During the
Battle of France, Heinrici's command was part of General
Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb's Army Group C. He commanded the XII Army Corps which was part of the
1st Army. Heinrici's forces succeeded in breaking through the
Maginot Line south of
Saarbrücken on 14 June 1940. In 1941, during
Operation Barbarossa, Heinrici served in the
4th Army under
Günther von Kluge as the commanding general of the
XXXXIII Army Corps during the
Battle of Białystok–Minsk, the
Battle of Kiev and the
Battle of Moscow. He received the
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross in 1941. Late in January 1942, Heinrici was given command of the 4th Army. On 24 November 1943, he was awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knight's Cross for his leadership during the
Battle of Orsha, during which the 4th Army taking defensive positions near the Orsha region in Belarus, temporarily halted the advance of the
Western Front led by General
Vasiliy Sokolovsky. During the 4th Army's retreat, it inflicted heavy losses on the advancing Red Army. These successes contributed greatly to Heinrici's reputation as a defensive specialist. Later in 1943, he refused to obey an order to destroy the city of
Smolensk by fire before the German army's retreat, and he was temporarily dismissed from his post as commander. Heinrici wrote in his diary:"Hampered by the snow and especially the snowdrifts, often shoveling ourselves out metre by metre, and traveling with vehicles and equipment that are by no means adequate for the Russian winter, behind us the enemy pressing on, concern to bring the troops to safety in time, to carry the wounded along, not to let too many weapons or too much equipment fall into enemy hands, all this was sorely trying for the troops and their leaders...Kitted-out with fabulous winter equipment, the Russians everywhere push through the wide gaps that have opened up in our front...The retreat in snow and ice is absolutely Napoleonic in its manner. The losses are similar." (left) and Heinrici, mid-1943 In 1944, after the previous successes of the Red Army in Ukraine, Heinrici repeatedly argued for the retreat of Army Group Center and a concomitant shortening of the front line; Hitler rejected these plans at a staff meeting on 20 May 1944. On 4 June, Heinrici was relieved of command of the 4th Army, which was later encircled east of Minsk and nearly destroyed during
Operation Bagration. In the summer of 1944, after eight months of forced retirement, Heinrici was sent to
Hungary and placed in command of the
1st Panzer Army; as well as the
Hungarian First Army which was attached to it. He was able to keep the 1st Panzer Army relatively intact as it retreated into
Slovakia. Later in 1944, during the
Battle of the Dukla Pass, the 1st Panzer Army prevented Soviet forces from linking up with Slovak rebel forces of the concurrent
Slovak National Uprising. Heinrici was awarded the Swords to the Oak Leaves of his Knight's Cross on 3 March 1945.
Retreat from the Oder On 20 March 1945, Hitler replaced
Heinrich Himmler with Heinrici as Commander-in-Chief of
Army Group Vistula on the
Eastern Front. Indicating that he was ill, Himmler had abandoned his post on 13 March and retired to a
sanatorium at Lychen. At this time, Army Group Vistula's front was less than from
Berlin. Army Group Vistula consisted of two armies: the
3rd Panzer Army led by General
Hasso von Manteuffel and the
9th Army led by General
Theodor Busse. Heinrici was tasked with preventing a Soviet attack across the
Oder River amid shortages of manpower and material. Only the terrain itself favoured Heinrici; he dug the 9th Army into three defensive lines atop Seelow Heights, overlooking the sandy, swampy banks of the Oder. Manteuffel's 3rd Panzer Army, which had fewer panzers than the 9th, was similarly positioned in the north to delay a possible flanking strike by Marshal
Konstantin Rokossovsky's
2nd Byelorussian Front. On 16 April, the
Battle of the Oder-Neisse began. The Soviets attacked with about 1,500,000 men for what they called the "Berlin Offensive Operation". During the
Battle of Berlin, Heinrici withdrew his troops westward and made no attempt to defend the city. By late April, Heinrici ordered the retreat of his army group away from the Oder River. Hitler only became aware of the retreat of Army Group Vistula around 21 April, after a puzzling request by Heinrici, who sought permission to move his headquarters to a new site, which was farther west than Berlin.
Dismissal On 28 April, Field Marshal
Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the German Armed Forces High Command, was riding along the roads north of Berlin when he noticed that troops of the
7th Panzer Division and of the
25th Panzergrenadier Division were marching north, away from Berlin. These troops were part of von Manteuffel's 3rd Panzer Army. As one of the two armies which made up Heinrici's Army Group Vistula, it was supposed to be on its way to Berlin. Instead, Heinrici was moving it northward in an attempt to halt the Soviet breakthrough at
Neubrandenburg, contrary to orders of Keitel and his deputy, General
Alfred Jodl. Keitel located Heinrici on a road near Neubrandenburg, accompanied by Manteuffel. The encounter resulted in a heated confrontation that led to Heinrici's dismissal by 29 April for disobeying orders. Heinrici was replaced by General
Kurt Student. General
Kurt von Tippelskirch was named as Heinrici's interim replacement until Student could arrive and assume control of Army Group Vistula. Student was captured by the British before he could take command. The rapidly deteriorating situation that the Germans faced meant that Army Group Vistula's coordination of the armies under its nominal command during the last few days of the war was of little significance. Heinrici was dismissed by Keitel for refusing to save Hitler. He was summoned to Berlin and would have complied had Captain Hellmuth Lang not persuaded him to "drive as slowly as you can" to
Plön instead, informing him that he would be murdered in Berlin like
Rommel (who had once been Heinrici's adjutant, and later Lang's commander). Heinrici then gave himself up to British forces at Plön on 28 May. ==Post-war life==