Type Panzer | ||
 | ||
Active 2 January 1943 – 8 May 1945 | ||
The 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg or 10.SS-Panzer-Division Frundsberg was a German Waffen SS panzer division. The division was formed at the beginning of 1943 as a reserve for the expected Allied invasion of France. However, their first campaign was in Ukraine in April 1944. Afterwards, the unit was then transferred to the west, where it fought the Allies in France and at Arnhem. The division was moved to Pomerania, then fought south east of Berlin in the Lausitz area until the end of the war.
Contents
History
The division received the honor title Frundsberg, which referred to the 16th Century German commander Georg von Frundsberg. The division was mainly formed from conscripts. It first saw action at Tarnopol in April 1944 and later took part in the relief of the German troops cut off in the Kamenets-Podolsky pocket.
It was then sent to Normandy to counter the Allied landings, where, along with the SS Division Hohenstaufen, it took part in fighting against the Allied Operation Epsom. The division suffered heavy casualties and retreated into Belgium before being sent to rest and be reconstituted near Arnhem, where it soon had to fight the Allied parachute assault during Operation Market Garden at Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, when together with the 9th SS Panzer division it constituted the II SS Panzer Corps. After rebuilding, it fought in the Alsace in January 1945. It was then sent to the Eastern Front, where it fought against the Red Army in Pomerania and then Saxony. Encircled at the Halbe Pocket, the division had many losses but managed to break out of the encirclement and retreat through Moritzburg, before reaching the area of Teplice in Czechoslovakia, where the division surrendered to the US Army at the end of the war.
Günter Grass
German writer and Nobel laureate Günter Grass was an assistant tank gunner with the SS division at the age of 17 in November 1944. He was wounded in action on 25 April 1945 and captured in a hospital.