Grenadiers

The Story of Waffen SS General Kurt "Panzer" Meyer

Kurt Meyer

• Publisher: Stackpole Books
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780811731973
• eBook ISBN:
  9780811769136
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

This WWII memoir by a decorated Nazi officer and war criminal offers a vivid account of German operations across Europe and the Eastern Front.

Known for his bold and aggressive leadership, Kurt "Panzer" Meyer was one of the most highly decorated German soldiers of World War II. He successively commanded a motorcycle company, a reconnaissance battalion, a grenadier regiment, and the Hitler Youth Panzer Division. 

Meyer also saw intense combat across Europe: the invasion of Poland, the fall of France, the sweep through the Balkans and Greece, the bitter fighting on the Eastern Front, and the 1944 campaign in Normandy, where he fell into Allied hands and was charged with war crimes. His firsthand account, written with unmatched vividness and immediacy, conveys the grim reality of war.

Table of contents

• Preface
• Editors’ Notes
• Poland
• From Prague to the Western Front
• Operations against Rotterdam
• Into France
• The Formation of the Reconnaissance Battalion at Metz
• The Balkans
• Into Greece
• The Crossing to Peloponnesus
• The Struggle against the Soviet Union
• From Sasselje to Cherson
• From the Dnepr to the Don
• The Winter War: 1942–43
• The Fighting for Kharkov
• The Counterattack
• The 12. SS-Panzer-Division “Hitlerjugend”
• The Invasion
• The Final Fighting around Caen
• From the Evacuation of Caen to the Falaise Pocket
• The Employment of the 12. SS-Panzer-Division “Hitlerjugend” from the End of the Invasion to the End of the War
• Imprisonment in England
• Back to Germany
• The Trial
• On Death Row
• From Dorchester to Werl
• Afterword
• In Memoriam
• Rank Comparisons