Helmut Wieselhuber
| Helmut Wieselhuber | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Birth date | 28 November 1922 |
| Place of birth | Munich, Free State of Bavaria, German Reich |
| Death date | 20 May 2022 (aged 99) |
| Place of death | Ettlingen near Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany |
| Place of burial | Ettlinger Hauptfriedhof (main cemetery of Ettlingen), Durlacher Straße, Field 1 |
| Allegiance |  National Socialist Germany West Germany
|
| Service/branch |  Heer Bundeswehr
|
| Rank | 1st Lieutenant (Oberleutnant) Colonel (Oberst) |
| Battles/wars | World War II |
| Awards | Iron Cross Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross |
| Relations | ∞ Ursula Notheis |
Helmut Wieselhuber (28 November 1922 – 20 May 2022) was a German officer of the Wehrmacht and of the Bundeswehr, finally Colonel as well as recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross in World War II. Wieselhuber was a member of the veterans association "Die Bordeauxroten – Kameradschaft der ABC-Abwehr- und Nebeltruppe e. V."and enjoyed his retirement in Ettlingen (Gerhart-Hauptmann-Straße 5).
Life
After graduating from school with Abitur, Wieselhuber joined the Wehrmacht during WWII and served with the Nebeltruppe which was originally set up for chemical warfare. The tactical mission of this unit was the release of smoke and chemical warfare agents, gas detection and the decontamination of soldiers, equipment and terrain. The use of rocket launchers, on the other hand, became particularly important after Wehrmacht units on the Eastern Front came under fire from Soviet Katyusha rocket launchers for the first time in 1941 and suffered heavy losses due to the devastating effect of this previously unknown surface fire weapon.
The Wehrmacht had nothing equivalent to counter these mobile and powerful rocket launchers, which German soldiers described as "Stalin's organs" (Stalinorgel). It was therefore decided to further develop the smoke troop's launchers, which were originally intended as smoke tracers for firing smoke and combat ammunition, and to make them available for artillery use as planned. In 1942, he was transferred to the new schweres Werfer-Regiment 1 (motorisiert), a heavy rocket artillery regiment.
With his regiment he fought, among other things, for Cherkassy before returning home to refresh the regiment. At the end of 1944, after a rest, the entire Werfer-Brigade 1 was loaded at the train stations in the Hameln – Hildesheim – Elze area. From there, the brigade was transported to East Prussia by rail. There it fought in association with the "Greater Germany" tank corps (Panzerkorps „Großdeutschland“) until the launchers were needed on the East Prussian Hela peninsula. On 8 May 1945, parts of the regiment were embarked and relocated across the Baltic Sea to Schleswig-Holstein. The battery that remained in the Vistula valley, as well as the part that remained on the Hela peninsula, was taken prisoner of war by the Red Army.
Post-WWII
After being released and returning home, Wieselhuber joined the Bundeswehr as a Captain and was trained to be a nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons (NBC; German: ABC) weapons defense expert. The NBC defense force was set up when the Bundeswehr was founded in 1956. As a military branch that had to be completely reorganized, it was only possible to draw on a few known experiences from the recent military past. The initial planning initially focused on setting up the NBC defense school, an NBC defense training battalion and the procurement of materials. With the formation order No. 13 of 18 May 1956, the working staff of the army school for NBC defense was set up in Sonthofen. The school was renamed the ABC Defense School on 7 August 1956.
As a Lieutenant Colonel, Wieselhuber was appointed commander of the ABC-Abwehrlehrbataillon 210 (NBC defense training battalion) in the Grünten-Kaserne in Sonthofen im Allgäu (Bavaria) from 1 October 1965 to 31 March 1968. In the summer of 1975, when a by Augusto Pinochet highly trusted Chilean staff officer of German descent Lieutenant Colonel Helmut Hermann Kraushaar (b. 10 October 1933 in Osorno, Chile)[1] attended a course at the Führungsakademie der Bundeswehr (FüAkBw), the Bundeswehr Command and Staff College, and was then commanded to the Panzergrenadierbrigade 1 in the Mackensen-Kaserne in Hildesheim to polish up his German, Colonel Wieselhuber, who was serving there at the time, was appointed his escort, including during the reception in the Hildesheim town hall on 15 September 1975 as well as for the big celebration with city representatives in the officers' quarters on Galgenberg. Lieutenant Colonel Kraushaar returned to Chile in 1976 and reported extensively to the genera staff there about the military findings gained in West Germany.
Death
Helmut Wieselhuber died in 2022 c. six months before his 100th birthday. At the time shortly before his death, he was the last living Knight's Cross recipient of the Werfertruppe (rocket artillery), the last Knight's Cross recipient with the tank destruction badge and one of the last four living recipients of the highest German award for bravery of the Second World War, the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.
Awards and decorations
- Iron Cross (1939), 2nd and 1st Class
- General Assault Badge (Allgemeines Sturmabzeichen) in Silver
- Wound Badge (1939) in Black
- Tank Destruction Badge (Panzervernichtungsabzeichen)
- Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 14 May 1944 as 2nd Lieutenant and Platoon Leader in the I. Abteilung/schweres Werfer-Regiment 1 (motorisiert)[2]
Gallery
References
- ↑ Helmut Kraushaar's father was Hans Otto Ernst Erich Kraushaar (1895–1978) from Elberfeld (Rhineland), a German artillery officer of the reserves in WWI (Badisches Fußartillerie-Regiment Nr. 14 in Straßburg) who served at the Western, the Eastern and the Ottoman front until December 1918. In Strasbourg, he had taken the opportunity to study German history and Sanskrit at the university. He was taught to parachute and was appointed commander of a balloon detachment in Düsseldorf; he then transferred to Berlin where he studied philosophy, history and geography, also learning Turkish; then he fought in Mesopotamia. After the war and already discharged, he studied at the Agricultural School in Göttingen for three semesters, followed by a year and a half of various studies; studied for a year and four months to become a Professor, graduating in 1924; he then accepted an offer from his cousin Hermann Kraushaar (b. 15 December 1886; merchant and German Consul in Osorno; Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, Cross of Merit in 1957) to travel to Chile, where he worked as a Professor at the German School of Valdivia and Osorno for two years; in 1931, he bought a large farm and dedicated himself to agriculture. The professor and his wife Anna Anita, née Scheuch had three children, among them Helmut Hermann Kraushaar who married Lucía Emilia Heyermann in 1959. They would have four children, among them son Helmut Herman Arturo Kraushaar Heyermann (b. 13 July 1963 in Angol), who would also become an officer, was commander of the Regimiento de Caballería n.º 3 "Húsares", later General de Brigada, Comandante de la 1ª Brigada Acorazada (Armored Brigade), also with the Chilean Army Military School, and, after having been highly decorated, retired 2017. The general was, among other things, author of the book Beagle, la guerra que no fue. ¿Cuál hubiese sido el probable resultado? (together with Mario A. Quinteros García).
- ↑ Wieselhuber, Helmut
