If you want to say that the history of armored unit combat, no one will skip World War II, it is the performance of the countries participating in the war in that historical period, leaving a lot of classic examples of the people who are talking about it and are popular, those tanks with brilliant achievements, the fragments of the storm, the battlefield full of blood, the smoke-filled sky, and the old photos taken on the battlefield that make people today linger.
So how many elite German troops were sent in the Battle of Kursk, which began on July 5, 1943? How many of these men were the elite armored combat forces of the German Army? Let's take a good look at the things of the German armored forces in the Battle of Kursk today.
In this campaign, Germany gathered a total of 900,000 troops, of which 680,000 were combat troops, and the rest were maintenance, logistics, medical, observation and other units.
There are 19 armored divisions in the combat unit, such as the 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, 11th, 18th, 19th, 20th Armored Divisions, as well as 17 independent tank fighter battalions and 4 independent heavy tank battalions.
These units were the main armored forces on which the Germans attacked.
We know that the armored forces were the main force of the blitzkrieg during world war II, and it was precisely in the early stages of the war that the German army relied on the close cooperation of the armored division and air power to quickly occupy western Europe and the western territories of the Soviet Union with the combat effectiveness of the "blitzkrieg".
The German Panzer Division was difficult to find an enemy for a while, and it was not until the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of Kursk that the German army completely gave away the strategic initiative, and its armored forces were also severely damaged.
At the Battle of Kursk, The German Armies Center and Army Groups South did everything they could but failed to break through the Soviet lines, and by the end of the campaign in late August, it was announced that Germany had begun to officially decline.
So which of these armored divisions is the elite of the elite? What is the ultimate fate?
The Wehrmacht is elite
It can be said that the panzer units themselves are elite as a shock force, but among them are the Wehrmacht's Great german panzer division and the Seventh Panzer Division. The 1st SS Flag Division, the Second Imperial Division, and the 3rd Skeleton Division of the Second Panzer Army were among the elite of the Panzer Division.
The predecessor of the Seventh Panzer Division was once the Rommel division, which made great contributions in the process of conquest of France, and the Greater German Panzer Division was the big brother of the Wehrmacht, the model project of the Army, with the right to give priority to the equipment of advanced combat weapons, a large number, participated in almost all the important battles of the Second World War, and was the main force in the main force.
Elite SS
The Waffen-SS was the Führer's personal armed forces, the Royal Forest Army, with a strong sense of honor, and the Guard Flag Division was number one, and this unit fought desperately in various battlefields to defend the number, such as the Battle of France, the Balkan Campaign, the Invasion of Kharkov in the Soviet Union, and the Battle of Kursk at this time.
The First Division commander was General Hausser, a veteran of the Wehrmacht, who was also the head of the first SS school, who brought Prussian military qualities to the SS and trained a large number of high-quality officers, reborn and rid of the suspicion of "vase".
The earliest officers and men of the Third Skeleton Division were guards and staff who came out of the concentration camps, this group of people were accustomed to the darkness of the concentration camps, the personality was brave and fierce, the division emblem was the skeleton of the Prussian tradition, and there were few division emblems marked by skeletons in the German army, which showed the strength of this unit's combat effectiveness. After the Battle of Demyansk in 1942 the division became famous, and the Fuehrer excitedly upgraded it to another SS panzer division.
The above are the best of the German panzer divisions during the Battle of Kursk, the elite of the elite.
However, the situation on the battlefield was rapidly changing, such as the Allied landing in Italy during the battle, and the SS had to transfer some of it, which caused Marshal Manstein to be greatly dissatisfied and powerless.
Of course, even a good soldier can not win every battle, history is history after all, the Battle of Kursk finally ended with the defeat of the German army, but also completely buried the strategic initiative, until the end of the war did not turn the tide again.
By the start of the Battle of Berlin in April 1945, these units had collapsed and could no longer return to the defense of Berlin, and they could no longer fight.
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