The following account compiled by the Records Section, Brigade Staff, Panzer Brigade MICHAELS will be the first of hopefully many accounts provided on the actions of the German WW2 battlegroup MICHAELS as it fought in Europe from 1943 through to the surrender of German troops in May 1945 (ED NOTE: Using WRG Rules, Armor & Infantry, 1925-1950).
Kampfgruppe MICHAELS, first organized in 1943 under the auspices of Inspector-General of Armored Forces General Heinz Guclerian's reform of the Panzer arm of the Heer, was a battlegroup of the first division reorganized along the new establishment as envisioned by General Guclerian. Against new formations which were robbing the current armored divisions of replacements, Guclerian's division was based on the cadre of veteran units drawn from Army and Waffen SS units. Guclerian's new divisions, to be based on his revised tables of organization, would be formed from the old divisions as they were withdrawn from the front and brought back to Germany for refit. At the same time as the Army divisions were refitted the Waffen SS units would also be refitted, and their personnel dispersed among the Army units as NCO's and Officers. The Waffen SS would cease to exist as a separate armed force from the Wehrmacht. The new Panzer Division, with a brigade of four tank battalions and four grenadier battalions in two grenadier regiments, was named, appropriately, GOTTERDAMERUNG SS PANZER.
The division began organizing shortly after the defeat at Stalingrad and had one regiment of its panzer brigade and one battalion of each of its grenadier regiments formed when the Reichsfueher SS Heinrich Himmler came down on General Guderian and the Army supporters of his plan with the full weight of Himmler's influence with Adolf Hitler. Hitler's personal bodyguard, the Waffen SS, would not be absorbed by the German Army. The division, already 50% formed, was hastily completed in the standard one tank and two grenadier regiment organization and sent to the Russian front. Use of its name was forbidden although its initials GDSS were retained. The men had their own nicknames. Thrown into the battles of mid and late 1943 the division did well. Well enough that GDSS was increased in size to a Corps in 1944.
KG MICHAELS also flourished. In 1943 Oberst Joseph Michaels commanded a battlegroup consisting of the reinforced Divisional Reconnaissance Battalion. By 1944 KG MICHAELS was an independent Panzer Brigade of GDSS Panzer Korps and by 1945 Major Genral Michaels was commanding Kampfgruppe Panzer Division MICHAELS, one of the three divisions of GDSS Panzer Korps.
GDSS does not appear in any history books. Confused with GD, GrossDeutschland, the Army's elite panzer division, GDSS was never identified during the war as an independent unit of the German Army. Accounts of it, such as GDSS Panthers on the Western front in 1944 appear, but have not been recognized. GDSS, the additional division and later Corps that provided a much needed fire brigade for the German Army on both the Western and Eastern fronts from 1943 on, would not be identified until 1967. Information on this unit will appear in later articles, but for now let ustakea look at the account of Panzer Brigade MICHAELS as passed on to me by Mr. Robert Zobal whose grandson commanded MICHAELS' third panzergrenadier company.
Records Section
Brigade Staff
Pz. Bde. MICHAELS
24.6.44
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