Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin (4 September 1891 – 9 January 1963) was a General der Panzertruppe of Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht during World War II.
Biography[]
Fridolin von Senger und Etterlin was born on 4 September 1891 in Waldshut-Tiengen in the Kingdom of Wurttemberg in the German Empire (present-day Germany) to a Catholic family. He joined an artillery regiment of the Reichswehr in 1910 and gained a Rhodes scholarship to attend the University of Oxford, but he fought against the United Kingdom during World War II. In 1918 he was promoted to Lieutenant, and by 1939 he was a colonel, having continually served in the army even into the era of Nazi Germany.
Senger commanded German forces during the 1940 battle of France at the start of World War II, and in 1941 he was promoted to Brigadier-General. He led the 17th Panzer Division in the Soviet Union in 1942, but in June 1943 he was given command of German forces on Sicily in anticipation for the Allied invasion. He led the Germans in the Battle of Gela, Battle of Piano Lupo, Battle of the Vizzini-Caltagirone Road, and other actions on Sicily, before he gave orders to withdraw German and Italian troops from Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica after the situations there became untenable. In October 1943 he took over the 14th Panzerkorps and fought the Allies in southern Italy at the battle of Monte Cassino, where a church of the Benedictine Order that he belonged to was destroyed by Allied bombers. In June 1944, he fought against Alexander Vandegrift's US Marine Corps at Monte Castello before being forced to withdraw. Senger und Etterlin continued to fight on the Italian Front until the end of the war in Italy on 3 May 1945 and, after the war, he continued to write on military matters and theory.