Panzer Group West

▣ Unit · 1944 – 1944

Panzer Group West was the German headquarters controlling the armoured divisions in Normandy, commanded by General Leo Geyr von Schweppenburg. Its role was to mass the panzer formations for a concentrated counter-attack against the landings, but the Allied air campaign and the slowness of German decision-making prevented that from happening. On 10 June 1944 its headquarters at La Caine was struck by an Allied air raid that killed much of its staff and destroyed its communications, gravely disrupting German armoured command. Reorganised and later renamed Fifth Panzer Army, it directed the armoured fighting through July and the retreat in August. The position shown here is a schematic headquarters-area location following the German armoured front in the Caen sector. Its disruption by the La Caine raid is often cited as a turning point in the German armoured response to the landings. It remained the principal German armoured headquarters in Normandy until the retreat to the Seine.

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

• Normandy landings

Reuse this data: open dataset (GeoJSON / CSV, CC BY 4.0)