Very young Hitler Youth being introduced to panzergrenadiers of the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend in Belgium in 1944. At least three of the SS panzer divisions recruited Nazi-indoctrinated teenagers.
On d-day, 6 June 1944, Hitler dithered, hoping that his infantry would hold the invasion. After midday he passed control of the 12th SS Panzer division Hitlerjugend over to General dollman’s 7th Army. SS-Standartenführer Kurt Meyer, commander of SS Panzergrenadier regiment 25, came under air attack that day, as he graphically relates: ‘A chain of Spitfires attacks the last section of the 15th Company. Missiles and cannon reap a devilish harvest.’ The divisional reconnaissance battalion, under SS-Sturmbannführer and ritterkreuzträger Gerd Bremer, was among the first units to reach the front on the 7th. Upon arrival, it manoeuvred through 8 miles of no man’s land to the division’s far left flank to establish a security line. The battalion beat off numerous heavy attacks between 7 and 11 June, during which Bremer’s command vehicle was knocked out and he was wounded by shrapnel. Although twice wounded, he nevertheless remained with his unit until the situation was secure.
Shortly after Kurt Meyer arrived, he galvanised the situation, proposing a counterattack on the left flank of 21st Panzer. He established his HQ at Ardenne Abbey, outside Caen. His SS Panzergrenadier regiment 25, part of Kampfgruppe Meyer/wünsche, went into action against the Canadians north of the city on 7 June, supported by fifty Panzer IVs of 2nd Battalion SS Panzer regiment 12 commanded by Sturmbannführer Prinz. The counter-attack was timed for 1600, but four Panzer IVs of 5th Company under Untersturmführer Porsh ran into Sherman tanks along the Franqueville-Authie road. Three of the panzers were knocked out and it became impossible to wait. wünsche gave the order and the 5th and 6th Companies advanced left of Ardenne Abbey, with the 6th Company claiming ten enemy tanks for the loss of five Panzer IVs.
SS-Sturmann Hans Fenn was almost killed in this battle:
Ours, the fifth panzer, took a direct hit between the side of the hull and the turret … The shell ripped a leg off my commander, oberscharführer esser. As I heard later, he managed to get out of the turret. The incendiary shell immediately set fire to all parts of the panzer. I lost consciousness…. Somehow, I managed, without being fully conscious, to crawl over the hatch of the loader.
The attack was broken up by Canadian artillery, naval gunfire and air strikes, followed by a counter-attack by the Sherbrooke Fusiliers. That evening the Kampfgruppe of panzergrenadiers and panzers held defensive positions stretching from the railway line between Caen and Luc sur Mer to rue nationale 13 from Caen to Bayeux. Although the Canadians had pushed through the Carpiquet airfield, the 12th SS had stopped them in their tracks, destroying a total of twenty-seven tanks for the loss of fourteen Panzer IVs. over the next few days the Canadian 3rd Infantry division, striking from the Caen–Bayeux railway near Bretteville, fought the 12th SS.
The 12th SS found Carpiquet airfield deserted by the Luftwaffe and unoccupied by the Canadians. They now turned on the Canadian 7th Brigade, also part of the Canadian 3rd division. Around 2200 SS Panzergrenadier regiment 25, supported by Panthers, struck towards Bretteville from three directions. The attack from the south resulted in the platoon commander’s tank being immobilised in the town and surrounded. The attack from the southwest was ordered to rescue him, but the lead tank was knocked out and driven off. In the attack from the west three Panthers were hit simultaneously by concealed Canadian anti-tank guns; two managed to withdraw, but the other burned like a torch, although its crew managed to escape. The following morning the attack was broken off.
On 9 June Panthers of 3rd Company, SS Panzer regiment 12, under SSobersturmführer rudolf von ribbentrop, having missed the attack on Bretteville, moved on norrey with the Caen–Cherbourg railway embankment protecting its right flank. ribbentrop had been wounded so Hauptmann Lüdman led the twelve Panthers. However, once they advanced beyond the cover of the railway bank, well concealed anti-tank guns knocked out seven Panthers and the advance was halted. Crew losses were also heavy, with eighteen of the thirty-five men involved killed.
The 3rd Company then moved to Fontenay-les-Pesnel to the west, but with all its tanks suffering mechanical problems withdrew to Harcourt. Two days later the division’s tanks claimed thirty-seven Shermans for the loss of three panzers in the fighting south of Le Mesnil.
The stark reality of war soon came home to emil werner, serving with Meyer’s SS Panzergrenadier regiment 25:
Until Cambes everything went well. So far as we were concerned, the village looked fine. But on the outskirts we came under infantry fire and then all hell broke loose. we stormed a church where snipers had taken up positions. Here I saw the first dead man from our kompanie; it was Grenadier ruehl from the headquarters platoon. I turned his body over myself – he’d been shot through the head.
On the 11th the Canadian 6th Armoured regiment lost thirty-seven of its seventy-six tanks in the fighting around Le Mensil-Patry. By now the 12th SS had lost about 25 per cent of its manpower, 20 per cent of its tanks and 10 per cent of its guns. In total, about sixty Panzer IV and V tanks remained serviceable. Fritz witt was killed at Venoix on the morning of the 14th when his HQ was caught in an Allied naval bombardment and shrapnel struck him in the face. Following his death, Kurt ‘Panzer’ Meyer took command of the division.
It seemed that the British operation epsom, designed to punch west of Caen on 25 June, could not fail, but directly in its path lay the 12th SS, holding the line from Fontenay-le-Pesnil through St Marvieu and Cheux eastwards to Carpiquet airfield. The British 30th Corps was to jump off first, followed by 8th Corps the next day. The latter had 60,000 men, 600 tanks, 300 guns and the support of another 400 guns from the flanking 30th Corps, plus naval and air support. It fell to SS Panzer regiment 12 and SS Panzergrenadier regiment 25 to resist 8th Corps, while just to the west of Caen SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 26 was facing the Canadian 3rd Division.
The plan was for the British 8th Corps to break through between 47th Panzer Corps and 1st SS Panzer Corps, force a bridgehead over the odon river and take the strategic height of Hill 112. For the British it was a race against time as the 2nd SS Panzer Corps and 2nd SS Panzer division were heading for the sector, so even if the attack pierced the in-depth defences of the 12th SS, the intervention of German armoured reinforcements could kill epsom. on 25 June 30th Corps conducted operation dauntless, a subsidiary attack to secure 8th Corps’ western flank before the main offensive carried out by the 49th (west riding) Infantry division supported by the 8th Armoured Brigade. The 49th also conducted operation Martlet, intended to capture Fontenay-le-Pesnil.
Second Lieutenant Stuart Hills of the nottinghamshire Sherwood rangers Yeomanry, 8th Armoured Brigade, remembered the stiff reception from the 12th SS:
The fighting in Fontenay was fierce and confused, with enemy tanks of 12th SS Panzer dug in defensively east of the town, and we did not have enough infantry to take the village. At about four o’clock in the afternoon the attack had clearly run out of steam, infantry losses had been heavy and we withdrew to the heights of Point 102 above Fontenay to replenish our stocks of ammunition, refuel and have something to eat.
The attack, though, was renewed and Fontenay was duly captured and the road to Caen cut. A Squadron moved forward to attack rauray but, as Stuart Hills relates, it was in for a nasty surprise:
As they cleared Fontenay, they were suddenly confronted by an enormous tank coming round the bend in front. It was hard to know who was more surprised, but John [Semken, the squadron leader] shrieked, ‘Fire, it’s a Hun,’ and they loosed off about ten rounds into the smoke. As this cleared away, it was observed that the crew were baling out as small flames came from inside the tank. It was a Tiger of 12th SS Panzer, the first Tiger to be captured in normandy, and [it] made an impressive sight at close quarters as both its size and the thickness of its armour became apparent.
Semken’s force included a number of Sherman Fireflys armed with the powerful 17-pounder anti-tank gun and by the end of the day they had accounted for thirteen Panzer IVs, a Tiger and a Panther tank.
Between Tessel wood and rauray ten Tiger tanks were dug in and SS Panzer regiment 26 repulsed the British attack through Le Manoir from Tessel towards rauray and established positions near Le Haut du Bosc facing towards Cheux. Assembling across the line Fontenay-Tessel-Bretteville to attack towards Juvigny, the Heavy Tank Company’s actions left SS Panzergrenadier regiment 26, which lay directly in the path of the British attack, unsupported. The latter was thrown into a counter-attack at 0500 on the 26th.
Hubert Meyer, operations Staff officer of the 12th SS, was expecting an armoured attack and tried to get the order rescinded, but 1st SS Panzer Corps would not comply. The results were predictable:
At 0700 on 26 June, this great British attack of about 500–600 tanks on a breadth of about 3 miles rolled over the Pioneers and the Panzergrenadiers. eventually it came to a halt only because our artillery fire separated the enemy infantry from their tanks…. As late as 28 June our operators picked up radio messages from British tanks attacking the remnants of 3rd Pioneer Company, which still held several strongpoints in the old front line between St. Mauvieu and Fontenay. we tried to convince 1st SS Panzer Corps that a well planned counter-attack by tank units from the southwest might restore the original front, or at least, relieve the surrounded units, but fresh forces were not available.
The 15th (Scottish) division, with the 11th Armoured division and the 31st Tank Brigade, also broke through the 12th SS’s defences. Likewise the 43rd (wessex) Division, supported by the 4th Armoured Brigade, reached Mouen. On the 27th the 15th (Scottish) Division captured a bridge over the Odon and the 11th Armoured division moved to take Hill 112.
The following day British tanks and air attacks drove the enemy from the hill. The British 20th Armoured Brigade withdrew from Hill 112 on the night of 29/30 June, not because of dogged resistance by 12th SS but in response to the arrival of 2nd SS Panzer Corps with the 9th and 10th SS Panzer divisions, which came into the line between 47th Panzer Corps and 1st SS Panzer Corps. The Germans had succeeded in containing epsom but at a cost of more than 2,600 casualties sustained by the 12th SS. epsom cost the British 8th Corps 4,020 casualties, while the 11th Armoured division alone lost a hundred tanks and suffered 1,000 casualties during 26–29 June.
On 6 July panzergrenadiers of the 12th SS deployed to the northern suburbs of Caen. within two days they, along with a regiment from the 16th Luftwaffe Field division, were ejected by Montgomery’s operation Charnwood, a frontal assault on the city that commenced on the 7th. The Canadians sought to exploit their gains at Carpiquet, striking Caen from the west. To the east the 3rd Infantry was to secure Lebisey and Herouville, their original d-day objectives. The bombing, while impeding the progress of the attackers, did not completely neutralise the defenders and 7.5cm and 8.8cm anti-tank guns met the tanks. At La Bijude the 12th SS troops were well entrenched and it took two attempts before the village was firmly in the 59th division’s hands. The advancing Allies were then brought to a halt before Malan.
The British 3rd division reached Lebisey and Herouville within an hour and brushed aside the 16th Luftwaffe Field division only to find Caen an impassable sea of craters and rubble. In the meantime the 1st SS tried to mass its armour for a counter-attack, but air strikes and naval gunfire drove back the thirty-five panzers, which suffered some losses.
At the village of Buron, northwest of Caen, elements of the 3rd Battalion, SS Panzergrenadier regiment 25, were surrounded and on the verge of being overrun by Canadian tanks. Kurt Meyer and General eberbach, Panzergruppe west’s commander, were at the Ardenne Abbey. Meyer recalled the dramatically unfolding events:
All available tanks were sent towards Buron. The attack failed to get through. From the [Ardenne] monastery church tower I watched the tank fight as it surged back and forth. Both sides suffered heavy losses. Then, suddenly, enemy tanks appeared from Authi [to the north], heading straight for Ardenne.
The fifteen Panthers of von ribbentrop’s tank company now deployed against this mass of enemy tanks and they shot up the enemy armour, halting its advance. The last enemy tank was destroyed only 100 metres west of Ardenne but von ribbentrop had saved the command post. His initial instructions had been to relieve the panzergrenadiers and clear the Canadians from Buron, but he was distracted by the Canadian tanks to the left of the village and had to send a platoon of Panthers to deal with them. reaching Buron, von ribbentrop’s Panthers knocked out several Canadian tanks.
SS-Unterscharführer Freiberg, serving with von ribbentrop, was in one of the three knocked-out Panthers:
We crossed the open field to the wall around the village of Buron at high speed. As we moved past an opening in the wall, there were suddenly two explosions. Sepp Trattnick’s tank and another tank burst into flames. we immediately opened fire with both machine guns on the opening in the wall. I saw some movement there and then a flash from the muzzle of an anti-tank gun. The round struck our gun mantlet and the solid projectile ended up in the fighting compartment. our sight was smashed, and the gunner was wounded in the face. I received several fragments in my left arm.
Although the troops of the 12th SS could not retain Caen, they had, along with Panzer Lehr, denied it to the Allies for just over a month. By the 9th the 12th SS had lost fifty-one Panzer IVs and thirty-two Panthers. Three days later the men received a welcome respite from the bloodletting when they were relieved by an infantry division and sent to Potigny, 20 miles north of Falaise, to recuperate. After the liberation of Ardenne Abbey it was later discovered that the 12th SS had slaughtered twenty Canadian prisoners in the grounds in early June 1944. After the war Kurt Meyer was put on trial for this war crime.
By the end of 10 August Meyer had just thirty-five panzers facing some 700 enemy tanks. However, in the area defended by the 12th SS alone, more than a hundred Allied tanks were destroyed in the fierce close combat. By now the American breakout from Avranches was well under way and the US 1st and 3rd Armies were charging westward. Although the Canadians reached Falaise on 16 August, the 12th SS held out in the town for a further two days. By now the battle for normandy was all but over.
Between 6 June and 22 August Hitler’s fanatical and resolutely fearless teenage nazis lost around 8,000 men killed in action, wounded and missing. This must have seemed a death-blow from which no unit could hope to recover. nonetheless, most of the division’s combat arms and rear services were not encircled at Falaise. In addition, many of the missing who evaded capture made their way back to the unit. It would soon rise from the ashes of normandy ready to fight again.
Very young Hitler Youth being introduced to panzergrenadiers of the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend in Belgium in 1944. At least three of the SS panzer divisions recruited Nazi-indoctrinated teenagers.
A young panzergrenadier of 12th SS Panzer division Hitlerjugend. The recruits for this division were drawn from 17-year-old members of the Hitler Youth in 1943. Kurt Meyer’s SS Panzergrenadier Regiment 25 went into action against the Canadians in Normandy on 7 June 1944.
Two more SS panzergrenadiers in waffen-SS smocks and with fabric helmet covers. Hitlerjugend arrived in Normandy with about 17,000 men, which included two panzergrenadier regiments.
Hitlerjugend Panzer IVs in France in 1944. SS Panzer regiment 12 under SS-Obersturmbannführer Max wünche had an authorised strength of around a hundred Panzer IVs and eighty Panthers. These were massed in the Ardenne Abbey area.
A waffen-SS Panther passing through Paris to the front. The SS panzertruppen are wearing the one-piece non-reversible camouflage coverall.
A wespe 105mm self-propelled gun belonging to SS Panzer Artillery Regiment 12 from the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. An SS panzer artillery regiment comprised twelve batteries in four battalions. One battery in each battalion was equipped with self-propelled guns, whilst the rest were towed weapons. In the summer of 1944 Hitlerjugend had twelve wespe and six Hummel self-propelled guns.
Panzertruppen and panzergrenadiers from the 12th SS in the Ardenne Abbey area in early June 1944.
Hitlerjugend commander Fritz witt (centre) in conference with Max wünsche, commander of the 12th SS Panzer Regiment (right), and Kurt Meyer, commander of the 25th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment (left). Witt was killed on 14 June.
Wrecked half-tracks destroyed during the bitter fighting in Normandy.
A Sherman tank knocked out by the 12th SS during early July.
A knocked-out 12th SS Panther in Fontenay-le-Pensel, west of Caen. It was destroyed during Operation Martel on 25 June 1944. In the foreground is a Waffen-SS gunner and his 75mm anti-tank gun.
Some twenty Tigers of Heavy SS Panzer Battalion 101 fought with the 12th SS as part of Kampfgruppe wünsche. Max Wünsche was the commander of the 12th SS Panzer Regiment.
12th SS Panzer IV Ausf H. After divisional commander Fritz Witt was killed, Kurt Meyer took charge. His tanks gave the Canadians a tough time at Buron.
A Jagdpanzer IV lost in France. On 19 July 1944 SS Panzerjäger Abteilung 12 joined Hitlerjugend with a company of Jagdpanzer IV. On 26 April the division had ten such tank destroyers and another eleven were sent on 22 June.