Xxiv Panzer Corps
Dorthea Seate
Panzer Group Kleist was the first operational formation of several Panzer corps in the Wehrmacht. Created for the Battle of France on 1 March 1940; it was named after its commander Ewald von Kleist.[6] Panzer Group Kleist played an important role in the Battle of Belgium. Panzer corps of the Group broke through the Ardennes and reached the sea, forming a huge pocket, containing several Belgian, British, and French armies.[7] When the armistice was signed, the Group was deployed in occupied France, being renamed to Panzer Group 1 (Panzergruppe 1) in November. In April 1941, Panzer Group 1 took part in the invasion of Yugoslavia as part of Field Marshal Maximilian von Weichs's Second Army.[8]
In May 1941 Panzer Group 1 was attached to Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt's Army Group South at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. At the start of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, Panzer Group 1 included the III, XIV and XLVIII Army Corps (motorized) with five panzer divisions and four motorized divisions (two of them SS) equipped with 799 tanks. Panzer Group 1 served on the southern sector of the Eastern Front against the Red Army and was involved the Battle of Brody which involved as many as 3,000 Red Army tanks. The units of the Group closed the encirclement around the Soviet armies near Uman and near Kiev. After the fall of Kiev Panzer Group 1 was enlarged to become the 1st Panzer Army (on October 6, 1941) with Kleist still in command. The army captured Rostov, but was forced to retreat eight days later.
In January 1942, Army Group Kleist, which consisted of the First Panzer Army along with the Seventeenth Army, was formed with its namesake, Kleist, in command. Army Group Kleist played a major role in repulsing the Red Army attack in the Second Battle of Kharkov in May 1942. Army Group Kleist was disbanded that month. The First Panzer Army, still under Kleist, which had been attached to Army Group South earlier, became part of Army Group A under Field Marshal Wilhelm List.[9] Army Group A was to lead the thrust into the Caucasus during Operation Blue and capture Grozny and the Baku (current capital of Azerbaijan) oilfields.[9] The First Panzer Army was to spearhead the attack. Rostov, Maykop, Krasnodar and the Kuban region were captured.[10]
In September 1942, the offensive by Army Group A stalled in the Caucasus and List was sacked.[11] After Adolf Hitler briefly took personal control of Army Group A, he appointed Kleist to the command on 22 November 1942.[12] As Kleist took over, Colonel-General Eberhard von Mackensen took the reins of the First Panzer Army. In December 1942, as the German 6th Army was being crushed in the Battle of Stalingrad, the Red Army launched an offensive against Army Group A. The First Panzer Army was ordered to retreat through Rostov in January 1943, before the Soviet forces could cut it off in the Kuban.[13] By February 1943, the army had been withdrawn west of the Don River and Kleist withdrew the remains of his forces from Caucasus into the Kuban, east of the Strait of Kerch.[14]
In January 1943, von Mackensen's First Panzer Army became attached to Army Group Don under Field Marshal Erich von Manstein.[13] The month after that, von Manstein redeployed the First Panzer Army together with the Fourth Panzer Army to counter-attack the Soviet breakthrough from the Battle of Stalingrad. The First Panzer Army contributed to the success of the Third Battle of Kharkov in March 1943.[15] In July 1943, the Army, with the help of the XXIV Panzer Corps, repelled the Soviet Izyum-Barvenkovo Offensive.[16] In October 1943 Soviet forces crossed the Dnieper River between Dnipropetrovsk and Kremenchug. The First Panzer Army counter-attacked along with the 8th Army, but failed to dislodge the Soviet forces. At the end of that month, as the Red Army closed in on Kiev,[17] von Mackensen was replaced by Colonel-General Hans-Valentin Hube.
The First Panzer Army remained attached to Army Group South from March 1943 to July 1944. By that time German troops had been pulled out from Ukraine. In March 1944, crisis hit the First Panzer Army as it was encircled by two Soviet fronts in the Battle of Kamenets-Podolsky pocket.[18] A successful breakthrough was made,[19] saving most of the manpower but losing the heavy equipment. That same month Hitler, who insisted his armies fight an inflexible defense to the last man, dismissed von Manstein.[20] In October 1941, when the First Panzer Army had been formed, it was a large army consisting of four corps, several infantry, panzer, motorized, mountain, and SS divisions, along with a Romanian army and some Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, and Slovak divisions. By the spring of 1944, the First Panzer Army had shrunk considerably, consisting of only three corps, two infantry, four panzer, and one SS division. After July 1944 it retreated from Ukraine and Poland before fighting with Army Group A in Slovakia (Battle of the Dukla Pass).[21]
Following WWI, eastern Germany was vulnerable to an attack from Poland. The Germans were forbidden to use regular army troops so the Poles took the opportunity to invade. Nehring recruited on behalf of the Volunteer Frontier Defence Force that faced the attackers. He then served as a company commander and reconnaissance officer.
The action provided valuable experience. He saw firsthand the effects of radio communication, discovering that it could be used to quickly redirect tank attacks, even shifting the line of attack for an entire operation. Like other commanders in the area, he also saw the problems of coordinating with slower moving and less flexible infantry groups. The result was a change in tactics toward specialist armored operations.
Nehring met Korovshin, a Russian tank expert, at a victory parade. Nehring had already hypothesized that the Russians could convert tractor factories to produce huge numbers of tanks if necessary. Korovshin kept his tanks out of the parade, preventing Nehring from seeing them.
On May 20, Hitler ordered Guderian to set up a panzer group, consisting of multiple existing corps. Nehring was chief of staff for the group. Following its early swift successes, he was promoted to major general.
For the invasion of Russia in 1941, Nehring was in charge of the 18th Panzer Division. The division was under-supplied, equipped with tanks that were unsuitable for Russia and the soldiers were not familiar with them.
Despite the drawbacks, Nehring had great successes, riding at the front of his division as it spearheaded drives deep into Soviet lines. He saw his theories of mobile warfare executed to full effect on the eastern steppes. His achievements included a 150-kilometer raid into the flank of a Russian army and the breaking of an encirclement at Suchinitshy.
He returned to action to face Allied forces that had landed further west, in Tunisia. There, using very limited resources, he created a bridgehead into which fresh troops were sent and to which Rommel could retreat from the east. He planned an operation at Tebourda that dominated the Allied formations there. By the time he left Africa in December, the link up with Rommel had been achieved.
Returning to Germany, Nehring rebuilt the shattered XXIV Panzer Corps before leading it back to Russia. There, he was forced to redirect his troops in the face of a Russian counter-attack. He was once again wounded.
After recovering from his injuries, Nehring returned to the Russian front. He joined an army in retreat, driven back by the massed forces of the Soviet Union. He gained a reputation for holding broken fronts, as he repeatedly repaired and reinforced fractured German lines. His corps played the leading part in rescuing the 1st Panzer Army when it was surrounded.
Moved to the command of 4th Panzer Army, Nehring found a formation made up mostly of infantry, its tanks having been diverted to other work. Despite the absence of his preferred troops, he held back another Soviet offensive.
When Soviet forces smashed the German lines, Nehring took command of disparate troops surrounded by the enemy. The wandering pocket of German forces fought its way through a Russian encirclement then crossed Poland in a grueling 250-kilometer winter march, before joining the main German lines. Once again, Nehring had saved his men from disaster.
In July 1941, Panzer Group 2 (since 5 October - Second Panzer Army) was ordered to cross the Bug on D-Day on both sides of Brest-Litovsk, to break the Russian Front and to reach the Roslavl - Yelnya - Smolensk area in rapid exploitation of the initial success.
The CG [Commanding General - AWW], on the basis of experiences gained during the campaign in the West, decided to have four armored divisions spearhead the crossing of the Bug. The commander requested the cooperation of the infantry for the attack as well as for the blocking of Brest-Litovsk (XII Corps). The armored attack had to be conducted south and north of the fortress of Brest-Litovsk,
To provide uniform command as soon as the Offensive started, the commander requested and obtained the attachment of XII Corps and of infantry divisions stationed in the zone of attack. At the same time, the Panzer Group became subordinate to Fourth Army, Field Marshal von Kluge commanding.
In the wake of the successful armored attack, open flanks on both sides would necessarily develop from the start. Those flanks had to be protected. It was chiefly the left flank which was threatened due to the heavy Russian concentration near Bialystok. This concentrated force, after recognizing the danger caused by the tanks in its rear, could be expected to attempt an escape from the threatening encirclement. The Russians might push along the main road via Volkovisk - Slonim.
XXIV Panzer Corps (General of the Panzer Troops, Baron Geyr von Schweppenburg) with 255th Infantry Division (subordinate for crossing the river) from Vlodava toward Maloryta; First Cavalry Division from Slavatishche via Maloryta toward Pinsk; Fourth Panzer Division from Koden toward the road Brest-Kobryn; Third Panzer Division from north of Koden toward Brest-Kobryn; Tenth Motorized (Division) behind as. second wave;