List, Field Marshal Siegmund

List, Field Marshal Siegmund (1880–1971),German Army officer who commanded the German forces in Austria after the Anschluss of March 1938. Promoted general in April 1939, he led the Fourteenth Army during the Polish campaign of September– October 1939 and the Twelfth Army during the fighting which culminated in the fall of France the following June. He was promoted field marshal in July 1940, commanded the Twelfth Army during the Balkan campaign—which he conducted brilliantly—and from June to October 1941 was C-in-C South-East, commanding German forces in the Balkans. In July 1942 he was succeeded by General Löhr and then commanded Army Group A in the German–Soviet war. He was given the task of capturing Rostov-on-Don, and then seizing the Caucasus, but when his offensive stalled (see German–Soviet war, 4) he was dismissed by Hitler in September 1942, and retired. In 1948 he received a life sentence from an American military tribunal, chiefly for war crimes in the Balkans and Greece, but was pardoned and released in 1952. He has been judged as one of ‘the most neglected and underrated of all of Hitler's field marshals’ ( S. Mitcham, Hitler's Field Marshals and their Battles, London, 1988, p. 203).