Years of service 1924–45 Name Friedrich Mellenthin | Awards German Cross in Gold | |
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Battles/wars World War IIInvasion of PolandBattle of FranceBalkans CampaignSiege of TobrukBattle of GazalaFirst Battle of El AlameinSecond Battle of El AlameinBattle of StalingradBattle of KurskBattle of KievLvov–Sandomierz OffensiveBattle of NancyBattle of MetzBattle of ArracourtBattle of the Bulge Books Panzer Battles: A Study of the Employment of Armor in the Second World War Battles and wars Invasion of Poland, Battle of France Unit III Army Corps, 197th Infantry Division, 2nd Army, XLVIII Panzer Corps, Army Group G, 5th Panzer Army | ||
Friedrich von Mellenthin (30 August 1904 – 28 June 1997) was a German general during World War II. A participant in most of the major campaigns of the war, he became known afterwards for his apologetic memoirs Panzer Battles, first published in 1956 and reprinted several times since then.
Contents
Mellenthin's works were part of the exculpatory memoirs genre that fed the post-war revisionist narrative, put forth by former Wehrmacht generals. Panzer Battles was instrumental in forming the misconceptions that influenced the U.S. view of Eastern Front military operations up to 1995, when Soviet archival sources became available to Western and Russian historians.
Career
Mellenthin was born in Breslau; his brother Horst von Mellenthin was also a World War II general. In 1924, Friedrich von Mellenthin enlisted in the Reichsheer; in 1932 he married Ingeborg von Aulock. He was assigned to the Prussian Military Academy in 1935. Between 1937 and June 1941, Mellenthin held several general staff positions in the Army; in June 1941, Mellenthin was posted to North Africa, where he served as a staff officer in the Afrika Corps until September 1942.
Till May 1944, Mellenthin served as chief of staff of the XXXXVIII Panzer Corps in the occupied Soviet Union, under General Hermann Balck, including the Battle of Kursk, the Battle of Kiev, and the spring 1944 retreat through the western Ukraine. In September 1944, Mellenthin followed Balck to the 4th Panzer Army and then to Army Group G in eastern France. On 28 December, Mellenthin was given command of 9th Panzer Division, which was then engaged in the Battle of the Bulge. From March to May 1945 he was chief of staff of the 5th Panzer Army.
Mellenthin was captured by the British Army on 3 May 1945 and spent two and a half years in a POW camp. He professed ignorance of Nazi activities, writing in his memoirs: "not until we were behind barbed wire did we learn of the misdeeds of the Supreme Authority, deeds which shook us to the core and made our cheeks burn with shame". After his release, Mellenthin emigrated to South Africa. He died in Johannesburg in 1997.