Panzergrenadiers: The Art of the Counterattack

Max Hastings in his seminal WWII history Armageddon highlighted a key truth about German army strategy that greatly enhanced its effectiveness in battle: the art of the counter attack. Wrote Hastings: “Every German soldier was taught the doctrine of so-called ‘active defence’. This required a focus not upon holding forward positions to the last man, but rather upon launching fierce counter-attacks while the attackers were still milling in disarray upon captured positions.” (p. 98) As part of this strategy German units would lightly man forward positions, keep strong reinforcements in reserve, out of artillery fire, and launch punishing and relentless counterattacks if these positions were overrun.

Nowhere was this strategy more common than in the mountain skirmishes between the US First Army Group, and the German defenders protecting the high peaks commanding the approach to the Liri Valley.

In the First Special Service Force’s first battle on Monte la Difensa, they were pitted against as many as 400 Panzergrenadiers, veterans of the Sicilian campaign, and specifically the defence of Monte Basilio (near the village of Troina) against the onslaught of the US 1st Infantry Division. The Panzergrenadiers on Difensa must have been considered one of the theatre’s top units. Difensa, the key peak in the Camino mountain complex and the foremost position on the Liri/Cassino approach, was vitally strategic ground.

True to the strategy of fierce and unforgiving counterattacks, the Panzergrenadiers on Difensa manned the peak with 250 soldiers from a battalion of the 104th Panzergrenadier Regiment. They were supported by half a battalion of the 129th Panzergrenadiers, but – in case of attack – the other half of the 129th Third Battalion stood in reserve on the ridgeline.

The FSSF’s attack on the Panzergrenadiers of Difensa was an utter surprise. The commandos of the FSSF scaled cliffs in the dead of night in early December 1943, and attacked from the rear. They quickly – within two hours – pushed the Panzergrenadiers off of Difensa’s peak and onto the ridgeline, and almost instantly the Germans began counterattacking, sniping, and raining mortar fire onto their positions. As Hastings wrote: “It was a precept of the entire war, that the German Army always detected and punished an enemy’s mistakes.” (p. 98)

In this case, the FSSF, which accomplished its primary mission, did not error. But planners who believed that British attacks could simultaneously seize the neighbouring peak, Monte Camino, did. The Brits inability to secure Camino, which looked down upon Difensa so seemingly close you could throw a football from one peak to the other, meant that the FSSF could not safely attack onto the ridgeline, and continue on their ultimate objective: Monte Remetanea. So the FSSF remained dug in, and endured days of punishment from the Panzergrenadiers until Camino was secured and the ridgeline could be cleared.

Read the prologue A Perfect Hell. And remember that the Difensa battle was not the only instance when the FSSF encountered an active German defence in the Apennine Mountain campaign. When the FSSF’s 3rd Regiment overran Monte Majo on January 7, 1944, the German defenders counterattacked 27 times.