German Ground Forces of World War II

German Ground Forces of World War II offers the first comprehensive order of battle for German ground troops throughout the Second World War, from the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, to the destruction of the last remnants of Germany’s Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in Berlin in 1945. Unlike similar works, these orders of battle are dynamic, and so account for the continuously changing character of Germany’s ground forces at war.

This massive new reference work by McCroden and Nutter, broken up in sections including Theater Commands, Army Groups, Armies, and Corps Commands, presents a detailed analysis of each corresponding order of battle for every German field formation above division. Additional new ground is broken by also describing the orders of battle of the myriad German and Axis satellite formations assigned to security commands throughout occupied Europe and the combat zones, as well as those attached to fortress commands and to the commanders of German occupation forces in Eastern and Western Europe. An accompanying narrative describes the career of each field formation and includes the background and experience of many of their most famous commanding officers.

For the first time, readers can follow the career of every German division, corps, army, and army group as the German armed forces shifted units to and from theaters of war, from the period of triumphant successes to the years of grinding defensive warfare and eventual defeat.

William T. McCroden is a native of suburban Cleveland, Ohio. He has also lived in Michigan, Florida, and Oregon, served in the U.S. Coast Guard during the Vietnam War era, has an associate’s degree, and worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs. William spent decades researching the orders of battle of the German ground forces (including those of the Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and Waffen SS) in the Second World War. He is married to the former Marsha Prouty and lives in Fairview Park, Ohio.

Thomas E. Nutter is retired after practicing intellectual property law for more than thirty years. In addition to his Juris Doctorate, he holds master’s and doctorate degrees in military history. He devotes most of his time to researching and writing about the German armed forces. He lives in Atlanta with his wife Shawn.

David M. Glantz is an American military historian and the editor of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. Glantz holds degrees in history from the Virginia Military Institute and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Defense Language Institute, Institute for Russian and Eastern European Studies, and U.S. Army War College.

He began his military career in 1963 as a field artillery officer from 1965 to 1969 and served in various assignments in the United States and Vietnam during the Vietnam War with the II Field Force Fire Support Coordination Element (FSCE) at the Plantation in Long Binh.

After teaching history at the United States Military Academy from 1969 through 1973, he completed the army’s Soviet foreign area specialist program and became chief of Estimates in US Army Europe’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence. Upon his return to the United States in 1979, he became chief of research at the Army’s newly formed Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and then Director of Soviet Army Operations at the Center for Land Warfare, U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

While at the College, Col. Glantz was instrumental in conducting the annual "Art of War" symposia which produced the best analysis of the conduct of operations on the Eastern Front during the Second World War in English to date. The symposia included attendance of several former German participants in the operations and resulted in publication of the seminal transcripts of proceedings.

Returning to Fort Leavenworth in 1986, he helped found and later directed the U.S. Army’s Soviet (later Foreign) Military Studies Office (FMSO), where he remained until his retirement in 1993 with the rank of Colonel. In 1993 he established The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, a scholarly journal for which he still serves as chief editor, that covers military affairs in the states of Central and Eastern Europe as well as the former Soviet Union.

In recognition of his work, he has received several awards, including the Society of Military History’s prestigious Samuel Eliot Morrison Prize for his contributions to the study of military history. Glantz is regarded by many as one of the best western military historians of the Soviet role in World War II. He lives with his wife Mary Ann Glantz in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.