Günther Tribukait

Günther Tribukait (sometimes referred to as Tribukeit or Tribukayt) was a German Colonel (Oberst) during World War II and recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. The Knight's Cross and was awarded to recognise extreme battlefield bravery or successful military leadership.

Military career
Little is known about Tribukait's military career. He was born in 1909 in Greifswald. During the battle of Velikiye Luki, (winter 1942/1943) Major Tribukait was commander of the Jäger-Battalion 5 and personally led, as leader of the Kampfgruppe Tribukait, a breakout attempt from a battle tank to escape the encirclement in early January. After the failure of the operation he took command of the city's "Citadel".

As the situation was deteriorating, Tribukait was given direct order from "Wöhler Group" to break the enemy ring to the west and reach the German lines in that direction around 16 January.

Apparently, the outcome of the particular operations Tribukait led, was favorable. Tribukait's team managed to break out and Tribukait himself was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 8 February 1943. Later he went on to command the Jäger-Regiment 750 of the 118th Jäger Division as Oberstleutnant, position in which he was awarded the German Cross in Gold on 23 February 1944. He finally rose to the rank of Oberst.

Trial and execution
Towards the end of the war, Tribukait was arrested by Yugoslav forces and became a Prisoner of War. The 118th Jäger Division - and other Mountain and Jäger divisions as well - were involved in numerous war crimes throughout the Balkans, carrying out, among others, harsh retaliations against the civilian population, especially Serbs and Greeks. Until his trial, he was held in a POW camp at the outskirts of Belgrade.

Oddly, Tribukait had the lowest rank of the defendants of the fourth process of the Yugoslav War Crimes Trials Proceedings (5–16 February 1947). He was tried along with six other major war criminals: Generaloberst Alexander Löhr (commander-in-chief of Army Group E), Generalleutnant Josef Kübler, Hans Fortner and Fritz Neidholdt, Generalmajor Adalbert Lontschar and the SS-Brigadeführer August Schmidthuber. All of the defendants were found guilty of "mass executions of non-combatants, especially of women and children, destruction and razing of homes, kidnapping of Yugoslav civilians to concentration camps and torture and murder of POWs."

All of them were sentenced to death. According to a witness, Löhr and the six other convicts, were imprisoned again in the POW camp outside of Belrade - evidently, Löhr spent his last hours "in a small prison cell, bound in chains and wearing only his underwear". During the night of 25/26 August 1947, ten convicts - among them Tribukait - were picked up by a truck and were driven to the place of execution, where they were executed by hanging in the early hours of 26 February 1947.

Awards

 * Iron Cross 2nd Class
 * Iron Cross 1st Class
 * German Cross in Gold on 23 February 1944 as Oberstleutnant and commander of the Jäger-Regiment 750
 * Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 8 February 1943 as Major and commander of Jäger-Battailon 5