Absolutely, @yavasa – three exhausted and shot-up Waffen SS divisions, attacked by three fresh Soviet tank corps, plus an attached tack corps, plus an attached mech corps, all thrown together quite haphazardly at the last minute, plus a guards airborne division of all things trying to hold the line, two SP Assault gun regiments, some independent tank regiments and brigades, regiments of two more guards rifle divisions that were already under attack from the days previous …

Most of this was put together the night before with very little organization, communication, or cohesion …

The Soviet commander was a brilliant academic and administrator but perhaps not the most pragmatic battlefield commander …

@torros and I were talking above about the scale of this engagement. On one day, on one field, to do this in say … Flames of War, you’d need well over 1000 vehicle miniatures. tens of thousands of infantry and artillery miniatures, and a 1:100 table 400 feet wide by 500+ feet long.

Definitely one for the records books.

The ironic thing is many histories tend to exaggerate or inflate these numbers, so some people might actually find my numbers conservative.

Skirmish campaigns have a couple of Kursk based scenario books that might be useful

https://www.skirmishcampaigns.com/books.htm

Grossdeutschland features very heavily in the article series, @yavasa , especially Parts 03 and 05. Definitely one of my favorite German divisions to use in wargaming.

Are we sure they were that “infamous” though? Are we getting them conflated with Waffen SS Panzergrenadier divisions like Das Reich, Totenkopf, Wiking, or Leibstandarte?

I have about 120,000 words written into Grossdeutschland in Russia, mostly for a PanzerBlitz campaign I worked up a few years ago, concentrating on Summer 1943-44. So Kursk definitely fits in there, where PGD GD formed the spearhead of XLVIII Panzer Corps. Syrtsevo, Dubrova, Verkopenye, Hill 242, Cherkasskoye, and later at Karachev … they were in it the whole way, on both sides of the salient.

@yavasa – Gotcha. Indeed the Pancevo Incident is a full-blown and indisputable war crime. I had heard of something in the Balkans, but since my research all focuses predominantly on GD Division in Russia, and when it was an actual division (instead of a motorized infantry regiment), this admittedly wasn’t on my radar.

I make the point in the article series that the panzergrenadier Grossdeutschland Division is a pretty good choice for players who are looking for a German unit that both “gets all the best toys” and remained relatively clean of war crimes. Of course, I really have to stress relatively here.

But compared to units like Waffen SS Leibstandarte, Das Reich, Totenkopf, and Wiking (the four best … and worst Waffen SS divisions), PzGr GD Div in Russia is a pretty good choice.

I make the comparison between these divisions in particular because GD, LAH, Das Reich, and TK all fought more or less beside each other with 4th Pz Army on the south face of the Kursk Salient. I wanted to make sure casual history gamers were clear on the difference.

Also, from a gaming perspective, these are the kinds of divisions that tend to have all the best weapons, equipment, and troops that gamers like to use on the table top (Tigers, elite troops, Panthers, integral StG Battalions, etc.). 😀 The problems for more historically-serious gamers is that these divisions TEND to also have the worst records re: war crimes, etc. The best weapons came out later in the war, after all, when only units the NSDAP thought were “politically reliable” got the best gear.

I feel PzGr Division GD is the exception, a relatively “clean” unit, at least compared to others in the same “equipment class.”

I’ve also looked up my old manuscript on “GD” PzGr Division and it’s only 54000 words, so I grossly overestimated my previous count. It was a campaign pack for PanzerBlitz that tried to loosely recreate GD’s battles from July 43-August 44.

I say “loosely” because it also had a “campaign build” element that allowed players to accrue campaign points and eventually upgrade their units as they wished. So although the campaign started out pretty accurate historically, by the end player choice had injected a degree of variance. When I played through it, for example, my II. Battalion / Panzer Regiment Grossdeutschland would eventually have not only companies of PzKpfw IVHs and PzKpfw V Panther Ds, and then As, but also two platoons of StPz IV Brummbär. When players get to pick what units they upgrade with, strict historical accuracy will eventually “wobble off target” a little. 😀

Of course, not all these battles were at Kursk or included with the upcoming article series. 😀

@yavasa – no worries at all, sir. I just relized my statement was a little too overgeneralized – PzGr Div “GD” didn’t come out of that mess with completely clean hands, just cleaner than most other divisions “of their level.”

Casual history buffs, however, often mistake them for a Waffen SS division because they’re such hardened veterans, they’re so well equipped, and they fought in many of the same battles, (Third Khar’Kov, Kursk, etc), and have a “cool name” instead of a number.

And many Waffen SS divisions were actually quite poor (as I’m sure you know), when gamers think “elite, well-equipped Waffen SS) they’re usually thinking of the “fearsome foursome” (1st SS LAH, 2nd SS Das Reich, 3rd SS TK, 5th SS Wiking). Others like 12th SS HJ did pretty well in Normandy, and of course 9th and 10th SS Panzer in Market-Garden. Plenty of others, though (I think were were 36 in all?) were actually pretty poor.

One last thing, this “elite” status for the Waffen SS is more of a mid- and late-war thing. Early on the Wehrmacht Heer actually looked down on them as pretty amateurish, certainly brave and loyal but also very reckless and obtuse in their tactics. This “sharpened up” to a degree as the war progressed (despite horrific casualty rates) because these divisions always got the best training and replacement troops, so tactical experience was passed from veteran to replacement better than in some other German divisions, and over all the division became more “experienced” on average.

Overall, I’m not sure the Waffen SS were ever quite as “elite” as their “mystique” suggests. It’s just this “thing” that wargamers and casual history buffs like to imagine. To a certain extent we have the same thing here in the US with the Confederacy of the ACW.

@yavasa – I think I have one of the books you mention Steel Inferno, 1st SS Panzer Corps in Normandy, Michael Reynolds, (c)1997, Dell/Doubleday Books. I see in his dedication – “To all those who fought with honor in Normandy, many of them deserved better commanders.”

As a former Marine, I can admit the Waffen SS motto: “Meine Ehre heißt Treue” (Loyalty is my Honor) can sound a lot like the US Marine Corps’ “Semper Fidelis” (Always Faithful). Both forces stress extreme physical fitness, select recruit, maintaining its status as an army within an army, accomplishing the mission no matter what, molding recruits into indestructible, utterly fearless men … But no two organizations could be further apart. But are they really?

**Actually yes, the US Marine Corps has a 240-year history blemished with only a handful of much smaller incidents – Son Thang in Vietnam and Haditha in Iraq come to mind – as opposed to tens or even hundreds of thousands of killed by the Waffen SS in less than six years.

But you can see where things get blurry. When you’re in the military, accept a subculture of putting the needs of the unit, service, and state above your own, obedience to orders, and self-sacrifice, to include morality. If they tell you to kill, you kill. You don’t think about it. If you’re thinking about it, you don’t belong there, you’re only going to get yourself or your comrades killed.

That said, the Waffen SS was an all-volunteer force for almost all of its history from what I remember. Every one of those men knew what the Waffen SS was, knew what it represented, and had to fight like hell to be accepted. If they just wanted to “serve their country” they could have joined the regular Army (by the end of the war, you really didn’t have a choice). Unlike the Marine Corps, the Waffen SS had at its core a personal loyalty not to the state, but to Hitler, and to a political party that’s truly one of the most evil organizations history has ever seen.

So I always stop short of giving the Waffen SS the “soldiers doing their job” pass. I can see where veterans might admire them, but one must be very careful with that kind of politics.

Which is why I usually stick to Panzergrenadier Division “Grossdeutschland.” 😀

In more lighthearted news @yavasa … I’m not really following the World Cup in Russia, but everyone at work is and talking about it constantly. Last I heard the Germans are still in it, but had a tough game recently because of overconfidence and inclement weather, up to and including hail?

Why is it whenever the Germans to try win something in Russia, they’re overconfident until the weather turns against them? 😐 😐 😐 😐 😐