Balck Major General Hermann Balck

 
'If Manstein was Germany's greatest strategist during World War II, Balck has strong claims to be regarded as our finest field commander. He has a superb grasp of tactics and great qualities of leadership'

Major-General von Mellenthin
Balck was a firm believer in 'saddle-orders', taking his place with whichever of his groups was to make the main effort and visiting the regiments involved several times a day. While operations were in progress, he maintained contact with his staff through a radio link to divisional headquarters, which remained static some miles to the rear. He was also a convinced advocate of the value of night marches. In Panzer Battles: 'For weeks on end the division moved by night and before dawn was at the very spot where the enemy was weakest, waiting to attack him an hour before he was ready to move. Such tactics called for unheard-of efforts, but saved lives, thanks to the Russians having been taken completely by surprise.' 
Commissioned into the Tenth (Hanoverian) Jäger, which Guderian has shortly before also joined, Balck had a distinguished career as a regimental officer in WWI. It was not until WWII, however, that his rise began, and it dated from his remarkable display of leadership in the opening stages of the French campaign. As commander of Schutzenregiment I in the 1st Panzer Division of Guderian's Panzer Group, he established the first German bridgehead across the river Meuse at Sedan. Taking advantage of a heavy air attack on the strongly defended far bank, he raced his men across in storm boats and seized sufficient ground for the divisional bridging train to set up its pontoons for the waiting tanks. 
General Hermann Balck displayed the same brilliance at the tactical and operative levels of war 
that von Manstein did at the strategic
For his success he was promoted to command the Pz Rgt 3 of the 2nd Panzer Division in the invasion of Russia from June 1941 to July 1942, which he handled with flair, particularly during the Russian counter-offensive of December 1941. The hallmark of Balck's battles was an attack directed into the enemy's rear, often while they were making their own attack. On one occasion the twenty-five tanks remaining to the Panzer Regiment destroyed sixty-five Russian tanks without loss to themselves in this manner, the latter being under impression that the Germans were their own second wave. 
In November 1943, Balck's task as defined by Colonel-General Erich Rauss, the commander of the Fourth Panzer Army, was the recapture of Zhitomir and the stabilization of the front west of Kiev. For this he was given the largest concentration of armor available, including the 1st, 7th, 19th and 25th Panzer Divisions, the 1st SS Panzer Division LSSAH and a battlegroup from the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, plus the 68th Infantry Division. Following the German tradition, Balck and von Mellenthin, corps commander and chief of staff of the XLVIII Panzer Corps, respectively, sat down separately to prepare plans and then accepted the best features of both. 

The XLVIII Panzer Corps advanced northwards to Zhitomir, smashing the armored fist through the Soviet line on 15 November, with the LSSAH swinging right to form a protective shoulder. The Russian Third Guards Tank Army mounted counter-attacks east of Zhitomir, and Balck promptly took the decision to entrap the enemy army within a pocket. Throughout the 20th the LSSAH hammered away at the Russians from the west, serving to focus their attention in that direction. Simultaneously, the 1st Panzer Division was driving east along the Zhitomir-Kiev highway, and other divisions covering flanks. With the coming of darkness, many divisions went into leaguer, little realizing that in Balck's world people seldom halted, rested or slept. The enraged corps commander ordered them to complete the encirclement after dusk, and by 24 November the pocket had been eliminated. 

On 15 December, the XLVIII Panzer Corps was directed against more Russian formations which were believed to be on the point of effecting a penetration of the front, and Balck started hammering the enmy from three sites. However the enemy was not intimidated, and when a map was found on the body of a Soviet officer, it became clear that the XLVIII Panzer Corps was tackling no fewer than three tank and four rifle corps which had been assembled. Balck abandoned his attempt at encirclement and went onto the defensive, after having destroyed two Russian armies, mauled a third and captured or destroyed 700 tanks and 668 guns. 
In September 1944 Balck was given command of Army Group G in the West, in succession to Blaskowitz, who was made responsible for the loss of southern France. In France, the Panzerwaffe had been squandered, preventing the establishment of a viable armored reserve with which Balck could attack the long exposed flank of the Allied armies driving towards Belgium and Aachen. His appointment was not welcomed by von Rundstedt, for Balck had no experience of operations against the Western armies. Balck arrived with instructions to renew the offensive against the American Third Army. Von Rundstedt protested against the order for an armored offensive, arguing that the time for a counter-stroke had gone and that the armor should be moved north to the Aachen sector. 

On 25 September the attack was resumed, but then an alarmed Hitler ordered that all armor should be concentrated to stop the British driving for the Ruhr. Already, however, in the attemp to carry out Hitler's original instructions, all panzer reserves had been thrown away in the south, with hundreds of Panthers and PzKpfw IV's destroyed. Amid the general climate of paranoia, Hitler was displeased with Balck's failure, against overwhelming odds, to prevent Patton's advance into Lorraine. He lost command of Army Group G and was reduced in status to army commander, and he finished the war as GeneralOberst der Panzertruppen commanding a mere sub-army, Armeegruppe Balcke, opposite the Russians in Hungary.