa (now Namibia), where he took part in the bloody Herero and Namaqua Genocide. During the First World War, he served as the commanding officer of the Royal Bavarian Infantry Lifeguards Regiment in France, Serbia, Romania, and at the Isonzo front.
For his war service, Epp received numerous medals, of which the Pour le Mérite (29 May 1918) was the most significant. He was also knighted, being made Ritter von Epp on 25 February 1918, and received the Bavarian Military Order of Max Joseph (23 June 1916).
After the end of the war, Epp formed the Freikorps Epp, a right-wing paramilitary unit mostly made up of war veterans, of which the future leader of the SA Ernst Röhm was a member. This unit took part in the crushing of the Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich, being responsible for various massacres. Epp joined the Reichswehr and was promoted to Generalmajor in 1922. He took his leave from the German Army after getting involved with right-wing associations in 1923.
When it became necessary for the Nazi Party to purchase a newspaper to publicize its political creed, Epp made available some 60,000 Reichsmarks from secret army funds to acquire the Völkischer Beobachter, which became the daily mouthpiece of the party.
As the Sturmabteilung (SA) expanded, it became an armed band of several hundred thousand men, whose function was to guard Nazi rallies and disrupt those of other political parties. Some of its leaders, particularly Ernst Röhm, visualized the SA as supplanting the regular army when Adolf Hitler came to national power. To this end, a department was set up under Epp called the Wehrpolitisches Amt (Army political office). Nothing came of this, as a distrustful Hitler had the SA crushed and many of its leaders killed in the Night of the Long Knives in the summer of 1934.
After leaving the Bavarian People's Party, Epp on 20 May 1928 was elected from electoral constituency 26 (Franconia) as one of the first 12 Nazi Party deputies to the Reichstag. He would continue to be elected to the Reichstag in each subsequent election throughout the Weimar and Nazi regimes to 1945. He served as the Nazi Party's head of its Military-Political Office from 1928 to 1945, and later as leader of the German Colonial Society, an organization devoted to regaining Germany's lost colonies. On 31 August 1933 he was made a Reichsleiter, the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party. On 3 October 1933, he was also made a member of the Academy for German Law. In May 1934 he became head of the NSDAP Office of Colonial Policy until its dissolution in February 1943.
Epp's final notable historical action occurred on 9 March 1933, two weeks before the Reichstag passed the enabling act, which granted Hitler dictatorial powers. On the orders of Hitler and Wilhelm Frick, he abolished the Government of Bavaria and set up a Nazi regime, with himself as Reichskommissar. On 10 April Hitler appointed him Reichsstatthalter for Bavaria. In this position he often clashed with Bavaria's Nazi Minister-President Ludwig Siebert. Epp's attempt to limit the influence of the central government on Bavarian politics failed. He, however, retained his post as Reichsstatthalter until the end of the war, although by then he was politically insignificant.
On 8 May 1933, von Epp's DO X crashed at the Passau Kachlet. The city named one of its streets Ritter-von-Epp-Straße.
He was arrested on Paul Giesler's orders in 1945, for being associated with the Freiheitsaktion Bayern, an anti-Nazi group led by Rupprecht Gerngroß. However, Epp had not wanted to be directly involved with the group, as he considered their goal—surrender to the Allies—a form of backstabbing of the German Army.
Suffering from a heart condition, he was hospitalised at Bad Nauheim at the end of the war. On 9 May 1945, a clerk at the hospital alerted agents from the US Counterintelligence Corps that Epp was a patient there, and he was arrested and sent to a prison camp in Munich to await trial at Nuremberg. He died in detention on 31 January 1947.
Decorations and awards
Order of the Red Eagle, 4th class (German Empire)
Order of the Crown, 4th class with swords (Prussia)
Military Merit Order, 3rd and 4th class with Swords (Bavaria)
1914 Iron Cross 2nd Class, 1914
1914 Iron Cross 1st Class, 1915
Knights Cross of the Military Order of Max Joseph (Kingdom of Bavaria), 1917
Pour le Mérite, 1918
Knight of the Princely House Order of Hohenzollern with swords (Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen)
Knight 2nd class of the House and Merit Order of Peter Frederick Louis (Oldenburg)
Knight of the Order of Saint John (Bailiwick of Brandenburg)
Honour Chevron for the Old Guard, February 1934
Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918, 1934
Golden Party Badge
Sudetenland Medal, 1938
Anschluss Medal, 1939
War Merit Cross 2nd Class and 1st Class with Swords
Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords, 1943
Military Merit Cross, 2nd class (Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin)
Nazi Party Long Service Award (10 and 15 years)
Order of the Iron Crown, 3rd class (Austria)
On 18 May 1933, the city of Passau decided to make von Epp a Citizen of Honor.
Georg Wilhelm Schöning
Date of birth: 8 June 1908 (Gumbinnen an der Pissa, Ostpreußen, German Empire)
Date of death: 2 November 1987 (Bochum, Westfalen, West Germany)
Promotions:
01.10.1937 Leutnant der Reserve
00.00.1940 Oberleutnant der Reserve
01.03.1942 Hauptmann der Reserve
01.10.1943 Major der Reserve
21.01.1945 Oberstleutnant der Reserve
Career:
00.00.1937 Reserveoffizier in Infanterie-Regiment 23
26.08.1939 Drafted to Infanterie-Regiment 23 during mobilization
00.11.1939 Chef 10.Kompanie / Infanterie-Regiment 244
00.00.1940 Chef 10.Kompanie / Infanterie-Regiment 120
00.05.1942 Ordonannzoffizier in Infanterie-Regiment 120
01.06.1942 Führer III.Bataillon / Infanterie-Regiment 120
16.10.1942 Seriously wounded near Kalatsch
00.03.1943 Kommandeur I.Bataillon / Grenadier-Regiment "Feldherrnhalle"
08.02.1944 Führer Füsilier-Regiment "Feldherrnhalle"
26.07.1944 Kommandeur Panzer-Brigade 110
00.09.1944 Führer Panzergrenadier-Regiment 66
00.05.1945 POW of the Soviet
00.10.1945 Released from the POW camp
Awards and Decorations:
00.00.19__ Wehrmacht-Dienstauszeichnungen
11.07.1940 1939 Eisernes Kreuz II.Klasse
12.08.1941 1939 Eisernes Kreuz I.Klasse
00.00.194_ Infanterie-Sturmabzeichen in Silber
00.00.194_ Nahkampfspange in Bronze
00.00.194_ Verwundetenabzeichen in Bronze und Silber
14.02.1942 Deutsches Kreuz in Gold
00.00.1942 Medaille “Winterschlacht im Osten 1941/42”
00.00.194_ Order of Bravery 4th Class (Bulgaria)
00.00.194_ Ordinul Mihai Viteazul 3rd Class (Rumania)
00.00.194_ Krimschild
16.10.1942 Ehrenblattspange des Heeres und Waffen-SS
07.02.1944
Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes, as Major der Reserve and Kommandeur
I.Bataillon / Füsilier-Regiment (motorisiert) “Feldherrnhalle” /
246.Infanterie-Division
21.01.1945 Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes
mit Eichenlaub #707, as Major der Reserve and Führer
Panzergrenadier-Regiment 66 / 13.Panzer-Division
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Wilhelm
Schöning (8 June 1908 – 2 November 1987) served as commander of the
66th Panzergrenadier Regiment of the 13th Panzer Division during the
Siege of Budapest.
Most of the division was encircled and
destroyed in Budapest between December 1944 and February 1945. Those who
escaped, consisting of 200-300 men, were reformed under Schöning.
Wounded during the battle, Schöning broke through Soviet lines and
reached the German 3rd Cavalry Brigade on the Buda side. Schöning
remembered it thus:
"Suddenly I had the feeling that my leg was
being torn off. (...) As my pistol was empty I ordered my lieutenant to
finish me off because I didn't want to be taken prisoner. He was himself
wounded in the arm. He then called to me: “Only another 2,000 metres,
Lieutenant Colonel. We have to make it!'” I crept through the snow up a
hill with the major...Two wounded grenadiers from our battle group
picked us up under the arms under the heaviest fire and stood us upright
and I dragged myself with several wounds to the feet the two kilometres
to the German position."
Swedish Army Captain Viggo Olson (right) posed with a decorated World War I veteran, probably from Germany. One of the nice medal in his uniform is a Turkish one, Gallipoli Star. The picture was taken by Carl-Erik Suneson on 18 May 1941.