A detailed account of the III. SS-Panzer-Korps' retreat from Estonia, battles in Courland, Pomerania, and Berlin, featuring rare photos and veteran accounts. Heinrich Himmler regarded the III. (Germanic) SS-Panzer-Korps under SS-Obergruppenführe Felix Steiner as his favourite unit and general in the Waffen-SS. This SS-Panzer-Korps was supposed to ideologically unite SS volunteers from Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, Belgium and Switzerland into a Germanic brotherhood - intended to politically serve Himmler´s plan of a Greater Germanic Empire and the colonization in the East. Battles against the Red Army in the Baltic states, Pomerania and Brandenburg-Berlin 1944 and 1945. Volume 2 deals with the retreat from Estonia in autumn 1944, the violent positional battles in Courland in 1944-45, the frantic fighting in Pomerania, but not last but not least, the desperate battles of defeat in Berlin in 1945. In addition to unique and unpublished photographs, the volume contains a wealth of unique eyewitness accounts from decades of interviews and correspondence with Waffen-SS veterans, detailed summaries of armoured corps operations, short biographies of interesting personalities, facts about German and Soviet weapons and tanks, and lesser-known SS units, such as SS-Panzer-Abteilung 11 "Hermann von Salza" and schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 503. Distinguished WWII-researchers have contributed with essays on key aspects of the Waffen-SS. 479 b/w photos & illustrations, 14 colour maps
