View attachment 20583 Bundesarchiv - C. Chen, Can anyone i.d. the unit on the vehicle's lower left corner, foreground? Ideas about where the unit may be? They do not seemed concerned with strafing or artillery harassment at this moment. Spring is on the way. Snow is not deep. But Kursk is on the way in a few months. Bad to worse.
Looks like 12 Pz, Div.? Don't know what the swords signify. Original caption: " Russia - armored infantry and tanks in driving on snow-covered track, spring 1944, PK 670" http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_101I-090-3913-24,_Russland,_Sch%C3%BCtzenpanzer_und_Panzer_im_Winter.jpg I wondered at Korsun pocket, as there seem to be a few other images of a similar road, and then a further search of Bundersarchiv with 'Korsun' revealed the same image is used by a few Korsun references: Hardly conclusive, and I'm uncertain about the 12th Pz. too, but maybe a start. Good luck!
It's 4 Panzer Division used 43-45 plenty of pics of similar here. https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=4+panzer+division&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=NPotU7ncGcOQ7AbC4YGYBw&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1024&bih=651#imgdii=_ http://www.feldgrau.com/PzDiv.php?ID=4
Thank you, Gentlemen. Great pictures Owen! 4TH Panzer Division Defensive operations on the Eastern Front, 1943–1945__wikipedia In the spring of 1944, the division moved to the area of Kowel in occupied Poland, where it was to support Army Group South during the expected Soviet spring offensive. However, Operation Bagration, (started on 22 June 1944), was aimed at Army Group Centre and the division was forced to withdraw, along with the rest of the German army. Assigned to the XXXIX Panzer Corps under Gen. Karl Decker, the division withdrew to the area of Warsaw, where the Soviets halted their offensive due to the Warsaw Uprising. During the battle of Wołomin, 4th Division even managed to inflict some casualties on the Soviet III Tank Corps.[citation needed] The division was then transported to northern Lithuania, where it was to support Army Group North. It was attached to the 3rd Panzer Army. However, the Soviet advance cut the German army group in two and the division was mostly dispersed. Some of its sub-units were cut off from the rest of German-held territory together with the 16th and 18th Armies in Livonia, where they supported the defence until the end of the war. Other units were attached to smaller, often improvised formations. They were destroyed by the Soviet offensive of April–May 1945.[citation needed] Kowel is Hebrew for the town in Poland that is now Kovel, Ukraine. [SIZE=13.333333969116211px]In [/SIZE]World War II[SIZE=13.333333969116211px], following the Nazi German [/SIZE]invasion of Poland[SIZE=13.333333969116211px] and subsequently, their [/SIZE]Operation Barbarossa[SIZE=13.333333969116211px] the Germans murdered 18,000 Jews in Kovel, mostly during August and September 1942. Later on, in March and April 1944, Kovel was a site of fierce fighting between the [/SIZE]5th SS Panzer Division Wiking[SIZE=13.333333969116211px] and the [/SIZE]Red Army[SIZE=13.333333969116211px].[/SIZE] During the Volhynian Genocide, the town was a shelter for ethnic Poles, escaping the genocide. In that period, Ukrainian nationalists murdered app. 3,700 Polish inhabitants of Kovel county. In early spring of 1944, the 27th Infantry Division of the Home Army operated in the area. Kovel was captured by the Red Army in July 1944. In 1945, at the insistence of Joseph Stalin (following the Tehran Conference of 1943) Poland's borders were redrawn, the Polish population was forcibly resettled and Kovel was incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It has been a part of sovereign Ukraine since 1991.
