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Wittmann at Villers Bocage While other Tigers of his command struck northwest and decimated the tanks and half-tracks of the Sharpshooters and Rifle Brigade parked along the road towards point 213 and Caen, Haupsturmfuhrer Michel Wittmann attacked on his own to the southeast, driving his panzer into the village of Villers Bocage.

Panzer

In the 1920s German officers such as Heinz Guderian and Erwin Rommel realized that the weapon their enemies had already produced—the tank—could make their mission-oriented tactics work. Shock troops on treads would not get tired. They could go much farther, and their mobile cannon and machine guns could wreak far more havoc in the enemy rear. Instead of tying the tank to the infantry, as the British, French, and American armies continued to do, the Germans created the panzer division, in which the tank was the central weapon, with motorized infantry and artillery in supporting roles. The best tanks in the world: the Panzer Mk III and Mk IVs, executed devastating blitzkriegs. The result of these “blitzkrieg” tactics was a series of stunning victories in the first years of World War II that made Adolf Hitler the master of Europe. Panzerwagenlied #8 / Panzer Song

The German Panzer Mk IVs had a maximum of 80 millimeters of armor, and the first Tigers had 100 (the Tiger II, 150) and mounted the famously excellent 88-millimeter gun. By one (American) calculation, killing a Panzer was worth losing four Shermans; a Tiger II, eight. In North Africa we were not up to the task of fighting duels with the Panzers and Tigers, especially when the latter were employed in defense, as mobile pillboxes. While the Shermans did badly in one-in-one tank duels against the German tanks, Shermans did not generally fight one-on-one. They often fought five-on-one, and they won.

Air power and artillery also helped win tank battles. Wittman, for instance, perhaps the greatest German tank warrior of the war—with 119 victories on the Russian front alone—was killed in a carpet-bombing attack in August 1944. After the war the commander of the 116th Panzer Division told Allied interrogators that his tanks were on their way to making a serious penetration of the Normandy beachhead when they were mauled by overwhelming air and artillery bombardments. Similar commerits are common in German army reports throughout 1944 and 1945. A despairing Erwin Rommel summed up the German plight in a December 1943 message to Hitler: “British and American superiority in the air alone has again and again been so effective that all movement of major formations has been rendered completely impossible.”

German troops push and pull a motorcycle and its sidecar thrught a quagmire.

Thousands Rode To War On Two Wheels

After September 1, 1939, and Germany's invasion of Poland, a trickle of so-called "death cards" began appearing in homes across the Third Reich. Each of the 2- by-4.5-inch paper rectangles bore the image of a soldier killed in action and was posted to friends and relatives by the deceased's family. The trickle increased in 1940 as the blitzkrieg swept through France. It became a torrent after June 22, 1941, and Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany's doomed effort to conquer the Soviet Union. One such death card was issued in the name of Josef Hamperl, the resident of Kolenzdorf having fallen on August 23, 1944, in the south of France two days after U.S. forces had reached the Seine River north and south of Paris as the Allies pushed toward the borders of Germany. The grenadier was 19. He was also a motorcyclist, his military life spent, literally, on two wheels. His death card photo shows him wearing his riding goggles, the young soldier one of thousands who rode to war on two or three wheels.

Motorcycles have been going to war for as long as motorcycles have been around: American Harley-Davidson and Indian; British Triumph, BSA Matchless, and Norton; Italian Motor Guzzi and Gilera; French Terot and Gnome Rhone; Belgian FN and Gillet. More manufacturers were producing them by World War II. If you had a war to go to, motorcycles would get you there, often faster and through terrain inaccessible to other vehicles.

The German military was the largest employer of motorcycles during World War II. In addition, as German forces swept across conquered lands they acquired a wide array of British, French, and Belgian machines, painted them Wehrmacht gray, and sent them into battle. German military motorcyclists played an important role either as solo couriers or as scouts, as teams of tank hunters, or in divisions of rifle troops.

What did the German soldiers think of their warhorses? One rider of a motorcycle manufactured by NSU wrote back to the company the following words of praise, often echoed by his comrades. "On September 21, it has been five years since I bought it new at your Stuttgart branch, where I worked as a mechanic since August 1939. Since the end of August, I have been in Wehrmacht service with the motorcycle, which I myself have always driven since then. During the four years of my private driving, the machine always functioned to my complete satisfaction, as it has now, since I have been drafted. In this year I have driven it 20,000 km, at first in the Polish campaign, then during service in the operational area of the western front and on duty in France. During the campaign in France I drove about 7,000 km.... If possible, I want to buy back the machine after the end of the war we have been compelled to wage." This letter was penned in the early part of the war when Germany seemed invincible. There is no word if the satisfied customer was ever able to claim his beloved motorcycle.

During the campaigns that spread across Europe and into the Soviet Union, motorcycle troopers served a variety of functions including chauffeuring officers, delivering dispatches and even hot meals, and scouting on patrol. Motorcycles also were point vehicles taking the brunt of battle, sometimes as specially equipped tank destroyers. As with all motorcyclists, there was a kinship among these soldiers who called themselves kradfahrer. They rode exposed without the armor plating of the Panzers, without the safety of hundreds of foot soldiers beside them - moving targets, as it were, or sniper magnets. And then there were minefields, artillery fire, and strafing aircraft to contend with.

The other enemy was inclement weather, particularly on the Eastern Front. By autumn, the roads had turned into nearly impassable bogs, the fields over which the motorcycles traveled turning into seas of mud three feet deep at times. Pack horses sank to their bellies, boots were sucked off the soldiers' feet. Motorized forces that had once traveled over 70 miles in a day now were lucky to make 10. By winter temperatures fell to minus 40 degrees Farenheit, engine oil and exposed soldiers freezing solid. Some 113,000 cases of frostbite were reported. Some German motorcycle riders benefited from special heating systems grafted onto their bikes, including foot and hand warmers. They, along with the foot soldiers, ate horse meat provided by over 100,000 animals that died in the freezing cold. But the two-wheeled iron horses pushed on.

At war's end, many if not most of the German motorcycles, along with their riders, did not return home. The Germans' lightning war required machines of high caliber in more ways than one. Although horses and even bicycles carried battalions of combatants, as did trucks and tracked vehicles, motorcycles led the way. These were often purpose-made BMW and Zundapp military bikes, as well as civilian models made by NSU and DKW and a host of other manufacturers, that "served" either by contract or requisition.

For heavy-duty sidecar use, the German military relied upon the Zundapp KS750 and the BMW R75, both motorcycle manufacturers producing their own sidecars although those built by Stoye, Royal, and Steib were also employed. Next in line were the motorcycles manufactured by DKW and NSU. Non-German motorcycles, bought under license, included the Triumph, with more than 12,000 250cc units built in Nuremburg, which was also home to Steib sidecars of the era, and later the site of the war crimes trials.

By 1938, some 200,000 motorcycles were produced annually in Germany and the adjacent areas it had annexed. The principal manufacturers were BMW, DKW, NSU, Triumph (under German license), Victoria, and Zundapp. The BMW motorcycle, first launched in 1923, had broken the motorcycle speed record with a supercharged 750 in 1937, reaching 173.68 miles per hour. In June 1939, three months before to the start of World War II, German rider George Meier won the famous British Isle of Man TT, the first for a foreign rider on a foreign bike. In addition to the vaunted 750cc R75, BMW also supplied the military more than 36,000 side valve R12 motorcycles. The Wehrmacht used the following BMW models: R4, R12, R23, R35, and R75.

Also known as the "Type Russia," the R75 sidecar was literally unstoppable until it encountered the snowdrifts outside Stalingrad. Designed between 1939-1941, the tank-tough R75, with its crankshaft-driven sidecar, proved itself to be a major success, boasting 52 miles to the U.S. gallon, a range of 225 miles, and a carrying capacity of over 1,000 pounds, about equal to its own 929-pound weight. Specifications included a 745cc air-cooled four-stroke overhead valve twin-cylinder engine. An 8speed transmission had two reverse gears as well. Top speed was a reported 60 miles per hour. The shaft final drive featured a split-tongue differential, two thirds going to the bike, one third to the sidecar. But R75 arrived too late in the war and in too small numbers (16,500) to affect the final outcome; its factory in Eisenach was destroyed in 1944 by Allied bombing.

Established in Zschopau, near the city of Chemnitz in 1919 by a Danish entrepreneur, DKW became the largest brand not only in the German Reich, but in the world. In 1932 the company merged with Auto Union, composed of DKW Audi, Horch, and Wanderer. Postwar DKW later became MZ, then more recently Hercules while retaining the DKW name because of its reputation. German military models included the RT125 and NZ350.

The marque of this manufacturer was derived from the city in which its motorcycles were made, Neckarsulm, and thus the letters NSU. Initially, in 1873, the company produced knitting machines, then moved on to bicycles and automobiles as well as V-twin motorcycles. NSU built prototypes that eventually appeared as the Volkswagen, Hitler's "people's car." German military models included the Pony 100, 201 ZDB, 251 OSL, 351 OSL, 501 OSL, 601 OSL, 501 TS, and 601 TS.

Victoria started out as bicycle maker in 1886, introducing its first motorcycle in 1899. The Nuremberg facility later added an engine factory in Munich, the engine designed by an ex-BMW engineer. In 1926, the Victoria supercharged racer broke the speed record with 104 miles per hour. In the 1930s, the company began producing two- and four-stroke machines from 98cc to 248cc. German military units included the KR 35 WH and K 6.

Established in 1917 to make fuses for artillery guns during World War I, Zundapp began building high-quality bikes in 1919, both two- and four-strokes. By 1933 the company had produced 100,000 motorcycles. Between 1938-1941, more than 18,000 Zundapp 600cc KS W sidecar rigs were built for German military use. The best known Zundapp was the KS 750 flat twin-built exclusively for the Army. German military models included the DB 200, K 5OOW, KS 600 W, K 800 W, and KS 750. The KS 750 went into production in 1940 with approximately 18,695 units built. Its weight was 920 pounds with a top speed of about 60 miles per hour. It was frequently equipped with an MG-34 machine gun attached to the sidecar.

Even America's legendary Harley-Davidson Motor Co., at the behest of the U.S. military, produced a copy of the Wehrmacht's vaunted BMW motorcycle. Known as the XA model, it featured the BMW signature flat twin engine with shaft drive. The U.S. Army ordered 1,000 of the XA's at $870 each; however, it dropped the order in favor of the less complicated and less expensive overhead valve Harley-Davidson WLA, of which some 88,000 were ultimately built. A prototype sidecar design, also using the German "boxer" engine design and shaft-driven sidecar wheel, faded from the planning stages with the advent of the all-conquering jeep.

G. Paul Garson. The German Army employed a number of motorcycles during the fighting on two European fronts. WWII History. January 2007.

Desert Panzer II1/30 Model This amazingly detailed, hand painted, 1/30 scale polystone model of a Deutsches Afrika Korps Panzer II tank features realistic weathering; authentic markings with an aerial recognition flag; a metal German tank commander and three metal Italian "Blackshirt" infantrymen with realistic weapons; and more.

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