Liege 1914 – 15-cm Morser -The Destroyer of the Forts

21 cm Mörser 10.

In the 1913–14 war plan, the younger Moltke determined that Germany would concentrate the mass of her army – sixty-eight divisions – against France and only nine against Russia (with two reserve divisions watching the North Sea coast against a British landing). Unless the French attacked first, and in strength, in Lorraine, the main German attack would be made through Belgium north of the Meuse. Moltke could not risk having an intact Liège cutting the supply lines of the German 1st and 2nd Armies.

Heereskavalleriekorps 2 (HKK 2 – 2nd Cavalry Corps) would advance with 2 and 4 Kavalleriedivision (KD – Kavalleriedivision – cavalry division) to cross the Meuse north of Liège to take up a position north-east of the fortress and send patrols into Belgium. 9 KD would operate south of Liège.

To take Liège quickly, six brigades, that had not had time to mobilise and were still at peacetime strength (about 25,000 infantry, 124 field artillery pieces and four 21cm mortars) would conduct a quick attack on the night of the fourth to fifth mobilisation days in order to pass between the individual forts, before the Belgians had time to prepare field fortifications between them. The routes had been reconnoitred and established by German General Staff officers in peacetime, who were to act as guides in wartime. In almost all cases the routes followed a major road; little or no attempt was made to infiltrate cross-country. They would seize the city – which was not protected by a wall – and the individual forts would presumably see the futility of further resistance and surrender. 

‘Presumably’ because the only notes that still exist concerning the coup de main against Liège are in 1913–14 German deployment orders (1913–14 Aufmarschweisungen), which do not state why or how, if the forts did not surrender outright, that five brigades of infantry (six in 1914), supported by four 21cm mortars, were going to take twelve forts.

The only logical explanation is that Moltke was assuming that Liège would be completely unprepared to defend itself. Moltke apparently expected that in addition to the garrison of the forts, the Belgians would have the peacetime garrison of 6,000 men and 3,000 Garde Civique. Not only would there be no Belgian forces in the intervals between the forts, allowing the German brigades unopposed passage into the city proper, but that the forts too would be unready: best case, still in peacetime caretaker status, worst case without their complete garrison and store of munitions and supplies. Under such circumstances, one or two forts might be overrun or surrender and the rest of the forts would recognise the futility of further resistance. Moreover, it was no state secret that the Belgian 3 DA HQ was at Liège. The German attack had to be made before 3 DA was combat-ready.

The General Staff brochure, Liège-Namur, written in 1918, says that Ludendorff was responsible for ‘the concept and preparation of the attack’. Ludendorff says that the coup de main against Liège was his idea, with the caveat that, once inside the central city and in possession of the citadel it would be possible to easily reduce the individual forts. Ludendorff said that in 1914 he was assigned to the 2nd Army, which had the responsibility of conducting the operation, because of his knowledge of the Liège attack, which was otherwise a closely guarded General Staff secret.

In fact it seems likely that Ludendorff, who had no particular expertise in fortress warfare and was the chief of the Aufmarschabteilung (deployment section) of the General Staff, had no more responsibility for planning the attack than preparing the rail-march tables. Kabisch says that the detailed plan for conducting the attack was written by Brigadier General Schwarte and Section 4 (Western Fortresses) of the great General Staff. The plan was first developed in the 1908–09 Aufmarsch (deployment plan).

If the first attack failed, it would be repeated on the tenth day of mobilisation. If Liège had not fallen by the twelfth day of mobilisation, it would be necessary to transit Dutch territory at Maastricht.

The Liège Myth
Any history of the Battle of Liège attributes the fall of the fortress almost exclusively to the effect of the super-heavy German 42cm guns, an explanation that the Germans fostered themselves, since it emphasised the effectiveness of a German ‘wonder weapon,’ which would presumably demoralise the enemy. This is clearly the intent of the German official history Der Weltkrieg I, which emphasises the 42cm to the exclusion of the rest of the German siege artillery. The Belgians, Moranville in the lead, attributed the fall of Liège entirely to the German super-heavy artillery, which excused the rapid surrender of the Belgian forts. These monster guns continue to fascinate historians of the Marne campaign and their readers.

Barbara Tuchman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning The Guns of August combines ‘common knowledge’ with dramatic prose and is therefore the most popular book on the Marne campaign. She gives her imagination free rein: for example, according to Tuchman the Austrian Skoda 30.5cm mortars were employed at Liège (they weren’t), and the destruction of Liège was caused solely by super-heavy artillery; the German 21cm mortars are not mentioned.

John Keegan’s The First World War, an exceptionally popular and influential military history, repeats the Liège ‘common knowledge’ verbatim: according to Keegan, the destruction of the Liège forts was due solely to the German 42cm guns. Keegan dutifully footnotes his sole source concerning Liège, Christopher Duffy’s ‘The Liège Forts’ in Purnell’s History of the First World War, I, 131–8. This is a useful demonstration of how ‘common knowledge’ becomes entrenched. Purnell’s was a populist weekly magazine, first published in 1970, which had 128 issues. Each magazine was about thirty pages long and covered perhaps four different topics. Each article was heavily illustrated with drawings and photos: Duffy’s had four fully illustrated pages, two half-illustrated and only two of text. Duffy cited eight sources, only two of which had specific information about the siege of Liège. This is not a well-researched article, which would explain why the 21cm are mentioned once. For good measure, Duffy throws in the participation of the Austrian 30.5cm, which never fired at Liège. The strongest part of the article are drawings of the 30.5cm and 42cm. But the 42cm get credit for everything.

In fact, nine of the twelve Liège forts were destroyed by just thirty-two German 21cm mortars, exactly the gun calibre that Liège was designed to defeat. Only one fort, Loncin, fell to the 42cm gun fire – Pontisse had been wrecked by 21cm fire before the 42cm arrived – and even here the 42cm fire was supplemented by the fire of other weapons. The last two forts surrendered, one while under a short period of 21cm fire, the other while not under fire at all.

And Liège fell with dizzying speed. Fort Barchon was reduced on 8 August by the fire of six 21cm mortars, d’Evegnée on 11 August by four 21cm mortars in two days of bombardment. The mass of the siege artillery, almost exclusively 21cm mortars, arrived on 12 August. Three forts fell on 13 August, two on 14 August, three on 15 August and the remaining two on the morning of 16 August. The German siege artillery, and principally the four battalions (thirty-two guns total) of the hard-hitting, mobile 21cm mortar of FAR 4 and 9, had reduced Liège in less than four days.

Development of German Siege Artillery
Armies fight the way they have trained to fight. Behind the brilliant successes of the German heavy artillery at Liège, then Namur, Maubeuge and Antwerp, lay nearly twenty years’ worth of work in developing doctrine, equipment, and good, hard training, especially the live-fire shoots at the artillery MTA and the fortress General Staff exercises. Lombard reported that from the very start German artillery fire was ‘devastatingly accurate’.

By 1883 the German siege artillery faced the daunting prospect of massive French fortifications from Verdun to Belfort, and Antwerp, which led the Chief of the General Staff, Schlieffen, and the General Inspector of the Artillery, to develop the ‘Heavy Artillery of the Field Army’ (schwere Artillerie des Feldheeres), which would consist of a battalion of 15cm guns at the corps level and 21cm guns at the army level.

In 1902 the corps batteries began to receive the new 15cm schwere Feldhaubitze 02 (sFH 02). This was a revolutionary new design, with a recoil brake which kept the gun stable in position and allowed a far more accurate and higher rate of fire. The steel gun tube reduced weight and increased mobility. Maximum effective range went from 6,000m to 7,400m. A battery consisted of four guns and two munitions wagons, a battalion of four batteries and a light munitions column. The mission of the howitzers was to provide corps general support artillery, conducting counter-battery fire against field artillery equipped with armoured shields, and against dug-in infantry. It was not a siege weapon.

The German 21cm mortar in the 1890s was ‘extremely unwieldy’. In 1909 the army-level artillery received the new 21cm mortar, which also had a recoil brake, an armoured gun shield, weighed about 9000kg and fired a 100kg shell 9,400m. It was broken down to three pieces for movement. A particular innovation was the Radgürtel: a wheel with flexible rectangular wooden plates affixed. One plate was always in contact with the ground, and significantly reduced the ground pressure generated by firing the weapon, and therefore no longer required a special base plate. A battery included six OFF, thirty-five NCOs, 218 EM and 150 horses. Each mortar battalion had two batteries, each with four guns, and a light munitions column. The mission of the 21cm mortars was to engage French border fortifications, especially the Sperrforts located between the four main fortresses. There was also a 13cm flat-trajectory gun with a range of 15km, which in siege operations would allow rear-area lines of communications to be engaged in depth.

For a considerable period the largest German siege weapon was an older-type 30.5cm mortar which had been introduced in 1893. It had a maximum effective range of 7km and a shell weighing 400kg. Its official designation was a ‘heavy coastal mortar’ and its code name was ‘β-Gerät’ – ‘β apparatus’. Initially it was moved on narrow-gauge field railways, later on tractor-pulled trailers. Only nine were purchased. It was followed in 1909 by ‘β-Gerät 09’, which was also pulled by tractors and trailers. Only two of these were acquired.

In 1909 the heavy artillery also acquired a 42cm ‘short naval mortar’ (kurze Marinekanone) with a range of 14km and a 930kg shell. Its code name was γ-Gerät. It needed to be moved by regular rail line into the firing position. Firing tests showed that the weapon had outstanding accuracy as well as a very effective shell, so that in 1913–14 four more were delivered. The disadvantage of the mortar was its great weight and consequent dependence on rail mobility.

The success of the Radgürtel for the 21cm mortar led the artillery commission to use it for heavier weapons. To test this, in 1910 Krupp developed a 28cm howitzer on a wheeled Radgürtel chassis, in 1911 a 30.5cm howitzer.

In 1914 the German field army had 408 15cm howitzers, 112 21cm mortars, sixteen 10cm guns, one 28cm howitzer on a wheeled carriage, twelve 30cm mortars and seven 42cm mortars. The reserve foot artillery units included 400 15cm howitzers, 176 10cm guns and thirty-two 13cm guns. There were 420 pieces of heavy artillery without horse teams and 834 pieces of heavy fortress artillery.

The military and naval history of the German nation and its armed forces.

The German people also have experienced a variety of political institutions—rule by emperors, kings, and princes, representative institutions and republics. In studying German history one can benefit from understanding the relationship between geography and the growth of military institutions. Germany has often been contrasted to Britain, which has been protected by the water, while Germany has lacked frontiers and required a strong military to defend it from potential enemies on all sides. Germany also was internally weak, even though it encompassed the Holy Roman Empire, which began with the Saxon, Otto I, who was crowned king in 962. By the end of the Middle Ages there were, however, some 300 states—duchies, counties, ecclesiastical territories, free cities, and other territories. There was no clear boundary to the west, where the German states were threatened by the French king, or to the east, where Slavic tribes predominated. During this period the Germans themselves colonized the east in one of the greatest movements of peoples before the American West was settled. Here the Germans settled in areas associated with the names of Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and Brandenburg, and they pushed into Silesia. This eastward expansion indicated a new direction of German influence, with which the Hohenzollern family, which created Prussia, was associated.

Many cleavages have divided German society throughout history. Ethnically, the Germans were not homogeneous. The religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics during the Reformation created other serious divisions. Some historians even claim that Germany was never thoroughly Christianized, and its pagan tradition erupted again during the Nazi regime. Other divisions existed in the political and cultural realm and among the social classes. Political disunity, however, was the most obvious division. 


The Germans oscillated between universal empire and localism. When nationalism belatedly developed, attempting to bridge these differences, it ended up becoming a most violent kind. The 18th century saw the rise of the state of Prussia and the violent threat of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, which revealed the weaknesses of Germany but led to a widespread growth of national feeling. Unfortunately, the Congress of Vienna militated against the growth of unity. The rivalry between Prussia and Austria prevented the growth of a true federation that might have led to a unified state. The revolutions of 1848 were a turning point for Germany, during which the Germans failed to turn toward democratic government and create a successful unified state based on a liberal constitution. In the end it was the authoritarian Prussian Junker, Otto von Bismarck, who set himself the task of destroying liberalism in order to strengthen conservative Prussia and maintain its position as a great power. Prussia and Prussianism eventually triumphed over the rest of Germany, which was more passive, liberal, and good-natured. Bismarck and Prussia impressed on the Germans a spirit of militarism and the Machiavellian doctrine of the reason of state, which justified every infringement of written and unwritten law. These were qualities that found even greater expression in the leadership of Adolf Hitler. The cleavages continued after World War II, as West and East Germany were divided between a democratic Federal Republic and a communist German Democratic Republic. Today the Germans are still trying to bridge those differences since they were reunified in 1990.

The Panzer Divisions

The military historian Matthew Cooper described the German Panzer arm of service as: 'a failure. A glorious failure ... but a failure nonetheless ... The significance of this failure was immense. The Panzer Divisions, the prime offensive weapon, had become indispensable ... in both tactical and strategic terms ... Upon the fortunes of the armoured force was based the fate of the whole army ...’. ‘He concluded that the fault for the demise of the Panzer arm lay in the hands of Hitler and the Army commanders, 'who failed to grasp the full implications of this new, revolutionary doctrine and consistently misused the force upon which their fortunes had come to depend'. Another reason was the neglect of equipment and organizational requirements, which stunted the Panzer arm's potential in the field.

Hitler was impressed by armour operating in conjunction with other arms. In 1933, after witnessing a demonstration of mobile troops, he had been very enthusiastic, although armoured theory and practice were not new in the Germany Army. Indeed, it would be true to say that Germany's armoured force was born on the steppes of Russia during the 1920s. Among other prohibitions, the conditions of the Versailles Treaty forbade the German Army from having armoured fighting vehicles. To circumvent this restriction, the governments of republican Germany and the Soviet Union entered into a conspiracy: the Soviet Union would grant a vast area of land upon which the German military commanders could practice manoeuvres, while in another part of that territory, factories would be set up to construct the armoured fighting vehicles which German experts had designed and which the German commanders needed for their manoeuvres. A great number of German senior commanders and armour theorists went to Kasan in the Soviet Union and developed the skills required in handling armour in the mass and in conducting exercises using aircraft. Between them, the Army and Luftwaffe commanders evolved and developed the concept of Blitzkrieg.

This collaboration between Germany and Russia lasted until 1935, when the Nazi government withdrew the Panzer and Luftwaffe detachments from Soviet territory. Thereafter, it was on German soil that tank design and construction was carried out. The first types of Panzer had been given the cover name 'agricultural tractors', to hoodwink the officers of the Armistice Commission, and because that name fitted In with conventional German military thinking that armoured vehicles would be used principally to bring supplies forward across the broken and difficult terrain of the battlefield. This negative attitude towards the strategic employment of armour as a separate arm of service was common to many generals of the high command: one even went so far as to say: 'The idea of Panzer divisions is Utopian.' But the protagonists advanced their ideas, and a Mechanized Troops Inspectorate was set up in June 1934. Hitler's repudiation of the Treaty of Versailles brought the expansion of the German Army, and with it the beginning of an armoured force. As early as July 1935, an ad hoc Panzer division successfully carried out a training exercise which demonstrated that the movement and more particularly, the control - of major Panzer units was practicable. Even further than that, a general staff exercise had studied the employment of a whole Panzer corps in action. The year 1935 also saw the birth of a new arm of service when the Armoured Troops Command was created, which was followed by the raising of the first three Panzer divisions. The Armoured Troops Command had, as yet, no real authority, for armour was not considered to be an equal partner with the infantry, cavalry and artillery arms.

General Guderian was given the post of Chief of Mobile Troops, and took over the development and training of the entire mechanized force of the Army. As a consequence, he had direct access to Hitler. During 1938, two more Panzer divisions were created, as well as a command structure which allowed the Panzer arm - in theory, at least - to be one of the partners in the Field Army.

It was one thing to be accepted as a partner, it was another to be equipped for that role. The Panzers which the armoured divisions needed were issued to non-Panzer units, and another hindrance was that tank quality was poor. The majority of machines in the armoured force were Panzer I and II types, which were not only obsolete, but were under-gunned and under-armoured. A third negative factor was the raising of three light (mobile) divisions in November 1938. These, together with a fourth division, were created instead of Panzer divisions.

It was not until 1940 that the OKW placed all German armour within the framework of its Panzer divisions. This favourable situation was of brief duration, for by the middle years of the war one-fifth of the AFV strengths still remained outside a divisional framework. One final factor was that the German leadership neglected to plan for new types of replacement tanks. Apart from the existing III and IV types, no preparation was made to produce adequate stocks of tanks or other armoured vehicles or any new marks of Panzer. It was not until 1943 that top priority was given to AFV production. Total production of Panzers in the second month of the war, September 1939, was only fifty-seven machines. Clearly, there was a need for improvement.

German superiority in the matter of Panzer operations during the war owed nothing to the number or quality of the machines it fielded, but was rather the product of superior organizations and training. The campaign in Poland did not see the Panzer force being used in the way that Guderian and the other theorists had planned. It was, instead, the speed with which the whole German Army moved - not just that of the Panzer divisions - which brought victory. For the Polish campaign, the German Army had fielded 2,100 tanks, and lost 218 of them. More serious than the 10 per cent battle loss was the high rate of mechanical failure, which kept 25 per cent of the machines out of action at anyone time. There had been no improvement by 1940, when the war in the west opened. For that campaign, out of a total of 2,574 machines, fewer than 627 were of the heavier Panzer III and Panzer IV types, and 1,613 were the obsolete Panzer I and II. Nevertheless, as Guderian recorded, the Panzer force fought its battle more or less without interference from the OKW, and as a result, achieved dramatic successes.

One of the few examples of Hitler's direct interference was when he halted the Panzer divisions outside Dunkirk, an act which allowed Britain to withdraw the bulk of its Army. As a result of the experiences gained through the victory in the west, it became clear that the Panzer arm of service would soon rise to become a partner equal to the infantry. Hitler was determined to invade the Soviet Union, but needed to increase the number of Panzer divisions. To achieve that growth, he could have decided to increase the output of German tank factories. Instead, he deluded himself that numbers equalled strength, and raised the number of armoured divisions from 10 to 21 by the simple expedient of halving the AFV strength of each division. Thus, each division was made up of a single tank regiment numbering 150-200 machines. Hitler was convinced that a Panzer division fielding a single armoured regiment had the striking power of a division which fielded two regiments. It was a fatal mistake, particularly since Panzer production in the first six months of 1941 averaged only 212 vehicles per month. The total number of machines available for the new war against Russia was 5,262, of which only 4,198 were held to be 'front-line' Panzers, and of that total, only 1,404 were the better-armed Panzer III and IV. Those vehicles, good as they were, were soon to be confronted by the Red Army's superior T 34s and KV Is. Although inferior in every respect, the Panzer llls and IVs were forced to remain in front-line service until the Panzer V (Panther) and the Panzer VI (Tiger) types could be rushed into service. An example of the blindness of the general staff towards armour requirements was shown by General Halder, who seemed to be satisfied that 431 new Panzers would be produced by the end of July 1941, although this was less than half the number of machines lost during that period. Throughout the war, replacements never equalled the losses suffered.

To summarize: German industry was not equipped for the mass production of AFVs, and the ones which were produced for the Army were inferior to those of its opponents - certainly until the Panther and the Tiger came into service. Although the Panzer arm fought valiantly to the end, from 1943 it was firmly on the defensive, except for a few isolated offensives. The greatest mistake was that the supreme commander, Hitler, would accept no limitations upon his strategic plans, and sent major armoured formations across vast areas of country without consideration for the strain upon crews or machines and the drain upon the petrol resources of the Reich, and then committed those tired crews and worn-out vehicles to battle against unequal odds. Because of those and many other factors, Matthew Cooper must be seen as correct in his verdict that the Panzer arm was a failure.

Organisation

The Panzer divisions of the German Army were eventually numbered 1-27, 116, 232 and 233. The establishment also contained named Panzer divisions, as well as light divisions, which were later upgraded to Panzer status. When general mobilization was ordered, the Army had five Panzer and four light divisions on establishment.

The infantry component of the 1st Panzer Division was Schützen Regiment No.1, made up of two battalions, each of five companies; the 2nd Panzer Division incorporated the 2nd Schützen Regiment, with two battalions, each of five companies; the 3rd Panzer Division had the 3rd Schützen Regiment, also with two battalions, each of five companies; the 4th Panzer Division's infantry component was the 12th Schützen Regiment, with two battalions, each of four companies; and the 5th Panzer Division had the 13th Schützen Regiment, with two battalions, each of four companies.

The organization of the light divisions was not standard. The 1st Light Division had Cavalry Schützen Regiment No.4, which was reorganized into a motorized infantry brigade, with a single infantry regiment, a recce battalion and a tank regiment. The 2nd Light Division had Cavalry Schützen Regiments Nos 6 and 7, formed into two motorized infantry regiments, a recce regiment and a battalion of tanks; the infantry regiments were made up of two battalions, each of which fielded four squadrons. The 3rd Light Division had Cavalry Schützen Regiment No. 8 on establishment, formed into a motorized infantry regiment of two battalions, each fielding two squadrons; the divisional establishment was completed with a motorcycle battalion and a Panzer battalion. The 4th Light Division fielded Cavalry Schützen Regiments Nos 10 and 11, forming two motorized infantry regiments and a Panzer battalion; each of the motorized regiments was composed of two battalions, both of these fielding four squadrons.

In the months between the end of the Polish campaign and the opening of the war in the west, the four light divisions were upgraded to Panzer division status, and were numbered 6-9. Three motorized infantry regiments were taken to create the 10th Panzer Division. Other infantry regiments were used to increase the strength of the first three Schützen regiments to three battalions, as well as helping to create the 11th Schützen Regiment.

The number of Panzer divisions on establishment was increased from 10 to 20 during the autumn of 1940, and that number was further increased during 1941, with the 21st Panzer Division being raised for service in Africa. During the winter of 1941/2, Panzer divisions Nos 22, 23 and 24 were raised. The 24th was created by conversion of the 1st Cavalry Division, whose mounted regiments were renamed and renumbered Schützen Regiments Nos 21 and 26.

On 5 July 1942, the Schützen regiments of Panzer divisions were renamed Panzergrenadier regiments, and there was a change in organization, with the disbandment of the machine gun company which had been on the strength of each battalion. Panzer Divisions Nos 25, 26 and 27 were formed during 1942. Ten divisions were destroyed on the Eastern Front and in Africa, the 14th, 16th and 24th were lost at Stalingrad, while the 22nd and 27th suffered such severe losses that they had to be broken up. The 14th, 16th and 24th Divisions were then re-raised in France. In Tunisia, the 10th, 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions were lost, as were the 90th Light Division and the 164th and 999th Light Africa Divisions. The 15th and 90th Light were re-raised as Panzergrenadier divisions. The 21st Panzer was also re-raised in its former role. Neither the 164th Light nor the 999th Light were re-formed.

Most of the Panzer divisions on establishment were reorganized along the lines of a 'Panzer Division 1943 Pattern'. In this, the first battalion of each division became armoured Panzergrenadiers, able to fight from their armoured vehicles. The first three companies of the battalion had a war establishment of 4 heavy and 39 light machine guns, 2 medium mortars, and 7.5 cm and 3.7 cm guns. No.4 Company had three heavy PAK, 2 light infantry guns, six 7.5 cm and 21 machine guns.

The first, second and third companies of the battalions in the new-pattern division each had 4 heavy machine guns, 18 light machines guns and 2 medium mortars. No.4 Company had 4 heavy mortars, 3 heavy PAK and 3 machine guns. No.9 - the infantry gun company - had 6 guns mounted on tracks. No. 10 Company was the pioneer company, and was equipped with 12 machine guns and 18 flame-throwers. During 1943/4, the 18th Panzer Division was broken up, and units were taken from it to create the 18th Artillery Division. During this period the 'Panzer Lehr' Division was raised, and three reserve Panzer divisions were used to create the 9th, 11th and 116th Panzer Divisions. The military disasters of the summer of 1944 brought about the creation of Panzer Brigades 101-113, which were used to reinforce Panzer or Panzergrenadier divisions which had suffered heavy losses.

During the autumn of 1944, the Army followed the pattern of the SS in combining two Panzer divisions into a permanent corps structure. Until that time, Army Panzer Corps HQs had been administrative units, to which divisions had been allocated as required. Army Panzer corps were then created, and 'Grossdeutschland', 'Feldherrenhalle' and XXIV Panzer Corps were created. The first named contained the 'Grossdeutschland' Panzergrenadier Division, the Panzergrenadier Division 'Brandenburg' and the 'Grossdeutschland' Musketier Regiment. The 'Feldherrenhalle' Corps had 1st and 2nd Divisions of that name, and the XXIV Panzer Corps contained the 16th and 17th Panzer Divisions, as well as the 29th Panzer Fusilier Regiment.

The final reorganization of the Panzer arm of service saw the creation of the 'Panzer Division 1945'. This was an internal rearrangement which created and fielded a Panzer battle group because there was insufficient fuel to move all the Panzer vehicles, and only the machine gun company and the heavy weapons company were mobile.

The war between Germany and the Soviet Union

The war between Germany and the Soviet Union which began on 22 June 1941 was waged on an extraordinary scale across a front of 1,000 miles. The war was Hitler’s inspiration. Following the success of German forces in 1939 and 1940 he finally decided in December 1940 to launch a quick strike at the Soviet Union using the same war of movement and concentrated armoured/ air fighting power that had succeeded until then. Divided into three army groups, North, Centre, and South, three million German and allied forces drove against the unprepared Soviet armies in a series of devastating pincer movements which brought them to the edge of Leningrad and Moscow in four months, and to the economically rich Donets Basin in the southern Ukraine. The winter weather prevented the quick victory Hitler wanted, but the following spring German forces moved forward again in the south to try to capture the whole of the southern industrial and oil region and to swing behind the remaining Soviet forces to the north to complete one final annihilating encirclement. By September German forces had reached Stalingrad on the Volga and the edge of the Caucasus mountains.

The German attack was a model of operational skill and tactical efficiency, but by the late summer of 1942 there were clear signs that the momentum was lost. In November the Soviet armies on either side of Stalingrad inflicted the first major defeat on the invading force. The encirclement and capture of 300,000 men of the German 6th Army in Stalingrad in January 1943 was regarded world-wide as the point at which the tide turned against the aggressor states. The German defeat has often been blamed on Hitler himself, who had taken over direct command of German armies in December 1941. While it is certainly the case that he led his forces into a campaign where they became vulnerably overstretched across the steppe of southern Russia, few German generals even in the autumn of 1942 thought that Soviet forces were capable of very serious resistance in the south. The roots of the German problem go deeper than this. During the first eighteen months of the conflict the German forces underwent a gradual process of ‘de-modernization’. The numbers of aircraft and tanks were constantly reduced through high battle losses and the diversion of resources to other fronts. Production in the Reich failed to keep pace. At the end of very long lines of communication the maintenance and repair of vehicles and planes became a logistical nightmare. The severe climate—bitterly cold in winter, hot and dusty in the summer—took a heavy toll of vehicles. Armoured divisions began the war with 328 tanks apiece; by the summer of 1943 they averaged 73; by the end of the war the figure was 54. The German army fell back on the use of horses. During 1942 German industry turned out only 59,000 trucks for an army of 8 million men, but the same year 400,000 horses were sent to the Eastern Front. The German forces concentrated their air and tank power on a few élite divisions; the rest of the army moved like those of the Great War, by rail, horse, or foot.

The Soviet forces experienced entirely the opposite process. From a feeble platform in 1941 Soviet armies and air forces underwent an extraordinary programme of reform and modernization. Soviet military leaders set out deliberately to copy the success of their enemy. Air forces were concentrated in large air armies, centrally co-ordinated for the most flexible response to problems at the front line, and with great improvements in radio communication which made it possible to give effective support to ground forces. Armies were reorganized to match German practice, with a core of heavily armoured and mobile divisions. Small improvements, such as the installation of two-way radios in tanks, supplied from the United States as aid, produced a radical change in fighting power. Stalin gave high priority to supply and logistics, and by 1943 the number of aircraft and tanks produced began to overhaul German production by a wide margin, while the technical quality improved remarkably in the course of two years. The most significant reform came in the attention paid to operational skills. Stalin devolved responsibility for organizing operations to the general staff and his exceptionally talented deputy Marshal Zhukov. Under his leadership the Soviet forces proved capable of planning and executing operations involving millions of men, a feat quite beyond Soviet generals in the early stages of the war.

The effects of these far-reaching reforms were demonstrated in the largest and most significant set-piece battle of the war, at Kursk in July 1943. In an effort to stabilize their front- line German generals planned to lure the Soviet forces into a huge pitched battle on the Kursk steppe where they hoped to encircle and capture the core of the revived Red Army. Zhukov prepared a defensive field of such depth and sophistication that the German armoured spearheads were only able to move a matter of miles before annihilating Soviet counter-offensives broke the German line and drove the invading force back beyond the Dnieper River. In the following eighteen months Soviet offensive tactics succeeded in driving back what had been regarded until then as the finest army and air force in the world. German forces swung on to the defensive, concentrating on using tanks as mobile defensive artillery, and switching to the mass production of anti-tank guns and heavy defensive armament. The growing imbalance of forces in favour of the Red Army disguised the extent to which the balance on the battlefield began to swing back to the defender. In the gruelling advance into Germany both sides suffered extraordinary losses. It was here that the Second World War was won and lost. The Red Army destroyed some 607 divisions of German and allied forces between 1941 and 1945. Two-thirds of German tank losses were inflicted on the Eastern Front.

June 1941 - the largest invasion ever mounted - Babarossa - and the great conflict that ensued....