SS and 71st*

Today I will write about the 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen, a topic suggested to me by a random blog topic generator. As it turns out, my young father crossed paths with these 9th SS Panzers Hohenstaufen when that command surrendered near Steyr, Austria in May of '45. Dad was with the 71st Infantry, the "farthest east" US division, which reached Steyr at the same time as units of the Russian Red Army advancing from the east.

The 9th SS Panzers was moved around a lot during the short history of its active role in combat. They first saw action in Poland in the spring of '44, but were quickly moved to Normandy and from there took part in the general retreat inland which occupied most of the next year.

The pictures from my dad's wartime divisional chronicle don't show the Panzers, but they do show American and Russian troops meeting up and eating together, along with the obligatory group portrait of the high generals on the scene, Inset at the bottom of the page is a destroyed German #88 anti-aircraft gun near Steyr.

History from the troop's eye level -- that certainly gives a different kind of view. At the troop's eye level you see the individual nuts and bolts on the machines that drive modern war along, Nowadays, killing mechanisms are more dependent on electronics and less mechanical than in the past, still nothing has changed much since gunpowder came along.

Klick on pic to make it big, then klick again for actual size.

*Clinger, Johnson, Mazel, and Nichols, The History of the 71st Infantry Division (1946, Augsburg, Bavaria: 71st Infantry Division (self-Published).

Manuel Delorez
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