![]() When the 13th Panzer Division advanced on Rovno, Gen. There were some limited Soviet successes. However, lightly-armed BT and T-26 tanks comprised the bulk of the Soviet force.īy June 29, 1941, as the advancing German tanks encircled and annihilated the Soviet units, with others falling back, “the battles the Soviets were still waging elsewhere were now battles more for survival than anything else,” Glantz wrote, “because at this point the Soviets began running out of fuel and ammunition.” The Soviet 10th Tank Division of the 15th Mechanized Corps alone had 63 KVs and 38 T-34s, according to Glantz’s book The Initial Period of War on the Eastern Front. What’s all the more remarkable is that the Soviet corps had considerable numbers of heavier KV and T-34 tanks, tougher than the German army’s best tanks at the time. German warplanes bombed them incessantly, and fast-moving Panzer divisions with coordinated artillery support chopped them apart. The six Soviet corps were disorganized and lacked enough trucks and tractors to transport infantry, howitzers and supplies, and their attacks were uncoordinated. Making sense of the chaotic battle on available maps is … difficult. It’s unclear how many tanks of the 1st Panzer Group were destroyed in the battle, but the force did lose 100 of its tanks during the first two weeks of the war. The battle which developed and then concluded on June 30 was a confusing morass that swallowed 2,648 Soviet tanks out of a total force of 5,000 versus some 1,000 German tanks. Mikhail Kirponos launched a counter attack into the advancing 1st Panzer Group advancing toward Kiev. Beginning on June 23 between Dubno, Lutsk and Brody in far western Ukraine, six Soviet mechanized corps under Gen. Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. The II.SS-Panzer-Korps took part in the Ardennes Offensive inDecember, 1944, and was later transfered to the Eastern Front where it endedthe War in May, 1945.Glantz describes the Battle of Brody at 15:45 The 9th and 10thtook part in these operations against the Allies under control of theII.SS-Panzer-Korps. TheBritish 1st Airborne Division was dropped on Arnhem, and then crushedunder the shear pressure of the German counter-attack. ![]() The 9.SS-Panzer-Divison and the 10-SS-Panzer-Division were present in and aroundthe city of Arnhem, the Northern most goal of the Allied offensive. In Septemeber, 1944, the II.SS-Panzer-Korps took part in opeationsduring the Allied Operation Market-Garden, an air and land assault intothe Netherlands. In Late Summer, 1944, the Korps took part in theBattle of Falaise gap, and managed to break-out before the Allies closed thering around them. In June, 1944,the Korps was once again back in France, this time fighting against theD-Day landings in Normany. In the Winter of 1943 the Korps was in France again, until the Spring of1944 when it was transfered to the Eastern Front once more. The Korps was ordered to Italy to help stabilize the rapidly crumblingsituation of Germany’s Italian Ally after the failed Kursk offensive.Mussolini was deposed on the same day that the II.SS-Panzer-Korps wasordered to Italy, and in the end, only the 1.SS-Panzer-Division actaully was transfered, while theother unit of the Korps stayed on the Eastern Front. Against massive Soviet pressure and manpower, theoffensive stalled and was called off shortly after it was launched,and the II.SS-Panzer-Korps was pulled back. The Divisions of the Korpsmanaged to push deeper into the salient then any other unitin the offensive. TheII.SS-Panzer-Korps spearheaded this offensive by driving into thesouthern edge of the Kursk salient. ![]() ![]() This was the Kursk Offensive, and it wasthe most massive and important tank battle in all of History. The Korps was sent to the Southern Front in Russia inEarly 1943 where it took part in operations to stem the Soviet 1943 WinterOffensive and then to recapture Kharkov and Belgorod in the earlySpring, 1943.Īfter the German success on the Eastern Front in stemming SovietOffensives, the Germans launched an offensive of their own in the Summerof 1943 aimed at further crushing the Soviet forces already pushed back fromthe previous months of fighting. The Korps wasfirst used to control reorganizing SS-Infanterie-Divisionen in France inthe Summer of 1942. It was ready for action 8.42, and in 6.43it was renamed as tje Generalkommando II.SS-Panzerkorps. The II.SS-Panzer-Korps was formed in 7.42 in Bergen (Holland) as ssPanzer-Generalkommando. ![]()
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