The Staff Officer Behind the Best Panzer Commander of WW2

Get both copies of German Command Ebooks here: https://www.germancommand.com/ Description: Hermann Balck's reputation as Germany's finest field commander rests on one sentence written by his former staff officer, Friedrich Wilhelm von Mellenthin, in a book that has shaped English-language histories for seventy years. Mellenthin spent most of the Second World War as a German intelligence officer, producing enemy estimates at headquarters from Poland through North Africa to the Eastern Front. He served as chief of staff to Balck at the 48th Panzer Corps for roughly twelve months, not the multi-year partnership the literature suggests, before moving through higher commands and finishing the war as a one-star general. His book Panzer Battles, published as a doctrinal study rather than a memoir, became the primary English source on German armored operations despite relying on wartime intelligence estimates that reflected what German staffs believed about Soviet forces rather than Soviet actual strength. The ninth panzer division command he may have held in the Ardennes remains disputed between published sources, and the famous Chir River engagement that anchors Balck's reputation is told from the German side without the Soviet records that show the tank army Balck supposedly destroyed continued fighting into the next offensive.