Panzer Regiment News Today

While France was defeated by German advances in 1940, the Allied nation put up a valiant fight thanks to the formidable Char B1 - a legendary WWII tank.

In five days, three B1s defending the bridges at Rethel knocked out 20 German tanks, nine armored cars and 38 motor vehicles.

For the first time, the Wehrmacht had encountered a tank that completely that outmatched its own.

At least 369 B1 Bis were manufactured by Renault and four additional French companies.

The Wehrmacht encountered a tank that outmatched its own. Heres What You Need to Know: Despite its power, the B1 could not shift the overwhelming tide of events. At five o’clock in the morning on May 16, 1940 a company of the 8th Panzer Regiment lay in an ambush position along a rubble-strewn street of the French town of Stonne. The day before, the unfortunate village had changed hands several times as French troops attempted to stem the tide of German armor headed toward the English channel...

An American Infantry Divisions Baptism of Fire in Nazi Germany In their first combat experience, a handful of American soldiers accomplished its objective and held against powerful German counter-attacks. Heres What You Need to Know: In November 1944, an American infantry division underwent its baptism of fire in the worst conditions imaginable and acquitted itself with honor beyond anyone’s expectation. The final outcome of the campaign, however, was determined by the heroic action of only ...

Hitlers Bodyguards Tried to Take Bastogne—and Failed The division had been ordered to fight through unsuitable terrain, starved of essential supplies, and denied the air support this type of operation demanded. The story of Hitler’s Bodyguard, the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte (LAH), in the battle for Bastogne does not begin until after the siege of that city had been raised by the U.S. 4th Armored Division, part of General George Patton’s Third Army, on December 26, 1944. By then ...

Weeks of heavy fighting produced the first Red Army victory of the war on the Eastern Front. Heres What You Need to Know: Although Yelnya became nothing more than a footnote in the history of the war on the Eastern Front, it showed what a determined Red Army could accomplish. The smell of victory was in the air as the forces of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock’s Army Group Center continued to drive deep into the Ukraine during the final week of June 1941. To most of the young soldiers of the arm...