PANZERKOMMANDANT 001 Kurt Sametreiter

Kurt Sametreiter's journey through the Second World War, told through his writings and personal photographs. An infantry soldier who rose to become a non-commissioned officer in the tank destroyers and then a panzer officer, Kurt Sametreiter was awarded the Ritterkreuz (Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross) as a member of the SS-Panzergrenadier-Division "Leibstandarte" (LSSAH).

THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF PANZER OFFICER KURT SAMETREITER

The first "photo album" in a new collection tracing the military careers of German tank crewmen during the Second World War through their personal albums and previously unpublished memoirs. In this first volume, you will discover the fate of Kurt Sametreiter, a young Austrian who enlisted at the age of 15, was decorated with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross in 1943, became a Waffen-SS panzer officer, and lived until his death in 2017.

This work recounts the exceptional journey of Kurt Sametreiter, but also that of Heinz Klose, a young man from Danzig who became a non-commissioned officer and was killed in action on the Russian front in 1944. The intertwined destinies of these two young men — Kurt the Austrian and Heinz from north-eastern Germany — who seemed worlds apart, yet whom the war brought together and then tore apart.

Having become friends and brothers-in-arms in the same tank destroyer company of the "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler", Kurt would go on to become Heinz's brother-in-law by marrying his sister Ulla. We follow Kurt Sametreiter and his friend Heinz step by step throughout the war, from the very first days of the conflict with the German intervention in the Danzig region, through the Western Campaigns (France) and the Balkans, the Eastern Front from 1941 to 1944, the Battle of Normandy, and all the way to the very end of the Second World War in Europe.

For all enthusiasts of military history and narrative, and for specialists in German mechanised units of the Second World War.