Generalmajor Walter Fries (left, Kommandeur 29. Panzergrenadier-Division) posed with Oberst Dr.rer.pol. Fritz Polack (Kommandeur Artillerie-Regiment 29) after the Ritterkreuz award ceremony for Polack.
Fritz Polack (22 October 1892 – 6 April 1956) was a highly decorated Wehrmacht officer who rose from artillery lieutenant in World War I to Generalleutnant in World War II. A veteran of the Saxon Fußartillerie-Regiment Nr. 10, he earned both classes of the Iron Cross in 1914–1916 before studying political economy and rejoining the Reichswehr in 1934. By 1943 he commanded Artillerie-Regiment 29 (motorisiert) within the 29. Panzergrenadier-Division (under General Walter Fries) during the defense of Sicily in Operation Husky.
He received the Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes (Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross) on 27 August 1943 as Oberst and regimental commander. The official citation highlights his actions on 11 August 1943 at Brolo on Sicily’s north coast: “Oberst Polack assembled a Kampfgruppe with all available forces and used it to fight for control of the narrow passage at Brolo. He then held this position until he made contact with the Kampfgruppe led by Oberstleutnant Krüger.” This was no routine artillery duel—it was a desperate, improvised infantry-style stand by an artillery headquarters that saved the division’s escape route during the final German withdrawal from Sicily.
By early August 1943 the 29. Panzergrenadier-Division formed part of the German rearguard along Sicily’s northern coastal Highway 113 (the only viable east-west route). The division held the strong Naso Ridge–San Fratello line against the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division, but the Americans launched “end-run” amphibious landings to outflank them and race to Messina. Task Force Bernard (Lt. Col. Lyle W. Bernard’s understrength 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry—roughly 650 men—plus five Shermans, self-propelled 105 mm guns, engineers, and naval support from the cruiser USS Philadelphia and six destroyers) hit the beaches west of Brolo just after 0243 hours on 11 August.
Polack’s regimental HQ (a tiny force of artillerymen, HQ staff, and a few 20 mm Flak guns) occupied the commanding double-humped ridge of Monte Cipolla—a steep, scrub-covered height only 450 yards from the sea that overlooked the coastal road, the stone village of Brolo, the lemon groves (“the flats”), and the dry Brolo Riverbed. The balance of his artillery regiment and elements of the 71st Panzergrenadier Regiment were spread eastward along the coast.
The Americans landed almost undetected at first. Companies F and G scrambled up the precipitous northeastern nose of Monte Cipolla through lemon groves and over a 13-foot railroad embankment. Dawn broke with the hill seemingly in American hands.
Then Polack’s small headquarters erupted. Flares lit the sky like magnesium stars. Machine guns and small-arms fire ripped down the slopes, “tearing up the slopes around the scrambling Americans with small-arms fire, killing several.” The outgunned artillerymen poured fire into the climbing GIs; American bodies tumbled back down the brick-hard terraces. Polack’s party fought until they were forced to beat a hasty retreat off the hill and into the village of Brolo.
Polack immediately grasped the mortal danger: if the Americans seized the narrow coastal defile at Brolo, the entire 29th Division—and potentially larger German forces—would be cut off from Messina. He radioed General Fries, who ordered an immediate counterattack and began pulling troops from the Naso Ridge defenses. Polack wasted no time. He scraped together every man he could find—his own artillery personnel (now fighting as infantry), two companies of panzergrenadiers, and half a dozen tanks—and packed them into half-tracks and personnel carriers.
Around 1100 hours his Kampfgruppe Polack rumbled out of Brolo along Highway 113. Tanks and half-tracks clanked forward in a thunder of tracks and engines, infantry dismounting to push through gullies and stone walls. German guns opened up from the village; 20 mm Flak hammered the American positions on Monte Cipolla. In the lemon groves below, Polack’s tanks dueled American Shermans and self-propelled guns at point-blank range—one German tank and an American crew both burst into flames after a direct confrontation. His men overran and destroyed two American howitzers from Battery B and mowed down ammunition mules and runners.
The coastal road and riverbed became a hellscape. Naval shells from the Philadelphia and destroyers screamed in, shattering trucks and carving craters along the highway. Grass fires ignited by explosions burned telephone wires and isolated American units. A-36 fighter-bombers screamed overhead, strafing and bombing Brolo. American mortar and machine-gun fire cut down German scouting parties (one 30-man group advancing down the Brolo Riverbed was almost annihilated). Yet Polack’s Kampfgruppe seized and held the vital narrow passage at Brolo—the choke point that controlled the retreat route.
All afternoon the fighting raged. Bernard’s men on Monte Cipolla were squeezed into a shrinking perimeter; radio pleas grew desperate (“Enemy counterattacking fiercely. Do something!”). Misplaced American bombs even killed 19 of their own men and destroyed Battery A’s remaining howitzers. German tracers zipped through the darkness “like neatly organized fireflies,” bullets churning the hard ground while figures ran, cursed, and fell.
Polack’s force maintained the position under relentless naval and air pounding until late in the day, when they finally linked up with Kampfgruppe Krüger (elements of the 71st Panzergrenadier Regiment under Oberstleutnant Walter Krüger advancing from the west). The link-up secured the coastal highway. The 29th Panzergrenadier Division was able to withdraw eastward past the trap, loading men and vehicles onto trucks under cover of night and shellfire. Most of the division escaped to Messina and crossed the Strait of Messina in the final evacuation (Operation Lehrgang), completed by 17 August.
Polack’s rapid assembly of a scratch Kampfgruppe, his personal leadership in the close-quarters fight, and his stubborn defense of the Brolo defile prevented the Americans from severing the German line of retreat. This action—turning artillerymen into street-fighting infantry and coordinating tanks and infantry under devastating naval gunfire—directly earned him the Knight’s Cross.
The award recognized not only bravery but decisive leadership that preserved combat power for the Italian mainland campaign. Polack later commanded the 29. Panzergrenadier-Division itself (from August 1944) and was nominated (but not officially awarded due to the war’s end) for the Oak Leaves. He surrendered to U.S. forces in Italy in 1945 and died in 1956.
The “Imbroglio at Brolo” (as one American account called it) was a classic small-unit knife-fight in a larger campaign: a handful of determined Germans under an artillery colonel turned back a surprise amphibious thrust and kept the escape corridor open for thousands. That is the vivid, gritty action that won Fritz Polack the Ritterkreuz.
Source :
https://grokipedia.com/page/fritz_polack
https://www.tracesofwar.com/persons/35763/Polack-Drrerpol-Fritz.htm
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