best german division in ww2

The next step would be to study the ENTIRE unit history of the division. Most were experienced in the West and Russia. I discussed the plan by telephone with Kienitz, then drove to each regiment and briefed the commander personally on the next day’s plan. By the end of November 1942 the German position in south Russia had deteriorated significantly. Balck’s 15th Panzer Regiment was down to about twenty-five operational tanks when it came upon the rear of a march column of forty-two tanks from the Soviet Motor Mechanized Corps at Nizhna Kalinovski. Best results obtained with Panzergranate 40 APCR shots with a hard tungsten core. Like many senior German officers of his generation, Balck came from a military family, albeit a slightly unusual one. Fallschirmjäger-Division) was an elite German military parachute-landing division that fought during World War II.A division of paratroopers was termed a Fallschirmjäger Division. This is an apolitical forum for discussions on the Axis nations and related topics hosted by the Axis History Factbook in cooperation with Christian Ankerstjerne’s Panzerworld and Christoph Awender's WW2 day by day. Germany had ten panzer divisions in Normandy, including five from the Waffen SS. In position by dawn at the Russians’ most sensitive point. 4. fschj, 90 leichte, 1. 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. On the night of December 1, the 11th Panzer Division was alerted to move south from Roslavl to shore up the collapsing sector of the Romanian Third Army. But only twelve tanks and thirty trucks managed to escape initially, and when Balck’s forces sprung, they first annihilated all remaining Soviet units inside the pocket, then turned to pursue the escaping column and destroy all those vehicles as well. by krichter33 » 23 Feb 2014, 03:34, Post Troops of the Third Reich fought all over Europe, North Africa, the Atlantic Ocean and the Middle East during the Second World War. Our *3* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency; and almost fanatical devotion. Hundreds of dead Russians lay in and around our positions. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 5,000 articles originally published in our various magazines. The order was sent by radio—and in the clear. Muzzle velocity 550-1,130 m/s (1,804-3,707 ft/s), 3000 yards range.-7.5 cm Pak 40: German standard WW2 AT Gun, more than 20,000 built until 1945. 3. The Soviet Fifty-seventh Army attacked from south of Stalingrad and joined the Fifth Tank Army on the Don, cutting off the German Sixth Army. The Panzerkampfwagen V or Panther was the best German tank of World War II and possibly the best medium tank fielded by any of the combatants in World War II. Are there any other such subjective assessments out there??? However the Germans ratings of a Division changed as circumstances dictated. This is mostly overlooked issue when discussing the Fallschirmjager and the Waffen-SS, and it may explain the less than stellar performance of German vanilla infantry, most glaring an issue in Barbarossa, but already showing signs during Fall Gelb. At the end of the war Balck managed to prevent his troops from falling into Soviet hands by surrendering his command to Maj. Gen. Horace McBride, commander of U.S. XX Corps. There, the Soviets caught by surprise and massacred the divisional trains of the 336th. 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. December 1942 was a time of crisis for the German army in Russia. Panzer General Gustav Fehn commanded the 5th Panzer Division and then the XXXth Panzer Corps as well as the XXIVth Panzer Corps. 2. As the division loaded on railcars, Balck and von Kienitz drove ahead to assess the situation firsthand. Our 2 weapons are fear and surprise; and ruthless efficiency. Balck had pulled off a modern-day Cannae, and from that point on the 11th Panzer Division was known by the code name “Hannibal.”. The right side of the German line was held by the understrength 336th Infantry Division. That in turn sealed the fate of the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad—which finally fell on February 2, 1943. 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. There were several crack German divisions- Grossdeutschland and Panzer Lehr for example. For the next three days Balck and his division fought a series of running battles, eliminating bridgeheads across the Chir as soon as the Soviets established them. Balck was one of the very few senior German commanders captured by the Americans who refused to participate in the U.S. Army’s postwar historical debriefing program in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The 15th Panzer Regiment started moving forward a half-hour later. 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. Morale was at rock bottom. by Sheldrake » 06 Mar 2014, 03:31, Post The new Soviet thrust, Operation Saturn, threatened to drive to Rostov at the mouth of the Don on the Azov Sea. They subsequently became the most experienced division in the British army. Our chief weapon is surprise; surprise and fear; fear and surprise. Like Rommel, Balck was never a German general staff officer. A fire direction center typically controlled at least a dozen guns, so better target acquisition and observation of the fall of the rounds than the Word War I practice was needed. 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. If Knobelsdorff, the commanding general, agreed, I let the regiments know. I have always been a soldier, not a clerk, and I didn’t want to be one in time of war. His troops got up and followed him to the top. 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. If you are looking to sell your collection you will be sure to get the fairest price anywhere for it. The best German division during WWII was the 4th Panzer Division. 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. Marcus is right it will be difficult to arrive at a concensus, this discussion will just end up as one persons opinion against anothers. Balck had to rebuild his unit from scratch—while in combat. 4. When Balck learned of the situation he immediately moved to the 336th Infantry Division’s command post near Verchne Solonovski. 9 bids. I just said, “See what you get by bringing attention to yourself?” We didn’t change our plan and we worked together in magnificent harmony from that point on, but we never again submitted anything in writing. In the absence of their commander, the divisional staff passed along the warning order. Describing this period, Balck wrote in his memoirs: Each day was like the next. We would just have to hope—against reason—that the hodge-podge of troops covering Morosovskaya would hold for a day. Another Soviet corps had been wiped out at the hands of Balck’s understrength division. To close the gap between the regiments I organized a counterattack with [the motorcycle company of the Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion] and some tanks. The 1st Parachute Division (German: 1. Only Balck’s 15th Panzer Regiment was in position. 9. Nobody expects the Fallschirm! The designing of a medium tank to replace both the Panzer III and IV began in 1938. Balck, however, ran afoul of German Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler and was unceremoniously fired by Hitler in late December. 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. The Fifth Tank Army had been virtually destroyed. But while the Soviets consolidated their position for the night, Balck methodically brought up the remainder of his units and prepared to strike the next day. The 94th Infantry Division (German: 94. 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. Most German snipers were armed with the Karabiner 98 and later Gewehr 43 rifles, but there were often not enough of these weapons available, and as such some were armed with captured scoped Mosin–Nagant 1891/30, SVT or Czech Mauser rifles. 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. Discussions on High Command, strategy and the Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) in general. 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. There are five Divisions you can choose from in CoD WW2: Infantry, Airborne, Armored, Mountain, and Expeditionary. The Germans’ Italian, Hungarian, and Romanian allies proved to be weak reeds, especially when the weather in Russia turned cold. [The German defenders’] only hope lay with a single tired and depleted division that was coming up in driblets. 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. His great-grandfather served under the Duke of Wellington in the King’s German Legion, and his grandfather was an officer in the British Army’s Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. The backbone of the Heer (German Army) was the infantry division. That, along with the fact that he spent most of the war on the eastern front, accounts for his relative obscurity today. About face. 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. Upon his arrival in Russia he found a dismal situation. After securing the town with brief but heavy fighting on December 24, he moved on to Tatsinskaya, which put him in the Soviet rear. What they found was far worse than what they had expected. If successful, it would cut off Army Group Don from the rear and seal off all of Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist’s Army Group A in the Caucasus. panzer, 16pzg/116 panzer, 3. Panzer General Ludwig Cruwell fought alongside Rommel, and was captured in North Africa while commanding the 11th Panzer Division in 1942. This article originally appeared in the April/May 2008 issue of World War II magazine. Balck concluded: The situation was desperate. The average loss rate of a U.S. infantry regiment in World War II was 100 percent after three months of uninterrupted combat missions. 18. 90. pzg, 5. Balck led another night march and before dawn on December 19 once again took a superior Soviet force completely by surprise. Simultaneously, he moved his three maneuver regiments into their attack 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. GERMAN ARMY WW2 ORDER OF BATTLE. No change in plans. But Balck, leading from the front, reacting instantly to each enemy thrust, repeatedly parried, surprised, and wiped out superior Soviet detachments. When the attack came, Balck and his key commanders were making a ground reconnaissance in preparation for the planned advance. 72. inf, 1.skij, 12. 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. Spanning from 1939 to 1945, World War II was one of the most brutal conflicts in human history. He wasn’t among the good men, since he fought on Germany’s side, but this didn’t influence his qualities as a general.A highly decorated officer, he won the esteem of both of his men and his enemies. If that constitutes them as the best british division of WW2… Describing one of his earliest actions with the 11th Panzer Division, Balck wrote: HistoryNet.com is brought to you by Historynet LLC, the world's largest publisher of history magazines. 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. Then I drove back to my command post and telephoned Colonel Mellenthin, the chief of staff at XLVIII Panzer Corps. by BDV » 27 Feb 2014, 02:07, Post When I arrived on the scene the situation had already been consolidated somewhat. He was always one step ahead of his enemy, even in the relatively few situations when he was initially taken by surprise. Over the next few months his division would rack up an astonishing one thousand enemy tank kills. With only twenty operational tanks and one understrength infantry battalion, Balck moved toward Skassyrskaya to block the oncoming Soviets. 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. But the Germans desperately needed good commanders, and Guderian, by then the chief of staff of the German army, intervened to have Balck reassigned as the commander of the newly reconstituted Sixth Army, operating in Hungary. The Best Division in CoD WW2. It was obvious to Balck that the Soviets’ next move would be an attempt to roll up the 336th Infantry Division. The Third Reich, led by Adolf Hitler, rampaged across Europe until it was finally defeated by Allied forces in 1945. Along the 37-mile sector where the Chir ran mostly north to south before turning east and flowing into the Don, the Romanians had the flimsiest of defensive lines, with only a single 150mm howitzer for fire support. 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”). by krichter33 » 25 Feb 2014, 03:07, Post 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. 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. Not the usual combat efficiency assessments that assigned numbers based on their capabilities in attack and defense, but more detailed assessments that took unit training, and command into account. 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. Locating two divisional command posts together violated German tactical doctrine and risked presenting the enemy with a very lucrative target. The 8th army was contrated around 7th armoured. Panzer-Division 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). The 7th Panzer Divison was cited four times and this was. TANK DIVISIONS (Panzer-Divisionen) 1. https://military.wikia.org/wiki/List_of_German_divisions_in_World_War_II Generally I visited each regiment several times a day. 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. $113.49. Since 1982 we have been a trusted dealer in all types of WWII German Collectibles. 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. The Sixth Army was encircled in Stalingrad. Balck and his advance party arrived on the scene on December 6. On Christmas Day the Germans still could not break into the cauldron, but neither could the Soviets break out. I have to do a forum search, because someone once mentioned the German wartime assessment reports. When the 11th Panzer Division intercepted the transmission, Balck knew he had his enemy in a trap. 28. jager, 1. Balck never hesitated to exercise that prerogative. This book was written from a March 1945 intelligence document that was published by the military intelligence division of the war department of the United States. Ethan Allen, American Revolutionary commander. In World War II, both German and American artillery fire direction was normally done at the battalion level. On December 22 the XLVIII Panzer Corps received orders to move immediately ninety miles to the west and establish blocking positions at Morozovskaya to screen Rostov. Balck was convicted and served a short sentence. 11. Get the best deals on Original WW II German Personal & Field Gear when you shop the largest online selection at eBay.com. 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. Balck and his adjutant, Major von Webski, were far forward when they came under heavy Soviet artillery fire. Balck pushed the principle to the extreme, forbidding any written orders at all. To prevent that, he screened the division’s left flank with his own engineer, antitank, and antiaircraft battalions. Then, another report 20 kilometers eastwards of a deep penetration into some hasty defensive position. 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. 11. Balck closed the ring around the XXIV Tank Corps, but his division had been moving and fighting too long and too hard. On his last day in command his division destroyed its thousandth tank since his arrival. This was mainly because he wasn’t only a good commander, but also a fantastic human being. The advantage was that all misgivings could be eliminated; misunderstandings and opinions could be resolved from the outset. What really made him great in the end was a consistent ability to assess a situation almost instantly, decide what had to be done, and then carry it out. 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. by Ifor » 24 Feb 2014, 19:52, Post Balck described his command style in his memoirs: My brilliant chief of staff, Major Kienitz, remained in a fixed position somewhat to the rear of the fighting, maintaining contact with God and me and all the world by radio. 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. Infanteriedivision) was a German Army infantry division in World War II. 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. There were no misunderstandings. The other contender for the accolade of best tank is the Soviet T34, earlier versions of … $23.90 shipping. 5. But Balck champed at the bit to get back into combat. Balck did not have the combat power to eliminate the Soviets. Yet in three short weeks his lone panzer division virtually destroyed the entire Soviet Fifth Tank Army. 7. While Rommel ran hot and cold, Balck had a rock-solid consistency that emanated from his steely intellectual and psychological toughness. This was the official reason I gave when I requested a transfer to the front as commander of a division. 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. ‘Each day was like the next,’ Balck wrote. Original German World War II Klappspaten (folding shovel) with carrier. This will always be a subjective subject and most of the evaluations are based on post-war rememberances and not on what the wartime records say. But the following day elements of the Fifth Tank Army crossed the Chir at multiple points, driving deep behind the left flank of the 336th Infantry Division. There is no division that performed well consistently for the entire duration of the war. We needed to crush the westernmost enemy column first in order to gain some swing space. Why is that you ask...? By the end of the day the Soviet I Tank Corps had lost fifty-three tanks and effectively ceased to exist. Owing to Allied deception measures, some German armored units failed to engage the Anglo-Americans until after D-Day. Announcing that he was going to take the hill with or without them, he started moving forward. by Sheldrake » 05 Mar 2014, 13:22, Post 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. I wonder what other studies discuss such opinions from other commanders. Creating these elite units meant that the regular units were depleted of these soldiers. “Night marches save blood” became Balck’s principal axiom. 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. Excellent post! 5. gbj, 1. Tanks, infantry, and artillery march through the winter night with burning headlights. Well, that other thread was locked so here it is direct from Field Marshal Harold Alexander, Army Group commander in Italy. 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. However, the average panzer division along the Atlantic Wall possessed merely seventy-five tanks. Best division in WW2. 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. In my opinion the situation was so dismal that it could only be mastered through audacity—in other words, by attacking. Instead, he held onto the money until the fall of 1944, when the 11th Panzer Division was again under his command as part of Army Group G. He then used all of the money “to cover the costs of a pleasant evening” with all of the members of the division who had fought with him in Russia. 1. by krichter33 » 05 Mar 2014, 07:37, Post The German command system in World War II emphasized face-to-face leadership, rather than the detailed and ponderous written orders so beloved by American commanders. Before the Soviets knew what was happening, the panzers opened fire and rolled up the entire column, destroying every one of the enemy tanks. Pzl Grossd. 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. Such subjective assessments out there??????????????!, 6th, 20th, 50th, 18th, 1st Can, 2nd Can as 'Good' Army. Was saying something to Balck that the regular units were depleted of soldiers! German Infantry division of paratroopers was termed a Fallschirmjäger division if any changes were,. 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