FREE MICHAEL WITTMANN AND THE WAFFEN SS TIGER COMMANDERS OF THE LEIBSTANDARTE IN WORLD WAR 2: VOL. 2 PDF Patrick Agte | 400 pages | 01 Oct 2006 | Stackpole Books | 9780811733359 | English | Mechanicsburg, United States Michael Wittmann & the Waffen SS Tiger Commanders of the Leibstandarte in WWII Volume Two follows Michael Wittmann and his unit into Normandy to defend against the Allied invasion. A week after D-Day, Wittmann achieved his greatest success. On June 13,near Villers Bocage, the panzer ace and his crew attacked a British armored unit, single-handedly destroying more than a dozen tanks and preventing an enemy breakthrough. The exploit made Wittmann a national hero in Germany and a legend in the annals of war. He was killed two months later while attempting to repulse an Allied assault, but the book continues beyond his death until the Leibstandarte's surrender. The book gives an interesting overview of this tank commanders activities but lacks details about tactics. Patrick Agte. Accounts of what it was like to command a tank in combat Contains maps, official documents, newspaper clippings, and orders of battle Volume Two follows Michael Wittmann and his unit into Normandy to defend against the Allied invasion. The Battle of Villers. Fighting on the VillersBocageCaen Road. Operation Epsom June The Fourth Battle of Caen July The Michael Wittmann and the Waffen SS Tiger Commanders of the Leibstandarte in World War 2: Vol. 2 Move South July. Battles Northeast of Falaise August The End of the Normandy Campaign. The Ardennes Offensive 16 December January The Defensive Battle in Hungary and Austria. The Allied Landing in Normandy. | Michael Wittmann & Waffen SS Tiger Commanders of Leibstandarte in WWII: Vol. JavaScript seems to be disabled in your browser. You must have JavaScript enabled in your browser to utilize the functionality of this website. By far the most famous tank commander on any side in World War II, German Tiger ace Michael Wittmann destroyed enemy tanks and anti-tank guns in a career that embodies the panzer legend: meticulous in planning, lethal in execution, and always cool under fire. Most of those kills came in the snow and mud of the Eastern Front, where Wittmann and the Leibstandarte's armored company spent more than a year in battling the Soviets at places like Kharkov, Kursk, and the Cherkassy Pocket. This website requires cookies to provide all of its features. For more information on what data Michael Wittmann and the Waffen SS Tiger Commanders of the Leibstandarte in World War 2: Vol. 2 contained in the cookies, please see our Cookie Policy. To accept cookies from this site, please click the Allow Cookies button below. Casemate UK. My Wishlist Login. Search: Search. Publication date:. Add to Basket. Add to Wishlist. Overview. Michael Wittman Volume One Reviews. Reviews from Goodreads. More from this publisher. Chasing Villa. World's First Spaceship Shuttle. Leaders of the Lost Cause. Lincoln's Choice. Peninsula Campaign Reflections on Lee. Story of the Battles at Gettysburg. Twenty-Fourth Michigan. All Rights Reserved. Site Development Firsty Group. Allow Cookies. You are being redirected In the literature concerning the war, differing source material has produced varying histories of the thirteen German heavy panzer battalions which saw front-line duty wherever the action was the most intense. No operational accounts of the st SS Panzer Battalion have been handed down. This was sufficient cause for the author to establish contact with the few surviving former members of the Tiger unit and to use all available archives to chronicle their history. His efforts received vital support from the personal recollections of the former tank commanders, gunners, loaders, tank drivers and radio operators of the heavy tanks. They were there: in the winter of at Kharkov, in the summer of in the Kursk offensive, known as Operation Zitadelle, after November at Kiev and Zhitomir, at the Cherkassy and Hube Pockets; in the summer of between Caen and Falaise, in December in the Ardennes, in in Hungary and Austria. Complementing these accounts of wartime events and the personal recollections of the Michael Wittmann and the Waffen SS Tiger Commanders of the Leibstandarte in World War 2: Vol. 2 crews are numerous photographs, the majority of which come from the personal collections of the former tank crews of this unit. Special attention will be paid to the career of Michael Wittmann, his exemplary personality and his outstanding achievements—and justifiably so, for he was the most successful tank commander of the second World War. He is recognized as such in German as well as in international histories of the war. It will be appreciated that his qualities as a human and a military leader receive an exhaustive examination and that his feats of daring—free from inaccurate descriptions—are retold the way they actually happened by comrades who were at his side. But who were these young tank crews, who fought, suffered and—many of them—died? They were predominantly young men from the —25 age class, though later in the war they were joined by members of the class of — Their grandfathers had fought at Sedan and Mars-la-Tour in —71, and their fathers at Verdun, the Argonne Forest and in Flanders in — These young men were familiar with the story of Tannenburg from their history lessons. Therefore to many of them the soldierly fulfillment of Michael Wittmann and the Waffen SS Tiger Commanders of the Leibstandarte in World War 2: Vol. 2 was already a familiar traditional concept. Full of idealism, the young men rallied to the flag. With the utmost willingness and devotion they fought and suffered through the pitiless struggle and cruel weather conditions in the east and endured the crushing material superiority of the enemy in the west. And—provided they managed to escape with their lives, the statistics on birth years to tell the story—they sacrificed, including while being held as prisoners of war, the best years of their lives. These young men were led and magnificently trained by officers and non-commissioned officers who had proved themselves while serving with the Leibstandarte in the years before the formation of the Tiger Company. The tank crews developed a feeling of combat superiority, undoubtedly created and enhanced by the awareness that they were capable of operating the best and most potent tanks in the world. It was an acknowledgement of this fact when a senior British officer once said that in Normandy they had to send five Shermans into battle in order to be able to effectively combat a single Tiger. Truly, German youth from every district in Germany was represented in the Leibstandarte Tiger Battalion. Every dialect was to be heard. And so during the infrequent quiet hours in the Ukraine, in Italy, and in Normandy, the songs of home, from Tirol to the Waterkant, from Silesia to the Saar, were played on accordions and harmonicas. To the young men of today it may seem unbelievable that those young tank soldiers, who faced death every day, indeed every hour, nevertheless found time for humor, fun and games, as is revealed in the accounts contained in this chronicle. That meant bivouacking in a tent for three or four days in the magnificent summer landscape of Normandy a few kilometers behind the front. One was able to wash, shave, put on clean clothes, write letters, enjoy extra food for a few days, do whatever he liked. Then youthful high spirits rose up, finding expression in a harmonica or a game of soccer. Common to them all was the readiness to give their best in action, even their young lives if it came to that. When the order come to battle readiness was given, when the gun was unlocked and the pistols were cocked, every man knew that it might be his turn, that when the panzers came back to refuel and rearm he might be hanging from the tank in a tent square, to be buried in foreign soil by his comrades. Even this last honor could not be paid to every man who fell, if the knocked-out tank burned or was left stranded in the enemy lines. His comrades were able to observe his fate through a scissors telescope but could not prevent it. The notation in the casualty list read believed fatally wounded. Or Sturmmann Erlander, the short, blonde tank driver from Alsace, whose tank was immobilized by a hit in the running gear. The tank was struck by another shell; no trace of Erlander was ever found. He is buried at the La Cambe military cemetery. To them loyalty to the Fatherland was more than empty words. Those who were there will never forget the fallen and missing and wish to take care to see that future generations, too, will Michael Wittmann and the Waffen SS Tiger Commanders of the Leibstandarte in World War 2: Vol. 2 the memory of the fallen Michael Wittmann and the Waffen SS Tiger Commanders of the Leibstandarte in World War 2: Vol. 2 their devotion to Germany. German Military Superiority in the campaigns against Poland inBelgium and France inand in the Balkans inwas based on the revolutionary operational tactics of the panzer divisions. Instead of employing tanks as infantry support weapons, as was the rule in other armies at that time, the German Army used them as weapons of breakthrough, striking deep into enemy territory and taking their opponents by surprise. Together with the Luftwaffe and fast-moving infantry, the flexibly-led German panzer arm was the guarantor of success. When they invaded the Soviet Union in the German armed forces encountered Soviet battle tanks, the KV I and especially the T 34, which were superior to German tanks in many ways.