Panzer Ace

Review contains spoilers.

Richard Freiherr von Rosen was born into an aristocratic family and was still a schoolboy in Germany when Poland was invaded in 1939. He applied for officer training with the panzer troops and in October 1940 entered military service in Bamberg with Panzer Regiment 35. France had surrendered some months previously and the young recruits expected that England would be next to fall. When his cohort graduated they were immediately moved to Eastern Poland in June 1941 to participate in Operation Barbarossa as part of the 4th Panzer Division, Army Group Central.

In the first months after the invasion of Russia, the author’s regiment - comprising mostly Panzer IIIs - participated in a succession of brief engagements with Russian troops, characterised by continuous movement deeper into enemy territory. After a front-line accident, von Rosen was returned to Germany and following his recovery he spent some time as an instructor, before entering officer training from which he graduated in June 1942. von Rosen was encouraged to join heavy tank Panzer Abteilung (PzAbt) 503, which was being fitted with the new Tiger tank. In late 1942, PzAbt 503 was transferred to the Ukraine to support the break-out of the doomed Sixth Army from Stalingrad. A series of wide-ranging operations on the Russian steppe could not change the inevitable fall of Stalingrad in January 1943, which shook the soldiers’ faith:

“We often spoke about it and blamed the highest political leadership but also the military commanders, who had allowed the moment to slip away when the chance still existed to break out from Stalingrad and save thousands of our men. Stalingrad was a turning point in not only the military sense, but also the psychological one. Nothing would ever be as it was before.”

In the spring of 1943, the battalion was transferred to the area near Kharkov, in preparation for Operation Zitadelle which began on July 5th. Following an awkward crossing of the Donetz the Tigers led the attack on the deep layers of Russian positions, which were heavily defended by infantry, anti-tank guns and minefields.

“We continued forward and then suddenly there was a flash. For a fraction of a second I could see the shell heading directly for me. It hit the bow of the panzer, and so did the second one. The air was shimmering: I couldn’t make out anything and fired an explosive shell towards where I suspected the source to be. We received another hit, this time from the right. I pulled back and drove in reverse to our starting point.”

The Tigers emerged relatively unscathed, but the lighter tanks following up were attacked by anti-tank guns that had remained hidden. One week into the offensive a point-blank hit from a Russian artillery piece struck von Rosen’s Tiger, knocking the long barrel from its mounting in the turret and badly injuring its commander. This wound marked the end of his service on the Russian front and he was evacuated to a military hospital to begin an extended convalescence which only ended in February 1944. During his absence, the battalion had fallen back through the Ukraine, Romania and Hungary and had been sent for refitting and reinforcement. In late June the Abteilung was en-trained and dispatched to contain the Normandy invasion, which was bottled up around Caen. On the western front, the Allied air superiority was more or less absolute.

“Systematic Allied air attacks had disrupted the railway network repeatedly in the initial stages of the invasion. Often we waited for hours in a tunnel if the aerial situation came to a head: again and again there were long detours whenever wrecked bridges or railway installations made it necessary… It was not possible to move by day because of enemy fighter-bomber activity…”

PzAbt 503 finally reached the front in early July 1944 and had a notable engagement against British Shermans and anti-tank guns, but came under sustained artillery and naval gunfire from the beach-head which fortunately the Tigers were able to withstand. Despite this successful action, von Rosen’s company was not in operation in Normandy for very long. On the 18th July, the German positions were attacked by more than 2,000 Allied heavy bombers, which knocked out many of PzAbt 503’s Tiger tanks:

“I went to the panzer on our right. It had received a direct hit and looked like a giant opened sardine tin. Flames licked the wreckage. Of Unteroffizier Westerhausen and his crew there was no trace. I worked my way through a veritable primeval woodland and now came to the gigantic crater in front of Oberfeldwebel Sachs’ Tiger 313. The panzer itself had been flipped over by the blast and now lay on its turret, wheels in the air. We found two crewmen dead under it and of the other three there was no trace. Where my front-line repair group had been was only a crater.”

von Rosen’s tank company was withdrawn to eastern France, where it received replacement vehicles. However, the Allied air forces intervened again and the en-trained panzers were attacked by Thunderbolts near Paris, destroying several of them and lightly wounding von Rosen again. He was sent to the rear for treatment whilst his company again moved to the reserve areas for refitting. The company eventually rejoined the battalion, which had been fortunate to fight its way out the Falaise Pocket. In September 1944, PzAbt 503 was withdrawn to Germany for reorganisation and was then sent to Budapest in October 1944, ahead of the Hungarian armistice with Russia.

By late October, the Germans were left to fill the vacuum caused by the surrender of Hungary. PzAbt 503 was used as a wide-ranging stopping force, moving from one area to another to counter the Russian advance. In the Budapest Offensive, the majority of the German tank losses were caused by mechanical failure and the difficult terrain and weather conditions. Light repairs were done in the field by the repair groups, who were frequently under fire and sustained heavy losses. There are several accounts of exceptionally difficult and hazardous tank and vehicle recoveries under enemy fire. For advancing troops this is certainly an issue but for a retreating army the inability to project sufficient force to hold territory long enough for recovery is a serious problem. These logistical failures reflected both the overwhelming numerical superiority of their Russian opponents and the gradual erosion of manpower and spares. In one notable incident in Hungary when a number of vehicles bogged down, von Rosen recounts:

“In order to bring back at least the Tigers unscathed, I had to blow up the two Flak panzers, a 24-tonne Flakpanzer IV SdKfz 161/ 3 Möbelwagen … with a 3.7cm gun and a 22-tonne Flakpanzer IV SdKfz 161/ 4 Wirbelwind with a quadruple 2cm cannon in a rotating turret. It was not an easy decision to make and I had to submit to a thorough enquiry later when Corps and the Army Group received the reports of their loss.”

Whilst the author was fortunate to command a Tiger tank, which gave a level of protection which crews of the light and medium tanks could only dream of, at this point in the war the Tigers were becoming increasingly vulnerable to the heavier Russian weapons. The Tiger crews were in many cases able to ‘sit out’ severe artillery barrages and aerial attacks where a direct hit was the main concern. That being said, the Tiger was far from invulnerable:

We roared frontally into an anti-tank gun front and were taken under heavy fire from ahead and from the flanks. Feldwebel Gärtner’s panzer received a lateral through-and-through. Apparently we were facing Stalin tanks [TN: the giant JS-2 armed with a 122mm gun, able to penetrate 100mm of armour at 2,000m]. Gärtner was seriously wounded and died on the way to the main dressing station…Then I saw a powerful stream of fire from opposite and at once we were hit. We were whirled about and suddenly daylight could be seen from within the panzer. We had received a through-and-through, the engine had had it. I shouted ‘Abandon!’ and in five seconds the whole crew was out."

In the last months of the war, von Rosen was awarded the Wound Badge in Gold - for his fifth and final wound - which resulted in him being in the American zone at the close of hostilities, thus avoiding a near-certain term of internment in a Russian Gulag. He returned to his home town, which lay in the French-occupied zone and was subsequently arrested and briefly imprisoned when the French started rounding up ex-soldiers suspected of being former Nazis.

Without diminishing his remarkable wartime experience and given the typical losses experienced by the panzer troops, von Rosen’s survival throughout the war can be attributed to his training and skill as a commander and the succession of wounds which took him away from the front-line for many months at a time. He was out of action for the Battle of Moscow, the Battle of Kursk, the Falaise Pocket and the closing stages of the Budapest Offensive. Indeed, he received the Combat Badge in Silver (for 25 operational days) in January 1945 after more than 3.5 years in service.

The author provides many details concerning the training and life of a panzer soldier outside of combat and the logistics of keeping a panzer battalion in the field. Descriptions of tank combat are perfunctory and professional and the author generally describes events from a tactical viewpoint, with few personal perspectives. The book has a number of superb photos of Tiger and King Tiger tanks, in addition to many others from the eastern and western fronts which chart the authors’ progression through the war. Place names and dates are frequently provided and overall its a detailed and professional account from a fine soldier. 7/10.

Finally, check out my interactive map of the locations in the book. All dates, events and locations are best-effort based on the author’s original text and any errors or omissions are my own. The full-screen version can be found here.