Original WWII German General Gause Photo Album – Rommel Inspection Denmark 1943 – Sabotage Troops – Atlantic Wall – Hanstholm – Very Rare Images

Description

 

Photo album found in 2024 in Latvia. General Gause was captured in the Courland Pocket (Kurland), astounding that such an item that was for in the personal documents of General Gause.

In April he was assigned to Generalkommando II Armeekorps in Kurland (General staff of Army Corps, Kurland). Gause was captured by Soviet troops in the Courland Pocket in 1945 and was a prisoner of the Soviets until his release in 1955 (more on Gause below).

Item Description: 

Photo Album in A4 size, with folded Newspaper of the same event pictured in the photo album.

Rommel Inspects Denmark

Video from Deutsche Wochenschau Nr 694

At 08:50 – It can be clearly seen the same event with the same Officers. 

The US Naval Institute published the following article below:  https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1954/june/rommel-normandy

In November, 1943, Field Marshal Rom­mel received orders to inspect the de­fences of north-western Europe against a possible invasion and to report his findings to Hitler’s H.Q. At his repeated request I was appointed as his naval adviser. I knew the whole of the coasts in question and all the ports from my own experience, for I had been in charge of minesweeping and later of escorts too, first in the German Bight of the North Sea and from the summer of 1940 on in Holland, Belgium, and France. From February to August, 1943, I had been in Italy where I became acquainted with Gen­eral Gause, Rommel’s Chief-of-Staff in Africa, a capable East-Prussian with a dry sense of humor. We formed rather similar opinions on the over-all situation, and that is why I found myself a member of the staff of Army Group B, with little previous experi­ence in Army ways.

There was no Army Group B at that time, only a small staff, composed of twelve to fifteen officers. I joined them early in De­cember, 1943, in Denmark, where we started on our assignment. It was a type of work that was new to us all. Amphibious operations had been neglected almost completely by our Armed Forces between the wars; there had never been any combined landing exercises. My own practical knowledge was restricted to the conquest of the Baltic Islands in Oc­tober, 1917, when the destroyer, whose gun­nery officer I was, put an infantry company ashore by means of ships’ boats, and I tried with negligible results to silence a field bat­tery firing from somewhere in the woods.

True, Norway had been an amphibious success, but it had been a surprise operation against half a dozen inadequately defended ports. Now it was a question of preparing extended coasts against one or more large-scale attacks from the sea, executed by mod­ern landing vessels and supported by power­ful fleets and air forces. Right from the be­ginning there was no doubt that the Allies would need a large port comparatively soon after establishing a bridgehead, yet would not make any attempt to take one by direct attack. They had tried that out at Dieppe and had suffered a heavy defeat. Now all the larger ports were still better fortified and prepared. Therefore, it was logical to assume that they would land on the open beach and try to cut off one of the major ports.

Denmark was not a likely target of the main assault. Any invasion attempt would probably be within easy operational range of the fighters based on southern England, i.e., somewhere on the coast between Den Helder in Holland and the Gulf of St. Malo in east­ern Brittany. Of course, the possibility of secondary operations outside this area was not to be neglected. Grand Admiral Raeder, who at that time had been in retirement for almost a year, wrote a letter to me expressing his concern for the Skagerrak. To prevent a break-through for taking the Jutland Pen­insula from the rear, we suggested in our re­port laying more minefields with many anti­sweeping devices. This was done, and the mines together with some coastal batteries, among them two with 15 inch guns, made the Skagerrak safer than many other places.

In Denmark, we were at once confronted with the problem of defending long and excellent landing beaches with partly motorized infantry, little armor, and hardly any airforce and navy. Rommel very soon came to the conclusion that putting the infantry in a heavily mined belt of field fortifications along the shore was the only practical solu­tion in view of the pronounced inferiority in the air, and that everything should be done to make this “Rommel Belt” as strong and elastic as possible. For this purpose the idea of beach obstacles was evolved here. We had never heard any details of the defences of Tarawa, not even the name of the island, as far as I remember. We took our cue from obsolete tank obstacles made of three steel beams riveted together at right angles. Con­sidered as entirely useless on land, they might rip open light vessels in shallow water. So in they went. On Fana Island off Esbierg, wide flat beaches gave us the notion of erecting strong wooden stakes to prevent gliders from alighting or to damage them when they tried to come in.

After an inspection of ten days we com­piled our report. Rommel’s plan was clear in general outline although much work had still to be done to fill in the details. He intended to fight near the beach, with the infantry and artillery in strong-points with all-around de­fence, protected by land mines and as many obstacles in the shallow water as possible, the armored divisions (if any) closed up to the infantry positions. In this way, the enemy was to be prevented from establishing a large beachhead from which he could not be ejected again without strong armor and air which we had not. Rommel went to Hitler’s H.Q. with this plan and got a general permission to continue on these lines.

A few days before Christmas, 1943, we took up our quarters at Fontainebleau, forty miles south-southeast of Paris, and started work at once. Field Marshal von Rundstedt, C.-in-C. in France, was an impressive old gentleman whom I had met for the first time in the spring of 1942 at St. Nazaire after the British raid on that port. Under him there were the 15th Army from the Schelde River to the Orne, the 7th Army from the Orne to the Loire, the 1st Army from there to the Spanish frontier, the 19th Army in southern France, and the armored divisions (seven, later ten, stationed all over France) as a separate army under General Geyr von Schweppenburg. To the 3rd Air Fleet (Field Marshal Sperrle), to the Navy Group West (Admiral Krancke) and to the 88th Army Corps in Holland, von Rundstedt could give directives only. In the whole of France the Air Force had not more than 500 planes. The Navy was strong in obsolete submarines, a few with schnorkel; they all got their orders from Grand Admiral Donitz’s H.Q. near Berlin. The surface forces consisted of six destroyers in Bay of Biscay ports, five torpedo-boats in Le Havre, some E-boat flotillas, and about 500 minesweepers, patrol boats, submarine chasers, and escort vessels.

There was little hope of reinforcements of the air and naval forces, and it became only too evident that the defence would have to be conducted almost exclusively by the army and the naval coast artillery. The German papers and news reels were full of reports and pictures of the Atlantic Wall. We were somewhat surprised when we could not find this “Wall.” For Operation Sea Lion a group of four heavy batteries (11- to 16-inch guns) had been erected near Boulogne at the nar­rowest part of the Channel. This is where all the reports and photos were made. Here the individual divisions held comparatively nar­row sectors, and there was another chain of divisions some miles inland. More to the west, the sectors grew larger and the re­serves thinner. Between Orne and Vire, one weak division of seven battalions held a front of about thirty miles without any re­serves. Distances between fortified observa­tion posts along the shore were up to 1000 yards. In Britanny, the sectors were still wider, but the rocky coast was not at all suited for a landing operation on a large scale. Outside the ports there ‘was not a single heavy battery, and medium batteries were few and far between. On the other hand, the Channel Islands were strongly fortified and boasted as many heavy guns as all the ports from the Somme to the Loire. Their installation was one of Hitler’s pet schemes, consuming up to 200,000 tons of fortifica­tion material per month which might have created a real Atlantic Wall.

The disposition of the troops and fortifica­tions reflected the current ideas on the prob­able place of attack and on the counter­measures. OKW, continentally minded, were firmly convinced that the Allies would cross at the narrow part of the Channel; they con­sidered the Seine as highly improbable. Von Rundstedt thought that the main thrust might be directed against the Somme area where the beaches were particularly suited for a large landing. The Navy preferred the Schelde and the Seine Bight where the waters between them were so full of ground mines that a major operation would be greatly hampered. Moreover, a frontal attack on the group of batteries around Boulogne-Calais was contrary to British concepts of am­phibious warfare.

At first, Rommel concurred with Rund­stedt, but he soon changed his opinion and thought the Seine Bight most probable. The Schelde was ruled out by the lack of interest of the Allied air force for its hinterland. Even after the Normandy landings OKW stubbornly held to the conviction that the main attack would happen near Boulogne- Calais. This attitude greatly handicapped Rommel in his attempts to improve the situation along the Seine Bight.

The divergence of opinions on the best method of dealing with the assault from the sea was no less of a hindrance. When Rom­mel came to France, he found that the armored divisions were to be kept well in­land, in the woods of southern Normandy and around Paris; after the landing, they were to counter-attack en masse. Rommel said that under ordinary circumstances this would be quite all right, but would not work in view of the enemy air supremacy. He was the only general with recent experience in that field and expected that any German attempt at large-scale mobile operations would be broken up or critically delayed from the air. That is why he planned to check the invasion at the outset before the enemy could form a large beachhead. His idea was to make the best possible use of everything the three services could con­tribute to a defence on and near the beach. He considered the counter-measures against the threatening Allied offensive as an armed forces problem to whose solution the armored force was a most valuable, but not the only, contribution. Although Rommel’s plans were approved by Hitler and Rundstedt, Geyr carried his point, too. He went to OKW and got General Jodi’s promise to keep back the four best armored divisions. In this way the Battle in Normandy was fought on two diametrically opposite plans.

Of course, it took some time to get a clear picture of all these aspects of a complex situation. Our first impression was that con­trary to our expectations the situation was almost worse than in Denmark, considering the close proximity of the Allied bases. Rommel at once set to work to improve this unsatisfactory state of affairs.

In trips of two to three days he inspected the coasts and divisions, first from Nor­mandy to Holland. As a rule, he was accom­panied by the engineer general, the naval adviser, an aide, and one or two more officers (artillery, Air Force, communica­tions, or personnel), sometimes a photog­rapher. Rommel believed in collecting per­sonal impressions of men and localities. All the time, there was not a single formal re­view. Work and training were going on whilst he went from staff to staff and from position to position. Very quickly he saw all that was necessary, and he did not waste much time. Sometimes, he talked to the men. His speeches were simple, short, and to the point. The soldiers liked him and threw themselves into the increased work with a will.

Not all the higher staffs were convinced that he was right. Rommel could give sug­gestions only, and work lagged in some parts of the coast until he was made C.-in-C. of the 88th Army Corps, and the 15th and 7th Armies. Then he could give orders, but more than a month had been lost. He retained his position as inspecting general for the other parts of France, and we made two trips to the coast south of the Loire, to La Rochelle and Bordeaux, and in southern France to Marseilles and Toulon.

Everywhere he expounded his plan of fighting near the beach, of forming a kind of reef in the water, a heavily-mined belt along the coast, and of preventing landings from the air near the coast. The amount of work and material needed for its execution was tremendous; time was short. For instance, a little under two million land mines had been laid when he arrived. His target was be­tween fifty and a hundred million; four million were actually laid within four months. Mines were almost a hobby with him; he had a good grasp of technical problems and de­vised quite a number of improvised mines and obstacles himself. There were interesting similarities between mine warfare on land and at sea. Unfortunately, the Navy did not see eye to eye with us. We wanted three zones of naval mines in front of the beach obstacles, coastal mines of the KMA type (a cement block with 110 lbs. of explosive inside, on top a light iron frame, about six feet high, crowned by a normal mine horn, with a snag line attached) for shallow water from two to ten fathoms, ground mines of various types (magnetic, acoustic, mixed) down to twenty fathoms, and anchored mines for deeper water. Quite a number of minefields had been laid in the middle of the Channel in 1942/43 (I had taken part in some of these operations), but it could be expected that many of these mines had broken adrift and the rest would be swept easily.

Navy Group West was of the opinion that a wide channel along the coast should be kept free from mines for traffic (which had stopped for all practical purposes) and that the In­vasion would not happen before August anyhow. Rommel could not give any orders, and the upshot was that in 1944 not a single mine of any kind was laid in the western part of the Seine Bight. So-called “lightning fields” were prepared and kept in readiness to be laid when an assault threatened. It was no surprise that this method failed com­pletely off the invasion beaches where it was needed most.

In 1944, the first oyster mines (pressure) were completed. Rommel asked for them to be laid from the air off the Isle of Wight in the spring of 1944 as one of the few offensive measures still open to us. The use of this new mine was not permitted, however, because they might fall into British hands and then be used against us. No means existed for sweeping them at that time.

The beach obstacles were more successful. Since there was no officially approved pat­tern, the divisions were given considerable latitude to devise anything that might be a danger or at least a nuisance. Tripods, tetrahedrons, and stakes with mines or steel cutters on top were most widely used. The great range of the tide, nearly thirty feet, necessitated many rows of obstacles to fill the foreshore from high water to low water. Work was begun at the level just below high water and rarely completed. There were hardly any obstacles under low water when the invasion started. The glider ob­stacles were not finished either and not yet dangerous enough although an impressive number of “Rommel asparagus,” as the men called them, embellished the open tracts especially around Caen. Inundations were used wherever possible, mainly in Holland and Flanders, little in Normandy. Rommel gave strict orders to open the dikes as a last emergency only, because the salt water would have spoilt the land for many years.

Of course, the normal fortifications and ar­tillery positions were by no means neglected. Many worries were caused by the sparsity of troops, particularly in the western part of the possible attack area, their insufficient armament, lack of modern artillery, of uni­form artillery command and of material for building bombproof shelters. Attempts to get more troops to the area from the Orne to Cherbourg succeeded only in part. One in­fantry division and one airborne division were sent there, but not a Flak Corps and two armored divisions which could have been made available. There was only one comparatively weak armored division astride the Orne, and another on the Somme. The others were kept inland.

The severe drain on the German Army of the war in Russia became evident in many ways. Of the 49 infantry divisions in the West (31 between Schelde and Loire) more than half were under strength and without battle training and experience as mobile units because they had been manning the local defences on the coast for years. Over and again, they had sent their best officers and men to the East and received half-­invalids and recruits as replacements. Small wonder that quite a few of the commanders were below the average.

Many divisions had seven battalions only, instead of the usual nine, and in some one or two battalions there were volunteers from among the prisoners of war, Georgians, Tartars, Kalmycks, and even Indians. Some divisions were composed of Air Force per­sonnel, well-armed, but generally not so well officered. They were still part of the Air Force.

The infantry divisions were armed with weapons of almost every European make. One held the record with exactly one hun­dred different types of weapons. It goes without saying that logistics and training were rendered very difficult.

The artillery was not better off as to ma­terial, worse as to organization. There were guns of various German, French, Russian, and Czech makes; for some types, ammuni­tion was no longer manufactured. These guns might belong to the Army Coast Artillery, Field Artillery, Navy Coast Artillery, Navy A.A. Artillery, or Air Force A.A. Artillery. The Navy Coast Artillery was under so- called “Sea Commandants” (rear admirals or captains) as long as the enemy was on the water. As soon as he landed these batteries came under the orders of the Army artillery commanders. This switch-over remained a bone of contention all the time because the enemy might be ashore at some points and yet it might be far more productive to fire at targets at sea.

The position of the coast artillery batteries and their protection was another subject of hot dispute which was never settled satis­factorily. The Navy wanted them forward where they could fire directly at their moving targets at sea. The Army preferred them well concealed, a mile or so behind the beach from where they could fire indirectly only. Armor would have been the best protection but was unobtainable. Concrete shelters had the great disadvantage of making all-around fire impossible. After some devastating bomb attacks on unprotected batteries, orders were given by OKW to put all coast defence guns under concrete regardless of angles of fire. This order came too late for some batteries, and they were pulled back from the beach.

In the winter of 1943-44 the Navy was asked to contribute every gun that could be rnade available to the defence of the coast between the ports. At Hitler’s orders most guns had been installed in Norway, to the neglect of France. Only two 210 mm. bat­teries and two 150 mm. batteries of four guns each could be procured. One of each caliber was given to the 15th Army and 7th Army. In this way one 210 mm. battery was installed not far from Calais in an area that was well fortified. The other was erected at Marcouf southeast of Cherbourg and had three guns ready on D-day. One 150 mm. battery went to Longues near Bayeux, the other to the southern bank of the mouth of the Seine. Rommel had no say in selecting the positions for these guns.

It was uphill work, but notwithstanding many difficulties progress was to be seen soon, and when the months went by hope increased that we might be successful after all. Under Rommel’s leadership the spirit of the troops improved noticeably, and every­body did his best.

At the beginning of March our staff quar­ters were moved to La Roche Guyon on the Seine, about forty miles west of Paris. Life there was quiet and interesting. When we were not on the road for inspections, Rom­mel used to take long walks in the beautiful surroundings, accompanied by two or three officers. He generally had lunch and supper with about ten of us at an oval table. My place was on his right; whenever we had a guest—and we had many—he took my seat, and I moved down one. In this way I had the opportunity of talking with many well- known men, like Rundstedt, Guderian, the panzer leader, Sperrle, 3rd Air Fleet, Geyr von Schweppenburg, Blumentritt, Rund- stedt’s Chief-of-Staff, Dr. Dorpmiiller, the Minister of Transport, Kaufman, in charge of sea transport, von Stiilpnagel, the Mili­tary Governor of France, the commanders of the armies and many army corps and di­visions, and others.

When we had no guests, topics of our con­versation were our work, experiences in the two wars, but also educational and technical problems. Rommel was a good listener who was fond of a good joke even when it was at his own expense. He liked best to talk about his experiences as commander of an armored division in the French campaign in 1940 and, of course, in North Africa. General Speidel, in his spare time a doctor of history, who followed Gause as Chief-of-Staff in April, 1944, came from Russia and could tell vividly about the situation there.

Our fare was simple, to the regret of the officer in charge of culinary arrangements who owned a famous hotel. Rommel drank very little and did not smoke at all. In his absence there was sometimes a mild binge, but I cannot remember ever having seen an officer of his staff the worse for alcohol. Be­sides walking, our recreations were pingpong, some tennis, radio, and movies. I read a lot of English books which I picked up in Paris cheaply, discovering among others The Saint and Nero Wolfe. Sometimes, I went on trips of my own to the Sea Commanders and the admirals over them to explain Rommel’s ideas, to improve cooperation, and to make plans for making the larger ports unusable for the longest possible time in case the enemy succeeded in getting near them. I talked about this problem particularly with Rear-Admiral Hennecke, Sea Commandant at Cherbourg, whom I knew well, and it seems that we succeeded in making quite a mess of the port and its installations. On the other hand we decided to leave the small fishing ports in Britanny intact because the few tons they could handle would not in­fluence the outcome of the campaign and after the war nobody would build them up again whereas the large ports would probably be put in order even during the war.

Intelligence of enemy intentions was non­existent; of his dispositions, fragmentary— mostly based upon the results of radio inter­ception. It was disturbing that our air recon­naissance hardly ever got through to south­ern England. The last air photos made be­fore the Invasion were from May 25th. We got some good pictures of towed Mulberry components but failed to recognize their full significance. They were labeled as probable landing piers.

All through May the weather was fine and clear, and an attack was expected daily. We were surprised and grateful that it did not come off. The air attacks on bridges and rail­ways made it quite evident that Normandy and the Seine Bight were being cut out of the rest of France and the assault was to be expected there. Rommel applied for the opening of V-l-fire (buzz bombs) on the assembly areas in southern England, for air attacks on Southampton and Portsmouth, for the laying of oyster mines in the channels leading to sea from these ports, for moving two armored divisions and the flak corps to Normandy—not a single one of the requests was granted. He was on his way to Hitler’s H.Q. at Berchtesgaden when the storm broke.

On June 5th, 1944, there seemed to be little danger of an assault from the sea in view of high winds and low clouds and a weather forecast saying “no change.” So I went to Paris, a drive of an hour, to talk the situation over at Navy Group H.Q. Afterwards, I spent some time in the beautiful French Navy Museum in the Trocadero, in spite of an air raid alarm. Then I had lunch at the Ritz with a retired admiral representing a firm making a novel kind of concrete with only about ten per cent of the steel needed for normal concrete. Afterwards I picked up the naval liaison officer of the 15th Army and took him to our staff quarters. There was much air activity in spite of the scudding clouds, and we kept our eyes peeled.

For the evening Speidel had some guests, among them Ernest Jiinger (the most famous infantry subaltern of World War I, now a well-known writer), a diplomat who had re­turned from the United States in 1942, a war correspondent with the highest Bavarian decoration of World War I, a general staff officer who had been seriously injured as a regimental commander in Russia, and a few others. There was a lively conversation, many topics were discussed, among them the United States at length, and we had not the slightest inkling that an American general had set in motion the mighty machine of In­vasion. The minesweeping flotillas approach­ing our coast at that time were not sighted and reported. Why, I have not been able to find out; visibility improved during the afternoon, and our bombed radar stations were almost all in working order again.

Most of our guests left around midnight, but a small group sat up, contrary to our custom. Shortly after 2 a.m. we received the first reports of air landings at various places. At first, it was not clear whether it was a di­version only or the genuine thing. By and by it turned out to be an attack on a large scale and a wide front, from east of the Orne to the Cotentin Peninsula. Nobody went to bed, our remaining guests stayed till afternoon. We witnessed the difficulties and delays Speidel experienced until he got permission to move the nearest armored divisions up. Rommel arrived towards evening.

From the naval point of view, little could be done. Torpedo-boats and E-boats had some success, but were soon put out of action, mainly by bomb attacks on their bases. Two DDs were lost in a fight off Ouessant, the others turned back to the Gironde. Later, a few schnorkel submarines operated quite successfully in the Channel, and one-man-torpedoes made some hits at their first operation that came as a surprise to the Allies. But all these were no more than pin pricks.

I saw the Allied Fleet from Le Havre on a clear day and accompanied Rommel a few times to the front. Life in the villages near the firing line went on as usual. It was rather a contrast to see a father cutting his boy’s hair, peasants driving about in horse car­riages, soldiers strolling with girls, men working in gardens, a few hundred paces from the command post of an armored di­vision forward of the heavier guns, with the rumble of a great battle as background.

After three days it was quite obvious that it would be impossible to crush the Allied beachhead. On the contrary, losses mounted steadily to such a degree that the day could be foreseen when there would not be enough troops left to oppose an enemy break­through. Cherbourg was soon cut off. A Navy transport detachment was the last unit to carry ammunition and medical stores into the “fortress” that had no fortifi­cations against attack from land. This de­tachment got back through the Americans by-passing their road blocks by driving through an unguarded gap among the sand dunes on the west coast of the Cotentin. The same unit later witnessed the American break-through at Avranches. Hidden on a wooded hill they were cut off once more but got through again.

In this critical situation Rommel con­sidered the war as lost and was determined to act accordingly. On many walks he talked about the necessity of bringing the war to an end, although he did not tell me his actual plan of offering an armistice before the Allies broke out of the beachhead. He was afraid that continuing the war would prepare the road for communism.

On July 17th, when he returned from the front, his car was hit by fighters and over­turned. He suffered four fractures of the skull and was laid up for many weeks. With him the only man was out of action who might have gone on when the badly pre­pared attempt at Hitler’s life on July 20th failed. I saw him and read to him almost daily in the hospital near Paris until he was transferred to Germany in the first days of August. There, I visited him in his home near Ulm and stayed for a night as his guest two days before he was forced by Hitler’s emissaries to take poison.

It is my impression that, with luck, he might have defeated the Allied attack if he had had a completely free hand from the be­ginning. His death was a loss not only for Germany. He was more than an excellent tactician and leader of men. He had political insight, too, contrary to many of his col­leagues, and he felt as a European. With his name, his common sense and his personal modesty he was a man to render valuable services to the reconstruction of the Western World.

A German Navy cadet in 1914, Admiral Ruge became an officer in 1916, served in cruisers, battleships, and destroyers, and between wars spent a total of thirteen years in mine develop­ment and minesweeping. He was Captain in Command of Minesweeping Flotillas from 1937 to 1941, in command of Western Defences (mine­sweeping, escorts, patrol) from 1941 to 1943, then served as naval adviser on Rommel’s staff until the Normandy invasion, and Chief of Naval Construction from that time until the end of hostilities. Admiral Ruge is the author of Entscheidung im Pazifik, a book describing World War II in the Pacific for the German public.

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Hermann von Hanneken (1890–1981) – German General of the Infantry

v
Hermann Konstantin Albert Julius von Hanneken was a German military officer who served in both World Wars. Born on January 5, 1890, in Gotha, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, he embarked on his military career in 1908. During World War I, he held various staff positions and continued his service in the interwar Reichswehr. By World War II, he had risen to the rank of General of the Infantry.

From September 29, 1942, to January 1945, von Hanneken served as the supreme commander of German forces in Denmark. In this role, he declared martial law in August 1943 in response to increasing sabotage activities and oversaw the dissolution of the Danish military. He reportedly objected to the planned deportation of Danish Jews, but his concerns were dismissed by higher authorities.

In January 1945, von Hanneken was relieved of his command due to allegations of corruption and was sentenced to eight years in prison by a German military court. However, he was reinstated shortly thereafter. Post-war, he was tried in Denmark during the 1948 “Großer Kriegsverbrecherprozess” (Great War Criminal Trial) and initially sentenced to eight years in prison. On appeal in 1949, he was acquitted.

Von Hanneken passed away on July 22, 1981, in Herford, North Rhine-Westphalia.

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General Kurt Cuno

He is notably linked to Denmark through his command of the 233rd Reserve Panzer Division, which was stationed in central Jutland, Denmark.

Deployment in Denmark
From August 8, 1943, to May 20, 1944, Cuno commanded the 233rd Reserve Panzer Division.

The division was headquartered in Horsens, a town in Jutland. Its primary role in Denmark was training tank crews and motorized troops. The unit did not participate in front-line combat while in Denmark, though there were occasional Allied air raids.

Injury and Later Role
On January 19, 1942, during fighting on the Eastern Front near the Don River, Cuno was severely wounded, resulting in the amputation of his lower left leg. After recovering, he was unfit for front-line duty and was assigned to administrative roles. He later became the General of Motor Transport in the German Army High Command (OKH). Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross (January 18, 1942), as an Oberst (Colonel) and commander of Panzer Regiment 39

After the War
He was taken prisoner by Allied forces in June 1944. Released in 1947. He died in Munich on July 14, 1961.

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Sabotage Troop 

Pictured is Oberleutnant Welk – DKiG

There is information available about an individual named Walter Welk who was an Oberleutnant in the 8th Grenadier Regiment 509 and was awarded the Deutsches Kreuz in Gold on September 26, 1944

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Friedrich Gause (1893–1973)

Role in the Wehrmacht:
Rank: Generalleutnant (Lieutenant General)

Position: Chief of Staff to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (Afrika Korps and Army Group Africa)

Service: German Army (Heer), Wehrmacht

Key Contributions and Role:
Gause was most notably the chief of staff to Rommel during the North African Campaign (1941–1943).

As Rommel’s right-hand man, he was deeply involved in operational planning and logistics for the Deutsches Afrikakorps (DAK) and later Panzer Army Africa and Army Group Africa.

Gause helped manage the complex coordination between German and Italian forces in North Africa.

Known for his organizational skills and loyalty, he was instrumental in sustaining German forces in the harsh desert environment under difficult supply conditions.

Post-War:
After the war, Gause authored a number of military historical works, including contributions to accounts of the North African campaign and Rommel’s leadership.

He is considered an important figure for military historians studying the Wehrmacht’s operations in Africa.