This article is the 299th original article of the Burning Islands Group. The full text is 5770 words, with 17 pictures, and it takes 15 minutes to read. This article was first published on June 14, 2020 at TTH and WX. If you can't read the full text, please search for the official account of the same name (ID: bikunet), or enter the number directly.
With this article, I would like to pay tribute to the peoples of all countries who heroically resisted in the world anti-fascist war!
About the author: Eagle descends from the sky, from the Burning Island Group WeChat group, likes to study the battlefield records of North Africa and the Balkans in World War II.
Welcome everyone to share and promote this article, not for the sake of tips or reading, but to throw bricks and jade, to learn the history of the Balkans in World War II from the masters. If you want to enter the burning island group WeChat group, want to submit articles to the island group or criticize and correct this article, welcome to add me WeChat minshengluhao, welcome to use the dry goods in your hands to punch this article in the face. At the same time, the author in this article also has a series of questions that cannot be answered, and welcomes the guidance of high people.
This article mainly explores the exploration of Admiral Lyell in the film "Walter Defends Sarajevo" (hereinafter referred to as "Watt"), and will be launched in the future: combined with the introduction of the old film Yugoslav guerrilla warfare, the reasoning and imagination of some characters and plots in "Watt" and "Bridge", so stay tuned.
Figure 1. Stills from Walter Defending Sarajevo
"May God bless the pursuers and bless the pursuers."
The air was trembling, as if the sky were burning. Yeah, the storm is coming. ”
"Whoever is alive can see it!"
"Look, this city. He's Walter! ”
Mention the famous Yugoslav old film "Walter DefendSarajevo" of the last century, I believe that many fans and military fans are not strangers, this film was filmed by the Posner Film Studio to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Yugoslav People's Uprising (the Great Uprising of the People of All Ethnic Groups in Yugoslavia in July 1941), premiered in Hungary in 1972, translated and screened by the Beijing Film Studio in 1973, and quickly swept the country, and the touching plot and classic lines in the play made countless people tear up and boil with blood! This film and the 1969 "Bridge" produced by posner Film Studios can be called the "South Film Double Wall" introduced in China at that time. Many people recite the lines backwards like a stream, and the impression of the characters is extremely deep.
The author is also a big fan of "Watt", has seen "Watt" and "Bridge" more than a dozen times, classic lines can be recited backwards like a stream, and classical music often echoes in the ear. However, since I first saw this classic movie, there has been a question that has been born and has always haunted me, that is, who is the "Admiral Lyle" mentioned at the beginning of the movie. In the past, due to his lack of military knowledge, he had been puzzled. Now, when I am older, I think back to my original intention, and I learn about the personal life of this general through many sources, and later I feel that there are more and more historical materials and movie materials of World War II, and it is better to enjoy alone than to enjoy everyone. So I wrote this article to share with you. When watching movies, I often hate my lack of knowledge and hate that I don't understand Serbo-Croatian, which has caused many regrets and deficiencies in the text, please forgive me, and hope to encourage you.
Well, let's get to the point and explore the general according to the plot of the movie.
Figure 2. One of the screenshots of the stills
At the beginning of the film, the german 1944 character is displayed, and it can be seen that the trajectory of the characters in the film is limited to 1944.
Figure 3. Screenshot of stills: Admiral Lyle
Then, the German general who appeared first went into the underground command in the bomb shelter, met with his subordinates, and said: "Gentlemen, I would like to announce to you an important news, our commander of the South-Eastern Military District, Admiral Lyell, has received orders that The A Corps begin to retreat from the Balkans as planned this evening", leading to the central figure explored in this article, General Lyle. Then he sat down again and said: "The loss of Belgrade, the push of Russian troops toward us from the north, the presence of guerrillas all over Yugoslavia: our situation in the Balkans is critical ...", followed by the specific deployment of Operation Laufer. Then analyze the background at that time according to these few sentences.
There are many people who think that the words "Germany 1944" appearing at the beginning of the film indicate that the South-East Command of the German Army is in Germany, which is impossible. The words "Germany 1944" simply indicate that the Allies bombed Germany itself at the beginning of the film. The German southeast command was supposed to be in the Balkans.
Looking at the time node, it is mentioned that "the loss of Belgrade", after checking the data, it is learned that the Battle of Belgrade, coordinated by the Red Army of the Soviet Union, the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army and the Bulgarian Fatherland Front Army, was implemented from September to October 1944, and liberated the Yugoslav capital Belgrade on October 20, after which the Soviet army went north, and the task of liberating the whole territory of Yugoslavia fell to the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army led by Tito. That means that the plot of the movie should be after October 20, 1944.
Now to analyze this Admiral Lyle, we must first understand who the general with glasses in the opening of the film is.
A closer look at his collar badge reveals three pieces of Germany's national flower— cornflower, red substrate, and gold thread stitching.
Figure 4. Recent photo of Lyle's collar badge
This is the Field Marshal's Medal after 1942. Looking at the epaulettes, which are also sewn with gold thread. Before 1942, the Marshal's Medallion, like the General's Medallion, was two pieces of cornflower.
Figure 5. Field Marshal's Medal after 1942
Marshal Epaulettes of 1941
Figure 6. Field Marshal's Medal in 1941
This is a pair of epaulettes from Field Marshal Lundstedt, and the epaulettes in the movie are basically the same, and the details are not clear.
Figure 7. Historically, Marshal Weix and the image contrast in the film
Based on the above information, it can basically be judged that this general is a marshal, so which marshal is it? According to his spectacled image and the area he is stationed in the Balkans, it can basically be judged that Marshal Maximilian von Weix (hereinafter referred to as Weix) of the German army, the previously mentioned Battle of Belgrade, the German commander is Marshal Weix, the commander of army group F, marshal Weix, this battle the German army lost, Marshal Weix led the remnants of the retreat, the underground command in the movie is definitely not in Belgrade, as to whether it is in Sarajevo, the author did not check, welcome readers to point out the mystery, this is the first question mark of this article. The above picture shows the historical Marshal Weix on the left, and the right is the image of Marshal Weix in the movie, which shows that the actor's appearance has been very impressive.
(Author's profile: Eagle descended from the sky, from the burning island group WeChat group, like to study the World War II North Africa - Balkan battlefield documentary, welcome to criticize this article, join the island group WeChat group, submit to the island group)
Judging Marshal Weix, let's look at what he said: "General Lyell, commander of the Southeast Military District", Lyell was a first-class general or general of the German army (German general first-class rank: "general /supreme general, general of the army / second-class general, lieutenant general, major general", according to domestic customs, it is easy to translate as "major general, admiral, lieutenant general, major general". It is worth noting that the translation of the military district here is inappropriate, only Germany itself, occupied Austria and Poland in World War II set up 21 military regions, and there were no military regions in other occupied areas, which are best translated as southeast theaters or southeast command. According to the information of the General of the German Army, there is only one general named Lyle and stationed in the Balkans, that is, The Air Force General Alexander Lør. Well, now it's basically decided that Admiral Lyle is Alexander Lehr! (hereinafter referred to as Lehr)
Figure 8. Luftwaffe First Class Admiral Alexander Lohr
Above, the German general and general are actually one level, Chinese translation is different. The German military ranks of "General, General of the Ranks/General of the Second Rank, Lieutenant General, Major General" are easily translated as "major general, admiral, lieutenant general, major general" according to domestic customs.
Alexander Lohr (1885-1947). Also translated as Lohr, Rolle. Luftwaffe Admiral, along with Erhard Rouse (Army General) and Lothar Lendulik (Army General, also related to the Balkans. In August 1943, 250,000 Italian soldiers were disarmed along the Yugoslav coast and participated in the encirclement and suppression of Tito's guerrillas. In 1944 he became commander of the Second Mechanized Force, in May he participated in the planning of Operation Vaulting, and in the second half of 1944 he commanded the Arctic Battle of Lapland with the Finnish Army, and the Battle of Petsamo-Hilknes with the Soviet Army) and ranked as the three Austrians who received the highest military positions in the Third Reich.
Lehr was born in the Kingdom of Romania (nor does it look germanic in the photo), the son of an Austrian navy colonel and a Russian nurse mother, who later lived in Austria. He was a platoon leader in the Austro-Hungarian Infantry Regiment during World War I, promoted to lieutenant colonel after the war, and later transferred to the Air Force. After the German-Austrian merger in 1938, he was promoted to lieutenant general of the Luftwaffe.
On 1 September 1939, the Germans blitzed Poland, and General Löhr's 4th Air Force was tasked with supporting Marshal Lundstedt's Army Group South.
Figure 9. German military operations in Greece in 1941
Thanks to the burning island group friends looking for Khan Courtesy photo
On Sunday, April 6, 1941, the Germans blitzed both Yugoslavia and Greece, and Sarajevo, a land steeped in blood and fire for many years, sounded gunfire more than 20 years after resting at the end of World War I. The 4th Air Force under the command of Lehr bombarded the Yugoslav capital belgrade on April 6 and 7, killing and wounding more than 17,000 civilians, quickly disintegrating the Yugoslav resistance and laying the groundwork for its own shooting in the future. The 4th Air Force then covered Marshal Liszt's 12th Army and occupied the entire Peloponnese. From a purely military point of view, the German blitzkrieg operations in Yugoslavia and Greece were no less exciting and commanding than blitzkriegs in Northern Europe, Western Europe, and so on. Lehr then served as commander-in-chief of Operation Mercury, who parachuted into Crete, and had a disagreement with Lieutenant General Student, commander of the Airborne Operations and commander of the 11th Air Force, with Ler believing that the troops should be concentrated on airborne landings in the western part of the island, and Student believing that it was necessary to disperse seven places to parachute (fortunately, he did not listen to his pepper plan, where the content of the differences was controversial and the records of different books were different), and the differences between the two were resolved by Goering with a compromise strategy (airborne in four places: Maleme, Gania, Iraqline, and Rethimnon). On 3 May 1941, Ler was promoted to air force general due to the occupation of all of mainland Greece, but Crete was defeated.
Figure 10. The third general on the left is General Ler
At one of the military parades, a group of Air Force generals, the second from the left was Marshal Kesselring, and the third from the left was General Lehr
On June 22, 1941, the Soviet-German War broke out, and Lehr commanded the 4th Air Force, in conjunction with Army Group South, to bomb Odessa, Kiev and other places. In August, Ler was transferred to the Balkans.
Figure 11. As Admiral Ler
On the left is General Lehr, on the right is General Wolfram von Richterhofen, who took over as commander of the 4th Air Force on 14 July 1942, and on 16 February 1943, Richterhofen was promoted to field marshal for his work in support and supply to the Stalingrad Air Force. The marshal was the cousin of the famous "Red Baron" of World War I, the ace pilot Manfred von Richterhofen, whose fame is still shrouded in the aura of his cousin.
In June 1941, the Germans formed the South-East Command in Athens, which was responsible for commanding the German forces in Yugoslavia and Greece, and the first commander-in-chief of the South-East Command was Marshal Wilhelm Liszt, who took office in June 1941. The second commander was Walter Conzen. In August 1941, Lehr was appointed third commander of the South-East Command and commander of the 12th Army.
On 1 January 1943 (also known as December 1942), the 12th Army was reorganized into Army Group E on the spot, with Lehr serving as commander-in-chief of Army Group E in Yugoslavia and Greece. He also served as commander-in-chief of the Southeast Command until around August 26 of that year (Marshal Weix took over as commander of the Southeast Command). During his tenure from August 1941 to August 1943, Lehr frantically suppressed and massacred the Yugoslav and Greek Tito People's Army and guerrillas, and launched five large-scale encirclements and suppressions of the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army, notably the Third Battle of Kozara, the Fourth Encirclement (Battle of the Neretva River), the Fifth Encirclement (Battle of Sudeska) and the "Vaulting Horse" of Latteto.
Figure 12. Contrast of color photographs of Admiral Ler
In August 1943, in view of the increasingly fierce guerrilla warfare in Yugoslavia, which had caused instability in the rear areas of the Eastern Front, and fearing that the Allies would land in the Balkans after Sicily, the Germans strengthened their forces in the area and created a new Army Group F, with the area of responsibility for Yugoslavia and Albania, the headquarters stationed in Belgrade, and the Southeast Command (in charge of the two army groups E and F), and the commander-in-chief was Marshal Weix. The defensive area of Army Group E in Lehr was compressed southward into greece and the Aegean islands, and the headquarters were stationed in Thessaloniki, Greece (this is why "our armored troops depart from Thessaloniki" in the movie).
Figure 13. Another color photo
In September 1943, after the surrender of Italy, Lehr, stationed in Greece, disarmed his former ally, the Italian army, according to the plan that had been planned for a long time, and killed those who did not comply, and in November, Lehr won the Battle of the Dodecanese Islands against the British and Italian troops (that is, the string of islands on the southwestern turkey's doorstep, which became Italian territory after the Italo-Turkish War and was compensated to Greece after World War II).
Figure 14. Soviet counter-offensive
In March 1944, in view of the victories of the Soviet army and the beginning of different feelings of the vassal states, in order to avoid being annihilated, the commander-in-chief of the South-East Command, Marshal Weix, commander of Army Group F, and General Ler, commander of Army Group E, cooperated to withdraw the German troops in the Balkans north. From August to October, the situation deteriorated, and Army Group E accelerated its retreat and contraction of the front, and around November 4 the German army basically withdrew from Greece (the prototype of Operation Laufer), retaining only a small number of troops on Crete and the Aegean Islands, fighting until germany surrendered. At the same time as the Germans withdrew from Greece, the British army quickly landed in Greece and the old place of battle, Crete, divided the respective spheres of influence in Eastern Europe with the Soviet Union, suppressed the Greek National Liberation Army, and triggered a three-year Greek civil war.
Figure 15. Gallery style A Legion
The public account "Heey Gunboat Military Gallery" depicts German equipment of the A Corps
Figure 16. Counter-offensive in Eastern Europe
On 25 March 1945, Marshal Weix was dismissed by Hitler (hitler's dismissal was no longer unusual), and Army Group F was disbanded. Lehr, commander of Army Group E, was also commander-in-chief of the South-East Command, and germany surrendered only 2 months later. During this period, Army Group E also became the only Army Group of the German Army in the Balkans.
Figure 17. Stills #2
On May 8, 1945, Germany announced its unconditional surrender. Knowing the depth of his sins, Lehr still ordered Army Group E to break out in the direction of the Allies, in a vain attempt to evade justice. At that time, Lehr and his 150,000 men were in Yugoslavia, three days away from the Austrian border in Carinthia, and he negotiated with the British army, hoping that the whole army would surrender to the British army in Austrian territory, but the British refused. Its forces had to surrender to Yugoslavia. Lehr, the executioner, escaped, was captured by the British on 13 May, and extradited to Yugoslavia.
In 1947, at a court-martial in Belgrade, Lehr was charged with the war crime of killing civilians and prisoners of war during the 1941 bombing and occupation of Belgrade, sentenced to execution and immediately executed.
On 26 February 1947 in Belgrade, Lehr was executed by firing squad, the only senior Luftwaffe general to be executed after the war (Goering committed suicide by poisoning). The demon, whose hands were stained with the blood of the peoples of Poland, Yugoslavia, Greece and the Soviet Union, was finally punished as he deserved.
After a brief introduction to The curriculum vitae of General Ler, attentive military fans may find that from August 1943 to March 1945, the commander of the South East Command was Marshal Weix. The plot of the film is set between the liberation of Belgrade in October 1944 and the dismissal of Weix, when the commander of the Southeast Command is Marshal Weix himself, that is, the marshal himself who appears at the beginning of the film, not General Lehr. I think that this may be Marshal Weix's humble remark out of respect for his comrades-in-arms, "Commander-in-Chief of the Southeast Military Region, Admiral Lyell", means "a commander of the Southeastern Military Region" (i.e., the commander of the subordinate Army Group E) rather than "Commander-in-Chief". Historically, the "Army A" was actually "Army Group E." Readers are welcome to provide information and explain their doubts to the author.
In the film, Sarajevo is still occupied by the Germans, and I suspect that Marshal Weix's headquarters is in Sarajevo. On April 6, 1945, the war-torn Sarajevo finally ushered in its own liberation.
In the process of checking the information, I saw a sentence that read, "On May 15, the main commander of the German army in charge of the Yugoslav front, General von Lyle, announced his surrender", I don't know if this von Lyell is a mistake of Lehr, please ask for advice.
Some references:
Public number "Huey Gunboat Military Gallery"
Burning Island Friends Looking for Khan's Warrior Press, World War II 1939-1945
The Burning Island Group Of Friends refers to the "General Dictionary of the Air Force of the Third Reich" sold in the Book of Literature, 96 pages, 112 pages, 113 pages, 114 pages, 171 pages
Burning Island Friends The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, sold by the Iron-Blooded West Wind, pp. 138-159, 328-351
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