PANZER OFFICER – From Russia to Normandy

Friday, 1 September 1939: the young Richard von Rosen, aged seventeen, learns that Germany has entered the war. He volunteers in October 1940 and joins the Panzer-Ersatz-Abteilung 35, where he undergoes rigorous training in France, in the Bordeaux region, in preparation for becoming an officer.

In late April 1941, still very young, he held the rank of Fahnenjunker (officer cadet); then came Operation Barbarossa on 22 June. He served as a gunner in a Panzer III, fighting in the USSR with the 4.Panzer-Division within Army Group Centre. He took part in the hard-fought battle for the bridge at Stary Bychow and was seriously wounded shortly afterwards.

After this first phase of his military experience on the Eastern Front and his subsequent convalescence, he is transferred to the schwere Panzer-Abteilung 503. From January 1943 he serves as a tank commander on a Panzer VI "Tiger", fighting initially in the Kalmyk Steppe before, as a Leutnant and platoon commander in the 3rd company, taking part in Operation Zitadelle, the greatest tank battle in history.

His battalion was sent to Normandy after the D-Day landings, where it endured the full weight of Allied bombing during Goodwood. Partly re-equipped at Sennelager with the powerful Tiger II, Baron von Rosen took command of a company of these formidable Königstiger — a famous photo report immortalised this change of command.

In 1945 he suffered his fifth wound, bringing his war to an end.

Very different from Tiger-Abteilung 503, the historical work published in 2013 by Éditions Heimdal, this is a text written in 2012 by Richard von Rosen — a highly interesting autobiography, illustrated with 450 photographs and documents, largely unpublished, by an officer who did his duty with nothing to reproach himself for, yet who was deeply marked by the consequences of war.

After the war he joined the Bundeswehr, serving as Chief of Staff of Allied Forces at Fontainebleau (1964–1966), Kommandeur of Panzer-Bataillon 294 (1966–1970), of Panzer-Brigade 21 (1972–1976), Military Attaché at the German Embassy in Paris (1976–1980), and German liaison officer with the French Forces in Germany. He became a close friend of Colonel Aubry, founder of the Musée des Blindés in Saumur, and retired in 1982 with the rank of Generalmajor.

An exceptional figure, a friend of France, he shares his remarkable experience as a panzer commander and company commander of Tiger IIs. The photographic documents allow us to follow him step by step through four and a half years of combat.