The defence offered by the German Panzer Grenadier Division Brandenburg to the Soviet assault gives some idea of the type of fighting at the battle of the Seelow Heights. The Brandenburgers were originally a special forces unit that increased to a divisional-sized panzergrenadier division and worked in conjunction with the Grossdeutschland Division. As special forces, the Brandenburgers adapted to the life of a panzergrenadier and became one of Germany’s premier fighting units. In the last days of the war on the Eastern Front, the Brandenburg panzergrenadiers were quickly involved in ferocious fighting as they attempted to stem the Russian onrush. These were the last days of the
Reich, but this only stiffened the German defenders’ resolve. The Russians soon had their armour across the Oder and Neisse rivers, but in the town of Kaltwasser the Brandenburgers made a stand. As at Stalingrad, tanks were at a disadvantage in urban warfare, and using Panzerfausts the Germans quickly knocked out a number of the T-34s. In towns like Kaltwasser the panzergrenadiers fought vigorous rearguard actions with little armoured support. Tank-busting teams of panzergrenadiers used Panzerfausts and explosive charges to take on the T-34s and JS tanks at close range. The T-34s were accompanied in built-up areas by teams of Russian infantry, so the German infantry had to contend with holding off the infantry while grenadier squads moved in to lay hollow explosive charges that could disable the Russian armour. Frequently, the only weapon available was the ‘Molotov cocktail’ petrol bomb that could set a T-34 ablaze with a good shot. In the end, however, the panzergrenadiers were outnumbered and they fell back to fight a last desperate defence of the German capital.
World History
