Karl Hubert Lanz (22 May 1896 – 15 August 1982) was a German general during the Second World War, in which he led units in the Eastern Front and in the Balkans.

Lanz entered the Army on 20 June 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I and served in the Western Front, and ended it with the rank of lieutenant (Oberleutnant).

[1][2] As the news spread, a large-scale anti-Jewish pogrom broke out, in which the town's Ukrainian population participated, stirred up in part by German and OUN posters and proclamations calling for revenge against the "Jewish Bolshevik murders".

In May 1942, Lanz's division fought in the Second Battle of Kharkov and then participated in the Fall Blau offensive through southern Russia and into the Caucasus (Operation Edelweiss).

[4][dubious – discuss] To accomplish this, the plotters planned to use von Strachwitz's Großdeutschland Panzer regiment to overpower Hitler's SS bodyguard.

[5] This "Plan Lanz" was known in certain military circles, including the leadership of Army Group B, and was even communicated to Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.

[6] The Germans feared an Allied landing in Greece (a belief reinforced by British disinformation measures like Operation Mincemeat), and were engaged in continuous anti-partisan sweeps,[7] during which several hundred villages were depopulated and often torched.

[11] Despite Lanz's personal misgivings and his clashes with his subordinate, General Walter von Stettner, over the treatment of civilians,[12] reprisals remained a standard tactic: following the death of Salminger in a guerrilla ambush in late September, Lanz issued an order demanding "ruthless retaliatory action" in a 20 km area around the place of the ambush.

In Corfu, resistance lasted only for a day, but all 280 Italian officers on the island were shot and their bodies were disposed of in the sea, on Lanz's orders.

After the German retreat from Greece in October 1944, Lanz and his troops moved through the Balkans towards Hungary, where they participated in Operation Margarethe,[17] and the Austrian Alps, where he surrendered to the US Army on 8 May 1945.

However, his defence team cast doubt on the allegations concerning these events, and as the Italians did not present any evidence against him, Lanz convinced the court that he had resisted Hitler's directives and that the massacre did not happen.

[18] His defence also argued that the Italians were under no orders to fight from the War Office in Brindisi, and would therefore have to be regarded as mutineers or franc-tireurs who had no right to be treated as POWs under the Geneva conventions.