As has been seen in the chapters on organisation and training, the term ‘panzergrenadier’ is ambiguous. When Germany entered the war in September 1939, the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS had motorised infantry divisions. These units had evolved in stages from motorised infantry regiments of the 1930s. As the SS were expected to be in the van of any assault, and as the SS creamed off the best of Germany’s new military equipment, they were usually motorised. Having said this, at the beginning of the war the SS motorised ‘divisions’ were often sub-divisional regimental formations in the process of being built into divisional-sized units. These motorised units became panzergrenadier divisions from 1942-43 as the war on the Eastern Front led to changes in the German armed forces. Some of these panzergrenadier divisions, particularly the SS divisions and the Grossdeutschland, ended up with such a large armoured core that they were renamed ‘panzer’ divisions in 1943 and 1944. To complicate matters, some of the motorised divisions went through an intermediate phase of being a panzergrenadier division before becoming a full panzer division; meanwhile, some panzergrenadier divisions that became panzer divisions kept the name ‘panzergrenadier’. In addition, it should be borne in mind that panzer divisions throughout the war had an organic component of motorised infantry carried in lorries and armoured personnel carriers (APCs). As will be seen, it was with panzer divisions as much as panzergrenadier divisions that panzergrenadiers fought during World War II. Finally, it is worth remembering that panzergrenadier divisions from 1942 were further divided into motorised and mechanised formations, with a motorised division having fewer APCs and more lorries, while a mechanised division had more tanks and APCs.
Therefore, in the two chapters on panzergrenadiers in action, the reader should be aware of some imprecision in the term ‘panzergrenadier’. Before the invasion of the USvSR and the wide-spread development of panzergrenadier divisions, the terms ‘motorised’ and ‘panzergrenadier’ will be used interchangeably. What can be asserted with certainty is that the motorised infantry used in the campaigns in Poland, France and the Balkans from 1939 to 1941 were the direct forerunners of the panzergrenadier divisions of the later stages of World War II.
World History
