Helmut Thumm


Helmut Karl Georg Thumm was a German officer, finally general of the Wehrmacht and recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves during World War II.

WWII

Thumm led German forces during the Allied offensive into the Colmar Pocket in January 1945. After pulling Hitler Youth teenagers out of the front lines against orders from above, he was relieved of his command of the LXIV Army Corps on 20 January 1945. He was taken prisoner of war at his home in Welzheim on 19 April 1945 by troops of the 44th Division. He would be repatriated and finally released on 25 October 1947.

Family

Helmut was the son of Protestant senior teacher Johann Georg Thumm and his wife Luise Emilie, née Bachert. His father was head teacher at a private school for higher education for girls founded in Ravensburg in 1887, which became a "Realschule" in 1903, a "Oberschule für Mädchen" in 1938, the "Mädchen-Gymnasium Ravensburg" in 1954 and the "Welfen-Gymnasium" in 1972, which also accepted boys from the school year 1972/73 and ended the 85 years of purely girls' education at the school.
In 1905, the family relocated to Heilbronn, and in 1908, to Stuttgart. There, his father, a military veteran and a patriotic member of the German People's Party, became the gymnastics teacher at the Friedrich-Eugens-Realschule as well as, since 1912, chairman of the state association of the Young Germany League, where his son also became active. The Bund was an umbrella organization of bourgeois youth associations founded in 1911 by Generalfeldmarschall Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz for the military education of German youth.

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