BREAK THROUGH! - The 2nd Panzer Division in the Falaise-Chambois Pocket, 13–23 August 1944

After fighting since 12 June 1944 to hold Caumont-l'Éventé against the 1st US Infantry Division, the 2.Panzer-Division, 16,700 men strong, lost 12% of its strength in June as its units arrived piecemeal. While it fared reasonably well in July, the same cannot be said of the Mortain offensive, where it suffered severe losses.

By 11 August, it was left with the equivalent of just one armoured company out of eight, and 50% of its infantry. Exhausted and starving, the men had no time to recover from these engagements before they were already required to move and oppose the troops of the XVth US Army Corps, which had just seized Alençon. With no time to reorganise, the units of the 2.Pz.-Div. arrived at Carrouges only to be engaged by a fresh, motivated and superbly armed enemy formation: General Leclerc's 2e DB.

Then the inevitable happened. The Allies closed in dangerously, forming a pocket of 25 km² into which the remnants of the 7. Armee and Panzergruppe Eberbach — to which the 2.Pz.-Div. was subordinated — were rapidly trapped. It was the German rout, every man for himself, utter chaos. Yet the officers of the 2.Pz.-Div. refused to admit defeat. As best they could, they rallied the survivors of their division in an attempt to escape the inferno.

The only order of the day was then: "Break through!"

Eight years spent alongside the veterans of the 2.Pz.-Div. allowed Didier Lodieu to gather a large number of accounts and photographs covering this period of the division's commitment. No book has ever brought together so many testimonies on the Falaise Pocket from a single unit. True to accuracy, he entrusted his writings to the directorate of the Montormel Memorial, which undertook to locate the veterans' accounts geographically and to contribute its own knowledge of the operational theatre.