Notes from the Front Line – Sketches and Annotations of a German Lieutenant Colonel

Jul 1, 2016 | Uncategorized

On the 100th anniversary of the first day of the Somme, Peter Harrington presents a fascinating set concerning the Great War, appended with the numerous annotations, hand-sketched maps and diagrams of Bogdan von Recum. Learn about his own significant military contributions during WWII and his insight into the previous war’s events below.

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EDMONDS, Sir James E., History of the Great War based on Official Documents. Military Operations, France and Belgium, 1914 [-18].

18 volumes, octavo; 8 cases of maps: An excellent set, with all of the maps present. First editions throughout with the exception of the first volume of 1914, which is the revised third edition of 1933, all in remarkably good condition. This set carries the armorial book stamps of Bogdan Freiherr von Recum and his pencilled ownership inscriptions.

Rudolph Alfred Bogdan Freiherr von Recum (1896-1990) was the son of Rudolph Heinrich Freiherr von Recum and Marie Ernestine Howard, daughter of the widely travelled British diplomat Sir Henry Howard. His brother, Otto, served with the German Navy between 1914 and 1927 and worked with the United States forces at the end of the war (see his New York Times obituary online).

Bogdan von Recum, cited as being a major in 1936 at the Dillingen/Donau Riding and Driving School, was sent to the Eastern Front where he arrived just in time to take part in the fierce actions around the Rhzev salient (known as the “Rhzev meat-grinder”), a strategic crossroads and vital rail junction straddling the Volga, where the German army was reeling from Soviet attacks; he saw action on 31 July 1942 with Aufklärungs-Abteilung 328 (a reconnaissance battalion) around the villages of Griborjewo, Gorbowo, Federkowo and Chanino; promoted to oberstleutnant (lieutenant colonel) on 1 August – clearly a field promotion as his command is described as being reduced to just himself and 22 men – his unit was at the forefront of the fierce fighting in the north part of the salient.

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His contribution to the German defence was a vital one: “Lieutenant Colonel von Recum, the commander of the 251st Division’s mobile battalion, took over responsibility for the defence of the bridgehead from the 87th Infantry Division. His ‘mixed hodgepodge of units thrown together as akampfgruppe’ included the 187th and 215st Engineer Battalions, the 87th Ski Battalion, the 72 Infantry Division’s mobile battalion, the 10th Company of the 129th Infantry Division’s 428th Grenadier Regiment, and the 1st Squadron of the 251st Mobile Battalion.

This motley force performed superbly, repulsing thirty-seven separate Russian assaults between 9 and 12 December, inflicting heavy losses on the attackers, and unbeknownst to Von Recum, forcing the Soviet commanders to alter their attack plans by shifting their main attack into the 39th Army’s sector” (David M. Glantz, Zhukov’s Greatest Defeat: The Red Army’s Epic Disaster in Operation Mars 1942, 1999 p. 271).

He later contributed the section dealing with the Italian Front to the unit history Kampf und Ende der Fränkisch-Sudetendeutschen 98 Infanterie-Division by the unit’s commanding officer, Martin Gareis (first published 1956); and corresponded with Liddell Hart about German commanders of the Second World War, material Liddell Hart used in his The Other Side of the Hill (1948), published in the US as The German Generals Talk.

His extensive and fastidious pencil annotations in both English and German, provide a sporadic but minutely informed and remarkably detailed commentary on matters ranging from the minutiae of battlefield dispositions to command decisions.

He was clearly gathering these volumes as they were published (presumably while he was serving at the Riding and Driving School at Dillingen/Donau), has carefully kept all agenda and corrigenda slips and cut and pasted them in where relevant; there are also cuttings from The Cavalry Journal and a good number of hand-drawn and detailed maps of a number of actions.

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Certain annotations and sketch maps show that Von Recum was particularly interested in the part played by the cavalry and subsequent developments in tanks and tank tactics (see volume III of 1917 and the section on Cambrai and the British use of the tank).

He comments interestingly on Passchendaele and the German breakthrough in 1918 (Operation Michael): “This Note II is a collection of material picked out of German books with the intention of maiking the success of the 21st as bade as possible” and then “The German higher Commands had learnt that it is wrong to use the reserves against the strongest opposition, but to use them at those parts of the front which gave in first, where the resistance is weak or broken! This was the case on the front of the British III Corps. Through this new lesson plans can only be followed as long as success is with these troops. War is not a series? of rigid principles”; the latter a reference to the new German tactical innovations of 1918 and the use of stormtroopers (or stosstruppen).

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We have not been able to ascertain whether von Recum served during the Great War but is more than likely given his age and later military service.

A fascinating set that would bear closer research, available for £5,000

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