1941-45

The wide open spaces of Russia proved a perfect demonstration ground for the Panzergrenadiers’ new style of combat. Equipped with lorries or the latest APCs, they moved from flashpoint to flashpoint, a technique that stood them in good stead once the long fighting retreat back to Germany began.

The war on the Eastern Front proved to be Germany’s nemesis. Following Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941,

Germany failed to defeat the Soviet Union and this gave the Soviet leader,

Josef Stalin, the breathing space in which to redeploy and rebuild his industrial base and war capability. In 1942, as a consequence, the Red Army counterattacked and the front rolled inexorably west, finally culminating in the battle for Berlin in 1945 and the end of Hitler’s Third Reich. In the mobile battles on the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1944, the Germans deployed panzergrenadiers in large numbers, as the large bodies of armour that were employed on the ideal tank terrain of the open Russian steppe needed infantry support. Panzergrenadiers were in the thick of the action right up to the last desperate battles in Germany and Berlin in 1945.

In these battles panzergrenadiers were employed as motorised infantry, but they also fulfilled many different fighting roles, and were deployed in many different types of terrain. On the Eastern Front, panzergrenadiers fought on the open steppe, in the forests of White Russia, in the ruins of cities such as Stalingrad and Berlin, and in the mountains of the Caucasus. The panzergrenadier was expected to be

Left: Armed with rifles and an MP40 machine pistol, members of the Waffen SS in a mixture of dress go ‘over the top’. The Waffen SS were used in a ‘firefighting’ role on the Eastern Front, particularly after 1943, when the Germans were in full retreat.

Flexible and able to adapt to the exigencies of war. This was the case whether fighting in France, the Eastern Front, North Africa or Italy.