73rd Infantry Division (Wehrmacht)
West campaign Balkan campaign German - Soviet War
The 73rd Infantry Division was a military major unit of the Wehrmacht in World War II.
Division history
The Division was established on 26 August 1939 as part of the second wave formation from parts of the 17th Infantry Division in Military District XIII in Nuremberg and used in the Polish campaign as a reserve of the 4th Army. At the western campaign in 1940, she took first as a reserve of the 16th Army, in the second phase of the Association of the 12th Army in part. Then it was used as garrison troops in Alsace.
Beginning of 1941 was the relocation to Romania and the march to Bulgaria, where they ran as part of the 12th Army for Balkan campaign against Yugoslavia in April. She stayed afterwards for a short time in Macedonia and prepared the room then Iaşi on the Operation Barbarossa before. Here it was used in the dressing of the 11th Army, cruising past Chişinău, Nikolayev and Kherson to the Isthmus of Perekop ago. After the breakthrough to the Crimea, she participated in the fighting there until it was delivered in December to the 1st Panzer Army and subsequently used in the Miusfront.
In the summer of 1942, she went over the lower Don before the Kuban and took, assumed now the 17th Army, among others in the battle for Novorossiysk part. After the German retreat from the Caucasus she was involved in the defense of the Kuban bridgehead. After the evacuation of the bridgehead in the fall of 1943, she was temporarily employed at the 6th Army in the Melitopol. In the spring of 1944 she was withdrawn to the Crimea and bruised during the ensuing Battle of the Crimea. Only remnants of the Division were evacuated to Romania.
On 16 June 1944, the Division in Hungary was reorganized and relocated in August for the IV SS Panzer Corps on the Vistula River, where it was destroyed during the fighting in the Warsaw area in September 1944. Army Group Centre was requested by the 73rd Infantry to hold the bridgehead Praga east of the Vistula, which was eventually discarded. After a reorganization as a battle group, they fought until their re- annihilation at Gdansk in April 1945. The division headquarters was evacuated from Danzig, but arrived at the sinking of the steamship Goya by a Soviet submarine in the night of 16 April 17, 1945 killed.
Structure
People
- Lieutenant Colonel Otto Hitzfeld, regimental commander IR 213 (* May 7, 1898 Schluchseewerk, † December 6, 1990 Dossenheim )