Das Reich: The March of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944 (Pan Military Classics) by Max Hastings

Author:Max Hastings
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: World, History
ISBN: 9780330529136
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2012-03-22T03:00:00+00:00

8 » ‘PANZER DIVISIONS ARE TOO GOOD FOR THIS . . .’

On 10 June 1944, as General Heinz Lammerding reviewed the position of his division and the orders he had received for its urgent movement, he found little cause for satisfaction. Elements of the Das Reich were sprawled across the Lot, Corrèze, and Haute-Vienne. Broken-down tanks and assault guns were lying by the roadside from Tulle to Montauban. All the staff’s warnings about the technical cost of moving heavy armour by the road had been justified. The Panzergrenadier brigade was deployed in a ring covering Limoges against the terrorist attack that the panicky Kommandantur in the city considered imminent. The steep hills and woods made communication between all these units erratic and uncertain. The report which Lammerding now transmitted to the general commanding 58th Panzer Corps is a great tribute to the climate created by Resistance after D-Day, and a measure of the Germans’ calamitous error in committing an SS Panzer division to anti-terrorist operations. It is worth quoting in full:

STATE OF THE DIVISION

The lack of adequate transport, the substantial distances to be covered in unfavourable terrain, the dispersal of units over 300 kilometres and the lack of advance preparation for operational and supply measures has weakened the strength of the division out of all proportion during the past eight days.

Unserviceability among tanks is 60 per cent, towing vehicles and half-tracks 30 per cent. The majority of the unserviceable vehicles can only be moved again when we receive the spare parts which are still missing, despite repeated requests. The division has been compelled to establish six support points in the Figeac–Tulle–Brive–Cahors area which require strong infantry protection because of the gang situation. The opportunities for commandeering additional wheeled vehicles from the gang area are negligible, because predictably the terrorists have beaten the liaison staff to it. Adequate fuel supplies depend on the arrival of the fuel convoy, which is nowhere in sight.

Only the division’s wheeled elements can begin to move to Normandy on schedule. The tanks and towing vehicles require at least four days for repairs, even assuming that the requested spare parts reach the division early on 11 June. Presumably the complete crippling of rail movement by the terrorists will anyway prevent an earlier entrainment. More long marches in this sort of country can only be undertaken at further heavy cost. The Figeac–Clermont-Ferrand–Limoges–Gourdon area is completely in the hands of the terrorists. Local German posts and garrisons are surrounded, in many cases besieged and often reduced to company strength. The French Government’s forces have been completely paralysed by the terrorists. The paralysis of the German posts is quite disgraceful. Without determined and ruthless action the situation in this area will develop until a threat exists whose proportions have not yet been recognized. In this area a new communist state is coming to life, a state which rules without opposition and carries out coordinated attacks.

The task of eliminating this danger must be transferred to the local divisions. Panzer divisions in the fifth year of the war are too good for this.

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