Hitler’s Königlich Bayerisches 16. Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment.

17-01-2020

gestapo

The Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 16 was set up as an infantry regiment of the Bavarian Army at the beginning of the war in 1914 and during the First World War as part of the 6th Bay. Reserve Division on the Western Front, initially used in front of Ypres. In this First Flemish Battle on 31 October 1914, the regimental commander Colonel Julius List fell, whereupon the regiment received the honorary name “List”. When the Bavarian army dissolved, the regiment in Lagerlechfeld stood between Augsburg and Landsberg. The regiment is often referred to as a volunteer regiment due to the propaganda of the Third Reich, but also in recent publications, although this does not correspond to the facts.   The regiment is mainly known because it belonged to Adolf Hitler. After the mobilization  on 3 August 1914, the Austrian submitted an application to King Ludwig III.  from Bavaria to enter the Bavarian army. On August 16, Hitler was accepted as a war volunteer and assigned to the Royal Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment No. 16 (List). Promoted to the corporal, he served until the end of the war as a registrar of the regimental staff. The historian Thomas Weber doubts Hitler’s claim that he received a special permit from the Bavarian king. It is more likely that the mass of volunteers at the Wehrmacht did not even ask for Hitler’s nationality or that he lied to this question.

From 9 November 1914 until the end of the war Hitler served as a messenger between regimental staff and battalion staffs with 1.5 to 5 kilometers from the main battle line of the Western Front. Research and publications of the historian Thomas Weber made 2010/11 new facts from that time known and refuted the reverberation of the present propaganda of the Nazis, Hitler was a battle-hardened and extremely brave soldier.

Other well-known members of the regiment were the poet Eugen Roth, the painter Albert Weisgerber, who fell on May 10, 1915 as a lieutenant and company commander west of Lille; Fritz Wiedemann, her with major Rudolf Schmundt, later Adjutant of Hitler, Max Amann, National Socialist functionary and publicist, and the Jewish soldier Hugo Gutmann  (later Henry George Grant), who was involved as a Jewish officer during the First World War, that the corporal Hitler the Iron Cross 1st class  was awarded, and later on was targeted by the Nazi regime. Fritz Wiedemann died on 17th January 1970, age 78,.in Postmünster, Hugo Gutmann, changed his name in Henry George Grant and lived in St. Louis and worked as a typewriter salesman. Gutman/Grant died in San Diego, California, on 22 June 1962, age 81. He was buried at Home of Peace Cemetery in San Diego

During the First World War, the Königlich Bayerisches 16. Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment. had the next casualties. Dead: 48 officers, one medical officer, 244 noncommissioned officers and 2,084 crews. Missing: two officers, thirteen NCOs and 178 crews by illness / accident deceased: one officer, fourteen NCOs and 114 crews  At the end of the war, there were 32 officers, six medical officers, 237 non-commissioned officers and 1,387 crews in captivity..

.