Bayerlein (After Action Reports of the Panzer Lehr Division Commander From D-Day to the Ruhr)

Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein, Commander of the Panzer Lehr Division, wrote twenty manuscripts while interred as a U.S. Army prisoner of war from April 1945 until his release from captivity two years later. The entire series of manuscripts, commonly referred to as “Foreign Military Studies”, was prepared post-war by hundreds of senior German officers at the direction of the U.S. Army’s Historical Division. Bayerlein cooperated whole-heartedly and honestly with the U.S. Army, telling his own version of events as they unfolded, starting with the creation of the famous Panzer Lehr Division. Bayerlein recounts his experiences through the horrors of D-Day, his retreat to the Rhine, the failed Ardennes Offensive, and on to his final days of fighting with his LIII Armeekorps in the Ruhr Pocket. All of General Bayerlein’s manuscripts are presented here, compiled into a chronological narrative of his experiences with his Panzer Lehr Division from the Allied Invasion of Normandy to his surrender of the LIII Armeekorps in the Ruhr pocket in the last days of World War II. Bayerlein also wrote several comparisons of his Panzers – Tigers and Panthers – with other armored vehicles, including Russian and American armor. This in-depth analysis, long hidden in boxes in the National Archives and Records Administration, is presented. This is the third book in a series on Bayerlein’s life and military career and contains 140 black and white photos, of which thirty are from his family’s private collection and have not been previously published, as well as thirty maps hand-drawn by Bayerlein while a prisoner of war.