Friedrich Julius Oskar Mieth
* 04.06.1888 Eberswalde/Brandenburg
† 02.09.1944 in Hussj bei Jassy/Karpaten (Rumänien) gefallen
His granddaughter insists that the date of death is 29.08.1944 somewhere in the valley of Vutcani
Married since 14.06.1928 with Edith geb. von Seeler (* 12.01.1895 Riga; †
16.12.1972 Wiesbaden) (aus dem deutsch-baltischen Adel); 1 Tochter,
Ingeborg
Eltern: Wilhelm Julius Mieth, (zuletzt Major) (* 1841 Domnitzsch an der Elbe; † 1922 Berlin–Lichterfelde) und Clara geb. Bernhard (* 1859 Thorn; † 1939 Berlin)
Promotions:
26.03.1906 Fahnenjunker
15.12.1906 Fähnrich
16.08.1907 Leutnant (Patent von 14.02.1906)
08.10.1914 Oberleutnant
18.10.1915 Hauptmann
01.06.1928 Major
01.03.1933 Oberstleutnant
01.03.1935 Oberst
01.04.1938 Generalmajor
01.03.1940 Generalleutnant
20.04.1943 General der Infanterie
Career:
00.00.189_ – 00.00.1906? Besucht u.a. das Schiller Gymnasium zu Groß–Lichterfelde und das Schubertʼsche Konservatorium für Musik; Abitur.
26.03.1906 Enitritt in das Pommersche Jäger–Bataillon Nr. 2 (Kulm / Westpreußen) als Fahnenjunker
01.08.1907(?) Zeugnis der Reife zum Offizier mit Allerhöchster Belobigung
22.03.1909 Versetzung i. d. Maschinengewehr (MG)–Abteilung 4
Im Ersten Weltkrieg mit dem Jäger–Bataillon Nr. 2 ins Feld
1915/16 in Rumänien verwundet
27.08.1916 Generalstab Beskiden–Korps
07.12.1916 Generalstab 2. Reserve–Division
13.03.1917 Generalstab ? Armee (number unreadable)
07.06.1917 Generalstab Donau-Armee
19.01.1918 Generalstab 9. Armee
20.04.1918 Generalstab XVI. Armeekorps
11.05.1919 Generalstab II. Armeekorps
01.10.1919 Generalstab Wehrkreis II (Stettin)
01.10.1920 Generalstab 2. Division
01.4.1922 Kompaniechef 8./ Jäger–Regiment 4
01.10.1924 Generalstab 6. Division
01.10.1926 Generalstab 3. Division
01.05.1928 Generalstab Gruppenkommando I
01.01.1928 Generalstab Kommandantur Küstrin
01.02.1930 I. d. Heeres-Ausbildungsabteilung (T4) im Reichswehrministerium
01.10.1935 Lehr-Offizier an der Kriegsakademie, Berlin
06.10.1936 Kommandeur des Infanterie-Regiments 27, Rostock
10.11.1938 Chef des Generalstabes des XII. Armee-Korps, Wiesbaden
25.08.1939 Kommandeur des Infanterie-Regiments 27, Rostock
10.11.1938 Chef des Generalstabes der 1. Armee
10.02.1940 Chef der Operationsabteilung und Oberquartiermeister I im Generalstab des Heeres
21.06.1940 Führerreserve
25.06.1940 Chef des Stabes beim Chef der deutsch-französischen Waffenstillstandskommission (General der Infanterie Carl Heinrich von Stülpnagel), Wiesbaden (Hotel Nassauer Hof)
10.12.1940 Kommandeur der 112. Infanterie-Division
24.11.1942 - 31.12.1942 mit der Wahrnehmung der Geschäfte des Kommandierenden Generals der Sicherungstruppen und Befehlshabers im Heeresgebiet Don beauftragt
00.12.1942 - 20.07.1943 zugleich Kommandierender General des Generalkommandos z.b.V. Mieth (auch “Gruppe Mieth“) bei der Armeeabteilung Hollidt
12.01.1943 - 12.02.1943 mit der Wahrnehmung der Geschäfte des Kommandierenden Generals der Sicherungstruppen und Befehlshabers im Heeresgebiet Don beauftragt
20.07.1943 Kommandierender General des IV. Armee-Korps (Umbenennung aus Generalkommando z.b.V. Mieth)
02.09.1944 KIA
Awards and Decorations:
17.09.1914 Eisernes Kreuz II. Klasse
11.03.1915 Eisernes Kreuz I. Klasse
07.02.1915 Bayerischer Militär-Verdienstorden IV. Klasse mit Schwertern
22.03.1917 Braunschweigisches Kriegsverdienstkreuz II. Klasse
06.12.1917 Österreichisches Militär-Verdienstkreuz III. Klasse
29.01.1918 Eiserner Halbmond (Harp Madalyasi)
00.00.1918 Verwundetenabzeichen, 1918, in Schwarz
29.12.1934 Ehrenkreuz für Frontkämpfer
01.08.1942 Medaille "Winterschlacht im Osten 1941/42"
01.10.1936 Wehrmacht-Dienstauszeichnung IV. bis I. Klasse
29.10.1939 1939 Spange zum Eisernen Kreuz II. Klasse
04.02.1940 1939 Spange zum Eisernen Kreuz I. Klasse
00.00.194_ Ordinul Mihai Viteazul Clasa 3 (Rumania)
26.12.1941 Deutsches Kreuz in Gold
11.03.1942 Orden der Krone von Italien (Großoffizier)
00.00.1942 Medaille "Winterschlacht im Osten 1941/42" (Ostmedaille)
02.11.1943 Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes, as General der Infanterie and Kommandierender General IV. Armeekorps
01.03.1944 Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub #409, as General der Infanterie and Kommandierender General IV. Armeekorps
18.02.1944 Mentioned in Wehrmachtbericht
08.06.1944 Mentioned in Wehrmachtbericht
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Friedrich
Mieth, an officer of great physical and moral courage, was born in
Eberswalde, Brandenburg, about 30 miles northeast of Berlin, on June 4,
1888. He entered the army in 1906 as a Fahnenjunker in the 2nd Jaeger
Battalion and was commissioned in the infantry in 1907. He served with
distinction in World War I, where he fought on the Western Front, in
Rumania, and with the Turkish Army. He performed well, became a company
commander, and was wounded at least once. He remained in the army
throughout the Weimar era, joined the General Staff, worked in the
Defense Ministry, and was promoted to major in 1928. After Hitler came
to power, the highly capable Mieth rose rapidly as the Wehrmacht
expanded, being promoted to lieutenant colonel (1933), colonel (1935),
and major general on April 1, 1938. In the meantime he commanded the
27th Infantry Regiment at Rostock, Pomerania (1936–1938) and served as
chief of staff of Wehrkreis XII (1938–1939), which headquartered in
Wiesbaden, Hesse. He was chief of staff of the 1st Army on the Western
Front when World War II broke out.
Mieth was one of the first
officers to clash with Hitler and the Nazis over the Einsatzgruppen
(murder squads) and the SS and SD atrocities in Poland. In January 1940,
Reinhard Heydrich, the brutal chief of the SD, set up a liquidation
camp at Soldau, Poland, near the East Prussian border. When Mieth
learned of this, he assembled the officers of the 1st Army and told
them, “The SS has carried out mass executions without proper trials. The
SS has besmirched the Wehrmacht’s honor.”
Prior to Mieth’s
speech Hitler may have been unaware of Heydrich’s specific actions, but
he certainly endorsed them in principle. In this clash between the army
and the SS he quickly demonstrated which side he was on. Mieth was
dismissed from his post on January 22 and sent into retirement. General
Franz Halder, chief of the General Staff of the army and sometimes an
anti-Hitler conspirator, rescued Mieth from professional oblivion three
weeks later by naming him chief of the Operations Department (O Qu I) of
OKH. This took a considerable amount of courage on Halder’s part.
Remarkably, Mieth was promoted to lieutenant general on March 1,
1940—only five weeks after Hitler had sacked him.
In his new job,
Mieth was involved in planning and executing the Western campaign of
1940—especially the operations on the Upper Rhine. During the last phase
of the Battle of Dunkirk he served as OKH liaison officer with the 18th
Army in a successful effort to transfer its divisions to the south as
rapidly as possible. Partially as a result of these efforts, elements of
the 18th Army took Paris on June 14. Later Mieth helped coordinate the
buildup of forces between Army Group A (von Rundstedt) and OKH for the
final phase of the conquest of France and toured the 9th Army’s front as
the representative of General Halder. He was named chief of staff of
the Armistice Commission on June 25, 1940.
After France
capitulated and Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of the United Kingdom,
was cancelled, Friedrich Mieth apparently tired of his duties in Berlin
and asked for a command. He took over the 112th Infantry Division near
Mannheim on December 10, 1940, the day it was officially activated. Sent
to Russia in July, the 112th fought at Bobruisk, Kiev, and Bryansk and
suffered heavy losses during the retreat from Moscow in the winter of
1941–1942. It was occupying a relatively static sector of Army Group
Center’s line when Stalingrad was encircled on November 23, 1942.
When
the Rumanian armies collapsed, Hitler upgraded headquarters’ 11th Army
to Headquarters, Army Group Don, and called upon the brilliant Field
Marshal Erich von Manstein to stabilize the front and save 6th Army.
Manstein hastily summoned Mieth and named him commander of security and
rear-area troops for the new army group. Because of the rapid speed of
the Soviet breakthroughs, however, Mieth’s real function was to organize
ad hoc units and lead them into combat to help stem the Russian tide.
On New Year’s Day 1943, for example, he was in the Zymlia sector,
commanding four ad hoc combat groups, each of approximately regimental
strength, plus the 336th Infantry Division and what was left of the 7th
Luftwaffe Field Division. With these forces he was conducting a delaying
action near the Don River. His hastily organized headquarters was
already known as Korps Mieth.
From January to July 1943, Mieth
fought in the battles along the Don, in the Donetz, and in the retreat
to the Mius. During this period he had to maintain constant flexibility
because his units were always changing, as the southern sector of the
Eastern Front underwent crisis after crisis. On March 4, for example,
Mieth controlled the 336th and 384th Infantry divisions and the 23rd
Panzer Division. Five weeks later all these units had been transferred,
and Mieth was directing the 3rd Mountain and the 304th and 335th
Infantry divisions. Mieth, however, proved himself to be an excellent
field commander, and on April 20, 1943 (Hitler’s birthday), he was
promoted to general of infantry. His headquarters was recognized as a
permanent formation on July 20, when it was upgraded to IV Corps—named
after a unit destroyed at Stalingrad. In the meantime, it received its
corps units, including the 404th Artillery Command (Arko 404), the 44th
Signal Battalion, and the 404th Supply Troop.
Friedrich Mieth
continued to distinguish himself on the Russian Front throughout 1943
and into 1944, earning his Knight’s Cross and Oak Leaves in the process.
He did not make headlines in America or Britain, or even in Germany,
for that matter. He was, rather, one of many solid, dependable, highly
competent German generals, fighting very skillfully against heavy odds,
for a cause in which he did not believe and for a leader and regime he
did not love, but for a country he did love. Meanwhile, IV Corps was
pushed inexorably back, across the Dnieper, out of the Nikopol
Bridgehead, across the Nogay Steppe and over the Bug and Dnestr, all the
way to Moldavia in the eastern Carpathians, where the Soviet spring
offensive of 1944 was finally brought to a halt. Here, as part of
Colonel General Johannes Friessner’s Army Group South Ukraine, it
awaited the next, inevitable Soviet attack.
In the meantime,
secret negotiations were taking place between representatives of the
Soviet Union and the political enemies of Hitler’s ally, Rumanian
dictator Ion Antonescu. On August 20, the anticipated Soviet offensive
began with a massive artillery bombardment, followed by strong ground
attacks. In all, the Soviets had 90 infantry divisions and six tank and
mechanized corps, or more than 925,000 men. Friessner met them with
360,000 German soldiers (23 divisions, of which 21 were infantry) and 23
Rumanian divisions—all of which had lost the will to fight. Of the army
group’s 392-mile front, 160 miles were held by unreliable Rumanian
troops. Although the Germans held their positions, the Rumanian front
broke in a number of places, and there were incidents of Rumanians
disarming and arresting German liaison staffs and cutting German
communications and even firing on German troops. Friessner was already
retreating when the Soviets sprang the trap.
On the afternoon of
August 23, Antonescu was deposed and arrested and Rumania defected from
the Axis, and that night the king broadcast a message to the Rumanian
people stating that Rumania would join the United Nations against their
common enemy—Germany. Meanwhile, the Rumanian Army stopped fighting the
Soviets, whose motorized columns surged unopposed into the German rear.
They were already 40 miles behind IV Corps before Mieth learned what was
going on in Bucharest. Two days later Rumania formally declared war on
Germany.
Meanwhile, on the morning of August 24, Friessner made
the difficult decision to save what little of his army group he could
save (for the defense of Hungary) and abandon the rest. Those forces
already cut off in Rumania would have to break out and escape on their
own—if they could. These included virtually the entire 6th Army
(resurrected since Stalingrad) and the IV Corps of the 8th Army.
On
August 21, Mieth’s corps consisted of the German 370th, 79th, and 376th
Infantry divisions and the 11th Rumanian Division. Outflanked by a
major Red Army attack to the west, Mieth at once retreated to the south,
parallel to the Pruth River, although he lost a number of heavy guns in
the process. (It had rained, and his horses could not move them out of
the heavy mud.) Mieth had already lost contact with the corps on both
his flanks.
August 22 was a day of continuous fighting with
Soviet vanguards, as IV Corps slowly fell back to the previously
prepared Trajan position. The sky was cloudless and the heat oppressive.
The rainwater had already evaporated, and dust choked the veteran foot
soldiers, who nevertheless beat back every Soviet attack. By this point
of the war, the Luftwaffe was long since a spent force even in the East.
Soviet airplanes bombed and strafed all the roads more or less
continuously. No one had seen a German fighter plane for a long time.
Despite
these difficulties, Mieth managed to keep his corps together—except for
the 11th Rumanian, which had been engaged but was still not conforming
to his instructions. Mieth ordered Lieutenant General Friedrich-August
Weinknecht, the commander of the 79th Infantry, to visit the Rumanian
commander, to coordinate operations and bring the 11th back into the
battle. While the two divisional commanders were talking, panic-stricken
hordes of Rumanians—led by their officers—suddenly appeared and rushed
by them, babbling something about being under tank attack even though
not one vehicle could be heard. The Rumanian commander tried to halt the
rout and even resorted to using his whip, but he could not perform a
miracle. The next day he was forced to report that his division had
dissolved.
Fourth Corps continued its withdrawal on August 23,
under the remorseless sun and cloudless sky. Soviet mechanized and
armored attacks against the rearguards were bolder now and beaten off
with difficulty. No food had arrived for some time, and the troops ate
their Iron Rations or lived on what little corn they could find in the
poor Rumanian fields. The wounded, without medication or proper
attention, were carried along in primitive farm carts and died like
flies in the scorching heat. By August 24 the men were nearing
exhaustion when Mieth learned from a radio interception that Soviet
armor had overrun Husi, cutting IV Corps off to the south and destroying
or dispersing the supply units in the process. Any possibility of help
or resupply was now gone. Meanwhile, stragglers from two other crushed
German infantry divisions joined Mieth’s columns in an effort to escape
the impending disaster. On August 25 and 26, with strong Soviet forces
to his front and rear, Friedrich Mieth launched a series of desperate
attacks against Husi; however, due to the swampland that almost
surrounded the town, the stiffness of the Soviet resistance, and the
rapidly diminishing combat strength of his exhausted corps, he was
unable to take the place and reopen the escape route to the south. He
therefore ordered all carts burned and all unwanted horses shot.
General
Mieth’s new plan was desperate, although definitely in line with the
situation. He planned to change direction and march to the west. Fourth
Corps would attack across the Berlad River, destroy all its remaining
equipment, and break into small groups. These parties were then to head
for German lines in the Carpathian Mountains, about 70 miles away—or at
least Mieth hoped they were heading for German lines. He had had no
contact with any higher or adjacent headquarters for days (although he
must have assumed—correctly—that the latter had already been destroyed).
In reality, Mieth had no way of knowing where either German or enemy
forces were located.
The German assault group was supposed to
form up for the attack on the night of August 27–28. It was to be
spearheaded by the 79th Infantry Division and led by the four assault
guns still left to the division, followed by its two combat engineer
companies. The infantry by now was low in ammunition and too exhausted
to be of much use. The foot soldiers who could still walk followed like
zombies, in stupefied silence.
General Weinknecht tried to carry
out the assault as scheduled, but it proved to be impossible. The combat
organization of the 79th Infantry Division was breaking down,
communications were gone, and the exhausted troops, many of whom had not
eaten for days, simply could not be aroused in sufficient numbers.
Delay followed delay until well after daybreak. Meanwhile, a hollow-eyed
General Mieth showed up at the division command post, shaken and
disheveled. He told how his headquarters had been overrun by Soviet
troops a few hours before. With the Reds pressing heavily into his rear,
Mieth was not happy that Weinknecht had not yet crossed the river, and
the two exchanged harsh words, largely brought on by the physical and
mental strain of the preceding nine days. In any event, the 79th
Infantry, followed by other units and stragglers, crossed the river
under artillery and mortar fire and overran the Soviet blocking
positions on the morning of August 29. Friedrich Mieth himself was right
up front with the engineers in close combat, and this is where he died.
Due to conflicting reports, we do not know for sure whether he fell to a
Soviet bullet or to a heart attack, but he certainly would have
preferred the former.
Once across the Berlad, IV Corps broke up
as planned. Later that day, Red Army radio traffic revealed that Mieth’s
men had broken across the river in strength and that about 20,000 of
them had pushed southwest of Husi. Almost all of these were run down and
killed or captured by the Soviets or the Rumanians. Only one member of
the 79th Infantry Division reached German lines in Hungary 12 days
later. He was now 300 miles from Iasi, where the ordeal began. The
detailed reports of the other divisions of the IV Corps are lacking, but
they could not have done much better. In sum, Army Group South Ukraine
lost all but five of its divisions in the Rumanian disaster. Three of
these were west of the Soviet offensive when it began and were not
engaged, and two (the 13th Panzer and 10th Panzer Grenadier) were mobile
enough and acted quickly enough to escape. Some rear-area units, of
course, were far enough behind the front to escape as well, and a few
isolated bands of infantry made their way back to German lines weeks
after the fighting began. Exact losses will never be known but could not
have been much below 200,000 men. Most of these were never heard from
again.
Generalleutnant Friedrich Mieth with French officers, 1940.
General der Infanterie Friedrich Mieth with the staff of IV. Armeekorps in Nikopol, 30 December 1943.
General der Infanterie Friedrich Mieth with Rumanian officers.
General der Infanterie Friedrich Mieth with Rumanian officers in Jassy.
General der Infanterie Friedrich Mieth at Berghof.
General der Infanterie Friedrich Mieth at Berchtesgaden.
Source :
https://www.ebay.de/itm/273789841161
https://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=122002&p=2288698#p2288698
https://www.tracesofwar.com/persons/12134/Mieth-Friedrich.htm
https://weaponsandwarfare.com/2020/01/26/friedrich-mieth/
