A professional soldier, Hans von Luck joined the Panzerwaffe in its earliest days, serving under Erwin Rommel. Skilled in the art of armored warfare, von Luck fought in the invasion of Poland in 1939 and was present as the Blitzkrieg swept across the Low Countries and France the following year.
In 1941 Hitler’s forces turned their attention to the East, launching their invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa, on 22 June. Hans von Luck’s unit was one of the many deployed in that offensive.
Von Luck then served with the Afrika Korps in the Western Desert. In describing his service in this theater, he tells of the occasionally chivalrous relationship with the men of the Eighth Army. After the Axis collapse in Africa, he returned to Europe and fought throughout the Normandy Campaign.
Captured by the Soviets at the end of the war, he was held for five years in a prisoner of war camp. After the war, he formed friendships with those who had been his opponents during the war, including Major John Howard, who had led the capture of Pegasus Bridge on D-Day.
As the renowned historian M.R.D. Foot once wrote, Panzer Commander is ‘a book that shows the finest face of the old officer class, the Kaderfamilie of central Europe, who were brought up to fight, but to fight clean – even when they came under the orders of satanic leaders’. That this unique and insightful account of one man’s war and its aftermath is one of the classic memoirs of the Second World War is beyond doubt.
