History
The corps was originally formed on 15 December 1940 in Germany as the XLVIII Motorized Corps (XLVIII.Armeekorps (mot)). At the dawn of Operation Barbarossa, on 22 June 1941, it was officially redesignated as the XLVII Panzer Corps. However, the corps seems to have used both names until June–July 1942.
XLVIII Panzer Corps was attached to Field Marshal Ewald von Kleist's Panzer Group 1, a part of Army Group South. The corps was involved in the armored battles near Dubno early in the campaign, and later saw action at Berdichev and Kirovograd.
From late 1941 to May 1942, the corps took part in defensive operations in the Kursk area. Thereafter the corps joined the Fall Blau offensive towards Stalingrad under Army Group South. During the Battle of Stalingrad the corps was trapped and its major units, 22nd Panzer Division and 1st Armoured Division (Romania), were annihilated. However, it was quickly reformed and used by Field Marshal Erich von Manstein's Operation Winter Storm efforts to relieve General Friedrich Paulus' trapped Sixth Army still in Stalingrad.
In February 1943, the XLVIII Panzer Corps took part in the battles around Kharkov, and in June it was committed to the southern flank of the Battle of Kursk as part of Hoth's Fourth Panzer Army.
After the failure of Operation Citadel the corps took part in the fighting withdrawal from the Ukraine. By February 1945, the corps found itself in Silesia, and it ended the war defending the Elbe River, where it finally surrendered in May 1945.
Read more about this topic: XLVIII Panzer Corps (Germany)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“When the coherence of the parts of a stone, or even that composition of parts which renders it extended; when these familiar objects, I say, are so inexplicable, and contain circumstances so repugnant and contradictory; with what assurance can we decide concerning the origin of worlds, or trace their history from eternity to eternity?”
—David Hume (1711–1776)