A German Sturmgeschütz III assault gun on the streets of Athens in late April 1941; Greece found
itself under triple occupation by the German, Italian and Bulgarian Axis powers. The Bulgarian Army
followed up Hitler’s invasion by occupying the eastern Greek provinces adjacent to its border. The
Bulgarian Army was later supplied StuG IIIs such as this, which they then turned on their former
allies.
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by
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Text copyright © Anthony Tucker-Jones, 2013
Photographs copyright © as credited, 2013
9781783468997
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Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction - Hitler’s Dogs of War
Photograph Sources
Chapter One - King Boris’s Bulgarian Panzers
Chapter Two - Hitler’s Czech Mates
Chapter Three - Mannerheim’s Recycled Finnish Tanks
Chapter Four - Horthy’s Hungarian Horrors
Chapter Five - Mussolini’s Italian L6 Goes to Russia
Chapter Six - Antonescu’s Romanian Armour
Chapter Seven - Fast Slovaks on the Steppes
Chapter Eight - Franco’s Fighting Spaniards
Chapter Nine - Hitler’s Ukrainian Nazis
Introduction
Hitler’s Dogs of War
The strongmen of Eastern Europe rallied to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi cause in the late 1930s intent on
sharing the spoils and settling old scores. In total the Finnish, Hungarian, Italian, Romanian and
Slovak satellite armies provided in excess of 1 million men, including the Hungarian 1st and 2nd,
Italian 3rd Mobile, Romanian 1st and Slovak Fast armoured divisions. This marriage made in hell was
crumbling by the summer of 1944 when one by one these dogs of war began to turn and bite the hand
that had fed them.
The battle of Arad fought in September 1944 was the last independent action of the war by the
battered Hungarian Army and one of the very few successes achieved by its limited armoured forces.
The Hungarian 4th Corps spearheaded by its 1st Armoured Division supporting a German offensive
had attacked the Romanian town. Ironically, this fighting took place against one of Hitler’s other
former Axis allies.
Although Arad fell on 13 September, the Hungarians soon found themselves caught up in a violent
six-day battle with the Romanian Army, which with significant air support succeeded in destroying
twenty-three Hungarian tanks. After the arrival of Joseph Stalin’s Red Army a joint Soviet-Romanian
counter-attack was launched, throwing the invaders out.
The outclassed Hungarians lacking air cover were forced to evacuate Arad just a week after
capturing it. They claimed to have destroyed sixty-seven Soviet tanks, at the cost of eight Germansupplied assault guns and a further twenty-two damaged. By the end of 1944 the Hungarian 1st Army
had withdrawn into Slovakia and the 2nd Army had been disbanded. German-supplied panzers of the
Romanian 2nd Armoured Regiment fought alongside the Red Army in Hungary and ended up in
Czechoslovakia.
At the same time Hitler’s forces in Yugoslavia found themselves attacked by panzers manned by
German-trained Bulgarian tank crews. Supporting the Red Army the 1st, 2nd and 4th Bulgarian
Armies were launched into Yugoslavia on 28 September 1944. The Bulgarian 1st Armoured Brigade
went into action against its former allies on 8 October when sixty tanks were thrown against Hitler’s
occupation forces.Twenty-one Bulgarian tanks recaptured Vlasotince, driving the German defenders
out. At Bela Palanka the Germans found themselves under attack by panzers on 12 October, but the
Bulgarians ran into well-prepared defences including 88mm anti-aircraft guns and lost five of their
tanks. It was clear that Hitler’s East European allies were abandoning him like rats from a sinking
ship.
Indeed Hitler’s Axis allies ultimately proved to be his Achilles heel on the Eastern Front. In the late
1930s Hitler, in order to secure his southern flank prior to striking Stalin’s Soviet Union through guile
and trading on festering post-First World War border disputes, sought to recruit King Boris III of
Bulgaria, Hungarian Regent Admiral Miklós Horthy, Romanian dictator General Ion Antonescu and
Slovakian Premier Dr Joseph Tiso to his war effort.
After the Munich Agreement President Hacha’s Czechoslovakian government granted autonomy to
Slovakia, but received intelligence on 9 March 1939 that Slovak separatists were plotting to overthrow
the republic.The Slovak Prime Minister Dr Tiso was dismissed and promptly flew to Berlin to see
Hitler. He returned to Slovakia and declared independence, thereby rupturing Czechoslovakia.
The annexed Czech lands became the German ‘Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’ and Hitler
also placed Slovakia under his protection. Tiso found German troops entering his country, and under
the Treaty of Protection Hitler gained exclusive rights to exploit the Slovak economy. LieutenantGeneral Ferdinand Catlos, the Slovak Defence Minister, was allowed to raise three just infantry
divisions from the ruins of the Czechoslovakian Army.
Hostility between Horthy and Antonescu also drove them into their pact with Hitler. Under Admiral
Horthy Hungary acceded to the Tripartite Pact on 20 November 1940, having been promised territory
in Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in return for taking part in the war against Stalin. Antonescu
followed suit on 23 November, as he wanted Soviet Moldavia and the southern part of the Ukraine.
Under the 1938 Munich Agreement Horthy regained southern Slovakia and the following year he
occupied the Czech region of Ruthenia and in August 1940 Hitler pressured Antonescu to hand back
northern Transylvania to Horthy.
The Hungarian Regent could have not been more fawning if he tried:
‘Your Excellency: Heartfelt thanks!’ he wrote to Hitler. ‘I cannot express how happy I
am, for this headwater region [Ruthenia] is for Hungary–I dislike using big words–…
We are tackling the matter with enthusiasm. The plans are already laid. On Thursday
16th, a frontier incident will take place, to be followed on Saturday by the big thrust.’
In the event there was no incident and Horthy’s troops simply rolled over the border.
Romania lost two western border regions to Stalin in 1940, followed by half of Transylvania to
Horthy and the southern Dobrudja to King Boris. Although the Romanian king abdicated in favour of
his son King Mihai (Michael), Antonescu held the reins of power and invited in two German divisions
to deter Horthy from further aggression.
With Antonescu’s permission, by the end of February 1941 Hitler was massing his troops in
Romania for Operation Barbarossa, his attack on the Red Army, but was distracted by the prospect of
British forces landing at Salonika to support the Greek Army in fending off Italian leader Benito
Mussolini’s forces operating out of Albania. Hitler decided he must first secure southern Thrace,
which he would then hand over to King Boris of Bulgaria to police.
Boris acceded to the Tripartite Pact on 1 March 1941 and German troops in Romania crossed the
Danube and took up position in Bulgaria ready to invade Greece.The opportunist King Boris provided
the Bulgarian 5th Army equipped with less than sixty wholly inadequate light tanks to support the
invasions of Greece and Yugoslavia.
Antonescu provided by far the largest number of the satellite troops and his best units including his
fledgling armoured forces for the assault on the Soviet Union. He was to remain loyal to Hitler to the
last:
‘Whatever verdict posterity may pass on him as a politician, Antonescu was a real
patriot,’ said Field Marshal Erich von Manstein in his memoirs,‘a good soldier and
certainly our most loyal ally. He was a soldier who, having once bound up his
country’s destiny with that of the Reich, did everything possible until his overthrow to
put Romania’s military power and war potential to effective use on our side.’
In June 1941 Antonescu provided his 3rd and 4th Armies numbering about 150,000 men and his 1st
Armoured Regiment was the first Romanian unit to cross into the Soviet Union.
Although King Boris took part in the brutal dismemberment of Yugoslavia and Greece (and
eventually declared war on Britain and America in December 1941), he was not keen to entangle
himself with Stalin. Arguing that his army lacked mechanisation, and they were the least mechanised
of all the satellite armies that fought for Hitler, Boris prudently avoided taking part in Operation
Barbarossa. Even so King Boris and his high command, in awe of the panzers’ blitzkrieg in France
and the Balkans, sought with meagre resources to emulate them.The Bulgarians formed their 1st
Armoured Regiment in June 1941 under the watchful eye of German instructors. Hitler hoped that
Boris’s armour would eventually be committed to the crusade against Bolshevism and Stalin.
By June 1941 Horthy had about 200 armoured vehicles and committed these and large numbers of
troops to Barbarossa, including the Hungarian Carpathian Group and the Mobile Corps. Fighting
alongside the Germans, the Mobile Corps performed well in the Ukraine, but after reaching the Donets
was withdrawn home in November. Premier Tiso’s rump Slovak State also provided Army Group
South with a Slovak Army Corps of two infantry divisions.
German troops developed an affinity with the Hungarians, as many of the officers were Germanspeaking veterans of the Austro-Hungarian Army or ethnic Volksdeutsche. Hitler once described the
Hungarians as ‘a nation of daring cavalrymen’; however, he had no great affection for Horthy and
despaired of the bad blood between the Hungarians and Romanians. ‘Our Romanian and Hungarian
allies were known to view each other with such mistrust,’ recalled von Manstein, ‘that they were
holding crack troops ready in their respective countries to use against one another if the need arose.’
Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union was already under way before Mussolini’s first contribution
arrived. Initially he sent 62,000 men to join Hitler’s other Axis forces in July 1941: they made up the
Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia or CSIR, comprising three divisions which were placed under
the command of the German 11th Army. Lacking tanks, the Italians mainly comprised lightly-armed
infantry, cavalry and bersaglieri (sharpshooters or riflemen).
At this stage the Italian 3rd Mobile Division was equipped with just sixty-one tankettes.The
following month the CSIR was bloodied fighting the retreating Russians between the Bug and Dniestr
Rivers. Afterwards the Italians were subordinated to General Paul von Kleist and were involved in the
attack on Stalino and occupying the neighbouring towns of Gorlowka and Rikovo.
Through promises, flattery and bullying Hitler managed to get the commitment of the equivalent of
fifty-two ‘Allied’ divisions for the 1942 summer campaign, consisting of twenty-seven Romanian,
thirteen Hungarian, nine Italian, two Slovak and one Spanish division. Worryingly, this was a quarter
of the combined Axis force and the bulk of the units were to be sent to the southern part of the front
where Hitler’s main blow was to fall. Of the forty-one fresh divisions half were ‘foreign’ and many
German generals were uneasy about this, but what could they do in the face of their manpower
shortage? American war correspondent and historian William Shirer noted,‘these “allied” armies were
all Hitler had’.
Although King Boris successfully resisted calls to join the war in Russia, he provided
reinforcements to alleviate pressure on Hitler’s security forces in the Balkans. In January 1942 the
Bulgarian 1st Army moved into Serbia and from mid-1943 fought Yugoslav partisans in Western
Serbia. These reinforcements came at a price: in the summer of 1942 Hitler had to intervene in Italianoccupied West Macedonia after clashes between Boris and Mussolini’s troops.
By the summer of 1942 Mussolini as promised had greatly expanded his commitment on the
Eastern Front, sending four infantry divisions and three mountain divisions that were incorporated
into the Italian 8th Army, which also included two German infantry divisions. By November
Mussolini’s contribution amounted to over a quarter of a million men in twelve divisions equipped
with 988 guns, 420 mortars, 17,000 vehicles, 25,000 horses and sixty-four aircraft but crucially very
few tanks.
With Hitler so desperate for reinforcements, Hor thy provided the Hungarian 2nd Army bringing his
contribution up to 200,000 troops. Supported by a single Hungarian armoured division it deployed
along the Don south of Voronezh. During the summer of 1942 Antonescu’s Romanian forces were
involved in the attack on Sevastopol and fought across the Kerch Straits, while others were in the
Caucasus with the 3rd Panzer Army. The Romanian 3rd Army under Colonel-General Dumitrescu
came back into the line in October 1942 to the north-west of Stalingrad. William Shirer observed:
‘Even the rankest amateur strategist could see the growing danger to the German armies in southern
Russia as Soviet resistance stiffened in the Caucasus and at Stalingrad and the season of the autumn
rains approached.’
Subsequently Hitler was furious at the collapse of his inadequate allies and lost all confidence in
their fighting capabilities. ‘I never want to see another soldier of our eastern Allies on the Eastern
Front,’ he raged after Stalingrad. Horthy presided over the worst military disaster ever inflicted upon
the Hungarian Army and was swift to accuse Hitler of abandoning his men to their fate.The Admiral
ordered the remains of 2nd Army home in March; both Romanian armies were also taken out of the
line.
After the Italians, Slovaks and Spanish were sent home, the Hungarian and Romanian forces
remained a liability until 1944 when Romania swapped sides and the Red Army overran Hungary.
Photograph Sources
The photographs in this book have been sourced from the author’s own extensive collection as well as
various archives including Russian Army, Finnish Army, US Army, US Signal Corps and Canadian
Army collections. In addition, the author would like to thank Igor Bondarets, Rene Chavez, Nik
Cornish and Scott Pict who kindly assisted with the picture research for this title by providing images
from their Eastern Front photo libraries. Inevitably the quality of the images varies greatly, and some
poorer quality ones have been included for their novelty and uniqueness, particularly when it comes to
the rarer indigenous East European equipment. Readers will note a marked paucity of armour in the
later chapters: this, of course, is because these units were primarily infantry formations but have been
included for the sake of completeness in assessing how they coped with armoured warfare on the
Eastern Front.
Chapter One
King Boris’s Bulgarian Panzers
To this day the role played by Bulgaria’s panzers during the Second World War is little understood.
While it is widely known that the Hungarians and Romanians fought on the Eastern Front, it is not
generally appreciated that the Bulgarian Army first fought with and then against the Germans in the
Balkans. Despite being allies, Hitler was able to profit from the regional squabbling of the East
Europeans. In the case of King Boris of Bulgaria, he gained southern Dobrudja from Romania in 1940
thanks to Hitler’s regional strong-arm tactics.
Bulgaria provided a microcosm of all that was wrong with French-designed armour in comparison
to German and Czech tanks. Hitler happily supplied King Boris with captured French tanks that were
too slow and lacked spare parts, greatly hampering the development of Bulgaria’s fledgling armoured
forces.To their dismay German forces in Yugoslavia ended up under attack by Panzer Mk IVs in
September 1944 manned by German-trained Bulgarian tank crews. At least ten shipments of panzers
arrived in the Bulgarian capital Sofia from 1940–44 courtesy of Adolf Hitler.
As already stated, the Bulgarian armed forces were the least mechanised of all the satellite armies
that fought for Hitler. Also, like Romania, Bulgaria had no indigenous tank capability whatsoever and
by the late 1930s had just over a dozen Italian-supplied L.3 tankettes and eight British Vickers 6-ton
tanks, supplemented by thirty-six Czech LT-35s. The first batch of twenty-six LT-35s was supplied by
Germany in February 1940, with the rest coming directly from the Skoda factory in German-occupied
Czechoslovakia. Bulgaria’s automobile industry was at best rudimentary and not really up to
supporting the maintenance requirements of tanks.This meant the Bulgarians were largely reliant on
foreign manufacturers for spare parts.
Bulgaria had to buy its first armoured vehicles, the L.3s from Italy, on credit and these were used to
equip the 2nd Automobile Battalion stationed in the Bulgarian capital.This became the 1st Tank
Company and the subsequent purchase of the British Vickers 6-tonners saw the formation of the 2nd
Tank Company. Both companies conducted manoeuvres in 1939 and were combined to form the 1st
Tank Battalion. During 1940 elements of the battalion were involved in seizing Dobrudja from
Romania and were then sent to guard the Turkish border.
By the end of February 1941 Hitler was massing his troops in neighbouring Romania ready for his
attack on the Soviet Union; however, he was distracted by the prospect of British forces landing at
Salonika to support the Greek Army in fending off the Italians operating out of Albania. Hitler
decided he must first secure southern Thrace between Salonika and Dedeagach, which he would then
hand over to the Bulgarians to police. King Boris acceded to the Tripartite Pact on 1 March 1941 and
German troops stationed in Romania crossed the Danube and took up station in Bulgaria ready to
attack Greece. Boris provided the Bulgarian 5th Army (with fewer than sixty totally inadequate
tankettes and light tanks) to support the invasions of Greece and Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslav capital of Belgrade was occupied by German and Hungarian troops on 13 April 1941.
The Bulgarian 5th Army followed the panzers across the frontier, occupying most of Yugoslav
Macedonia and moved to administer the Greek regions of Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace,
much to the irritation of Italian leader Benito Mussolini.The Bulgarians’ greatest concern was their
traditional foe Turkey and they had no intention of tying up their army in Greece and Yugoslavia. Up
until 1944 the regular army’s field divisions remained deployed on the Turkish border, leaving
reservist formations to act as occupation forces. Such was their brutality in Macedonia that no
significant partisan activity emerged until 1944.
King Boris and his high command were in awe of the panzers’ blitzkrieg into the Balkans and
sought to create their own armoured forces, albeit with paltry means. In June 1941 the Bulgarians
formed their 1st Armoured Regiment under the vigilance of German instructors. This consisted of the
1st Tank Regiment equipped with the Italian L.3s, Czech LT-35s and captured French R-35s, and the
1st Mechanised Infantry Regiment. The Bulgarians were pleased with the Czech armour but not the
French tanks.The initial shipment of R-35s was found to have parts missing, suspected to be the result
of sabotage.They were soon discovered to be mechanically unreliable and slower than the Skodas.
While both the R-35 and LT-35 had the same principal armament in the shape of a 37mm gun, that
was largely where the similarities ended.At almost 10 tons in weight the R-35’s engine could muster
82 horsepower, generating just over 12mph and a range of 87 miles. In contrast the Czech LT-35 with
a similar weight and 120hp was capable of double the speed and had a 120-mile range. The only
advantage the Renault had over the Skoda was its thicker armour, which stood at 45mm compared to
35mm.
Armoured exercises conducted in October 1941 showed just how useless the French R-35s were,
when much of the 2nd Tank Battalion failed to reach the training grounds due to breakdowns. The lack
of radios and armoured cars also proved a problem and it was not until the following year that the
situation showed any signs of improvement.
Toward the end of 1942, the Bulgarians became alarmed by German weapons deliveries to neutral
Turkey, so as a counter-weight Hitler agreed to equip ten Bulgarian infantry divisions, one cavalry
division and two armoured brigades. The Germans provided the Bulgarians with the Panzer III and IV
as well as StuG III assault guns in July 1943. The slow Renaults were assigned an infantry support
role. The following month King Boris died and successive prime ministers tried to extricate Bulgaria
from its corrosive relationship with Hitler. Bulgaria’s 1st Assault Gun Battalion was formed in June
1943 and the 2nd Battalion three months later.
In total Hitler supplied King Boris with over 260 panzers, which on the face of it seems quite a
generous gesture, particularly in comparison with the Finns who only received seventy-seven tanks
and Italy just 177. The Hungarians did slightly better with 385 panzers and Romania 350. Hitler,
though, was not in the business of giving away precious armour that would be better deployed with the
Wehrmacht. On closer inspection Hitler’s shipments to his Balkan ally consisted of thirty-six Skodas
and sixty-five Renault tanks, ten Panzer Mk IIIs and eighty-eight Mk IVs as well as fifty-five StuG III
assault guns.
After the Bulgarian experiences with the Renaults, in early 1944 when twenty-five French
Hotchkiss-built H-39s and Somua-manufactured S-35s were supplied by Hitler, they were assigned to
border units and the police. Like the Renaults these tanks, weighing in at 11 and 19 tons respectively,
were slow, managing only 17.5mph. They knew that the Germans had offloaded junk onto them.
Hitler probably hoped that the Bulgarian armour would eventually be committed to his crusade
against Bolshevism in the east. In the event it was to end up fighting Bulgarian and Yugoslav partisans
and the German Army.While Bulgaria had taken part in the destruction of Yugoslavia and Greece,
King Boris was less keen to entangle himself with his Russian Slavic cousins. Arguing that his army
lacked mechanisation, Boris prudently avoided taking part in Operation Barbarossa.
Although Bulgaria resisted calls to join the war in Russia it provided reinforcements to alleviate
pressure on German security forces in the Balkans. In January 1942 the Bulgarian 1st Army occupied
most of Serbia and from mid-1943 was fighting Yugoslav partisans in Western Serbia. In the summer
of 1942 Hitler had to intervene in Italian-occupied West Macedonia after clashes between the
Bulgarians and Italians.
The Bulgarians officially designated the 1st Armoured Regiment the 1st Armoured Brigade in
October 1943. The Renaults were despatched to support the army in central Bulgaria, fighting the
growing Bulgarian partisan movement. Later ten Renaults were assigned to the Bulgarian 29th
Infantry Division in Serbia to help fight Tito’s Yugoslav partisans. The United States Army Air Force
bombed Bulgarian factories around Sofia on 10 January 1944 and the 1st Armoured Brigade and 1st
Assault Gun Battalion were moved away from the city.
The 1st Armoured Brigade did not become operational until August 1944, while the two assault-gun
battalions were not operational until the following month. By this stage Hitler’s relationship with the
Bulgarians was waning. In addition to its commitments in Greece and Yugoslavia, the Bulgarian Army
found itself countering some 18,000 Bulgarian partisans. Further shipments of panzers were switched
en route to German troops in Yugoslavia. Bulgarian loyalty was suspect and the Germans secretly
planned to disable the Panzer IVs and StuGs.
When Romania swapped sides in August 1944 Bulgaria was secretly negotiating with the Allies. On
5 September 1944 the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria and three days later commenced
hostilities.The Bulgarians sought to save themselves by declaring war on Germany. The factory
workers downed tools in Sofia on 6 September and three days later an armed uprising took place.
Although the Bulgarian Army consisted of twenty-three divisions and seven brigades supported by
several hundred tanks and 400 aircraft, only four divisions and two brigades were facing the Soviets.
Pushing through Romania, the Red Army thrust into Bulgaria north of Varna and veered west. The
Soviet motorised columns soon outstripped the infantry but met no resistance. Arriving in Sofia on 15
September 1944 the columns of Soviet troops trundling through the city included British-supplied
Valentine tanks. In the meantime, the Germans moved swiftly to deal with their former allies in
Serbia and Macedonia disarming the Bulgarian 1st Army; only the 5th Army offered any short-lived
resistance.The Germans confiscated all the Bulgarian weapons stocks, re-issuing them to local
security forces.
Panzertruppen instructors from the combat school at Nis in Serbia were put on alert to move to the
German training camp at Plovdiv in Bulgaria from where they would act against the Bulgarian
panzers. Instead a column from the 1st Armoured, consisting of sixty-two Panzer IVs and other
armoured fighting vehicles, 835 trucks and cars, 160 motorcycles and four fuel tankers moved to
block the Sofia-Nis road outside the Bulgarian capital and local German forces were disarmed.
Bulgarian troops were withdrawn from Greece ready for an attack into Yugoslavia.
Supporting the Soviets the 1st, 2nd and 4th Bulgarian Armies were launched into Yugoslavia on 28
September 1944. The 1st Armoured went into action against its former allies on 8 October when sixty
tanks were thrown into the attack.Twenty-one Bulgarian tanks recaptured Vlasotince, driving out the
German defenders. At Bela Palanka the Germans found themselves under attack by twelve Panzer IVs
on 12 October, but the Bulgarians ran into well-prepared defences including 88mm anti-aircraft guns
and lost five tanks.The Brigade then went on to attack the 7th SS Division with some success. Notably
during September–October 1944 most of the Brigade’s tank losses were due to breakdowns rather than
combat.
By the end of November 1944 the Bulgarian panzers were in Pristina and Kosovska Mitrovica,
marking the end of operations in Yugoslavia. Elements of the Bulgarian Army equipped with Skoda
tanks subsequently fought with the Bulgarian 1st Army and the Soviets in Hungary, seeing action in
the closing months of the war. Ironically Bulgaria’s automobile industry, which had so singularly
failed to serve the Bulgarian Army during the Second World War, was enlisted to serve the Warsaw
Pact in the Cold War, producing various tracked vehicles for domestic use and export.
Bulgaria’s first real tanks arrived in 1940 in the shape of thirty-six German-supplied
Panzerkampfwagen 35(t)s, which were captured Czech-built LT-35s. These were found to be much
more reliable than the forty French R-35s and were issued to the 1st Tank Regiment.
In April 1941 King Boris of Bulgaria sided with Adolf Hitler and supported the Nazi invasion of
Greece and Yugoslavia by occupying Eastern Macedonia and Western Trace. Like most East European
armies of the time, the Bulgarians were woefully ill-equipped to conduct mechanised warfare.
This Bulgarian border guard typifies the antiquated nature of the Bulgarian armed forces. King Boris
was able to muster in excess of twenty infantry divisions. However, he only used his reservist units in
the Balkans for occupation duties; as well as terrorising the Macedonians they soon came to blows
with Hitler’s other allies in the region such as the Italians.
Like all the other East European armies in 1941 the Bulgarian Army relied on infantry divisions
supported by horse-drawn transport–mechanisation was at its most rudimentary stages. The reality
was that little had changed since the First World War.
Again like their neighbours the Bulgarians’ first experience with tanks was with the Italian-supplied
Carro Veloce L3 tankette. This, though, was not a true tank at all but simply a lightly armoured
machine-gun carrier. This massed column of at least a dozen tankettes might look impressive but up
against heavier tanks and anti-tank guns would not last long.
More Bulgarian tank crews with their camouflaged Italian L3. These along with Czech LT-35s and
French R-35s were used to form the Bulgarian 1st Tank Regiment.
A Bulgarian mortar crew; note their M1938 helmets (similar to the earlier M1936 with the same semicircular crown, but lacking the slight frontal crest). The design was clearly influenced by those worn
by the German Army.
German instructors were sent to train Bulgarian tank crews at Plovdiv as Hitler hoped that King Boris
would join the war on the Eastern Front. These trainees are posing by a dummy tank that bears a
striking resemblance to the Soviet T-34.
Hitler initially supplied the Bulgarian Army with around ninety captured Czech and French tanks, the
first German-built armour consisting of just ten Panzer Mk IIIs being received in 1943.
The Bulgarians were also first supplied with the newer German Panzer Mk IV in 1943 when an initial
batch of forty-six arrived in Sofia; these were followed by a similar number the following year. They
were used to equip the Bulgarian 1st Armoured Brigade formed in October 1943. In total Bulgaria
received 264 tanks and assault guns from Hitler during 1940–44.
The Bulgarians received three batches of StuG IIIs totalling fifty-five assault guns used to form two
Assault-Gun Battalions that became operational in late summer 1944. When Bulgaria defected, the
Germans disarmed the two Bulgarian Armies stationed in Yugoslavia but were unable to seize the
equipment at Plovdiv after the 1st Armoured Brigade put on a show of force.
The Bulgarians detested their French-built tanks; in particular the Renault R-35s proved to be
unreliable and were issued to Bulgarian border units and police. In 1944 Hitler supplied captured
French Hotchkiss H-39s (seen here) and Somua S-35s and these went the same way.
Inevitably with the panzers came instructors and mechanics to train the crews; this also ensured that
the Germans retained an element of control over the equipment supplied to their not altogether
reliable allies.
British-supplied Valentine tanks serving with the Red Army roll into Sofia on 15 September 1944. The
Bulgarians did not resist and had little choice but to side with the Russians; they launched their
panzers against the German Army in Yugoslavia.
Soviet T-34/85 tanks on the streets. Turkey was Bulgaria’s traditional foe and the Bulgarian Army
only had four line divisions facing the Soviet Union and nothing that could really stop such powerful
tanks as these.
Soviet infantry plod past a knocked-out Panzer Mk IV. Hitler’s plans of setting up a Bulgarian tank
force were swiftly dashed and the equipment he supplied ended up being turned on the German Army.
By 1944 his Axis allies were proving to be a house of cards that fell swiftly in the face of Stalin’s
onslaught.
The Bulgarian 1st Armoured Brigade went into action against its former allies on 8 October 1944.
Although it gave a good account of itself four days later at Bela Palanka, it ran into well dug-in
German 88mm anti-tank guns and lost five Panzer Mk IVs.
By late November 1944 the Bulgarian panzers were in Pristina; notably most of the brigade’s losses
were due to breakdowns rather than combat. With most of the Panzer IVs and StuG IIIs gone,
Bulgarian LT-35s saw some action with the Red Army in Hungary in the closing months of the war.
Thus ended King Boris’s Bulgarian panzers.
Chapter Two
Hitler ’s Czech Mates
Following the First World War Germany was expressly forbidden from possessing tanks, but Adolf
Hitler found a way round this and in 1934 produced a dozen turretless ‘agricultural tractors’ for
training purposes. He then created three Panzer Divisions and during the next four years ordered the
manufacture of over 2,600 Panzer Mk I/IIs. However, these forces were outclassed by France’s tank
fleet and outnumbered by Russia’s. If Hitler was to accelerate his timetable for European
confrontation, he desperately needed to supplement his meagre tank force.
Hitler, General Heinz Guderian and his other panzer leaders looking at the map of Europe in the late
1930s knew that the Czechoslovak arms industry was one of the best on the continent. The Czechs
were first-class tank builders and German intelligence indicated they had up to 500. Seizing them
could be easy, but first there was the matter of Germany’s union with Austria. General Guderian rolled
into Austria at the head of the 2nd Panzer Division in March 1938 meeting no resistance; 1st Panzer
then marched into Czechoslovakia’s German-populated Sudetenland, again with no opposition.
Emboldened, the following year Hitler annexed Czechoslovakia, setting him on the road to war with
the rest of Europe.The Czechoslovak armed forces did not resist. What happened next went largely
unnoticed but was vital to the subsequent invasions of France and Russia. General Guderian was
despatched to Prague to see how Germany’s panzer units had fared in the cold weather, but more
importantly to assess the condition of the Czechoslovaks’ armour.
After a briefing on the German panzers, Guderian travelled on to the city of Brno to examine the
Czechoslovakian tanks. He was disappointed to discover the haul was not as large as had been hoped.
Skoda had built 424 LT-35s, but many had been exported and only half of those taken from the Czech
Army were operational. Similarly none of the 150 follow-on LT-38s ordered by the Czechs had been
built. Nonetheless, Hitler quietly confiscated 219 tanks and more importantly two entire tank
production plants.
When Hitler steamrollered into Poland just six months later, his six Panzer Divisions were still
much weaker than intended. His force of 3,000 tanks included just ninety-eight medium
Panzerkampfwagen (PzKpfw) Mk IIIs and 211 of the more powerful PzKpfw Mk IVs. Significantly
though, included in the invasion force were over 100 LT-35s re-designated the PzKpfw 35(t) serving
with the 1st Light Division.These were armed with a 37mm gun comparable to the Mk III’s, but they
were half the weight and faster. While the LT-35 provided a useful stop-gap it was not kept in
production, although it remained in front-line service until about 1942 when those few remaining were
converted into artillery tractors.
The Czech CKD-built LT-38, re-designated the PzKpfw 38(t), was an altogether different
proposition.An order for 150 had been placed at the time of annexation and Hitler ordered it
completed: fifty-nine subsequently served with the 3rd Light Division in Poland in 1939 and fifteen in
the invasion of Norway in 1940. Hitler and Guderian were impressed by its performance and ordered
another 1,400 LT-38s.This, though, was the tip of the iceberg as Hitler demanded a further 5,000 be
built as self-propelled and assault-gun chassis. Principal of these was the Panzerjager 38(t) and
Jagdpanzer 38(t).
During the conquest of Poland, Guderian called on Hitler to hasten delivery of the Panzer Mk III
and IV; this, though, was held up by limited production capacity and the Army High Command’s habit
of hanging on to them. By the spring of 1940, of 2,800 German armoured vehicles 627 were Mk IIIs
and IVs, and 381 were Czech-built PzKpfw 38(t), while the remainder were the light Mk I, II and
armoured cars. General Guderian, commanding the German 19th Panzer Corps, records only 2,200
tanks being available for the attack on France, while the Anglo-French forces were in excess of 4,000.
According to Guderian’s figures 228 Czech LT-38s saw service, mainly with the 7th and 8th Panzer
Divisions, during the invasion in May 1940.
After the Polish campaign the 1st Light Division became the 6th Panzer Division and while
stationed at Paderborn in April 1939 was issued with 128 LT-35s (along with sixty-five PzKpfw Mk
IIs and forty-two Mk IIIs). Despite their mechanical shortcomings, 6th Panzer Division’s LT-35s gave
a good account of themselves when they came up against the formidable French heavy tank, the Char
B1 bis of the 2eme Division Cuirasse on 17 May 1940. By the spring of 1941 Czech-built armour
accounted for 25 per cent of the total German tank force and were instrumental in the invasion of
Russia that June.
Guderian subsequently became very concerned about Hitler’s over-reliance on the Czechoslovak
tanks. By 1942 the preoccupation was the production of self-propelled guns for defensive purposes
rather than offensive tanks, and to make matters worse the self-propelled guns were being armoured
with unhardened steel. Guderian recalled:‘the troops were already beginning to complain that a selfpropelled gun on a Panzer II or Czech LT-38 chassis was not a sufficiently effective weapon.’ Hitler
would not be swayed and the following year instructed that the production of the LT-38 and Panzer II
be devoted solely to making chassis for self-propelled guns. In total the Czech factories supplied
Hitler with almost 7,000 tracked armoured fighting vehicles, no small contribution to the German war
effort.
The impact of the acquisition of Czechoslovakia’s tanks facilities went beyond the German Army.
The Hungarian, Romanian and Slovakian armies were equipped with the PzKpfw 38(t), while the
Hungarians also produced their own version of the LT-35 known as the Turan. Romania started the
war with the Skoda LT-35, but most of these were lost at Stalingrad in 1942 and were replaced by exGerman 38(t)s. In 1940 Germany also provided the Bulgarian Army with 35(t)s. Hitler remained
shortsighted, for although the Czech armour was good in its day it was clearly obsolete in comparison
with the Russian T-34. When the Hungarians requested to build the German Panzer MkV Panther tank
in 1944, the deal fell through because of the exorbitant cost for the production licence, despite the fact
that Germany was losing the war by this stage.
Czechoslovakia’s tanks proved crucial, providing an important element of Germany’s tank force
invading Poland, France and Russia.These tanks had a significant impact on the initial German war
effort, as did the subsequent Czech self-propelled gun production which helped Germany’s defensive
war, particularly on the Eastern Front. Hitler’s early Panzer Mk I and II were simply not up to the job
and the two successor models were not available in sufficient numbers.Without Czechoslovakia’s LT35 and LT-38 it seems highly unlikely that Hitler could have mounted his highly successful attacks on
France in 1940 and Russia the following year.