Mauchenheim, genannt Bechtolsheim, Gustav Maria Benno Freiherr von, born 16-06-1889 in Munich , son of Maximilian Maria Markus Freiherr von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim
and Maria-Antonia, born Edle von Taeuffenbach. two months after Adolf Hitler. Gustav joined the Bavarian Army as a Fahnenjunker in 1907, 18 years old, with the Infantry “Leib” Regiment and promoted to Leutnant in 1909. He served in the first war as an Hauptman and after the war he temporary joined the Freikorps von Epp
and was allowed in the new 100.000 men Reichswehr
as Company Chief of the 19th Bavarian Infantry Regiment.
He served in 1929 with the Staff of the Command in Cuxhaven as Major and assigned as commander of the II Battalion of the 20th Bavarian Infantry Regiment in Ingolstadt. He retired from the Army but in 1936 he was reactivated, as Oberst, and Training Leader in Heidelberg with the Landwehrkommander in Darmstadt. With the mobilisation of World War II he took the command of the 404th Infantry Regiment with the 246th Infantry Division
under General Erich Denecke
Denecke died age 77 on 07-03-1963 in Darmstadt. The Regiment was during the “Phony war` stationed at the Western border. The Phoney War (the English spelling is preferred over the American “phony,” was an eight-month period at the start of World War II, that was marked by a lack of major military operations by the United Kingdom and France, the Western Allies against the German Reich on Germany’s Western Front. In May 1941 he took the command of the new 707th Infantry Division
and was involved in Operation Barbarossa under the command of the Wehrmacht commander in the Reichs Region of Osland, Generalleutnant Walter Braemer
Braemer died age 72 on 13-06-1955 in Hamburg. Braemer was later the commander of the Army rear area of the Army Group Mid under General der Infanterie Max von Schenckendorf. Von Schenckendorf
died of a heart attack age 58 on 0-07-1943 in Krummhübel and the 2nd Panzer Division
under Generaloberst Rudolf Schmidt
in the Region of Brjansk. Stationed in the region behind the front his troops committed several war crimes, as mass executions of Jews and from partisans suspected civilians. An order of Mauchenheims from 24-11-1941:
“When contacting smaller or larger groups of Jews you are allowed to kill them or to bring them to the different Ghettos”.
He lost his command in February 1943 and landed in the Führer Reserve and from begin April 1943 until the end of the war assigned as Inspector of the Wehrmacht Replacement Inspection in Heidelsberg and later in Regensburg. His efforts to get another commanding job, failed because of a lack of leading capacities. After the war he was accused of killing Jews but Mauchenheim denied and disputed that his troops were not involved in the mass killings and that he never ordered them to join the killing Police Troops. One was the jewish resistance nurse Bruskina, Maria “Masha”.
The judge and the Public Ministery, not knowing yet of war crimes by the Wehrmacht, finished the case against Mauchenheim in 1962.
Death and burial ground of Mauchenheim, genannt Bechtolsheim, Freiherr Gustav Maria Benno von.

Living in Nonnenhorn, Freiherr Gustav von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim, died at the age of 69 and is buried with his wife Valerie, born von Baligand, who died old age 89 on 30-05-1995, on the Nordfriedhof of Munich.


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