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The video is a revelation of General Wehrmacht Gotthard Heinrici in family reports and diary entries. I accompanied them with relevant illustrations and a chronicle.
Gotthard Heinrici was born in Gumbinnen in East Prussia (now Gusev in the Kaliningrad Region) in the family of a Lutheran priest. Little is known about his personal life. He was a relative of General Gerd von Rundstedt and was married to Gertrude Heinrici, half Jewish. Hitler personally granted him permission to marry. Heinrici had two children: a son, Hartmut, also fought in the Wehrmacht against the USSR (also mentioned in letters), and a daughter.
Heinrici was religious and regularly attended church. Because of this, he was not popular with the leadership of Nazi Germany. His relationship with Goering and Hitler was also strained, possibly due to Heinrici's refusal to join the NSDAP.
Although General Gotthard Heinrici did not write his own memoirs about the “eastern campaign,” he left with detailed letters to the family and a personal diary that he conducted throughout the war. These notes, which were not originally intended for prying eyes and came to the attention of historians only in the late 90s, paint a new, frank in their ruthless picture of the occupation and war against the USSR. The almost daily emotional and critical letters, which escaped post-factum processing, are sharply different both from books that came out of the pen of other German military leaders after the war, and from boring operational history. Sometimes self-righteous, sometimes sad or sarcastic reflections on politics, present, future alternate with momentary sketches of front-line reality, complete mutual hatred, military crises, unbearable conditions and impossible orders. The general’s notes lack details that are more typical for texts of trench soldiers, but the reader is given a broad perspective of a staff officer: Heinrici consistently commanded a corps, army, army group, starting with an attack on Moscow and ending with the defense of Berlin. Through pre-war letters and diary entries supplementing the main text, it becomes clear how a pessimistic, analytically minded Wehrmacht general was forged from the son of a pastor, a conservative young officer, who, participating in a criminal colonial campaign against the USSR, put all his talent as a strategist at the service of Hitler.
Heinrici remained in service throughout World War II. As in the First World War, he took part in the battles on both the Eastern and Western fronts. During the war, he earned a reputation as one of the Wehrmacht’s best defensive tactics, for which he received the nickname “Our Poisonous Dwarf” (German Unser Giftzwerg) from colleagues and subordinates. During the blitzkrieg in France, he commanded the 12th Corps and successfully overcame the Maginot Line. During the attack on the Soviet Union, Heinrici served under the command of Maximilian von Weichs (2A) and, as commander of the 43rd Corps, he was presented with the Knight's Cross. January 26, 1942 he took command of the 4th Army, which was to hold the defense against the troops of the Red Army during the counter-offensive near Moscow.