Some info about the question "ouyanghui" asked days ago

XXIV Panzer Korp's headquarter at Shilin was overrun by Russians in the evening Jan 14 1943. only Staff Chief Col. Heidkamper, Lt. Hans Koch, Lt. Melms and Intelligence officer May. von Platen escaped. Gen. Martin Wandel and all other staffs including 10 officers and 68 noncom / soldiers were captured and shotted on the village's square.
the headquarter was overrun again on 20th at Opyt and lost all radios/command vehicles. commander of 387th infantry division  in the order Gen Arno Jahr took command of the Korps and on 20th he was trapped by russians along with some hundreds of his men and he shotted himself before being taken prisoner by russians. on 21st his successor May. Gen. Karl Eibl (previously commander of 385th infantry division in the order) was killed by a russian shell when he was on a truck(or a grenade from an italian soldier?)
Operation Little Saturn is the aftermath of Battle of Stalingrad. it's main target is Don and Rostov and to cutoff stalingrad relife force from Von Manstein. the incident involving the death of Gen. Martin Wandel happened in area Ostrogoshsk-Rossoch where is the north part of the battlefield hundreds of kilometers away from Stalingrad (very close to Voronezh). AXIS troops trapped in the area were XXIV Panzer Korps(including 385th&387infantry division,27th panzer division ,Fuhrer Begleit Batallion - in the order of Grossdeutschland Division and part of 8th SS Cavalry Division "Florian Geyer". all severely understrengthened. and Italian 3rd Alpine Division "Julia" and Italian "Monte Cervino" Alpine Ski Battalion) and Italian Alpine Corps.
Some investigation about the truth:
on Dec 30 1942,the day Operation "Little Saturn" ended, XXIV's front was between Kantemirovka-Ivanovka. it's opponent was 1st Guards Army. the name of village that incident happened was Shilin or Chilino. I can't find neither names on map but I do find a village named "Zhilino" located some 30 kilometers behind the middle of Kantemirovka-Ivanovka line. I guess between the end of "little saturn" and the begining of "Gallop" russians just kept pressing on and gave no break to germans. Serverly short of strength made germans not be able to form a firm and continuous defence line. meantime many gaps on the line made it so easy for russians to use their infiltration/penertration tactic (like Tastinskaya Raid). so it quite possible Gen. Martin Wandel's command post was overrun by surprise. about killing POW, especially high rank POW with high potencial intelligence value, it was still quite possible because there were report from russians saying too many pows exhaust the strength of attacking force. East front is hell for both sides fighting with hatred and killing pows was quite common. (unfortunately part of 8th ss cavalry division "Florian Geyer" was attached to XXIV and the commander Hermann Fegelein was with this unit too. their reputation was not that good at that time)

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• It is a good piece of information you found there. -Giantfan- ♂ (843 bytes) () 02/06/2012 postreply 07:26:47

• glad to grab you eyes:) -萤火虫17pdr- ♂ (762 bytes) () 02/06/2012 postreply 15:51:26