“Given Balck’s battlefield achievements, why is his name largely unknown?”

By Stephen Robinson

GERMAN GENERAL Friedrich von Mellenthin had a number of goals when writing Panzer Battles: A Study of the Employment of Armor in the Second World War. In his 1956 best-seller, the former staff officer and divisional commander devoted considerable energy convincing his readers of the Wehrmacht’s unparalleled military excellence. According to Mellenthin, the German army would have likely prevailed had it not been for the unlimited manpower of the Red Army, coupled with the insane orders from the military amateur Adolf Hitler.

In Panzer Battles, Mellenthin also sets out to convince readers that the Wehrmacht was far removed from the Holocaust and the abhorrent world of Third Reich politics. Such themes are, unsurprisingly, found in other bestsellers written by former German generals such as Heinz Guderian’s Panzer Leader (1950) and Erich von Manstein’s Lost Victories (1955). However, these myths are ultimately unconvincing and have been demolished by the work of serious historians. For example, I recommend Why the Germans Lose at War: The Myth of German Military Superiority (1996) by Kenneth Macksey and The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality (2002) by Wolfram Wette.

Panzer Battles also contains another agenda of a more personal nature: Mellenthin went to great lengths to rehabilitate the memory of his former commander, General Hermann Balck. Mellenthin had served as Balck’s chief of staff in the 48th Panzer Corps and 4th Panzer Army on the Eastern Front and later in Army Group G in France.

Historians in the post-war years had few kind words to say about Balck. Hugh Cole in The Lorraine Campaign (1950) described him as “an ardent Nazi” with a “reputation for arrogant and ruthless dealings with his subordinates” who was just “the type of commander certain to win Hitler’s confidence.” Cole concluded that Balck was “an optimist” who was “prone to take too favourable a view of things when the situation failed to warrant optimism.” Chester Wilmot in The Struggle for Europe (1952) similarly declared:

The command [of Army Group G] was given to General Hermann Balck, an experienced tank commander and a notorious optimist with a reputation for ruthless aggression. This appointment was not welcomed by von Rundstedt, for Balck had no experience of operations against the Western Powers. With Hitler, however, this was no doubt a point in his favour.

Wilmot clearly had not done his homework as Balck had earlier fought the western Allies in France in 1940, Greece in 1941 and Italy in 1943.

The charge of being “ruthless” is a likely reference to an incident that occurred during the Lorraine campaign. After Balck discovered one of his divisional artillery commanders drunk in his bunker and unaware of where his batteries were located, he ordered the man summarily executed. In 1948, a civilian court in Stuttgart found that Balck had not acted within the framework of German military justice and sentenced him to three years in prison and he served 18 months.

Although there is no evidence or accusations that Balck participated in the Holocaust, he was also convicted of a war crime.

In November 1944, he ordered the civilian population of Gérardmer, France towards the Allied lines, and in the subsequent fighting, his forces virtually destroyed the town.

In 1950, a French military tribunal tried Balck in absentia with the crime of destroying Gérardmer and sentenced him to 20 years, however, American occupation authorities and the West German government refused to extradite him. On Sept. 19, 1949, a West German Denazification Court cleared Balck.

“These proceedings have found no causal connection between this man and National Socialism,” the ruling declared. As such, the description of him as “an ardent Nazi” does not ring true.

In Panzer Battles, Mellenthin sought to further rehabilitate Balck’s name.

“I regret that in that remarkable work, The Struggle for Europe,” he explained, “Chester Wilmot has followed the estimate of Balck’s qualities given in the American official history, The Lorraine Campaign, where Balck is portrayed as a swashbuckling martinet.” Mellenthin concluded: “If Manstein was Germany’s greatest strategist during World War II, I think Balck has strong claims to be regarded as our finest field commander.”

Given Mellenthin’s personal loyalty and bias towards his former commander, as well as the unreliable nature of Panzer Battles, can we trust the author’s conclusion?

Hermann Balck, born on Dec. 7, 1893, saw extensive action on the Western, Eastern, Italian and Balkan Fronts during the First World War. As a young commander, he displayed a remarkable understanding of his soldiers as human beings. He attributed this quality to his father General William Balck.

“I grew up and was educated as a soldier,” he would later recall. “But I also learned something else from my father, something even more significant — a deep sense and understanding for the lowest ranking troops and the mistakes of our social class.”

Balck stayed with the army during the Versailles years and twice turned down the opportunity to become a General Staff officer preferring to remain a field officer. Intellectually curious, a self-motivated learner and a lover of all things classical, Balck’s passion was exploring the great cities of Europe and admiring their historical treasures and cultural life. He also possessed a deep appreciation of antiquity and read his copy of Homer during the Greek campaign. Later in Italy in 1943, he modified his artillery plan to ensure that the Greek temples at Paestum remained outside the bombardment zone.

After the outbreak of World War II, Balck commanded the 1st Motorized Rifle Regiment during the French campaign and personally led his troops from the front. After his unit crossed the Meuse River, he orchestrated the decisive breakthrough at Sedan, which allowed Guderian’s panzers to surround the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk.

Despite this victory, Balck analyzed German tactical shortcomings and theorized a new way in which infantry and tanks would cooperate in kampfgruppen (battlegroups), revolutionizing the way panzer divisions fought.

During the Greek campaign, Balck commanded the 3rd Panzer Regiment and put his kampfgruppe ideas into practice while again leading his soldiers from the front. Despite operating in unfavorable mountainous terrain, the panzers of Kampfgruppe Balck defeated Allied troops at Platamon Ridge on the Aegean coast and at Tempe Gorge, opening the road to Athens.

Balck’s command of the 11th Panzer Division during the Chir River battles, a series of desperate winter engagements fought in southern Russia during the Stalingrad campaign, firmly established his place in history as a master of armored warfare.

On Dec. 8, 1942, he annihilated the Soviet 1st Tank Corps at Sovchos 79, destroying 53 Red Army tanks. One week later, with only 21 operational panzers, Balck attacked the Soviet bridgehead at Nizhna Kalinovski and destroyed 65 Russian tanks.

In September 1943, Balck commanded the 14th Panzer Corps in Italy, opposing the Allied landing at Salerno. He later returned to the Eastern Front to command the 48th Panzer Corps where he launched an unsuccessful attempt to recapture Kiev. Balck briefly commanded the 4th Panzer Army in August 1944 before commanding Army Group G in France the following month where he delayed the American 3rd Army, commanded by General George S. Patton, in Lorraine before the Battle of the Bulge. Balck returned to the Eastern Front to command the German 6th Army in Hungary until the end of the war. He surrendered to American forces in Austria in May 1945.

Balck distinguished himself with his forward presence on the battlefield, trusting his subordinates to keep everything under control at his headquarters. By giving up centralized control, Balck gained control of what was really important – fleeting opportunities at the front which he exploited to maximum effect:

I commanded from the front by radio and could thus always be at the most critical point of action. I would transmit my commands to the Chief of Staff, and then it was up to him to make sure that they were passed on to the right units and that the right actions were taken. The result was to give us a fantastic superiority over the divisions facing us.

Mellenthin appreciated the wisdom of Balck’s approach:

General Balck and myself were very close. When he went to the front lines I stayed behind and kept all things under control while he was at the Schwerpunkt [focal point], or vice versa. I myself, every second or third day, went to the front. General Balck then sat at the desk at Corps or Army Headquarters. . . I had complete freedom when he was away — to make my own decisions.

Given Balck’s battlefield achievements, why is his name largely unknown? In fact, he contributed to his own obscurity by avoiding the spotlight after the war. While a prisoner in American custody, he refused to participate in research conducted by the United States Army’s Historical Division, unlike many former German generals who used this opportunity to inflate their reputations. After being released in 1947, Balck made no effort to publicize his past deeds and remained silent when other German veterans wrote their memoirs and only emerged from obscurity thanks to the persuasive efforts of Mellenthin. As it turned out, his reappearance attracted interest from some unexpected quarters.

Following America’s defeat in Vietnam, reformers in the United States Army sought to refocus on the service’s traditional Cold War role of defending NATO against a feared Soviet invasion of Western Europe. However, in doing so it faced the dilemma of how to fight the Red Army and win despite being vastly outnumbered. Balck had the perfect credentials to help solve this problem.

Both Balck and Mellenthin travelled to America during the late 1970s and early 1980s as military consultants where they participated in symposiums, conferences and wargames. The Americans were awestruck by Balck’s first-hand accounts of his Eastern Front battles. In fact, General William E. DePuy, commander of Training and Doctrine Command, considered him to be “the best division commander in the German Army.”

Balck’s advice strongly shaped the AirLand Battle doctrine, which forms the basis of western military thinking to this day. As Balck’s cult status in the American military grew, the Army’s Staff College taught its students that his command of the 11th Panzer Division during the Chir River battles constituted the epitome of military excellence.

Balck recorded his thoughts in a journal between 1914 and 1945, which formed the basis of his long overdue memoir Ordnung im Chaos (1981). An English version only recently appeared in 2015. Balck in his memoir, unlike Guderian, Manstein and Mellenthin, took responsibility for mistakes: “We lost Stalingrad, Africa, and the Caucasus campaign because these campaigns were conducted beyond secured supply lines, and when this error became apparent, we did not abort in time.”

He acknowledged that the Red Army counter-offensive during the winter of 1942–43 “was well planned, well prepared, and brilliantly executed.” He also added, “I also underestimated the Russians considerably.” Balck’s honesty makes Order in Chaos a far more valuable resource for historians than the earlier accounts written by his contemporaries.

Although Panzer Battles has not stood the test of time and contains many historical problems, in retrospect Mellenthin’s account of his former commander Hermann Balck is perhaps the troubled book’s most important enduring legacy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Stephen Robinson is the author of Panzer Commander Hermann Balck: Germany’s Master Tactician. He also wrote False Flags: Disguised German Raiders of World War II. He studied Asian history and politics at the University of Western Sydney, graduating with First Class Honours. He has worked at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs researching British atomic weapons tests and as a policy officer in the Department of Defence. Robinson is an officer in the Australian Army Reserve and has served as an instructor at the Royal Military College. He also graduated from Australian Command and Staff College.