The motorized corps served as the tactical command element in the command structure, with the individual divisions serving as tactical combat elements. By early April 1945, after constant fighting the remnants of the division were sent to take up positions southwest of Frankfurt on the Oder, to restrain the Russian counter-offensive.
They were the operational movement element of Army Group North, Army Group Centre and Army Group South. The 23rd SS Division Nederland and the 11th SS Nordland Division subordinated to the III SS Panzer Corps. In the last case, a panzer group normally consisted of two or three motorized corps. not designated with numbers) during the campaigns in Poland, France, and Greece, they were not used at all in Norway and Denmark in 1940, and numbered 1-4 during the first half year of the war against the Soviet Union. Later in the war it was possible to find panzer corps that consisted solely of infantry divisions.ĭuring the initial period of the war the panzer corps predecessor, the motorised corps, were grouped into various panzer groups ( Panzergruppen). SS Panzer Corps, like all German higher level staffs at the time, was essentially divided into two elements: The Operations and Intelligence section (known as the Fhrungsabteilung) and the Logistics and Administrative section (known as the Adjutantur and Quartiermeisterabteilung). The corps was formed from the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich and the 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen, and it took part in the November 1942 occupation of Vichy France before being sent to the Ukraine in 1943. His works include Hells Gate: The Battle of the Cherkassy Pocket January to February 1944, Kampfgruppe Mühlenkamp, Unternehmen Ilse, and his recent trilogy about the IV SS-Panzer Corps, From the Realm of a Dying Sun.
Initially they were the main strike force of the Wehrmacht, and consisted of motorised infantry divisions ( ID (mot)) and panzer divisions. The II SS Panzer Corps was a German Waffen-SS armored corps that was active from July 1942 to. He recently retired after serving as the Senior Historian of Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia.
Panzer corps underwent transformation as the war went on.