German 21st Panzer Division
▶ Explore on the mapThe 21st Panzer Division was the only German armoured division in the Caen sector on 6 June 1944, and it was committed against the British landings east of the Orne on the first day. Its counter-attack reached the coast between the Sword and Juno beaches, the deepest German penetration of D-Day, but it could not reach the sea and was forced back. The division then helped hold the Caen front, absorbing heavy losses in the battles of June and July, and later fought a fighting withdrawal as the Allies pressed south. Much of it was caught in the Falaise pocket in August, and the survivors escaped east in disorder. The positions shown here are schematic and follow the division's area of operations around Caen and towards Falaise. Its D-Day counter-attack was the closest the Germans came to disrupting the landings on the first day. It remained in action on the Western Front until the end of the war.
Sources
- Wikimedia Commons — Charnwood (SVG, by EyeSerene)
- Wikimedia Commons — Operations Greenwood and Pomegranate, Normandy, July 1944 (EN.svg)
- Wikimedia Commons — Operation Tractable (SVG, by EyeSerene)
- Wikipedia — 352nd Infantry Division (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Wikipedia — Falaise pocket (CC BY-SA 4.0)
- Wikipedia — Normandy landings (CC BY-SA 3.0)
- Wikipedia — Operation Overlord (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Related
Reuse this data: open dataset (GeoJSON / CSV, CC BY 4.0)