Poland In late 1939, List commanded the
14th Army of the
Wehrmacht in the
invasion of Poland. It was List's task to advance his army into southern Poland immediately at the start of the invasion, to form the extreme southern wing of an encircling manoeuver carried out by the German forces aimed at trapping the
Polish Army in the general region of
Warsaw. He was unsuccessful in this mission, though he met advance elements of the
XIX Panzer Corps under General
Heinz Guderian a short distance south of
Brest-Litovsk on 17 September 1939. Following the conclusion of the fighting in Poland, which was accelerated by
Soviet invasion of the eastern part of the country (as agreed to in the
Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact), List and his army remained posted in Poland as occupying forces.
Invasion of France During the huge German offensive against
France and the
Low Countries from May to June 1940, the 14th Army remained in Poland while List commanded the
12th Army during the
fall of France. The 12th Army was a unit of
Army Group A under command of
Gerd von Rundstedt that successfully forced through the
Ardennes and then made the imperative breakthrough on 15 May 1940, which spread panic in the French forces and cut the
British Expeditionary Force off from their
supply lines. After this successful campaign, List was among the twelve generals that Hitler promoted to
Field Marshal during the
1940 Field Marshal Ceremony. In early 1941, German troops were being steadily massed on the
Eastern Front in preparation for the
German invasion of the Soviet Union. The
OKW believed that before the invasion could be launched it would be necessary to eliminate the possibility of interference from
Greece by militarily subduing this country. In an operation codenamed
Operation Marita, List was delegated to negotiate with the
Bulgarian Army's General Staff, and a secret agreement was signed allowing the free passage of German troops through Bulgarian territory. On the night of 28/29 February 1941, German troops (including List who now commanded the 12th Army) took up positions in Bulgaria, which the next day joined the
Tripartite Pact.
Greece and Yugoslavia general
Sepp Dietrich (left) in Greece, April 1941 On 6 April 1941, the Wehrmacht launched invasions of both
Greece and
Yugoslavia in what became the known as
Balkans Campaign. List's 12th Army, consisting of four
armored divisions and 11
motorized infantry divisions, totally outmatched the defending Greek and Yugoslav forces. German forces occupied
Belgrade on 13 April and
Athens on 27 April. The mainland campaign ended with the evacuation of British forces on 28 April. The Germans and their
collaborationist allies were faced with resistance from various
partisan groups. List became implicated in the
mass killings of hundreds of thousands of civilians by having ordered
hostage-taking and
reprisal killings. List resigned as chief of the 12th Army in October 1941 due to illness. In early 1942, he undertook an inspection tour of
German-occupied Norway at Hitler's request to determine the country's preparedness for a potential British landing. List's open distaste for
Nazism had already caused him to fall out of favour with Hitler, who did not want to give him a new command and only reconsidered at the insistence of various officers in the
Wehrmacht leadership.
Summer campaign of 1942 and dismissal In early July 1942, List took command of
Army Group A on the
Eastern Front, newly formed from the split of
Army Group South during the German summer offensive named
Case Blue. His orders were to take
Rostov-on-Don and then advance into the
Caucasus to take oil-rich areas of
Maikop and
Grozny. German forces made good progress for two months, taking Maikop and advancing almost to Grozny, never reaching Grozny despite having the opportunity to capture it because List wrongly diverted forces to unnecessarily secure his right flank. However, by the end of August their advance had ground to a halt, chiefly due to considerably stiffened
Red Army resistance, and also due to critical shortages of fuel and
ammunition as the army group outran its supply lines. Matters were made worse for the Germans by the removal in mid-August of most
Luftwaffe combat units to the north to support the
6th Army at the
Battle of Stalingrad. Hitler was angered by the loss of momentum in the Caucasus and sent
Alfred Jodl on 7 September to tell List to make faster progress. List explained to Jodl that he did not have enough forces to break through the Soviet lines to capture Grozny, and also believed that it was still possible to capture Grozny if all the other attacks were suspended and his army group was given priority in supplies and reinforcements. Jodl subsequently agreed with List and he relayed this information to Hitler, who became furious. Hitler relieved List of his command on 9 September when he proposed moving some stalled spearhead units to another, less advanced portion of the front to assist in destroying stubborn Soviet forces. Hitler placed himself in command of Army Group via the
OKH, stating that "Field Marshal List led sluggishly", until he appointed
Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist as commander on 22 November 1942. List never returned to active duty and spent the rest of the war at his home in
Garmisch-Partenkirchen, where he was arrested by the
American occupation force in May 1945. ==Later life==