Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist was born on August 8, 1881 into an old aristocratic family in Pomerania that had produced an extensive line of Prussian military commanders. Three of his forebears had reached the rank of Prussian field marshal. He entered the Imperial German Army in March 1900 as an officer cadet in the 3rd Royal Field Artillery Regiment and in August 1901 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant before entering the cavalry school in Hanover. He received General Staff training at the national military academy in Berlin, where he married Gisela Wachtel. In 1911 he graduated from the academy and joined the 14th Hussar Regiment stationed in Kassel. Three years later, he became a captain of cavalry and was reassigned to the command staff of the 1st Life Hussars “Totenkopf” before the eruption of World War I in July 1914.

Kleist commanded a cavalry squadron at the Battle of Tannenberg in August 1914 that led to the absolute destruction of a Russian army and a decisive German victory. He returned to General Staff service in October 1915 and was transferred to the 85th Infantry Division, a reserve unit on the Eastern Front. In 1917 he became the Chief of Staff of the Guards Cavalry Division, which took part in the Second Battle of the Marne in the summer of 1918. Shortly before the end of the war, he was moved to the staff of the 255th Infantry Division. After the armistice he returned to Hanover.

In 1919 Kleist joined the freikorps, a right-wing paramilitary organization set up to combat communism and growing Soviet influence in East Prussia and the Baltic region. In 1920 he joined the Reichswehr, the armed forces of the new Weimar Republic. He became an instructor at the Hanover cavalry school and later Chief of Staff of the 3rd Infantry Division and then the 3rd Military District. In 1931 he was made commander of the 9th Infantry Regiment before being transferred the following year to the 2nd Cavalry Division in Breslau, where he purchased a residence. He was promoted rapidly during this time period, reaching major general in 1932, lieutenant general in 1933, and finally general of cavalry in the summer of 1936. Also in 1936, Kleist became responsible for a new military district based in Silesia and the large military expansion put in place after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in 1933. In 1938 Hitler and his inner circle organized the downfalls of Werner von Blomberg and Werner von Fritsch, who were opposed to Hitler’s rapid re-militarization. This was followed by a general reorganization of the army to replace old guard commanders with officers more sympathetic to the Nazi agenda. Kleist, as the embodiment of the old Prussian nobility, was forced to retire to Breslau.

In 1939, with the invasion of Poland and war with the United Kingdom and France, he was recalled to service and placed in command of 22nd Corps, part of the 14th Army under Colonel General Wilhelm List based in Moravia and Slovakia. Kleist’s unit captured Lvov before joining Heinz Guderian’s 19th Corps near the River Bug.

In March 1940 Kleist was given command of several panzer corps including five out of the ten German armored divisions, dubbed Panzer Group Kleist. While lacking the knowledge of blitzkrieg theory possessed by other generals like Guderian, Kleist was a moderating force representing the conservative faction of the military. He was to oversee the push through the Allied front all the way to the English Channel, boxing in the British Expeditionary Force and several French armies. On May 12, the second day of the Battle of France, Kleist decided to cross the Meuse and attack Sedan rather than delay and wait for the army’s infantry to catch up with his tanks and motorized units. By May 14 Kleist had taken Sedan and soon after smashed a hole in the French line 62 miles wide. Marshal Phillippe Petain signed an armistice with the German government in July 1940 and Kleist was promoted to colonel general and awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross. In April 1941 Kleist’s panzer corps was renamed the First Panzer Group and sent to Bulgaria to lead the invasion of Greece.

In March 1941 the Royal Yugoslav Army Air Force overthrew the regency of Prince Paul in a coup d’état, replacing him with a pro-Western government. Nazi Germany decided to invade Yugoslavia before Greece, and the invasion commenced in early April. By April 13 Kleist’s panzers had entered Belgrade in the face of the near-complete collapse of the Yugoslav military, hindered as it was by inferior equipment and Croatian nationalists seeking independence. In May First Panzer Group was moved to Poland as part of Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt’s Army Group South for the upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. At this time Kleist’s group included five panzer divisions and four motorized divisions, including the 1st SS Panzer Division “Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler” and 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking.

When the invasion began on June 22, however, First Panzer Group struggled to make rapid progress through Galicia and the western Ukraine, at least compared to other German armored units. In addition to wild and heavily wooded terrain, Kleist had to contend with most of the extant Soviet tanks at the time, as the Soviet high command had long anticipated a German strike toward the industrial center of Kiev and the breadbasket of Ukrainian agriculture. Nevertheless, Kleist helped in the encirclement and destruction of the Soviet 6th and 12th armies near Uman in central Ukraine. In August and September he participated in the first Battle of Kiev, which resulted in another encirclement and the near total annihilation of the Soviet Southwestern Front. On October 6, 1941 First Panzer Group was upgraded to the First Panzer Army and sent south to help capture Rostov.

In November 1941 a combination of extended supply lines, harsh terrain, and tenacious Soviet resistance had started to make its impact on the German invasion force. Kleist successfully captured Rostov on November 20 but was forced to give up the city on November 28 in the first major setback for the Wehrmacht since the German-Soviet war began. Hitler fired the commander of Army Group South, von Rundstedt, for ordering the retreat and permitting the first victorious Soviet counteroffensive. However, Rundstedt’s replacement, Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau, supported the decision to fall back, causing Hitler to relent, and perhaps also sparring Kleist from losing his command.

In May 1942, while the Red Army was launching multiple counteroffensives in the aftermath of the failed German assault on Moscow, Kleist’s panzer army participated in Operation Fredericus, also known as the Second Battle of Kharkov. His units helped isolate three Soviet armies in a pincer attack resulting in huge losses for the Soviet Union, with over a quarter of a million Soviet casualties compared to 20,000 Axis losses. Kleist and the Wehrmacht were successful in their goals, eliminating an important staging ground for the Red Army’s attacks.

First Panzer Army was assigned to Army Group A for the 1942 German summer offensive toward the Caucasus oil fields, Case Blue. Field Marshal Wilhelm List initially commanded Army Group A but after two months of steady progress the advance stalled, prompting Hitler to dismiss List. Hitler attempted to lead the army group himself, but this coincided with the Battle of Stalingrad and the encirclement of the German 6th Army. In November Hitler placed Kleist in command of Army Group A, with General Eberhard von Mackensen taking over command of the First Panzer Army.

By January 1943 Kleist had successfully extracted First Panzer Army from the Taman Peninsula, thanks in part to the assistance of Army Group Don under Field Marshal Erich von Manstein. The other part of Army Group A, the 17th Army, was tasked with holding the Kuban bridgehead between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. Despite being under near-constant attack by the Red Army, the 17th Army held the five defensive lines that were to be the springboard for efforts to retake the Caspian oil fields. The Germans were fortunate to hold their positions, and for his victory Kleist was promoted to field marshal in February 1943. By September Kleist was charged with helping evacuate German troops toward the Dnepr River further west. The Wehrmacht would completely abandon the Taman Peninsula by the beginning of October 1943.

For the rest of the year, Kleist and Manstein fought the Battle of the Dnepr, slowly giving up ground as the Red Army cleared the Germans from the eastern bank of the river. Hitler refused to countenance retreat, even as his commanders warned of untenable positions. By the start of the 1944 the Wehrmacht found itself pushed past the Western Bug. In March Kleist arranged for the 8th Army, cut off from the rest of Army Group South under Manstein, to fall back to the Dniester River. On March 30 Kleist and Manstein received the Knights’ Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords, one of the highest awards available to military personnel, before being relieved of their commands due to their repeated disagreements with Hitler and insistence on withdrawals. Retired again, Kleist went to his estate in Silesia.

In 1944 Kleist was implicated in the July 20 assassination attempt on Hitler due to the involvement of his cousin, Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin. He was arrested by the Gestapo but avoided trial and was allowed to return home. A year later, however, he fled Silesia after the Soviets reached the region, only to be captured by Allied troops. In 1946 the British government turned him over to the Tito government of Yugoslavia, who sentenced Kleist to fifteen years for some of the massacres carried out during the German invasion and occupation. In 1949 the Yugoslav government turned him over to Soviet custody, where he was eventually sent to a prison camp for senior German officers in Vladimir. In November 1954 the East German news agency ADN reported that Kleist had died at age 73, the only German field marshal to die in Soviet captivity.

Sources

Barnett, Correlli. 2003. Hitler’s Generals. Grove Press.

Glantz, David. 2012. Operation Barbarossa: Hitler’s Invasion of Russia 1941. The History Press.

Megargee, Geoffrey. 2006. War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941. Rowman & Littlefield.

Mitcham, Samuel. 2009. Men of Barbarossa: Commanders of the German Invasion of Russia, 1941. Casemate.

Stahel, David. 2013. Operation Typhoon: Hitler’s March on Moscow, October 1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Stahel, David. 2015. The Battle for Moscow. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.