Tychsen, Christian.

Tychsen, Christian, born 03-12-1910 in Flensburg , the son of a master carpenter. After attending the municipal high school for boys, which he graduated with secondary school leaving certificate, he learned the trade of carpenter himself. Since his actual professional goal was interior designer, however, he became a member of the board of trustees of the applied arts college in Flensburg in 1933.  He joined the SS in December 1931 with 50^th SS-Standarte. He was later transferred to the SS/VT, SS Dispositional Troops , under SS Brigadeführer Paul “Papa” Hausser   in October 1934 and served with the Germania Regiment as a platoon leader from October 1936 until December 1938 when he became the Commander of the 1^st Company ‘N’ Battalion. When ‘N’ Battalion was dissolved he was moved to command the 1st Motorcycle Company. In February 1941 his command was absorbed by the Motorcycle Battalion and was renamed the 3^rd Company, although Schafranek still kept command. From left: Sylvester Stadler, Hans Weiß, Christian Tychsen, Otto Kumm, Vinzenz Kaiser and Karl-Heinz Worthmann in the Soviet Union (April 1943); Admission of an SS propaganda company Also in the picture is SS-Obersturmführer Hans Pavelka, killed in action on 16-07-1943 and SS-Untersturmführer Karl-Heinz Worthmann, killed in action on 06-07-1943 near Belgorod. In January 1942 Tychsen was given the command of the Motorcycle Battalion. After being wounded in February, 1942 he was posted to the SS Officers school at Braunschweig until he had recovered. In May 1942, he was given the command of II./Langemarck Regiment and retained in this position when it became the II./2^nd Panzer Regiment in October 1942. In April 1943 he was awarded the Knight’s Cross.

 

The name Langemarck, a small village in Belgium, grew in significance in the years following the war. Many Germans were unwilling to accept that they had been defeated, preferring to blame politicians and industrialists who were said to have ‘stabbed them (the army) in the back’; for the veterans Langemarck came to stand for victory out of defeat, a spiritual or moral victory gained by self sacrifice, a victory of innocence and youth pitted against hard professionalism, a victory of idealism in the service of the nation. Adolf Hitler spent two days visiting his former WWI Ypres Salient battlefields. His tour included the town of Ypres and Langemark military cemetery.

   
What became know as ‘Kindermord’or ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’ took place during the first battle of Ypres in the early days of the war. Enthusiastic and inexperienced students came fatally face-to-face with battle hardened British soldiers.

Tychsen became 2^nd SS Panzer Regiment  commander on November, 1943 and held command until he replaced the wounded  SS Brigadeführer, Heinz Lammerding, who died age 65, of cancer, on 13-01-1971, in Düsseldorf,

as temporary Commanding Officer of the Das Reich Division. Lammerding’s  Regiment  “Der Führer” of the 2^nd SS Panzer Regiment under command of SS Obersturmbannführer, Adolf Diekmann

  , was responsible for the Oradour Sur Glane massacre,  on 10-06-1944. 642 people, the whole town, were killed and only six survived.

 After being wounded more than nine times in total, SS Obersturmbannführer   Christian Tychsen was killed in Normandy, during Operation Overlord. Tychsen’s VW kubelwagen was ambushed by a machine-gun from the M-4 tank of Russ Needles, Co. H, 67^th Armored Regiment , 2^nd AD, on the afternoon of 28-07-1944. He died, age 33, on 28-07-1944 of his wounds in American captivity, his driver was fatally wounded and his orderly officer escaped. Souvenir hunters took his tunic with all his decorations and all other types of identification, so he was buried as an unknown soldier, but was later identified.

He is now buried on the German war cemetery of Marigny in France. A few rows further is the grave of General der Infanterie, Kommandeur LXXXIV Heeres Gruppe, Erich Marcks.

A hemorrhage killed Erich Marcks around 09.45 while he rested in a ditch close to the road where he also was buried first

In 1945 and 1946 the American war dead were relocated in 3,070 graves to the cemetery in St. Laurent-sur-Mer. In 1957 the Reburial Service of the German War Graves Commission interred German soldiers from numerous small graveyards and field graves at Marigny. The graveyard was created as five long blocks of graves with a banked outer boundary. Ceramics plaques bear the name, rank, and dates of birth and death of two soldiers. The cemetery contains a total of 11,169 graves.