Background
Heinrici was born in 1886 in East Prussia, the son of a minister of the (Protestant) Evangelical Church in Germany.
Heinrici was born in 1886 in East Prussia, the son of a minister of the (Protestant) Evangelical Church in Germany.
Following graduation from secondary school in 1905, he joined the army on 8 March 1905 as a cadet in an infantry division. From 1905 to 1906, Heinrici attended a war school. During World War I, Heinrici fought in the German invasion of Belgium and earned the Iron Cross 2nd Class in September 1914.
He was a Generalmajor from 1 Jan 1936, a Generalleutnant on I Mar 38, and was promoted to General of Infantry as the assault on France was about to start. Commanding the 12th Corps in Witz- leben’s 1st Army, he broke through the Maginot Line south of Saarbrucken on 14 June 1940 after the defenders began withdrawing on orders.
As CG, 43d Corps, Heinrici was awarded the RK on 18 Sep 1941 for action in Russia. The next month his two-division corps was assigned to Guderian’s 2d Pz Army. Promoted 1 Jan 1942, Generaloberst Heinrici commanded the 4th Army from 20 Jan 1942 for more than two years in AG Center. He developed highly successful defensive tactics that featured patrolling to discover impending Red Army attacks, withdrawing front line troops some 2,000 meters to escape enemy preparatory fires, and then counterattacking to destroy the off-balance enemy with German forces that had remained intact.
On 16 Aug 1944 he succeeded Erhard Raus as 1st Pz Army commander in the Carpathians, temporarily directing operations of the 1st Hungarian Army as w-ell. Heinrici’s skill in maintaining cohesion while withdrawing into Silesia won him the Swords (136/159), awarded 3 Mar 1945. Heinrici succeeded Himmler as CG, AG Vistula, on 20 March. With the decimated 3d Pz and 9th Armies he held the Oder River line for almost a month until the Soviets broke through around Kustrin on 18 April.
Heinrici had no success with Hitler in advocating abandonment of Berlin and concentration on saving Germans, civilian and military, from Soviet captivity. But the general was able to collaborate with Albert Speer in violating Hitler’s scorched earth edict. Heinrici was relieved of command late on 28 Apr 1945 after informing Keitel he would disregard Hitler’s orders to hold at all cost. Taken prisoner by US forces, he was interviewed by Liddell Hart and is cited at length in The German Generals Talk.
As a military commander, historians described him as the premier defensive expert of the Wehrmacht and a genius admired by his peers, although little-known today because he was, in the words of Samuel W. Mitcham, "as charismatic as a 20-pound sack of fertilizer".
Married to a half-Jewish (Mischling) himself, Heinrici supported many Nazi policies including the Lebensraum concept. On the eve of Operation Barbarossa Heinrici, on receiving the Commissar Order, justified it as easing pressure on the front lines through the exercise of "preventive terror" in the rear.