German army infantry divisions

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: rogo727

There are only two things I can't stand in this world. The first is people who can't tolerate other peoples cultures and the second is the Dutch.....Austin Powers.

Warspite1

[:)]

[rodney727]

I just noticed I got my second star.
3rd Panzer Division
Formed. October 15th, 1935
Home Station: Berlin wehrkeise III
Composition;
6th panzer Reg
3rd Panzer Grenadier Reg
394th Panzer Grenadier Reg
75th Panzer Artilley Reg
3rd Motorcyle Bat
543rd Tank Desrtoyer Bat
3rd Panzer Reconnaissance Bat
39th Panzer Engineer Bat
39th Panzer Signal Bat
314th Army Flak Bat

Known as the "Bear Division".

[parusski]

here are only two things I can't stand in this world. The first is people who can't tolerate other peoples cultures

Well thank God your tolerance can't be questioned.[8|][8|][8|][8|]

[rodney727]

ORIGINAL: parusski

here are only two things I can't stand in this world. The first is people who can't tolerate other peoples cultures

Well thank God your tolerance can't be questioned.[8|][8|][8|][8|]

Never in doubt.[:-]

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[nate25]

Got a couple days catching up to do, Rogo! [;)]

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[Toby42]

ORIGINAL: nate25

If he does every div in the Wehrmacht (Heer, SS, Luftwaffe, Kreigsmarine, etc.), this will easily be the longest thread ever.

You heard it here first. [;)]

Maybe he should start a separate thread for each division? Give the thread the title of the division so you can reference it easily?

[TulliusDetritus]

ORIGINAL: Treale

Maybe he should start a separate thread for each division? Give the thread the title of the division so you can reference it easily?

LOL

Fight fire with fire aka emulate the spammmmmers! [8D]

[radic202]

This is so awesome and educational, please keep up with this great info. Much appreciated!

[ilovestrategy]

I'm trying to picture myself in one of those divisions that broke away from the Russians to surrender to the Americans. I bet every German in those divisions needed a cold beer after that.

[british exil]

I met one ex_Wehrmacht officer who escaped fate. He was a member of Groß Deutschland and after many battles in the East was reforming in the western sector of Germany. Thus he was able to surrender to the english.

The father of my former boss was not so fortunate, treking towards the west from the east. He saw the US GI's manning a checkpoint, the war was over by this time, he saw the barrier go down 5 men before him. Those standing in front of the barrier, from his standpoint, were to turn 180 degrees and start marching east. He did return, in the 1950's, can't remember excate date, he just considered himself unlucky to be sent east but lucky to return. The GI's manning the checkpoint had their orders to close the checkpoint, they know what was in store for the POW's. I bet they felt bad about what they had to do.


Mat

[radic202]

Hope this is not out of context here but I found this on the net the other while looking something up:

Direct link to webpage: http://www.worldwar2database.com/html/g ... render.htm

This is at the bottom of the page:

Meanwhile, Army Group B, the last major German unit, surrendered its 200,000 men in the south on April 24. Everywhere, German soldiers were trying to get refugees out of the way of the advancing Red Army and to surrender to the Western Allies. Many of these men were simply rounded up and turned over to the Soviets. Close to 2,000,000 German troops were imprisoned by the Soviets in the closing weeks of the war. Most of them spent as much as a decade in Soviet Gulags.

My question here: Why was there so many German Soldiers left alive (200k here) in that Army Group that late in the Campaign, and why the heck would they have been turned over to the Red Army after surrendering directly to the allies. I am not a WW2 expert like most of you in here, would appreciate some feedback please. )(just want to learn more form you all)

[Lieste]

Huh? A division is an element of an army, which itself is an element of an army group.

200,000 seems to still be fairly strong in terms of numbers for one Army group in May 1945, but I suspect some are LOC troops and other non-front-line troops... This is around 15-20 division equivalents (somewhat less once LOC personnel are included).

The 2,000,000 (ie. 10x as many) are different troops trapped between the Soviet and Western Allied forces. 'Rounded up and handed over' is probably a bit harsh - more fair is that after a certain point the frontier was sealed to military personnel and they were turned back from checkpoints. Again, I suspect most are under uniform, but not actually front-line branches of service - many of these were either overwhelmed in the East, or had earlier opportunity to surrender in the West. A proportion were able to break free in the East and retreat onto the US and Commonwealth Forces, but I strongly doubt that armed, organised bodies of troops in those numbers still existed in Germany's forces at that time...

[radic202]

Oops I meant Army not Division, sorry my bad:
and will be edited and corrected in original post.

My question here: Why was there so many German Soldiers left alive (200k here) in that Division that late in the Campaign, and why the heck would they have been turned over to the Red Army after surrendering directly to the allies. I am not a WW2 expert like most of you in here, would appreciate some feedback please. )(just want to learn more form you all)

I appreciate the response, still find it hard to understand that such a large force would still have been left intact enough to surrender so late in the game? And could you please explain LOC for me and lastly would there have been any SS Units left in that Army Group as they would more then likely would have been the preferred of the Red Army as Prisoners if turned over to them by the Allies.

And of course sorry to OP, I do not want to train wreck this thread.

[Lieste]

LOC = Line of communication. Those troops not in combat services ~ signals, HQ, supply, transport, medical, veterinary, maintenance, post-office, police, construction engineer etc...

[radic202]

Of course, stupid me! Thanks for that clarification.

[british exil]

I also think that Stalin was questioning the western allies intents. He feared that they would use the German Pow to fight against the soviets with the forces the western allies had. By guaranteeing the the number of Pow's the western powers had to give to the Soviets, this reasoning could be stifled.

Mat

[Empire101]

ORIGINAL: warspite1

ORIGINAL: nate25

ORIGINAL: rogo727


It was used to form other Panzer Divisions later on. Each year form 1936 on each Panzer Regiment of the 1st had to provide two to four tank companies to the 7th, 8th,15th.35th, and 36th tank regiments.

This is true, but 1. thru 5. and 10. were formed the same way. There was a lot of experimentation going on prewar.

Warspite1

Wasn't this all to do with the dilution of strength in order to put more divisions in the field? I think (though its a looong time ago that I read it) that in 1940 for the attack on France the average no. of tanks per division was 300. By the time of Barbarossa it was less than 200.

I think you are right Warspite, for Barbarossa Panzer Division TOE's were virtually halved to double the amount of Panzer Divisions available for the invasion

[Walloc]

In regard to the PoW discussion. I'd take a look at Dr Per Rüdigers Overmans scholary study of german WWII casulties. A table of living PoWs taken by the 2 different sides are provided about 1/3 down the page of the link. Since its only living PoWs its not the same as PoWs taken. Still it should give some context to some of the figurs noted in this thread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_cas ... rld_War_II

Kind regards,

Rasmus