The Iron General: Unveiling the Legacy of Walther Nehring, Master of Panzer Troops
Nehring was born on August 15, 1892, in Stretzin, West Prussia. He was the descendant of a Dutch family who had fled the Netherlands to escape religious persecution in the seventeenth century. His father, Emil Nehring, was an estate owner and an officer of the Military Reserve. While Nehring was still a child, the family moved to Danzig.
Nehring joined military service on September 16, 1911, in the Infanterie-Regiment 152. He was commissioned as a Leutnant on December 18, 1913.
On October 26, 1940, he assumed command of the 18th Panzer Division at Chemnitz, leading it during the Barbarossa and Typhoon operations. The division under Nehring’s command has been accused of war crimes by numerous accounts.
In May 1942, Nehring took command of the Afrika Korps and participated in Operation Brandung, the last major Axis offensive of the Western Desert campaign, and the subsequent Battle of Alam Halfa (August 31 — September 7, 1942), during which he was wounded in an air raid. Between November and December 1942, he commanded the LXXXX Army Corps, the German contingent in Tunisia.
After North Africa, Nehring was deployed to the Eastern Front where he initially commanded the XXIV Panzer Corps, and later from July to August 1944, the Fourth Panzer Army. Nehring returned to the XXIV Corps in August 1944 and led it until March 1945 when he became commander of the 1st Panzer Army. In 1944, he also served as the commanding officer of the XXXXVIII Panzer Corps.
After the war, Nehring authored a comprehensive history of the German panzer forces from 1916 to 1945, titled “Die Geschichte der deutschen Panzerwaffe 1916 bis 1945.” He also wrote the foreword to Len Deighton’s book “Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk.”
