534158 - THE REAPER'S HARVESTING SUMMER 12.SS-Panzer Division 'Hitlerjugend' In Normandy

By Angelos N Mansolas

A detailed combat history of the elite 12-SS Panzer Division during the Normandy campaign from June to early September 1944.

Established in 1943, the 12th SS-Panzer Division was designed to become an elite unit formed by ‘…a generation of future soldiers, tough as leather and hard as Krupp steel’ and commanded by a nucleus of hardened SS officers and NCOs.

This is the detailed history of the division from its formation all through the Normandy campaign where it received its baptism of fire. Although employed in the field for the first time, those young soldiers fought with a tenacity and ferocity unexcelled by any other unit Allied or German deployed on the invasion front, defending doggedly every single yard of ground from Caen to Falaise, a distance of just 25 miles, over which the Canadians and British fought, paying a high price in blood.