Tiquet, Pierre Sturmartillerie de la Waffen-SS. Volume 4: Hohenstaufen - Frundsberg

In the fourth volume of his series on the assault guns of the Waffen-SS, Pierre Tiquet deals with the 9th SS Panzer Division "Hohenstaufen". Despite the early disbandment of the assault gun division (at the end of 1943, before the division's baptism of fire), the StuG. III occupied an important place in the SS Division "Hohenstaufen": The 7th and 8th companies of the II Mixed Battalion of the SS Panzer Regiment 9 were fully equipped with it.

These successful armoured vehicles took on Soviet tanks in Galicia in April 1944 when the Germans attempted to seize Tarnopol, and for two and a half months they fought on the invasion front in Normandy. Alongside the Panzer IV of the same battalion, later the Panther of the I. Abteilung of the SS-Pz.Rgt.9 or even the Tiger of the SS-Pz.Abt. 102, the assault gun crews of the division "Hohenstaufen" were in no way inferior to the British west of Cheux, then in the fight for the famous height 112, later south of Caen and in the Bocage northeast of Vire. In the summer of 1944, their kill figures were sometimes higher than those of Panzer IV, V and VI.
The decimated assault guns of the 9th SS-Pz.Div. were replenished in time to take part in Operation Wacht am Rhein (via St. Vith and Bastogne) in mid-December 1944, then to face the Red Army's steamroller in western Hungary and finally to have to lay down their arms in the Austrian Alps.