Once I Had a Comrade: Karl Roth and the Combat History of the 36th Panzer Regiment 1939-45

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ISBN 1 874622 58 2

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Covers: The 14th Panzer Division's emblem was the Teutonic rune 'Ethel' meaning 'homeland'. At first the rune meant the circular swath cleared around the family home, it grew to mean the territory of the clan, then land of the tribe, and finally the nation of the peoples, therefore, native land. The symbolic action it represented was a man ploughing a field with a yoked cow (viewed from above), and the emblem, a thatched cottage (viewed from the side). Karl Roth in parade full service dress uniform (Gesellschaftanzug). The purpose of the service uniform was to promote enlistments in the military by inducing soldiers like Karl to vie for the various awards they could display on it, representing certain skills, time in service, and rank held. The army national emblem, a silver or grey eagle, is worn on the right breast of the field and service coat and on the front of caps. Long trousers and high black shoes always are worn with this uniform (Courtesy E. Roth). Remaining picture shows a Panzer from 36th Panzer Regiment near Rostov-on-Don, winter 1941/42 (courtesy Bundesarchiv).

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Dedication

This work is dedicated to the memory of Karl Roth and to my wife Jutta, who spent countless hours translating German into English. Also to my mother-inlaw Else Roth, and to the veterans I interviewed, whose recollections of past events (some they would have rather left forgotten) made this book possible.

Memorial dedicated to the German Army (1914–1918, 1939– 1945) and located at the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress above the heights of Koblenz, Germany (Author’s collection)

Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden

(Ludwig Uhland 1809, set to a melody by Friedrich Silcher 1825)

Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden,

Einen bessern findst du nicht.

Die Trommel schlug zum Streite,

Er ging an meiner Seite

In gleichen Schritt und Tritt.

In gleichen Schritt und Tritt.

Translation:

In battle I had a comrade

You won’t find a better one.

The drum called us to fight,

He always walked at my side,

In step through good and bad.

In step through good and bad.

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Part I: Introduction: Germany before the war

1    Fulfilling the Dream (1916–1939)

Part II: The 4th Panzer Division

2    Loss of Innocence: Operation White and the Polish Campaign (September–October 1939)

3    Triumphant Victory: Operation Yellow-Red, France (May–June 1940)

4    English Invasion: Operation Sea-lion, France (Summer 1940)

Part III: The 14th Panzer Division

5    Campaign in the Balkans: Operation Punishment, Yugoslavia (April 1941)

6    Campaigns in the East: Operation Barbarossa (June 1941–November 1942)

7    Kharkov: Operation Fredericus I and II (May–June 1942)

8    The Dream is Destroyed: Operation Blue, Stalingrad (June 1942–March 1943)

Part IV: The New 14th Panzer Division

9    Rest, Recovery and Return to Russia (March–December 1943)

10  Year of Fate (1944)

11  Heroic Stand: Courland (August 1944–May 1945)

Part V: Conclusion: After the War

12  The Nightmare is Over (May 1945–present)

Appendices

I     Hans Niedt, the Photographic Journal of a Combat Pioneer

II    Karl Roth’s Personal Records

III   Orders of Battle and Organisational Charts

IV   Panzer Recovery and Repair

V    Regimental Tanks

Notes

Bibliography

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Acknowledgements

Iwould first like to recognize my mother-in-law, Else Roth, and my wife Jutta and her family including her cousins, without whose help this work could not have been completed. Also Gernot Loeffler, my brother-in-law, for driving me into France, Belgium, and Luxembourg, a great man now deceased. I also wish to thank Elfrieda Bock, and everyone at the Prince Eugen divisional remembrance room in Kuhlsheim. A special thanks to the late Paul Schmitt, a former 36th Panzer Regiment supply officer, and all the veterans of the 14th Panzer Division ‘Traditional Association’, including General Peter von Butler, Heinz Neuendorff, Erwin Jungkunz, Hans-Joachim Braun, Karl Brier, Klaus Voss, Leo Schwarz, Alois Weigand my step daughter’s father, and anyone else not mentioned. Another special thanks goes to two military book publishers, Dana Lombardy and Arnie Dupuy, who provided critical analysis to the story. An important thank you goes to Frau Caspers and the staff at the Koblenz photographic archives for their valued help, as well as the staff at the still pictures department at the National Archives College Park Maryland. A last thank you goes to longtime Schweinfurt resident Wilhelm Boehm author of Zwischen Schulbank und Kanonen , and Bernhardt Strobl, director at the Schweinfurt photographic archives.

This book would not have been possible without the devoted support offered by my family, including my parents, sister, and brothers. A special note of thanks goes out to all my friends, for their unending words of encouragement, especially my brother Dan. Two former Allied veterans provided their inspiration, my Uncle, Les Houde, a former B-17 pilot with twenty-five missions completed in Europe who read the entire manuscript, and Robert Bowen author of Fighting with the Screaming Eagles, who was captured during the Battle of the Bulge. I could not end the acknowledgements without thanking all those who document history, making it a pleasure for me to study.

Preface

This project began in the fall of 1987 when I met my wife, Jutta Roth, while stationed with the United States Army in Schweinfurt, Germany. During our first conversation she mentioned that her father, who died in 1972, was stationed at the same barracks facility I was then residing in. Being interested in modern European history, I inquired if her father served in the military in the Second World War. Jutta said he was the top sergeant of a maintenance company assigned to a tank regiment during the war, and then produced his metal identification disk (that all German soldiers carried) from her purse, reading: Stab ( HQ) 36th Panzer Regiment. She then said he was the only one not killed of three other step-bothers sent to fight and also survived the epic battle for Stalingrad in 1943. ¹

My father-in-law’s story sounded fascinating and I decided to look into the history of his unit to find out where they were and what happened to them during the war. After consulting my mother in law, Else Roth, I learned his regiment early in the war was originally part of the 4th Panzer Division. I was impressed at the extent of combat experience the unit possessed, having fought in almost every major campaign and some of the most important battles of the war. Their history spans seven years, from November 1938 until May 1945, covering such major events as the rearmament of Germany and the four year plan, the Blitzkrieg campaigns, Barbarossa and the attack on the Soviet Union, Stalingrad and the encirclement of Paulus’s Sixth Army, the bombing campaign against the German homeland, defense of the Atlantic Wall, the Dniepr River battles of 1944 and defence of the Courland peninsula, one of the last outposts still resisting at the end of the war in May, 1945.²

Returning to the United States, I began researching the 36th Panzer Regiment’s history and found many sources written on the organizational structure and brief histories concerning Army, Corps, and Division level units. Researchers though will have difficulty looking for the original German regimental war diaries as most of the documents were either destroyed in the Potsdam fire outside Berlin in 1944, by the unit commanders themselves, or were captured by the Russians at the end of the war and are only now becoming available. After my preliminary research, I discovered Karl Roth’s story and his regiment’s war record was almost a model in microcosm of the history of the European conflict on a whole.

The only official history of the unit is found in Rolf Grams’ book, Die 14. Panzer-Division 1940–1945. This first hand account of the war by a former unit commander published in 1958 is an invaluable source on the operational period 1941–45, but does not cover the vital blitzkrieg campaigns conducted early in the war, when the regiment was assigned to the 4th Panzer Division. Grams’ book is also a broad division history that inadequately details the strength of the unit during certain periods, leaving out some of the fateful events surrounding them. And last, this book was only published in German and therefore no exclusive English combat history exists, that encompasses the full story of Schweinfurt’s Panzer regiment. This book then provides a brief but concise chronological history of the unit encompassing from start to finish the tactical and strategic events affecting them, and the personal accounts of those who were there.

Starting with some generic order of battle charts and regimental daybooks the story was pieced together from various sources, where I discovered discrepancies in some of the official passages presenting the history of the regiment.³ For instance after the battle of Stalingrad, most books report the 36th Panzer Regiment as totally destroyed during the encirclement and subsequent surrender. In fact nearly half survived, along with other units that provided the core around which the future division was built.⁴ A.N. Shimansky writing about the battle of Cherkassy in 1944 for Liddell-Hart’s, The History of the Second World War series, reported all the defenders of the pocket were either killed or captured trying to break out,⁵ but the truth is more than half made it back to German lines.⁶ And about the evacuation of Courland at the end of the war, Cornelius Ryan in his famous book, The Last Battle, reported that only a few boatloads of men were evacuated to northern Germany, when actually thousands were.⁷

So what made Karl Roth and his regiment so extraordinary and why was their story above average, when compared to other German soldiers and tank regiments? As for Karl Roth, the answer to these questions is the fact that he survived six years of war, and was assigned to a revolutionary new branch of service playing the central role in the European conflict. The goal of the German ground warfare planners was to defeat the enemy in large encirclement battles, using the tank to achieve the new blitzkrieg strategy. Karl participated in and escaped his share of these engagements, including the Kutno Pocket in Poland in 1939, the reduction of the Dunkirk Pocket in 1940, the two largest encirclements of the war at Kiev and Uman in 1941, the Soviet setback at Kharkov in 1942, the most famous at Stalingrad in 1943, escaped from the Cherkassy pocket in 1944, and was evacuated to freedom from the forgotten Courland pocket in 1945. His story then is not that of the infantryman, following in the steps of their forefathers in the Great War, but instead of a skilled maintenance sergeant, repairing the tanks used by the most powerful motorized army the world had ever seen up until that time.

What made the 36th Panzer Regiment unique can be summed up into one word, ‘Stalingrad’. Of the thirty or so tank regiments that existed in the German Army during that time, only three (including the 36th) could claim to have fought the vicious street battles within the city. The 36th Panzer Regiment was always at the focal point of any battle and was involved in the advance on Stalingrad from the south in August (accumulating more miles in an advance than any other tank regiment in Russia at that time), the struggle for the factory districts in the center in October, and the desperate attempt to hold the northern line from the Russian onslaught outside the city in November. A battle group was then involved to a minor extent holding the jump off positions outside the pocket for Manstein’s relief attempt to reach the city in December. The famous struggle for Stalin’s city was the psychological turning point of the war, and arguably the most written about subject of the whole Russo-German conflict.

This book then does not attempt to glamorize, promote, or trivialize the war, but does seek to reconstruct a brief history of this unit to highlight their activities, and explore the personal path of a remarkable man who survived them. The most common question asked by others during the research process was, "was your

father-in-law a Nazi?" What my research revealed was not a man who survived through blind devotion to National Socialism, but instead through his own resources and desires to see his homeland and family once again. A friend and fellow historian, Arnie Dupuy, wrote after reading the manuscript,

This is a story that should be told. It further proves that the average German soldier was not a fanatical or superhuman warrior, as many would like us to believe. Karl Roth, like countless of his fellow soldiers in the Wehrmacht, was dedicated, resourceful and motivated when fighting a seemingly endless and hopeless war against the Soviets. What is also portrayed in this work is that he was a devoted father and patriot caught up in a series of events that were beyond his comprehension and clearly out of his control.⁸

The true physical and psychological suffering he and his comrades endured or inflicted will never be known or truly expressed into words, but his survival story and the history of the 36th Panzer Regiment is truly remarkable. If for no other purpose the research done and material covered helped my wife better understand her father, and the sacrifices he gave for a country he loved. In 1998 I was invited and attended a reunion of the 14th Panzer Division in Kuhlsheim, Germany. There I met Hans Braun, a former officer of the unit in the early days before and during the war. He replied to my wife a month later in response to a questionnaire I asked him and his comrades to look over. What follows is the translation of his brief but accurate description of the 36th Panzer Regiment, sent to me at the beginning of the research process:

29 Nov. 1998

Dear Miss Roth!

I met you during the meeting of the ‘Traditional Association of the 14th Panzer Division’ in October by the Pz. Btl. 363 in Kuhlsheim, and engaged in a conversation about your father, who was assigned to the workshop company of the 36th Panzer Regiment in Schweinfurt.

This letter is in response to the questions you gave me. The extensive questionnaire I cannot go into detail on because my memory of the road of the 36th Panzer Regiment only spans the period 1938–41. In this time frame I was together with Karl Roth in the same regiment, but cannot recall direct contact with him, although the picture of Feldwebel Roth, was fairly familiar. The reason I cannot recall him is that the regiment had 60 officers, 360–400 non-commissioned officers, and over 1000 enlisted men at that time.

On October 1st 1938 a new Panzer Regiment was established, the 36th, under the command of the 4th Panzer Division in Wurzburg. Out of the 4th Panzer Division emerged the leadership and troop personnel for the Regiment, and were moved to Schweinfurt.

The formation of the Regiment was not quite finished in the spring of 1939 despite the first warning orders for war. Under the leadership of the regimental headquarters staff in Schweinfurt, the tank battalions came from the 35th Regiment in Bamberg. The workshop company was established in Schweinfurt. In response to the first warning order for combat we moved from Austria to the training area of Doellersheim, then to Bohemia/Moravia, and reached the town of Iglau.

In the autumn of 1939 came the Polish Campaign, and after a short rest the Regiment was in January 1940 called to the West, in the area of Sauerland, and later we redeployed into the area around Julich. The road of the Regiment, inclusive the workshop company and Feldwebel Roth can be traced on the map included. After the French Campaign was over the 36th Regiment was moved with the 4th Panzer Division back to Schweinfurt, and in November 1940 was used to build the new 14th Panzer Division. The forming of the division took place in the beginning of 1941 in the training area of Milowitz, near Prague. From this point on the road of the Regiment can be found in Rolf Grams’ Die 14. Panzer-Division 1940–1945.

Until August 1941 I was the Regimental Adjutant of the 36th Panzer Regiment, in December 1941 I commanded the 1st Company, and from September commanded the 1st Battalion until they took back the front by the Mius River Line. In December 1941 I was moved to command as the 1st Ordnance Officer in the III Panzerkorps.

I hope Frau Roth with these references you can trace the road of the Regiment from 1938–1941 and altogether highlight the steps of your father and the 36th Panzer Regiment.

With friendly greetings, yours,

Hans Joachim Braun

Richard Byrd

Phoenix, Arizona

PART I

INTRODUCTION:

GERMANY BEFORE THE WAR

Karl poses for the camera in front of the 36th Panzer Regiment’s headquarters building at the barracks in Schweinfurt, dressed in his black Panzer field uniform, and wearing the early black beret issued to the tank men in the Regiment prior to the winter of 1939–40. The field uniform was designed to retain as much flair as was possible, while at the same time providing a practical utilitarian wear for the troops. The beret was to serve as a crash helmet, but the headgear proved unnecessary, and was later replaced with a black wool-rayon field cap. The black double-breasted coat issued with the uniform is known as the field-jacket (Feldjacke) and is dyed black to conceal dirt and grease stains. Panzer troops wore a metal death’s head on each collar patch. The black trousers are referred to as field trousers (Feldhosen) and are fitted with tapes, so they may be bound to the leg at the ankle. Standard black service shoes were worn with this uniform, as the use of boots was contrary to German army regulations. By the end of the war, the black Panzer uniform was standard for almost all tank and armoured car crews, cultivating an aura of esprit de corps within the regiment.

(Author’s collection, courtesy E. Roth)

CHAPTER I

Fulfilling the Dream (1916–1939)

After the First World War concluded economic depression in Europe caused bitter social divisions to develop along ethnic, racial, and political lines. The enforcement of the Versailles Treaty, coupled with the worldwide depression of the 1930’s, caused an environment to develop in Germany that placed into power Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. ¹ His rise to power was promulgated by the fulfilment of early promises to the German people concerning employment, rearmament, and the restoration of nationalism.

Karl Wilhelm Roth was born illegitimate in 1916 and grew up during these tumultuous years in the Franconian city of Schweinfurt, located in northern Bavaria. The town, with a population of 60,000 at the time was situated among wooded hills through which the Main River flowed, and was a major regional centre for the middle Main area.

His mother, whom he lived with in the early years of his life, was a waitress and since his birth was married, having one son, Hans Niedt (see Appendix I). Karl’s father, also remarried from his first wife and having two sons, belonged to a union and worked at the Kugelfischer ball bearing factory. The senior Roth was a Social Democrat, as were most of the city’s industrial plant workers and