Hitler's Commanders (24 page)

Keitel was unable to face down Manteuffel and turned his wrath on Heinrici, relieved him of his command, and then drove away in his staff car.
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Manteuffel and Heinrici merely shrugged their shoulders and continued the retreat westward. Once again, Manteuffel demonstrated that he was a man of convictions who would not yield.

General von Manteuffel remained in British custody at various sites in England throughout 1945 and into 1946. In March, 1946, he returned to Germany to testify before the Nuremberg tribunal in the trial against OKW. Finally, shortly before Christmas 1946, he was released and went to work for the Oppenheim Bank in Cologne. He was soon rejoined by his wife, who had been in a refugee camp near Hamburg.
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Respect and admiration followed Manteuffel into civilian life. He was elected to the town council of Neuss-on-the-Rhine in 1947 (he was working for a manufacturing firm at the time), and from 1953 to 1957 he served in the West German
Bundestag
(Parliament). He was also a guest of several foreign military commands, including the Pentagon in Washington, and lectured at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He passed away at home, Diessen-on-the-Ammersee, on September 24, 1978.

baron diepold georg heinrich von luettwitz
, called Heinrich, was born on his family’s estate at Krumpach in East Prussia on December 6, 1896.
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His ancestors had been soldiers since the reign of Duke Heinrich I of Silesia (1321–1388), when one of them was knighted for service against the Poles. Thus a tradition of military service was deeply ingrained in the Luettwitz family over a period of centuries; in fact, Heinrich’s first cousin, Baron Smilo von Luettwitz, also became a general of panzer troops, commanded the 9th Army on the Eastern Front, and ended up as a corps commander in the West German Army.
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Heinrich’s grandfather, a lieutenant colonel, had been killed in the Battle of Gravelotte in 1870, during the Franco-Prussian War. Baron Friedrich Karl von Luettwitz, Heinrich’s father, also fought in that war, after which he retired from the army as a captain, returned to Krumpach, and lived the life of a Prussian Junker until he passed away in 1919.

Meanwhile, young Heinrich entered the regular German school system, in which he excelled. An avid horseman from the age of eight, he wanted to join the Imperial cavalry when World War I broke out but apparently was unable to get the permission of his father. Undeterred, Heinrich volunteered for the army and, at the age of 17, was rushed to the Western Front as a private. Heinrich’s mother, Klara, sprang from another Prussian military family, the von Unruhs, who had considerable influence in the Imperial Army. In late 1914, her brother intervened on Heinrich’s behalf and had him brevetted second lieutenant on December 4, 1914, two days before his 18th birthday. Luettwitz completed a quick officers training course and was given a Royal Prussian patent as a second lieutenant on June 18, 1915. He was immediately posted to the 48th Infantry Regiment, where he was given a rear-area assignment. (Friedrich von Stauffenberg speculated that the elder von Luettwitz used his influence to keep his son out of danger, and this seems very likely, but cannot be confirmed.) In any case, Second Lieutenant von Luettwitz was not satisfied with his new position and besieged higher headquarters with numerous written requests for a frontline assignment. This letter-writing campaign did not bear fruit until 1917, when Heinrich was given command of a platoon, which he led in the bloody trench fighting in northern France that summer. Here Luettwitz distinguished himself, earning the Iron Cross, First and Second classes, before being severely wounded. He was sent back to Germany to recover and did not leave the hospital until the spring of 1918. By this time his family had decided to use a little more influence on his behalf, and on May 2, 1918, Heinrich was transferred to the 3rd Troop of the 1st Uhlan, an elite cavalry regiment, as a troop leader.

General Ludendorff planned to use the 3rd Uhlan as a pursuit force, once his assault troops achieved their decisive breakthrough in the summer offensive of 1918. This breakthrough never took place, so the Uhlans were never used. Then the armistice came, and Luettwitz and his squadron returned to their garrison post at Brieg/Oels, in Silesia, and engaged in peace-keeping duties on the Polish frontier. Luettwitz was accepted into the Reichswehr as a second lieutenant in the 8th Cavalry (as his regiment was renamed) in late 1919. During this first period of garrison duty, Heinrich met and paid court to Jutta von Engelmann, the attractive sister of a fellow officer. They were married at the von Engelmann estate of Pzybor, East Prussia, in the fall of 1920. After a brief honeymoon they returned to the Luettwitz estate of Krumpach, before Heinrich rejoined his regiment. It was not destined to be a good marriage. Jutta gave birth to a son, Hans, on January 18, 1922, but she was unhappy living with her in-laws. She returned to her family in the spring, effectively ending the marriage.

Meanwhile, Heinrich von Luettwitz continued to serve in the backwater garrison post, finally receiving his promotion to first lieutenant on April 1, 1925. Then, in 1926, Lieutenant Colonel Baron Hans von Stein zu Kochberg assumed command of the regiment. He and the young officer liked each other very much, and Luettwitz spent a great deal of time with Stein and his daughter, also named Jutta, a beautiful 19-year-old noted for her ability as a pianist and equestrienne. Heinrich soon fell in love with her.

Just before his retirement in 1927 Stein arranged to have Heinrich enrolled in the senior regimental staff course of Wehrkreis Officers Training School. During the Christmas season Luettwitz went to Breslau and filed for a divorce, which was easy to obtain under the Weimar Republic. He received the final decree within a few days, and he and Jutta von Stein were married on December 11, 1928, at Ober Naundorf near Dresden. Their first child, a daughter named Christa, was born on July 21, 1929. A second (and final) child, a son named Hans-Jürgen, would be born in 1932. In the meantime, Luettwitz graduated from his staff course in early 1928 and remained at the school as an administrative officer. Then, in April 1929, the cavalry lieutenant enrolled in a special course aimed at training officers to control motorized formations via the radio. Although his love for horses never diminished, Luettwitz was converted to the revolutionary concept of motorized warfare from that time on. It was the turning point of his career. He became an enthusiastic disciple of Colonel Oswald Lutz, Germany’s first inspector of motor troops. With the approval of his superiors, Luettwitz took part in various motorized training exercises at the school and was highly successful. For most of the next year (1929–1930), he traveled throughout Germany, conducting a series of lectures on mechanized warfare in the training centers of the other military districts. Few senior commanders, however, were ready to accept the new ideas, and the tour was generally a failure.

Luettwitz did not give up. On February 1, 1931, he was promoted to Rittmeister (captain of cavalry) and three weeks later took over a course in artillery fire control for motorized formations. Then he was sent back to Oels/Brieg, where he assumed command of the I Battalion of his old 8th Cavalry Regiment. By this time, however, the decision had been made to motorize the I Battalion, a process that von Luettwitz oversaw, along with the training of the battalion in the new tactics. He excelled in this difficult task and was rewarded by being given command of the 3rd Motorized Battalion, which was armed with the new PzKw I infantry tanks. He was promoted to major on January 1, 1936—the same day he officially transferred to the panzer branch.

In spite of his transfer to the tank arm, Major von Luettwitz continued to be an enthusiastic and outstanding horseman, and in 1936, he was named leader of the German Olympic Equestrian Team. His squad performed credibly in the autumn games and won several medals, but in Hitler’s Germany the Olympic Games were no longer games. When Luettwitz did not capture the elusive gold medal, he was abruptly transferred to the staff of the 4th Cavalry Regiment at Insterburg, East Prussia, as a supernumerary. He was in unofficial exile for a full year, and someone in power in Berlin obviously held this failure against him for some time, as we shall see. However, Luettwitz did have something working in his favor: Hitler’s rapid expansion and motorization of the Wehrmacht required a large number of trained motorized and panzer officers, and there were few available. In the summer of 1937, Berlin decided to motorize the 4th Cavalry, and on October 12, Baron von Luettwitz was given command of the regiment (which was part of the 1st Cavalry Brigade), to supervise this process. Once this program was well under way, however, the Panzer Inspectorate decided that an officer with more seniority should command it, and Luettwitz was demoted to the command of the I Battalion. He was nevertheless promoted to lieutenant colonel on March 1, 1939, and took command of the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion of the 1st Cavalry the day World War II broke out. This battalion spent most of the campaign in reserve in the East Prussian capital at Koenigsberg. It did not catch up to the rest of the brigade until September 14, when it rejoined the 1st Cavalry outside Warsaw. Two days later, Lieutenant Colonel von Luettwitz was wounded and had to be evacuated back to Koenigsberg for treatment. His World War II career had gotten off to an inauspicious beginning, to say the least.

Luettwitz was not able to resume command of his battalion until early 1940. There was not much satisfaction in this assignment, however, because the 1st Reconnaissance had been left behind in the east. While the rest of the panzer forces were gaining glory during the six-week conquest of France, Luettwitz cooled his heels in Prussia, fox hunting and going on long rides in the countryside. He felt utterly frustrated, for Luettwitz was an ambitious and partriotic soldier who wanted nothing more than to lead his command in action.

It was Major General Walter Nehring, the commander of the 18th Panzer Division, who rescued Lieutenant Colonel von Luettwitz from this professional limbo. The creation of the 18th Panzer was decreed by OKH in the fall of 1940, in response to Hitler’s illogical desire to create more panzer divisions by weakening the existing ones. During this process the 101st Infantry Regiment was transferred from the 14th Infantry Division to the 18th Panzer, with orders that it be equipped and trained as a motorized formation. Nehring then asked for von Luettwitz specifically, because he realized the Prussian baron knew how to train men who had no experience in trucks and half-tracks. Luettwitz arrived at the 101st’s home base at Chemnitz and immediately threw himself into his task. Then on January 3, 1941, despite the fact that he had achieved commendable results, he was abruptly ordered back to Koenigsberg as a reserve officer for armor under General of Artillery Gunther von Vollard-Bockelberg, the Wehrkreis commander. Walter Nehring was outraged enough to write a letter of protest to the Army Personnel Office, as did generals of panzer troops Erich Hoepner and Heinz Guderian. Although they were unable to get Luettwitz another command, they were at least successful in getting him transferred to the 1st Panzer Division as a supernumerary.

Heinrich von Luettwitz spent the first week of Operation Barbarossa as an observer with Army Group North. Then he got his third chance at a regimental command on June 29, 1941, when the commander of the 59th Rifle Regiment of the 20th Panzer Division was killed in action. Luettwitz was rushed to the Nieman River area (on the central sector of the front), where he assumed command of the 59th Rifle the following day. Now Luettwitz was to justify his years of hard work and training.

On July 6, the 20th Panzer began its advance to the Dvina. The following day Luettwitz took Ulla by storm and broke the Soviet line. Continuing in close pursuit of the enemy, Luettwitz outran his division and captured the key city of Vitebsk by coup de main on July 10. The Soviets realized that they could not leave this important city in German hands, so they threw their reserves against it in a series of fierce counterattacks. Luettwitz hedgehogged his regiment and held his positions until the rest of the division arrived two days later. Then the Soviets retreated toward Velizh, closely pursued by the 59th Rifle. After that the regiment was in more or less constant combat, driving to within 60 miles of Moscow in the process. Meanwhile, on October 1, Luettwitz was promoted to full colonel, to rank from November 1, 1940. He was awarded the German Cross in Gold on December 20, 1941.

Meanwhile, Stalin launched his winter offensive of 1941–1942. In terrible weather the 59th Rifle was slowly pushed back to a line east of Desna-Oka, which it held until the spring thaws effectively halted all operations. The 20th Panzer Division was then pulled back to Bryansk, to rest and refit. Baron von Luettwitz and his surviving officers worked diligently to integrate raw replacements into the regiment and were overjoyed at being able to equip the I Battalion with some of the new half-track personnel carriers. The refitting was completed at the end of April, at which time the division was transferred to the Orel sector, where its mission was to pin down Soviet reserves and help convince the Soviet High Command that the German summer offensive of 1942 would be launched against Moscow instead of toward its true objectives: the Caucasus oil fields and Stalingrad. Luettwitz performed exceptionally well in this secondary mission, during which he led a battle group and captured the town of Livny in heavy fighting. For this success he was awarded the Knight’s Cross on May 27, and on June 8 was given command of the 20th Rifle Brigade, which consisted of the 59th and 101st Rifle regiments. His divisional commander, Major General Ritter Wilhelm von Thoma, the future commander of the Afrika Korps at the Second Battle of El Alamein, wrote of Luettwitz at this time, “passionate soldier, ambitious, sometimes more critical than necessary. With much combat experience he joined the front line fight himself. A professional soldier capable of improvising. Socially courteous, he leads men by his personality and handles them well, both in theory and in practice.”
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