The 12th SS, Volume One

Real Battles. Real Soldiers. Real Stories.

Recruited from the ranks of the Hitler Youth, the elite 12th SS Panzer Division-which rapidly became one of World War II’s most feared- consisted largely of seventeen- and eighteen-year-old boys who were fanat- ically devoted to the German cause. In the aftermath of D-Day in June 1944, the division received its baptism of fire in Normandy, launching a fierce counterattack that turned into a bloody, month-long series of battles for the French city of Caen. Using war

diaries, official records, and his experi- ences as the division’s chief of staff, Hubert Meyer follows these teenage warriors through their grueling first weeks of combat.

HUBERT MEYER served in various units before becoming chief of staff of the 12th SS in 1943, a position he held for the war’s duration. He lives in Germany.