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Archival description
Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Abt. Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe, 456 F 1 · Fonds · 1914-1919
Part of Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg, Dept. General State Archive Karlsruhe (Archivtektonik)

On the history of Army High Command 7: The deployment plan for the West Army in a future war against France in 1914 provided for the formation of a total of seven armies on the German western border. The 7th Army, whose jurisdiction extended from the Hagenau-Saarburg line to the Alsatian-Swiss border, had the task of ensuring the protection of the left flank of the Western Army and thus guaranteeing the three so-called encircling armies (1 - 3, see Schliefen Plan) corresponding lateral protection. This 7th Army, which was under the command of the General Colonels of Heeringen, was assigned the General Command of the XV AK (Strasbourg), the General Command of the XIV AK (Karlsruhe) and the General Command of the XIV Reserve Corps at fighting formations. With the exception of a few Prussian and Württemberg troops, most of which were in the 28th Reserve Division, the 55th Mixed Replacement Brigade and the 55th Landwehr Brigade, the majority of the 7th Army (in addition to the units of the XV AK) consisted of the Baden troops of the XIV AK and the XIV Reserve Corps.With these troops, in one of the first battles of the world war, Colonel General von Herringen succeeded in stopping the advance of French units on the Rhine border and throwing them back from the Alsatian plain to the Vosges ridges. the transition from the war of movement to the war of positions, combined with the accelerated exchange of troops within the various army corps and armies, blurred the clear assignability of certain units to larger units. With the calming of the Upper Alsace and Vosges Front in the winter of 1915, larger parts of the fighting Baden troops were withdrawn from the area of responsibility of the 7th Army and replaced by Landwehr formations (also Baden, but also Württemberg, Bavarian and Prussian). These units, which were deployed at almost all theatres of war in the West, generally remained under the command of the 7th Army High Command. While the army groups and army fronts were pronounced intermediate instances of the higher leadership, the "Army High Commands" as command authorities combined combat command with administrative tasks. Their army area was divided into the "operational area" and the "stage" in which the supply facilities of the army were stationed. The allocation of army troops (pioneers, transport troops and air forces) was based on the respective operational objectives and also varied in the area of the 7th Armed Forces. In 1914, however, the air force department, field airship department, telegraph department and a radio command with two heavy radio stations belonged to the "basic equipment" of every army. Inventory history: The knowledge about the original jurisdiction of the 7th Army and the troops that formed it will have been decisive for the fact that the military tradition of this large formation was not transferred to the army archive in Potsdam after the end of the First World War, but remained in the Heilbronn branch archive and later in the army archive in Stuttgart. From there, the closed collection was transferred to the General State Archives in 1949 as part of the transfer of "Baden" military provenances (for the archive history of the XIV Army Corps tradition, see the preliminary remarks on Repertory 456 F 8 - Deputy General Command XIV Army Corps). Order and Distortion: The present inventory was recorded in 1985 by Heinrich Raab, a long-time administrator of the inventory group 456. The title recordings available on index cards were then sorted according to departments in accordance with the military business distribution plan and according to subjects within the departments. When the holdings were repackaged in acid-free archive containers, the undersigned checked and partially supplemented the title records, but the internal order of the holdings was largely retained. In addition, file fascicles found in other holdings of the inventory group 456 were integrated into the inventory according to provenance. Karlsruhe, August 1990Kurt Hochstuhl