Death Ride of the Panzers

by Dennis Oliver

  Ordering 7.Armee to coordinate the forces that crossed to the eastern bank of the Seine, Model left Dietrich in command of the armored screen on the western side. Model, recognizing the danger of the American bridgehead at Mantes-Gassicourt, ordered that it be destroyed immediately and that Dietrich prepare to hold Elbeuf at all costs, shielding Rouen and the only bridge left to the Germans.4

  The main line of resistance of 5.Panzerarmee was organized into two broad sectors. The western sector opposed the British and Canadians and the southern sector faced the Americans; it was the latter that Model felt was crucial. Here the German line was held by the infantry units of General Kuntzen’s LXXXI.Armeekorps and the few remaining tanks of 116.Panzer-Division. This force would be too weak to withstand a determined push and Model directed 49. Infanterie-Division and 18.Luftwaffen-Feld-Division to the area with the intention of sealing off the American bridgeheads. In addition, the remnants of 1.SS-Panzer-Division, 12.SS-Panzer-Division, and 2.Panzer-Division were ordered to move to LXXXI.Armeekorps’ area on the afternoon of August 21. These formations were, however, so depleted that they were only able to field ten serviceable tanks in total. On the following day, after a massive aerial bombardment, the Americans, led by 130 Sherman tanks, attacked Kuntzen’s positions. During the previous evening. 2.Panzer-Division and 9.SS-Panzer-Division had been ordered to move from the area around Lisieux, about 35 kilometers east of Caen where they were facing the British, to reinforce LXXXI.Armeekorps. However, they were still preparing to move when the American attack began and could only muster twenty-five tanks between the two divisions. On Kuntzen’s left flank, the infantry of 17.Luftwaffen-Feld-Division simply crumbled and the American tanks did not stop until they reached Louviers, 10 kilometers south-east of Elbeuf, and threatened the Seine crossing sites. Faced with the threat of encirclement, Model had no choice but to take more troops from the western sector, despite the pleas of the local commanders General von Obstfelder and Gruppenführer Bittrich, who felt that the line was already disastrously thin. Model’s bold strategy, however, paid off. While the British and Canadians remained inactive, Gruppe Schwerin, which included a number of Tiger II tanks of schwere Panzer-Abteilung 503, managed to reduce the American bridgeheads and even recapture La Roche-Guyon, which had been evacuated on August 18. Nevertheless, Model felt that the attack was not pursued with sufficient speed or aggression and blamed Dietrich, contending that a concerted assault should have pushed the front back to Evreux. Dietrich, who had been on the battlefield, realized the impossibility of the task that he had been given and asked to be relieved of his command. Eventually Model was convinced that the attacking force had been wholly inadequate and later informed Hitler’s headquarters that the sternest orders could not alter insurmountable facts.

  On August 23, the American units that had pushed Kuntzen’s corps aside to take Louviers were able to advance towards Elbeuf. The Germans were now forced to attack, regardless of the enemy’s superiority, in order to stave off disaster. The withdrawal of the mobile units from the western sector was given a new urgency, particularly because most movement had to take place at night. For the attack, Gruppe Schwerin was reinforced with 2.SS-Panzer-Division and 21.Panzer-Division, but this force was not enough to push the front any further to the south. When the Americans counterattacked they were able to reach the outskirts of Elbeuf, raising the possibility of an Allied force crossing the river and attacking the ferry points from the rear. The Germans had nothing with which to oppose a strong thrust across the Seine; their last reserve, the remaining tanks of 9.SS-Panzer-Division, were already engaged in the area around Elbeuf. Model could do little other than order 7.Armee to continue the crossings “ceaselessly and at maximum speed.” However, at this critical stage, the Americans seemed to hesitate, and on August 25, the tanks of Gruppe Schwerin managed to push them out of Elbeuf, albeit temporarily. The Allies seemed content to disrupt the crossings by destroying the ferries with air power and artillery. The decisive thrust that Model feared was imminent never materialized and 7.Armee was allowed to escape. Now a way had to be found for 5.Panzerarmee to disengage and cross the river and German command felt that this must be accomplished in a single phase to have any chance of success.

  To cover the retreat, the remaining tanks and assault guns were pulled back to a line to protect the crossings at Caudebec-en-Caux, Duclair, Elbeuf, and Rouen. The latter was the major crossing point and this could not escape the notice of the Allied air forces for long. On August 25, with tanks and trucks massed at the quayside, a wave of bombers plastered the town, causing fires which were still blazing the following day. It is perhaps surprising that the Allies did not attack the other crossing points with such vigour; one German account mentioning that on the same day the bombers raided Rouen, the streets of Oissel, just over 5 kilometers to the south, were jammed with an estimated 5,000-7,000 vehicles. On the day Rouen was bombed, the commandant of Paris formally surrendered the city, allowing French and American units to enter the French capital.

  By this time the British had crossed the Seine further to the north and were headed for the Somme, which Model had hoped would provide the next natural barrier to the Allied advance. Still, the Germans fought ferociously to hold what ground they possessed, with the tanks and artillery of 116.Panzer-Division fighting all day on August 26 to drive the Americans back near Bourgtheroulde, just over 5 kilometers west of Elbeuf. That night the last three self-propelled guns of the division’s Panzer-Artillerie-Regiment 146, which had been rendered inoperable during an air attack, were withdrawn from the front and towed across the Seine. The German rearguard was being slowly whittled away. A Kampfgruppe made up of the tanks of 116.Panzer-Division and 2.SS-Panzer-Division were ordered to hold Elbeuf for as long as possible, but were outflanked when US 2nd Armored Division entered the town from the south. The tank crews of 116. Panzer-Division fought the Americans to a standstill and withdrew late that night under the cover of heavy rain. Most of the men of 2.SS-Panzer-Division who escaped did so by swimming across the Seine. In the morning, US Army units handed the town over to the Canadians, who had advanced from the north. The survivors of 2.Panzer-Division crossed the river on August 28, while 331.Infantry-Division took over the section of the front to the east of Duclair and Rouen. In the early hours of August 28, the last elements of 9.SS-Panzer-Division crossed the river at Duclair under fire but lost the popular commander of SS-Panzer-Regiment 9, Otto Meyer, who had survived the fighting in Normandy and the Falaise Pocket.5

  Later that day, the Grenadiers of 331.Infanterie-Division finally pulled back across the river and on the same day the Canadian 3rd and 4th Armored Divisions entered Rouen. During the evening of August 31, a number of daring tank crews from schwere SS-Panzer Abteilung 102 returned to Rouen to destroy the three operational Tiger tanks which they had reluctantly abandoned on the east bank of the Seine. Not content with remaining in the area to watch the explosions, they also destroyed two Panthers that had been claimed by the French Resistance, using Panzerfausts before returning to their own lines in a stolen rowboat. These men were in all likelihood the last Germans to cross the Seine.

  Between August 20 and August 24 alone the Germans had managed to ferry some 25,000 vehicles to the east bank of the Seine. Although most of the heavy tanks were abandoned, and British Intelligence estimated that 95 percent of the men who reached the river after the debacle at Falaise managed to get across, including the rearguards. In addition to the ferries, twenty-four separate crossing sites had been in operation and, despite the railway bridge at Rouen being the best known and possibly the sturdiest, the pontoon bridge at Poses near Pont l’Arche was the busiest, where an estimated 16,000 vehicles crossed in the space of five nights and three days. The bridge was never bombed as it was usually dismantled during the day and no road led to it, which would have attracted the attention of Allied fighter bombers.

  Once the retreat beyond the Seine had been completed, Model intended that 7.Armee would cover the withdrawal of wh
at remained of 5.Panzerarmee to Arras, north-east of Amiens and the Somme. Once there, Dietrich was to hand command back to Eberbach. However, on the afternoon of August 31, Eberbach and most of his staff were taken prisoner by a British armored unit, depriving Model of one of his most able and experienced tank commanders. The British drive towards Amiens drove a wedge between 15.Armee and 5.Panzerarmee and destroyed any hopes of establishing a new defensive line on the Somme. Model was forced to retreat again with the British threatening Brussels.

  In the south, the units of Heeresgruppe G continued their withdrawal through Lyon, which Blaskowitz, the army group commander, hoped to hold only long enough for his troops to pass through to the north. In answer to an uprising within the city, he directed the divisions of General Erich Petersen’s IV. Luftwaffen-Feld-Korps to secure the city until the night of August 31, when Blaskowitz expected the last of his troops to pass through.6

  He also ordered Wietersheim, the commander of 11.Panzer-Division, to destroy all the bridges across the Rhône and Ain Rivers east of Lyon to deny the Americans the important road junction of Bourg-en-Bresse, 50 kilometers north of Lyon between the Rhone and Saone Rivers. However, before Wietersheim could complete his orders, the Americans managed to capture two bridges across the Ain and reach the village of Méximieux, almost 20 kilometers to the north-east of Lyon on the northern bank of the Rhone. Realizing the danger this presented, Wietersheim sent Major Heinz Bödicker, the commander of the division’s Panzer-Pionier-Bataillon 209, with his engineers and a number of Panther tanks from Panzer-Regiment 15, to drive back the Americans and destroy the Ain bridges at Port-Galland and Chazey-sur-Ain, the latter about 2 kilometers south-east of Méximieux. Advancing from Montluel, just outside Lyon, Bödicker was supported by Kampfgruppe Kilp, which had been ordered to open the road between La Vabonne and Méximieux, which ran north-east from Lyon. Before the 1940 campaign, La Vabonne had been a French army camp and was now held by a company of the US 179th Infantry Regiment and Company Giraud, a French Resistance unit, supported by a number of M10 Tank Destroyers. The German attack began on August 31 after a short artillery barrage and lasted all day, with Kampfgruppe Kilp eventually beaten back as darkness fell. However, the arrival of Kampfgruppe Müller the next morning enabled the Germans to surround the camp and take prisoner the US Army and Resistance fighters.

  As the Germans were making their final assault on La Vabonne, the tanks and halftracks of Kampfgruppe Bödicker spilled from the camouflage of the woods between La Boisse and Balan and raced to Chazey-sur-Ain, were they were able to capture the bridge by 6:00 am and very quickly destroy it with explosive charges. Ignoring the Americans in Méximieux for the moment, Bödicker turned his men back towards the remaining bridge at Port-Galland. At the village of Saint-Maurice-de-Gourdans, less than a kilometer from their objective, the Germans ran into a strong roadblock position set up by the first battalion of 179th Infantry Regiment. The defenders were able to call on artillery support from the south bank of the river and after a fierce fight that left most of the village in ruins, Major Bödicker realized his Kampfgruppe was not strong enough to take the bridge and withdrew towards La Vabonne. Making contact with the other battle groups, Bödicker assumed command of all three and decided to move towards Méximieux, which was reached at about noon. Within half an hour the Germans began their first assault. The attack from the south, where most of the tanks are involved, met with little success, but the units attacking the northern edge of the town were able to take the Château de Méximieux, within sight of the American headquarters. Confused fighting continued throughout the night but by 3:00 am Bödicker ordered his men to withdraw. Although the bridge at Port-Galland remained open and Méximieux was firmly in Allied hands, the actions of Kampfgruppe Bödicker had held up the American advance for the best part of two days. Although French units entered Lyon on September 2, the last Germans left the city with a distinct lack of urgency in the early hours of the following day as Resistance fighters battled with the Milice for control of the city.7

  An attempt to cut off the withdrawal at Bourg was itself surrounded and severely mauled at Montreval on September 3 by a Kampfgruppe under the command of by Major Karl Bode, who had done so much to hold up the Americans at Montélimar. By this time, however, most of the German force had withdrawn through Mâcon, almost halfway to Dijon.

  Although forward elements of US VI Corps, advancing from the south, were able to establish contact with units of Patton’s 3rd Army on September 10, they were not able to push forward to the Belfort Gap. By September 14, Heeresgruupe G had been reinforced by a number of armored units8 and held a line centered on Belfort running from Nancy in the north to the small town of Blamont on the Swiss border.

  The German army now presented a continuous front through the Schedlt Estuary, across Belgium north of Liege then south to the fortress city of Metz and on to Nancy, where the boundary of General Otto von Knobelsdorff 1.Armee met Blaskowitz’s Heeresgruppe G.

  During the first week of September, Antwerp and Dieppe had fallen to the British and Canadians and the ports of Le Havre and Boulogne-sur-Mer, which Hitler had declared a Fortress City, were both threatened. On the southern front and in the center, the Americans were closing on Aachen and the Saar. Rearguard actions were often overrun with little difficulty, while German counterattacks were hastily prepared and usually brushed aside with ease, as most of the superbly trained and equipped units that the Wehrmacht possessed when the Normandy campaign began had simply ceased to exist. The ease with which the Allies had advanced through Belgium in the north and towards the borders of the Reich in the center and south, in addition to the staggering losses suffered in the battles across Normandy and Brittany, had convinced many of the Allied commanders that the Germans were spent as a military force. To the reverses in the west must be added the losses incurred on the Eastern front, where the Germans had long been pushed out of Russian territory. However, by early September the situation began to change and the front began to solidify, although at the time this was almost imperceptible. Although the city of Antwerp fell to the Allies on September 4, it was ineffective as a port while the Scheldt Estuary remained in German hands. Most importantly, the failure to capture the approaches to the city allowed over sixty thousand men of General Gustav-Adolf von Zangen’s 15.Armee to escape, although much of their heavy equipment was left behind. These men were used to bolster the garrison of the central Netherlands.

  On the very day Antwerp was abandoned, Generalfeldmarschall Gerd von Rundstedt was recalled from retirement and reinstated as Oberbefehlshaber West, replacing Model, who had held the post for just eighteen days and was now relegated to the command of Heeresgruppe B. The main responsibility for saving the situation, however, would rest with the brilliant and energetic Model, who wasted no time in formulating a plan which would allow Germany to hold the Western Front.

  PANZER-BRIGADE 107, AUGUST 1944

  During a conference held on July 2, 1944, to consider the dire situation on the Eastern Front, Hitler suggested that small, highly mobile units would be capable of cutting off and destroying the Russian armored spearheads that were by then penetrating deep into the front of Heeregruppe Mitte. This was exactly what local commanders had been accomplishing for three years with ad-hoc Kampfgruppen or battle groups, often scraped together from badly depleted units and even stragglers. It was a method of fighting at which the Germans had proven themselves masters. That this idea was both unoriginal and had been fermenting in Hitler's mind for some time is suggested by his extremely detailed instructions that these formally-organized Kampfgruppen should number twelve, be made up of an armored infantry battalion, a tank force of approximately thirty to forty vehicles, a company of towed anti-tank guns and a number of mobile anti-aircraft weapons. Further, he insisted that the formations be called brigades and as they would be expected to operate into the winter months, the Jagpanzer 38(t), which was about to enter service, should be fitted with new, wider tracks. The army's first proposal
that a number of Panzer divisions then undergoing refit be converted to what were called Panzer-Kampfgruppen. Eventually, an order was issued on July 11, 1944, calling for ten brigades to be formed, numbered from 101 to 110, based Hitler's directions. Each was to contain a Panzer battalion of three companies equipped with PzKpfw V Panther tanks and a fourth company made up of Pz IV/70(V) tank destroyers. The battalion staff would field another three Panthers and four mobile anti-aircraft guns. It was anticipated that the brigades numbered from 101 to 104 would be ready for deployment by August 15, those numbered 105 and 106 by the end of that month, 107 and 108 by the middle of September, and within another two weeks 109 and 110 would take the field. The original order was amended on July 24, changing little except to grant the honor title Feldherrnhalle to Panzer-Brigade 106 and Panzer-Brigade 110. The formation shown here, Panzer-Brigade 107, was formed in late July 1944, from the remnants of 25.Panzergrenadier-Division. The brigade fought in Holland during September and October 1944, where it suffered heavy losses. In November, the surviving personnel and material of the brigade were absorbed by the refurbished 25.Panzergrenadier-Division.

  PANZER-BRIGADE 111, SEPTEMBER 1944

  It was expected that the second generation of independent Panzer brigades, raised in September 1944 and numbered from 111 to 113, would be far stronger in armor than the brigades raised earlier in the year. However, when the formation depicted here, Panzer-Brigade 111, went into action for the first time near LunÈville in the opening phase of what would become known as the Battle of Arracourt, the brigade headquarters reported that just six PzKpfw IV tanks and nineteen Panthers were on hand and ready for combat. During the battle, the Jagdpanzer IV tank destroyer company, which may have been at full strength, was attached to Panzer-Abteilung 2111. The Panzergrenadier units had none of their allocated halftracks and the few available trucks were used to move the support weapons into position. The brigade was practically annihilated in the fighting around Arracourt, losing most of its personnel, including the commander. Accounts that suggest that the tank strength actually increased during this time are probably including the vehicles of Panzer-Brigade 112, which were taken over before the initial assault.