524148 - BRANDENBURG: Die Panther-Abteilung-Brandenburg 1945 und ihre Vorgeschichte als I Abt Pz Rgt 26

By Wolfgang Ockert and Axel Urbanke

The story of the “Brandenburg” Panther Battalion and its prior history as I Battalion of Panzer-Regiment 26 played out against the background of the everywhere collapsing fronts of the final year and a half of the war. The reader takes part in the fighting withdrawals in the vast steppe landscapes of southern Russia and Rumania and the battles on the East Prussian border and in the Baltic States. He is encircled with the battalion in the Memel bridgehead in East Prussia in late 1944 and experiences the relief attempt towards Budapest in late 1944 - early 1945. Finally, in February 1945, follows the transfer of the renamed battalion to the Oder Front near Küstrin, where the Panthers were one of the last panzer battalions opposing the Russian drive on Berlin. The descriptions involve the reader, not only in the battalion’s actions, but as well in the overall events at the Oder in the final weeks of the war. He directly experiences the collapse of the entire Oder front, the retreat and destruction in the Halbe Pocket. The descriptions are so vivid and powerful that one cannot escape the drama of the events. Whoever wants to understand what happened back then can take a journey through time with this book.

Based on ten years of research, this is a book that rises above the many other books about panzer units and the final months of the war. More than 200 action photographs from every front, almost all of them previously unseen, and 27 color maps supplement the text.

This is a unique documentation which, once again, took advantage of the opportunity to allow the last eyewitnesses to speak.