ISBN 0-313-31640-6
312 pages

Preface; photos; Bibliography; Index

Appendices: Table of Equivalent Ranks; The Higher Panzer Headquarters; Chronology of the Second World War; Profiles of the Non-army Panzer Divisions; German Staff Positions

   In 1985 Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr. published Hitler's Legions, a book with more than 500 pages devoted to providing brief organizational information, outline unit history, notes about commanders, and list of published sources for every division in the German armed forces during World War II. Although some reviewers and commentators charged that too many errors compromised Hitler's Legions reliability, Mitcham's book nevertheless has for years remained one of the most popular, accessible, and comprehensive English-language sources for information on German divisions.
   In the Acknowledgments he wrote for Hitler's Legions, Mitcham apologized for his inability to provide full biographical details for all the German divisional commanders, and he went on to stress the need for such a volume. Interestingly, while Mitcham has in the meantime written several more books about World War II, including some work on Hitler's field marshals and leading generals, he has not yet tackled that entire project.
   With his latest book, however, Mitcham plows some of the old ground of Hitler's Legions while simultaneously providing much more in the way of biographical material.
   In scope, The Panzer Legions proves considerably narrower than Hitler's Legions. While the earlier book covered hundreds of divisions—infantry, jaeger, mountain, panzer, panzer grenadier, motorized, parachute, etc, including Army, Luftwaffe, and SS—the new work with few exceptions look at only panzer divisions of the German Army: 1st through 27th, 116th, 130th, 155th, 178th, 179th, 232nd, 233rd, 273rd, Clausewitz, 1st Feldherrnhalle, 2nd Feldherrnhalle, Fuehrer Grenadier, Holstein, Jueterburg, Kurmark, Muencheberg, Norway, Silesia, Tatra, and Grossdeutschland. The Luftwaffe and SS panzer divisions are dealt with briefly in an appendix.
   In format, The Panzer Legions proves very similar to Hitler's Legions. The divisions are listed numerically and each entry is divided into "Composition," "Home Station," a brief unit history, "Commanders," and "Notes and Sources."
   Under "Composition," for each panzer division Mitcham offers about four lines listing its principal organic elements.
   "Home Station" gives the city and Wehrkreis in which the division was originally raised.
   The unit history runs anywhere from a few paragraphs to a few pages and includes all the salient points of the division's career including its creation, changes in organization, redesignations, higher headquarters to which it was subordinate, battles and campaigns in which it took part, and so on. This material is for the most part considerably expanded over that presented in Hitler's Legions.
   Under "Commanders" Mitcham provides a solid paragraph or more for each officer who led the division. Invariably, the material here provides far more information than was given in the older book.
   Finally, "Notes and Sources" offers a few additional tidbits of information along with details of which pages of which books have been used in compiling the data for the division. In sum, this amounts to a Bibliography of four pages and ranges from the essential Tessin to Paul Carell's books, memoirs of several German generals, and even US Army official history volumes. Aside from the ubiquitous Tessin, most are in English.
   Although this particular unit history material is considerably shorter than most, the entry for Panzer Division Felherrnhalle 2 serves as a good example of Mitcham's approach:

PANZER DIVISION FELDHERRNHALLE 2

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COMPOSITION: Panzer Regiment Feldherrnhalle 2, Panzer Grenadier Regiment Feldherrnhalle 3, Panzer Artillery Regiment Feldherrnhalle 2, 13th Panzer Reconnaissance Battalion, Tank Destroyer Battalion Feldherrnhalle 2, Motorized Engineer Battalion Feldherrnhalle 2, Motorized Signal Battalion Feldherrnhalle 2; Army Flak Artillery Battalion Feldherrnhalle 2.

HOME STATION: Wehrkreis XX

Panzer Division Feldherrnhalle 2 was formed in March 1945 from the Replacement and Training Brigade Feldherrnhalle, which had recently been forced to abandon Danzig; the replacement units and other remnants of the 13th Panzer Division, which had been destroyed in Budapest; elements of the I Cavalry Corps; and the 110th Panzer Brigade (2110th Panzer Battalion and 1220th Panzer Grenadier Regiment). The new division (which was only at regimental strength) was sent to 8th Army in Slovakia in April and fought its only battles in Slovakia and on the upper Danube. At the end of the war, it tried to surrender to the Americans, but they insisted that it capitulate to the Russians. General Franz Baeke, the divisional commander, therefore disbanded the unit. It broke into small groups, some of which made it to the West. The rest went into Soviet captivity.

COMMANDER
Dr. Franz Baeke (1898-1978), a Franconian, was a dentist by profession. He entered the service as a war volunteer in the 53rd Infantry Regiment in 1915 and was discharged as a sergeant in 1919. Returning to active duty as a second lieutenant of reserves in the 6th Reconnaissance Battalion (1937), he was promoted to lieutenant of reserves (1939), captain of reserves (1941), major of reserves (1942), lieutenant colonel of reserves (1943), color of reserves (1944), and major general of reserves (April 1945). His posts included commander, 1st Company, 6th Reconnaissance Battalion (1940-41); 1a, 11th Panzer Regiment (1941-42); commander, I/11th Panzer Regiment (1941-42); commander, II/11th Panzer Regiment (1942-43); commander, 11th Panzer Regiment (1943-44); and commander, 106th Panzer Brigade Feldherrnhalle (1944). Baeke did not formally assume command of the remnants of the 13th Panzer until March 9, 1945, when it was virtually certain that General Schmidhuber was dead. An incredibly brave officer, Baeke personally knocked out at least three Soviet tanks in close combat. He held the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords. He was promoted to major general on April 1, 1945. Ironically, he died in Hagen, Westphalia, on December 122, 1978, as the result of injuries suffered in a traffic accident.

NOTES AND SOURCES
Bradley et al., Volume I: 158-59; Frank Kurowski, Panzer Aces, David Johnston, trans. (Winnipeg, Canada, 1992): 66; KTB OKW, Volume I: 1146; Mehner, Volume 12: 443; Tessin, Volume 14: 83.

   While the scope of this book is narrower in comparison to the older title it definitely provides more information for every one of the units it covers. On the other hand, it's worth comparing The Panzer Legions not only to the author's earlier volume, but also to other titles published within the last few of years.
   First, George Nafziger's The German Order of Battle: Panzers and Artillery in World War II offers unit by unit histories of almost exactly the same divisions (plus others) found in Mitcham's book. Nafziger's data is considerably more copious, but also focuses on organizational details—at the expense of battles and campaigns—far more than Mitcham.
   Second, The Wehrmacht at War, 1939-1945: The Units and Commanders of the German Ground Forces during World War II by Andris Kursietis provides similar material. For every German division, including all the panzer divisions, Kursietis gives chronological data about formation, redesignations, changes in command, and areas of operation, all in tabular format. Kursietis also provides, still in tabular format, information about all high-ranking German generals, which includes a proportion of divisional commanders.
   Kursietis also wrote The Fallen Generals with biographies of over 900 German generals who lost their lives during the war. Many of those generals were divisional COs covered in Mitcham's book.
   Thus, readers who have access to Nafziger and Kursietis will already be able to find most of the information in the new Mitcham book. And of course those with access to Tessin and a modicum of German language skills will be able to find much the same. All three of those—Nafziger, Kursietis, and Tessin—also go far beyond Mitcham in many areas, including scope of units included.
   The Panzer Legions does contain some material the others don't. First, Mitcham has the best short narratives of operational histories. Second, Mitcham is better at providing exact references for further research for each unit and its commanders. Most importantly, as he originally mentioned in his earlier book, Mitcham has taken strong steps toward providing complete biographical background for every divisional commander. Indeed, it looks like he might be well on his way to compiling sufficient data to eventually publish a complete biographical dictionary of German generals.
   Unfortunately, that biographical data is a bit difficult to mine from The Panzer Legions because the book is organized so that each commander's bio is placed with the division he commanded, and in some cases the biographical material is split over several entries (including the appendix with lists of higher panzer headquarters). This approach can be frustrating to anyone who wants to use the book for looking up information about a specific general. Given the strength of this biographical material, and its importance in the overall value of the book as compared to Nafziger and Kursietis and even Tessin, it seems like it would have been much more efficient to organize the book so that each divisional entry listed the names of the commanders (and the dates they commanded, as in Kursietis), but all the biographical entries were centralized alphabetically in a different section of the book.
   In sum, most of the material in The Panzer Legions—and more—will already be available to anyone with Tessin, or the Nafziger and Kursietis books, or even Mitcham's own Hitler's Legions. The best part of The Panzer Legions is the biographical data, and it would be nice to see Mitcham pursue this angle with a future book devoted exclusively to substantial biographies of all the German generals. Done well, that would certainly be a monumental accomplishment and one which could be recommended unreservedly.
   As to The Panzer Legions, readers will want to measure their needs and interests, and then compare that book to Nafziger, Kursietis, and the original Mitcham. Some readers will certainly find The Panzer Legions an important addition to their collections, while other readers will be able to live without it.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Greenwood Press.
   Thanks to Greenwood for providing this review copy.