SS Division Frundsberg

10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg
Insignia of 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg
Active	2 January 1943 – 8 May 1945
Country	Nazi Germany
Branch	Waffen-SS
Type	Panzer
Role	Armoured warfare
Size	Division
Engagements	Operation Epsom Operation Market Garden Operation Nordwind Halbe Pocket
Decorations	reference in the Wehrmachtbericht

The 10th SS Panzer Division Frundsberg or 10.SS-Panzer-Division Frundsberg was a German Waffen SS panzer division. The division was formed at the beginning of 1943 as a reserve for the expected Allied invasion of France. However, their first campaign was in Ukraine in April 1944. Afterwards, the unit was then transferred to the west, where it fought the Allies in France and at Arnhem. The division was moved to Pomerania, then fought south east of Berlin in the Lausitz area until the end of the war.

The division received the honor title Frundsberg, which referred to the 16th Century German commander Georg von Frundsberg. The division was mainly formed from conscripts. On the night of March 29/30, 1944, a force of 105 heavy bombers of RAF Bomber Command staged an attack on the rail junction at Vaires, where 13 troop trains carrying elements of the division happened to be located while moving to the Russian front. Members of the French Resistance among the railway workers, who knew of the coming raid, arranged it so that a train carrying naval mines was placed among the troop trains. The mines were detonated by the bombing, and by six days later 1,200 SS men had been identified as fatal casualties, with many more injured. It first saw action at Tarnopol in April 1944 and later took part in the relief of the German troops cut off in the Kamenets-Podolsky pocket.

It was then sent to Normandy to counter the Allied landings, where, along with the SS Division Hohenstaufen, it took part in fighting against the Allied Operation Epsom. The division suffered heavy casualties and retreated into Belgium before being sent to rest and be reconstituted near Arnhem, where it soon had to fight the Allied parachute assault during Operation Market Garden at Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, when together with the 9th SS Panzer division it constituted the II SS Panzer Corps. After rebuilding, it fought in the Alsace in January 1945. It was then sent to the Eastern Front, where it fought against the Red Army in Pomerania and then Saxony. Encircled at the Halbe Pocket, the division had many losses but managed to break out of the encirclement and retreat through Moritzburg, before reaching the area of Teplice in Czechoslovakia, where the division surrendered to the US Army at the end of the war.