Chronicle of the 7. Panzerkompanie, I. SS-Panzer Division "Leibstandarte"
Chronicle of the 7. Panzerkompanie, I. SS-Panzer Division

Author: Ralf Tiemann

Publisher: Schiffer Publishing

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13:

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This chronicle of the 7.Panzerkompanie follows the unit history of a "Leibstandarte" tank company from its creation in 1942 to the end of World War II. Compiled by former company commander and German Cross in Gold holder Ralf Tiemann, the detailed text relies on both official documentation and the personal recollections of numerous unit veterans. An individual level narrative covers the intense first combats for Kharkov in early 1943 and the summer Kursk engagements later the same year. In 1944 the unit engaged the Western Allies after D-Day. Illustrated with private photos made available from Waffen-SS veteran contributions, the detailed appendices provide a complete roster of all commanders, platoon leaders, senior NCOs, award winners and those killed in action. Exacting cartographic material allows the reader to follow all engagements in this first unit history of a "Leibstandarte" tank company available in English.

Bloody Verrieres, Volume 1
Bloody Verrieres, Volume 1

Author: Arthur W. Gullachsen

Publisher: Casemate

Published: 2021-12-31

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1636240038

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“An excellent work that adds to the history of the Normandy Campaign. It also gives the armchair historian points to ponder.” —A Wargamers Needful Things South of the Norman city of Caen, the twin features of the Verrières and Bourguebus ridges were key stepping stones for the British Second Army in late July 1944—taking them was crucial if it was to be successful in its attempt to break out of the Normandy bridgehead. To capture this vital ground, Allied forces would have to defeat arguably the strongest German armored formation in Normandy: the I. SS-Panzerkorps “Leibstandarte.” The resulting battles of late July and early August 1944 saw powerful German defensive counterattacks south of Caen inflict tremendous casualties, regain lost ground, and at times defeat Anglo-Canadian operations in detail. Viewed by the German leadership as militarily critical, the majority of its armored assets were deployed to dominate this excellent tank country east of the Orne river. These defeats and the experience of meeting an enemy with near-equal resources exposed a flawed Anglo-Canadian offensive tactical doctrine that was overly dependent on the supremacy of its artillery forces. Furthermore, weaknesses in Allied tank technology inhibited their armored forces from fighting a decisive armored battle, forcing Anglo-Canadian infantry and artillery forces to further rely on First World War “Bite and Hold” tactics, massively supported by artillery. Confronted with the full force of the Panzerwaffe, Anglo-Canadian doctrine at times floundered. In response, the Royal Artillery and Royal Canadian Artillery units pummeled the German tankers and grenadiers, but despite their best efforts, ground could not be captured by concentrated artillery fire alone. This is a detailed account of the success of I. SS-Panzerkorps’ defensive operations, aimed at holding the Vèrrieres-Bourgebus ridges in late July 1944.

Armor
Armor

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 56

ISBN-13:

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The magazine of mobile warfare.

Advance and Destroy
Advance and Destroy

Author: John Rickard

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2011-10-01

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 0813134560

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In the winter of 1944–1945, Hitler sought to divide Allied forces in the heavily forested Ardennes region of Luxembourg and Belgium. He deployed more than 400,000 troops in one of the last major German offensives of the war, which became known as the Battle of the Bulge, in a desperate attempt to regain the strategic initiative in the West. Hitler’s effort failed for a variety of reasons, but many historians assert that Lieutenant General George S. Patton Jr.’s Third Army was ultimately responsible for securing Allied victory. Although Patton has assumed a larger-than-life reputation for his leadership in the years since World War II, scholars have paid little attention to his generalship in the Ardennes following the relief of Bastogne. In Advance and Destroy, Captain John Nelson Rickard explores the commander’s operational performance during the entire Ardennes campaign, through his “estimate of the situation,” the U.S. Army’s doctrinal approach to problem-solving. Patton’s day-by-day situational understanding of the Battle of the Bulge, as revealed through ULTRA intelligence and the influence of the other Allied generals on his decision-making, gives readers an in-depth, critical analysis of Patton’s overall effectiveness, measured in terms of mission accomplishment, his ability to gain and hold ground, and a cost-benefit analysis of his operations relative to the lives of his soldiers. The work not only debunks myths about one of America’s most controversial generals but provides new insights into his renowned military skill and colorful personality.

Waffen-SS
Waffen-SS

Author: Adrian Gilbert

Publisher: Da Capo Press

Published: 2019-06-25

Total Pages: 589

ISBN-13: 0306824663

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From an award-winning and bestselling historian, the first comprehensive military history in over fifty years of Hitler's famous and infamous personal army: the Waffen-SS. The Waffen-SS was one of the most feared combat organizations of the twentieth century. Originally formed as a protection squad for Adolf Hitler it became the military wing of Heinrich Himmler's SS and a key part of the Nazi state, with nearly 900,000 men passing through its ranks. The Waffen-SS played a crucial role in furthering the aims of the Third Reich which made its soldiers Hitler's political operatives. During its short history, the elite military divisions of the Waffen-SS acquired a reputation for excellence, but their famous battlefield record of success was matched by their repeated and infamous atrocities against both soldiers and civilians. Waffen-SS is the first definitive single-volume military history of the Waffen-SS in more than fifty years. In considering the actions of its leading personalities, including Himmler, Sepp Dietrich, and Otto Skorzeny, and analyzing its specialist training and ideological outlook, eminent historian Adrian Gilbert chronicles the battles and campaigns that brought the Waffen-SS both fame and infamy.

The Germans in Normandy
The Germans in Normandy

Author: Richard Hargreaves

Publisher: Grub Street Publishers

Published: 2006-11-06

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 1781594708

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This account of the D-Day invasion—from the German point of view—includes maps and photos. The Allied invasion of Northern France was the greatest combined operation in the history of warfare. Up until now, it has been recorded from the attackers’ point of view—whereas the defenders’ angle has been largely ignored. While the Germans knew an invasion was inevitable, no one knew where or when it would fall. Those manning Hitler’s mighty Atlantic Wall may have felt secure in their bunkers, but they had no conception of the fury and fire that was about to break. After the initial assaults of June established an Allied bridgehead, a state of stalemate prevailed. The Germans fought with great courage—hindered by lack of supplies and overwhelming Allied control of the air. This book describes the catastrophe that followed, in a unique look at the war from the losing side.

Peiper's War
Peiper's War

Author: Danny S. Parker

Publisher: Frontline Books

Published: 2020-04-29

Total Pages: 775

ISBN-13: 1526743434

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A biography of the ruthless Waffen-SS commander focusing on his point of view while fighting for Nazi Germany during World War II. “A bad reputation has its commitments.” So wrote home Jochen Peiper from the fighting front in the East in 1943, characterizing his battle-hardened command during the World War II. Peiper’s War is a new serious work of military history by the renowned author Danny S. Parker which presents a unique view off the Second World War as seen from a prominent participant on the dark side of history. Peiper’s War follows the wartime career of Waffen SS Colonel Jochen Peiper, an Aryan prodigy who was considered a hero in the Third Reich. Peiper had been Heinrich Himmler’s personal adjutant in the early years of the war, and, having procured a field command in Hitler’s namesake fighting force, the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, he become famous for a flamboyant and brutal style of warfare on the Eastern Front. There, in his sphere, few prisoners were taken, and motives of racial genocide were never far from unspoken orders. Transferred to the west, Peiper’s battlegroup incinerated a tiny town in Northern Italy and killed the village mayor and priest. Being well-connected to Himmler and other generals of the period, Peiper finds a place in the narrative as a storied witness to the inner workings of the Nazi elite along with other prominent SS officers such as Kurt Meyer. In this meticulously researched work, we witness the apex and then death spiral of Nazi military intentions as Peiper fights for Germany across every front in the conflict. Peiper’s War provides a telling inside look at Hitler’s war and then how the dark secrets of his security-minded command were improbably unearthed at the end of the conflict by an obscure top-secret surveillance facility in the United States. Praise for Peiper’s War “This is a well-researched work with detailed footnotes. The photograph section is invaluable in appreciating the destruction wrought by Peiper in Russia and Italy.” —ARMOR

Military Power
Military Power

Author: Stephen Biddle

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-12-16

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 1400837820

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In war, do mass and materiel matter most? Will states with the largest, best equipped, information-technology-rich militaries invariably win? The prevailing answer today among both scholars and policymakers is yes. But this is to overlook force employment, or the doctrine and tactics by which materiel is actually used. In a landmark reconception of battle and war, this book provides a systematic account of how force employment interacts with materiel to produce real combat outcomes. Stephen Biddle argues that force employment is central to modern war, becoming increasingly important since 1900 as the key to surviving ever more lethal weaponry. Technological change produces opposite effects depending on how forces are employed; to focus only on materiel is thus to risk major error--with serious consequences for both policy and scholarship. In clear, fluent prose, Biddle provides a systematic account of force employment's role and shows how this account holds up under rigorous, multimethod testing. The results challenge a wide variety of standard views, from current expectations for a revolution in military affairs to mainstream scholarship in international relations and orthodox interpretations of modern military history. Military Power will have a resounding impact on both scholarship in the field and on policy debates over the future of warfare, the size of the military, and the makeup of the defense budget.

The Ardennes, 1944-1945
The Ardennes, 1944-1945

Author: Christer Bergström

Publisher: Casemate / Vaktel Forlag

Published: 2014-12-19

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 161200315X

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A comprehensive, photo-filled account of the six-week-long Battle of the Bulge, when panzers slipped through the forest and took the Allies by surprise. In December 1944, just as World War II appeared to be winding down, Hitler shocked the world with a powerful German counteroffensive that cracked the center of the American front. The attack came through the Ardennes, the hilly and forested area in eastern Belgium and Luxembourg that the Allies had considered a “quiet” sector. Instead, for the second time in the war, the Germans used it as a stealthy avenue of approach for their panzers. Much of US First Army was overrun, and thousands of prisoners were taken as the Germans forged a fifty-mile “bulge” into the Allied front. But in one small town, Bastogne, American paratroopers, together with remnants of tank units, offered dogged resistance. Meanwhile, the rest of Eisenhower’s “broad front” strategy came to a halt as Patton, from the south, and Hodges, from the north, converged on the enemy incursion. Yet it would take an epic, six-week-long winter battle, the bloodiest in the history of the US Army, before the Germans were finally pushed back. Christer Bergström has interviewed veterans, gone through huge amounts of archive material, and performed on-the-spot research in the area. The result is a large amount of previously unpublished material and new findings, including reevaluations of tank and personnel casualties and the most accurate picture yet of what really transpired from the perspectives of both sides. With nearly four hundred photos, numerous maps, and thirty-two superb color profiles of combat vehicles and aircraft, it provides perhaps the most comprehensive look at the battle yet published.

Armor and Blood
Armor and Blood

Author: Dennis E. Showalter

Publisher:

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 377

ISBN-13: 1400066778

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An account of a World War II tank battle between the Soviet Red Army and the Nazi Werhrmacht that proved to be a critcal turning point on the Eastern Front.