by Sheldrake » 05 Mar 2014, 13:22, Post There were several crack German divisions- Grossdeutschland and Panzer Lehr for example. The other contender for the accolade of best tank is the Soviet T34, earlier versions of … Balck, who ended the war as a General der Panzertruppe (equivalent to a three-star general in the U.S. Army), is today virtually unknown except to the most serious students of World War II. This way one can see how they performed during different situations throughout the war, with contingencies, such as losses and replacements, taken into account. Being a keen amateur and not an expert I would have thought it would be very difficult to sustain an elite(strong in all elements of warfare)unit of any size for a lengthy period of time. Comparing panzer divisions on the offense with a defensive infanterie division doesn't make any sense. The Panzer regiment signaled: Situation serious. I wonder what other studies discuss such opinions from other commanders. But before the two German units could link up, the Soviet Fifth Tank Army under the command of Gen. P. L. Romanenko crossed the Chir River, a tributary of the Don, and drove deep into German lines. by krichter33 » 25 Feb 2014, 03:07, Post Balck was convicted and served a short sentence. As he was saying something to Balck, Webski collapsed in midsentence—with a fatal shrapnel wound to his left temple. During the period from December 7, 1942, through January 31, 1943, the 11th Panzer Division was credited with destroying 225 tanks, 347 antitank guns, 35 artillery pieces, and killing 30,700 Soviet soldiers. Balck always declined, saying he preferred to remain a line officer. See more ideas about world war two, ww2, german army. $23.90 shipping. The series of defensive battles along the Chir was over. In 1948 he was arrested by the German government and put on trial for murder for ordering the summary execution by firing squad in 1944 of a German artillery battalion commander who was found drunk on duty. When Balck commanded the Fourth Panzer Army in August 1944, his counterattack brought the Soviet offensive in the great bend of the Vistula River to a halt. Hitler ordered Morozovskaya held at all costs. Describing this period, Balck wrote in his memoirs: Each day was like the next. The new Soviet thrust, Operation Saturn, threatened to drive to Rostov at the mouth of the Don on the Azov Sea. Despite being supported by Balck’s 15th Panzer Regiment, the 336th Infantry Division was unable to prevent the Soviet I Tank Corps from penetrating ten miles beyond the Chir, reaching State Collective Farm 79 by nightfall on December 7. Morale was at rock bottom. Are there any other such subjective assessments out there??? It lists every German division in WW2 and where they fought as well as if the division was cited for distinguished action. Meanwhile, on December 10 the Fourth Panzer Army had begun its move toward Stalingrad; XLVIII Panzer Corps still had the mission to cross the Don River and link up with this advance. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 5,000 articles originally published in our various magazines. Balck never hesitated to exercise that prerogative. The left side was held by the next-to-worthless Luftwaffe 7th Field Division, a unit of relatively well-equipped but untrained airmen serving as infantry. The Sixth Army was encircled in Stalingrad. To prevent that, he screened the division’s left flank with his own engineer, antitank, and antiaircraft battalions. Balck’s losses for the same period were 16 tanks, 12 antitank guns, 215 soldiers killed in action, 1,019 wounded, and 155 missing. But Balck, leading from the front, reacting instantly to each enemy thrust, repeatedly parried, surprised, and wiped out superior Soviet detachments. It was his opinion that the German parachute troops (1st and 4th Para in particular which were in Italy) were the finest troops he'd experienced. In my opinion the situation was so dismal that it could only be mastered through audacity—in other words, by attacking. The Fifth Tank Army had been virtually destroyed. Balck’s father, William Balck, was one of the German army’s foremost tactical writers in the years prior to World War I, and as a division commander in that war won the Pour le Mérite, Germany’s highest military order (popularly but somewhat irreverently called the “Blue Max”). When I arrived on the scene the situation had already been consolidated somewhat. 18. The 7th Panzer Divison was cited four times and this was. On Christmas Day the Germans still could not break into the cauldron, but neither could the Soviets break out. Unfortunately, my very competent chief of staff, Major von Kienitz, brought everything together in the form of an operations order and submitted it to corps. If any changes were necessary, I drove out during the night and visited each regiment again. But arriving with its lead elements was the division commander, Hermann Balck, who was about to execute one of the most brilliant performances of battlefield generalship in modern military history. Hundreds of dead Russians lay in and around our positions. So, let’s get started, the Allied Grand Strategy in World War II was “Germany First” and it worked out, so let’s begin with a German Infantry Division from 1940. Our 2 weapons are fear and surprise; and ruthless efficiency. But as Balck was at last preparing to take his units across the river on December 17, the Soviets struck elsewhere. Several days later Balck and his operations officer were conferring over a map when a low-flying Soviet fighter plane made a strafing run at them and put several bullet holes into the map between them. The average loss rate of a U.S. infantry regiment in World War II was 100 percent after three months of uninterrupted combat missions. He later returned to Russia to command the XLVIII Panzer Corps, where Mellenthin was still the chief of staff. On November 19 the Soviets launched Operation Uranus: the Fifth Tank Army crossed the Don River from the north and cut off the great bend sector, advancing as far as the north bank of the Chir and the west bank of the Don above the Chir. To close the gap between the regiments I organized a counterattack with [the motorcycle company of the Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion] and some tanks. I forgot what they were called, but I wish I can find more of them... Schweppenberg's statements were made after the war for the U.S. Foreign Military Studies. It was obvious to Balck that the Soviets’ next move would be an attempt to roll up the 336th Infantry Division. Over the next three days Balck continued to tighten the vise on the Tatsinskaya pocket, which finally burst on December 28, with the Soviets attempting a breakout to the northwest. by krichter33 » 06 Mar 2014, 02:56, Post Almost all of the division’s regimental and battalion commanders were on sick leave. Since 1982 we have been a trusted dealer in all types of WWII German Collectibles. At the start of World War II, Balck commanded the lead infantry regiment that spearheaded the crossing of the Meuse River by Guderian’s panzers in May 1940. Balck closed the ring around the XXIV Tank Corps, but his division had been moving and fighting too long and too hard. In the late 1970s, however, he finally started talking when he and Mellenthin participated in a number of symposiums with senior American generals at the U.S. Army War College. Post Russian penetration at Point X, counterattack, everything cleared up by evening. 8. 4. fschj, 90 leichte, 1. The Best Division in CoD WW2. After securing the town with brief but heavy fighting on December 24, he moved on to Tatsinskaya, which put him in the Soviet rear. There were no misunderstandings. The best German division during WWII was the 4th Panzer Division. Balck’s panzers then turned to meet a column of twenty-three Soviet tanks approaching in the second echelon. At approximately 9:00 a.m. on December 7, the LXVIII Panzer Corps sent Balck’s division command post a warning order to have the 15th Panzer Regiment prepare for a counterattack. Balck’s units were in night defensive positions when Kienitz awakened him at 2:00 a.m. on December 21: There was the devil to pay. Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, Confederate General. 3. Describing one of his earliest actions with the 11th Panzer Division, Balck wrote: I did not issue a written order, but oriented my commanders with the help of a detailed war game and extensive terrain walks. While I was out I decided on my course of action for the next day. I was mobile, at the focus of the action. Balck’s tanks slipped into the rear of the Soviet column in the darkness “as if on parade,” he wrote in his memoirs. Hermann Balck was the sum of thousands of small factors that were deeply engrained in him by the system under which he grew up. by BDV » 27 Feb 2014, 02:07, Post Most of the Infanterie divisions are overlooked in favor of the panzers, yet these "boring" units were the ones who probably fought longer and harder than many of their most famous compatriots. His 110th and 111th Panzergrenadier Regiments were still moving forward from the railheads at Millerovo and could not arrive before the end of the day. 2. GERMAN ARMY WW2 ORDER OF BATTLE. “Night marches save blood” became Balck’s principal axiom. Germany had ten panzer divisions in Normandy, including five from the Waffen SS. When the commander of the Soviet XXIV Tank Corps learned that German tanks were in his rear and his line of communications had been cut, he ordered all his units to consolidate around his position at Hill 175. The initial mission of the 11th Panzer Division was to form the reserve of the XLVIII Panzer Corps’ advance on Stalingrad. I have always been a soldier, not a clerk, and I didn’t want to be one in time of war. Why is that you ask...? Creating these elite units meant that the regular units were depleted of these soldiers. The 94th Infantry Division (German: 94. Balck went on to fight more winter battles until he was reassigned in early March 1943. Balck pushed the principle to the extreme, forbidding any written orders at all. This article originally appeared in the April/May 2008 issue of World War II magazine. Ethan Allen, American Revolutionary commander. When Balck left the 11th Panzer Division in 1943 he was given several weeks of well-deserved home leave and a bonus of 1,500 Reichsmarks (the equivalent of $8,000 today) to take his wife on a trip. Like many senior German officers of his generation, Balck came from a military family, albeit a slightly unusual one. [The German defenders’] only hope lay with a single tired and depleted division that was coming up in driblets. Excellent post! 2. The odds he faced were scarcely short of incredible: the Soviets commanded a local superiority of 7:1 in tanks, 11:1 in infantry, and 20:1 in a local superiority of 7:1 in tanks, 11:1 in infantry, and 20:1 in artillery. The second most produced tank during WWII. Generally I visited each regiment several times a day. The Germans never considered their tactical doctrine holy writ, and their commanders were authorized and even expected to deviate from it whenever they thought the situation required. There is no division that performed well consistently for the entire duration of the war. What makes a good formation is a fascinating question. Manstein had no option but to divert the bulk of the Fourth Panzer Army to defend Rostov. The next step would be to study the ENTIRE unit history of the division. Our *3* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency; and almost fanatical devotion. Well, that other thread was locked so here it is direct from Field Marshal Harold Alexander, Army Group commander in Italy. Spanning from 1939 to 1945, World War II was one of the most brutal conflicts in human history. Crush them. But tactical victory did not translate to operational success for the Germans, who were being pushed farther and farther back from the Don. He later wrote in his memoirs: In my position as Inspector of Mobile Troops I could only maintain my authority through fresh experience at the front. In the fall of 1944 Balck went to the western front, commanding Army Group G against Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr. in the Lorraine campaign. With his entire division still strung out along the route of march from the Chir, Balck deployed his units in a circle around Tatsinskaya as they started to arrive. Gen. Erich von Manstein, the commander of Army Group Don, planned to break the siege with a dagger thrust to the Volga River from the southwest by the Fourth Panzer Army, supported by the XLVIII Panzer Corps to its immediate north attacking across the Don River. Balck, however, realized that in the coming fight, instantaneous coordination between the two divisions would be vital, and with the primitive and unreliable communications systems of the day, this was the only way to do it. Its only significant combat power was the 11th Panzer Division, which only days before had been operating near Roslavl in Belorussia, some four hundred miles to the northwest. And he was in a position to know: as a general staff officer during the war, Mellenthin had worked at one point or another for virtually all of Germany’s greatest commanders—including such legends as Rommel and Heinz Guderian. Ground down by months of constant combat, only scattered remnants of the unit remained intact. The 110th broken through, the 111th overrun. We needed to crush the westernmost enemy column first in order to gain some swing space. When Balck first arrived at Morozovskaya a Soviet tank corps was bearing down on the city from the north, and threatening to envelop the town of Tatsinskaya on the left. However, the average panzer division along the Atlantic Wall possessed merely seventy-five tanks. 28. jager, 1. 3. by Ron Klages & John Mulholland The following accounting of German divisions by month from September 1939 to May 1945 by front was compiled from the works of Georg Tessin in his epic accounting of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS titled: Verbände und Truppen der deutschen Wehrmacht und Waffen-SS 1939-1945. Only then would it be possible to suggest particular divisions that proved themselves to be effective over longer periods, and through different types of actions, than other divisions......... Another facet is a problem that reared its ugly head with the Stosstruppen in WWI. It was his opinion that the German parachute troops (1st and 4th Para in particular which were in Italy) were the finest troops he'd experienced. In the bright moonlit night the Russians had attacked at the boundary between the two Panzergrenadier regiments. The XLVIII Panzer Corps was suddenly threatened with annihilation. This discussion shows up every now and then, let's give this thread a chance but for this to avoid a padlock we expect that people offer something to support their arguments instead of just listed a unit name like we have seen in so many other threads. By the end of the day, however, Balck received operational control of one of the Panzergrenadier regiments and an assault gun battalion from the newly arriving 6th Panzer Division. It was mobilised for World War II on September 26, 1939, disbanded on September 10, 1944, near Radom and reformed as the 26th Volksgrenadier Division on September 17, 1944, near Poznań by absorption of the new 582nd Volksgrenadier Division of the 32nd mobilisation wave. They subsequently became the most experienced division in the British army. The Germans’ Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian allies proved to be weak reeds, especially when the weather in Russia turned cold. When the 11th Panzer Division intercepted the transmission, Balck knew he had his enemy in a trap. In December 1942 Hermann Balck wiped out a force ten times his size in the most brilliantly fought divisional battle in modern military history. By 0900 hours the situation was pretty well in hand. While in command of the 11th Panzer Division, Balck was promoted to Generalmajor (U.S. Army one-star equivalent) and then to Generalleutnant (two-star equivalent). Still strung out along the line of march and arriving little by little, the 11th Division faced what amounted to mission impossible. In position by dawn at the Russians’ most sensitive point. Panzer-Division 2. Maybe I can find some more information, especially about units in the east... German Strategy & General German Military Discussion, ↳   Life in the Third Reich & Weimar Republic, ↳   Kriegsmarine surface ships and Kriegsmarine in general, ↳   Luftwaffe air units and Luftwaffe in general, ↳   German Strategy & General German Military Discussion, ↳   NSDAP, other party organizations & Government, ↳   The Ron Klages Panzer & other vehicles Section, ↳   Panzer & other vehicles - Photo threads, ↳   Axis Documents, Feldpost numbers, Postcards & Other Paper Items, ↳   The United Kingdom & its Empire and Commonwealth 1919-45, ↳   The Allies and the Neutral States in general, ↳   German Colonies and Overseas Expeditions, ↳   The end of the Ottoman Empire 1908-1923, ↳   Translation help: Breaking the Sound Barrier, http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/Germany/FMS/index.html. Only Balck’s 15th Panzer Regiment was in position. The 15th Panzer Regiment started moving forward a half-hour later. Manufactured by United States and some other western allies in WWII. His request was granted and, though still only a colonel, Balck was assigned to command the 11th Panzer Division. $113.49. By the end of the day the 15th Panzer Regiment had destroyed another Soviet corps and its sixty-five tanks without suffering a single loss. After the war Balck supported his family by working as a manual laborer in a supply depot. In any specific situation Balck almost always did what would have been expected of a typical well-trained and experienced German senior officer—and he always did it consistently and unwaveringly, time after time. Infanteriedivision) was a German Army infantry division in World War II. Take them by surprise. 5. gbj, 1. Announcing that he was going to take the hill with or without them, he started moving forward. Simultaneously, he moved his three maneuver regiments into their attack positions. When Balck learned of the situation he immediately moved to the 336th Infantry Division’s command post near Verchne Solonovski. He got it back, carefully graded. This was the official reason I gave when I requested a transfer to the front as commander of a division. Any attempts at defense would mean our destruction. As Balck analyzed the flow of orders from the corps, he realized that if the new threat was significant enough to derail the corps’ advance toward Stalingrad, then simply pushing the Soviet tanks back across the river—as he was now being instructed to do—was far too timid a course of action. He was wounded seven times and in October 1918 was recommended for the Pour le Mérite, but the war ended before the award was fully processed. Then, another report 20 kilometers eastwards of a deep penetration into some hasty defensive position. by krichter33 » 06 Mar 2014, 07:48, Return to “German Strategy & General German Military Discussion”. For reasons of secrecy, it was originally raised as the 7th Air Division, or Flieger-Division, before being renamed and reorganized as the 1st Parachute Division in 1943. During one of his first actions, Balck displayed his unflappable nerve leading from the front. I discussed the plan by telephone with Kienitz, then drove to each regiment and briefed the commander personally on the next day’s plan. Describing one of his earliest actions with the 11th Panzer Division, Balck wrote: A typical infantry division in June 1941 had 17,734 men organized into the following sub-units: by genstab » 19 Jan 2014, 18:48, Post The backbone of the Heer (German Army) was the infantry division. Nov 22, 2019 - Explore Gary L's board "German Generals of WW2" on Pinterest. 20. 10. 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