General der Infantry Günther von Blummentritt
Günther Blumentritt was born in Munich, Germany on 2nd February, 1892. He joined the German Army and during the First World War he served on the Eastern Front in Russia.
Blumentritt and his close friend Erich von Manstein served under Wilhelm Leeb during the 1930s. During the invasion of Poland in September 1939, he served as chief of operation under General Gerdt von Rundstedt. He also took part in the invasion of France in May 1940 and the following year served under Gunther von Kluge as chief of staff in the 4th Army.
In 1941 Blumentritt took part in the invasion of the Sovet Union before returning to Germany in 1942 as chief of operations. He served in France in 1943 but was badly injured in a railway accident and transferred to Reserve Hospital I in Hannover.
Blumentritt, who was associated with several of those members of the German Army involved in the July Plot against Adolf Hitler. In September 1944 he was sacked from office but Hitler refused to believe that Blumentritt was guilty and was eventually allowed to return to the front as commander of the 12th SS Corps 
.
After the Normandy landings Blumentritt and his troops were driven back by General Brain Horrocks 
and the 30th Corps 
.
On 27 March 1945, Blumentritt briefly assumed command of the increasingly demoralized 1st Parachute Army 
and then, from 8 April commanded “Army Group Blumentritt”—an ad-hoc collection of depleted units on the Weser river from Hameln to the Baltic—up to the end of the war. He was tasked to delay the Anglo-Canadian advance into northern Germany and he attempted to keep the Baltic sea ports open as long as possible so that German refugees could escape from the Russian advance in the east. On 2 May, after the death of Hitler on 30 April, Blumentritt ordered his men to give no further resistance to the allies and to fall back gradually. In early May, Günther Blumentritt acted as a first emissary to General Bernhard Montgomery for the surrender of the German forces in the North-West.
Günther Blumentritt died 12 October 1967, aged 75
in Munich, buried on the Waldfriedhof in Munich but his gravestone is removed for many years already..
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