BAYERLEIN: AFTER ACTION REPORTS OF PANZER LEHR COMMANDER

Generalleutnant Fritz Bayerlein, commander of the Panzer Lehr Division, wrote twenty manuscripts while interned as a US prisoner-of-war from April 1945 until his release from captivity two years later. The entire series of manuscripts, commonly referred to as "Foreign Military Studies", was prepared post-war by hundreds of senior German officers at the direction of the US Army's Historical Division. Bayerlein co-operated whole-heartedly and honestly with the US Army, telling his own version of events as they unfolded, starting with the creation of the famous Panzer Lehr Division. Bayerlein recounts his experiences through the horrors of D-Day, his retreat to the Rhine, the failed Ardennes Offensive, and on to his final days of fighting with his LIII Armeekorps in the Ruhr Pocket. All of General Bayerlein's manuscripts are presented here, compiled into a chronological narrative of his experiences with his Panzer Lehr Division from the Allied invasion of Normandy to his surrender of the LIII Armeekorps in the Ruhr Pocket in the last days of World War II. Bayerlein also wrote several comparisons of his Panzers - Tigers and Panthers - with other armoured vehicles, including Russian and American armour. This in-depth analysis, long hidden in boxes in the National Archives and Records Administration, is presented. Includes thirty black and white photographs from the Bayerlein family private collection and previously unpublished, as well as thirty maps hand-drawn by Bayerlein while a prisoner-of-war..