A German general whose armoured successes were inseparable from crimes on the Eastern Front
In December 1942, Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army tried and failed to relieve the encircled Sixth Army at Stalingrad.
Hermann Hoth was a German general who carried the Prussian and imperial army tradition into the Wehrmacht and rose as a panzer commander. He directed rapid mobile operations in the invasions of France and the Soviet Union, and in 1942 commanded the Fourth Panzer Army during Case Blue and the failed attempt to relieve Stalingrad. Hoth understood the war against the Soviet Union as a war of annihilation and transmitted and implemented the Commissar Order and brutal measures against civilians. Convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the OKW trial, he received fifteen years in prison and was released early in 1954.
Career Timeline
- 1904Entered service in the Prussian Army
- 1914–1918Staff and field commands in the First World War
- 1935–1938Commanded the 18th Infantry Division
- 1939–1940Commanded XV Army Corps in the invasions of Poland and France
- 1941Commanded Panzer Group 3 in the capture of Minsk and Vitebsk
- 1941–1942Commander of the 17th Army
- 1942–1943Commander of the Fourth Panzer Army and its Stalingrad relief attempt
- 1948–1954Convicted at the OKW trial and imprisoned at Landsberg
- 1956Published Panzer Operations
- 1971Died in Goslar