Als Panzeroffizier in Ost und West - Im Panzer III, Tiger und Königstiger - Book

Friday, September 1, 1939: Through radio, seventeen-year-old Richard Freiherr von Rosen watches Hitler's Reichstag speech attack Poland. Not enthusiastic about war, but like many of his peers, filled with sense of duty and probation, he soon applied for an active officer's career with the Panzer Troop. His request is fulfilled in October 1940 with the convocation to the stationed in Bamberg Panzerersatzabteilung 35. After hard basic training and an intensive officer cadet course, the young recruit is now in France and the Rhineland prepared for the upcoming war effort. In the rank of Fahnenjunker he finally relocated at the end of April 1941 with the 35th Panzer Regiment in the Posen Warthelager. On June 22, 1941 begins with the company Barbarossa for Richard Freiherr von Rosen as a gunner in the Panzer III of the war against the Soviet Union. Used in the 4th Panzer Division in Army Group Center, he experienced his baptism of fire in the heavy fighting of his regiment around Stary Bychow and is wounded a little later. After recovering and transferring to the heavy tank division 502, from January 1943 he fought with the Panzer VI Tiger first in the Kalmyk steppe. That same year, Rosen now takes part as a lieutenant and platoon leader in the 3rd Company of the Tiger Division 503 at Operation Citadel, the largest tank battle of the Second World War. In the summer of 1944, he was commanded to join the invasion front, where the heavy armored units were to stop the advance of Allied troops. But the experienced tanker gets to feel the hostile air superiority relentlessly. After re-equipment of his department in Sennelager he is now ordered as a company commander and commander of a King Tiger (Tiger II) to the crumbling front in Hungary. There he suffered his fifth wounding in early 1945 and experienced the end of the war in his homeland. Major General Richard Freiherr von Rosen made a career in the Bundeswehr and NATO after the war. His accounts, compiled from diary entries, give a detailed picture of the tank warfare on the eastern and western fronts. This gripping and unique experience report is supplemented by 445 partly unpublished picture documents.

Hardcover: 316 pages

Language: German

Size: 25.1 x 3 x 30.7 cm