Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. Born near Magdeburg, Jan. 24 1891 the son of a school master. Attended Officer Cadet training in 1909. Served on the Western Front during 1914 - 1916, then various staff appointments. By October 1939, he had reached the position of Major General and Chief of Staff, 16th Army. He was renowned as one of Hitler's greatest Panzer Commanders. He played an active part in Operation Barbarossa with his Panzer Corps striking towards the Ukraine and encircling Kiev. He took part in Operation Citadel and gained the Nickname 'Hitlers Fireman'. He was awarded the Knight's Cross with Diamonds and was promoted to Field Marshall. He was transferred to the Western Front to become Commander in Chief of the West. He will forever be linked to Operation Market Garden and the Ardennes Counter Offensive. He committed suicide in 1945 rather than be taken prisonner.
2. He achieved great fame during the 1940 campaign in France. This German General's distinction is that his 4th Panzer Groups got the closest to Moscow in December 1941, but did not charge. Hitler held him accountable, replaced him and stripped him of his rank. He was implicated in the Bomb Plot conspiracy against the Fuhrer and was hanged 8th August, 1944.
3. This Bavarian Artillery Officer transfered to the Air Force in 1933. He took an active part in the invasion of Poland and ordered the bombing of Warsaw and later Belgium and Rotterdam. He was the co-ordinator of the air attacks on Air Force bases in Southern England during the Battle of Britain. He later went with Rommel to North Africa and eventually became Commander in Chief in Italy, where he fought a brilliant defensive rear guard operation. In March 1945, with the German position on the Western Front becoming grave, Hitler ordered him to take over General von Rundstedt's command. The situation had by then, however, deteriorated too far and he was forced to surrender on 7 May, 1945.
4. He was the son of a Prussian General and served in the 1st World War as a signals and later Staff Officer. After the war, he specialized in military mechanical transport and helped to develop Germany's first tanks at a time when they were still forbidden under the Versailles Treaty. He was made Commander of one of the first three Panzer divisions, and in 1938 published his highly influential book on the future of armed warfare, 'Achtung! Panzer!'. He perfected these ideas in the Poland Campaign. For the Battle of France he was given a Panzer Group, his brilliant handling of which was a perfect demonstartion of the concept of blitzkreig. In Russia in 1941, his Panzer Group, renamed Fourth Panzer Army, led the drive on Moscow, but Hitler's midsummer decision to switch the main effort towards Kiev and Leningrad created an insubordinate dispute with the Fuhrer. The rightness of his judgement did not save him, and he was dismissed on 25 October 1941. He was later recalled and appointed Chief of Staff in 1944, but he could do nothing to stem the tide of defeat. He retained the post, although constantly at odds with Hitler, until 21 March 1945, when he was finally dismissed.
5. He was a promising Staff Officer, he transferred to the Panzer Arm before the outbreak of the war and was appointed Chief of Staff to Reichenau in the Tenth and later Sixth Army. In May 1940, he became Deputy Chief of the General Staff under Halder and then in January 1942, replaced Reichenau, who had been promoted to Army Group South, as Commander of the Sixth Army. His advance to Stalingrad culminated in his investment in the city in November and, when relief force nearly reached him in December (Operation Winter Storm) he decided that his orders from Hitler prevented him from breaking out to meet him. He was forced to surrender on 30 January 1943, having been promoted to Field Marshal the previous day.
6. A Bavarian Gunnery Officer, he was appointed in 1938 to the head of the operations section of OKW (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht). His role was executive rather than decision making, but he performed it brilliantly, giving concrete military form to the Fuhrer's strategic decisions. He attended all the twice-daily situation conferences and was principal source of technical information and advice. As a 'planner of aggressive war' he was tried and executed at Nuremberg.
7. He won the Pour le Mérite for 'outstanding bravery' as a Junior Officer of the Fifth Foot Guards during World War I. At the outbreak of war, he was appointed to command one of the three true Army Groups. He then formed Army Group B in the campaign in the west in 1940. He overran Belgium and Holland and broke the line of the lower Seine in the Battle of France. During operation 'Barbarossa' he command Army Group Centre for the attack on Moscow and Minsk. He was relieved of command in the great purge following the Russian counter-offensive of December, but was reinstated at Army Group South in January. He held the post until July.
8. He was one of Germany's greatest soldiers. Even the Allies felt a rueful admiration for the 'Desert Fox'. In France, he established a reputation as a tank leader with real flair. He was sent to North Africa in January 1941, to assist the Italians. He proceeded to win a reputation as a strategist and theater commander as well. Although eventually beaten at El Alamein, his North African campaign was highly skilled. He was sent to France next where he blunted the Allies first attempts to break out of the Normandy Beach Heads. On 17 July, 1944, however, he was in his staff car and severely wounded by British fire. Before he had fully recovered, he fell under suspicion of complicity in the Bomb Plot and was offered by Hitler the choice of disgrace or suicide. He chose the latter, but it was said that he died of his wounds and was buried with state pomp.
9. He was the son of Southern German Catholic aristocratic family. He was badly wounded in the Western Desert and transferred in 1942 to a staff appointment with the Home Army in Berlin. He was drawn into the circle of military conspirators against Hitler and took it upon himself, as someone with access to Hitler's conferences, to smuggle a bomb into the Fuhrer's conference room, a feat he achieved on 20 July 1944. The bomb failed to kill Hitler and the coup quickly fell apart. He along with others, was shot in the courtyard of the War Ministry.
10. An Austrian trained as an engineer, he was the most successful German Irregular Soldier of the war. He was a German Commando Leader and was best known for his daring rescue of Mussolini from the peak of the Gran Sasso in the Abruzzi in September 1943. He also kidnapped the son of the Hungarian dictator, Horthy, in 1944, thus nullifying the father's plans to make a separate peace with the Russians. In December 1944, as part of the Ardennes offensive, he led a force of English-speaking Germans into American lines where they spread confusion and destruction.
11. He was born in Berlin on November 24th 1887. He was regarded by many as the greatest German Field Commander of the war. He had been commisioned into Hindenburg's old regiment, the Third Foot Guards, and served with distinction as an infantry officer during World War I. He is credited with the unorthodox plan in 1940, to attack a very narrow front in the Ardennes. This plan was to sever the Anglo-French field army from its less mobile supports in the interior by a drive to the Channel coast. He commanded the 11th Army in the capture of the Crimea in 1941, and in the advance to the Caucasus. It was in 1943, however, that his great reputation was made. Having conceived and almost carried off the relief of Stalingrad in December 1942 (Operation Winter Storm), he achieved in February 1943 the most brilliant German counter-offensive of the Russian campaign, the recapture of Kharkov.
12. He was the Nazi ruler of Poland from 1939-44. He was a distinguished lawyer and was a Nazi minister without a portfolio before the war. He was in charge of all Germany's territories in the East. He supervised the liquidation of Polish intellectuals and pursued a vigorous anti-Jewish policy. All Jewish businesses were closed down and Jews were dispatched to Auschwitz, Treblinka and other camps. He tried to resign as the Red Army approached the Polish borders on 14 occasions, but it was in August 1944, that he finally resigned after announcing the collapse of the German administration. He was tried at Nuremburg and hanged on 16 October 1946.
13. He was born in Munich in 1892. During World War I, he was a part of the German Alpine Corps. He saw some of the bloodiest battles of the war like the Verdun Battles in 1916. He was an able soldier and an even more talented sycophant. This officer achieved the height of his ambition, the by-then-empty title of Commander-in-Chief of the German Army. He held this for ten days between Hitler's suicide and the surrender.
14. He was born in Braunfels an der Lahn, Hesse on August 8, 1881. He had overall command of the two Panzer groups in the crossing of the Meuse and the Battle of France, 1940. As Commander of Panzer Group I in Russia in 1941, he led the advance of Army Group South towards Kiev. In the following year was appointed to command Army Group A. Its task was to advance into the Caucasus, but it was halted as soon as the Stalingrad battle began. He then became embroiled in the defensive battle in southern Russia. A steadfast rather than a brilliant commander, he died in Russian captivity.
15. On his dissolution of the War Ministry in 1938, Hitler asked its 'disgraced chief', Blomberg, if his assistant, would make a suitable professional head. On being told that he was 'simply the man who runs my office', Hitler said, 'That's exactly the man I want'. Known as 'Lakaitel' to the rest of the High Command ('Lakai' means 'lackey'), he never disagreed with the Fuhrer, but did nothing to justify his Marshal's baton.
Source: Author
deadmeat
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