What were the best Panzer divisions?

This is actually a quite hard question to answer. I would have to place my bets on the early panzer divisions that fought in the first two or three years of the war when the Panzer divs were actually still advancing and helped in the great encirclements in Russia and the dash to the channel in France. Those units were productive for the Germans, they helped forge the image of the mighty German Army.

I have to agree with the notion many of the later war panzer divisions often called "elites" probably dont deserve the name. I know from many of the accounts I have read from Normandy that the SS units in the early days of the battle tended to launch badly coordinated attacks, infantry attack without tanks, than when the infantry had been thrown back the tanks showed up and attacked without infantry support, or vice versa. The 12th SS in particular comes to mind, absolutely fanatical when defending an objective, extremely hard to clear out of an objective and quite able to make taking anything quite costly. Thing is their offensive actions were often poorly executed, and really can you be an "elite" division if you are consistently defeated in offensive actions. I remember a Canadian Veteran, when reflecting on the heavy counter attacks against the becahhead in the days after D-day, said something like "they attacked us stupidly and we slaughtered the dumb bastards". I don't doubt the combat power of those units nor the extremely effective obstacle they proved to be to efforts to enlarge and breakout from the Normandy beachhead. But my question is doesnt elite imply you will be able to take and secure your objectives more often than not despite unfavorable odds? I think the SS units were good solid effective units, I just dont think they were elite.

 

One thing to note is that the Waffen SS divisions in the West were hardly full strength. The 12th went into battle without it's mobile artillery as well as without its recce unit. Time was not available and orders from command were also a contributing factor to the failure for any of the German units to perform. But if you look at those units who were around since the beginning of the war and fought in the East, fully strengthened, you will see how good they are.

Just by what some of those units did in the West, Falaise for example, merits some kind of recognition. Yes, their defensive capabilities are recognized but that is all that they were able to do. Offensive operations were just not in the cards for them because of the allied air superiority as well as nonsenical orders from OKW.

 

As far the SS divisions go (for the exception of the 2nd and 5th SS divisions), I see no qualitative or even total superiority in combat capability compared to other Panzer divisions. I do keep in mind the term "tactical victory" and have examined the SS vs. enemy losses although many books kind of keep it sketchy. For instance, Peiper's unit in the Ardennes seems to have lost more men than US forces regardless.

These SS divisions had a few thousand more men and sometimes stronger material components than equivalent Heer units but I have not come across anything that shows that they were indeed better for whatever reason. For instance, the 9th SS division lost most of their men in Normandy but its achievements? They don't seem to be outstanding.

As for the better units (imho), the 2.SS had documented tactical feats as well as the GD division (ie. Targos Frumos). The 6th Panzer division's history has many accounts of disproportionate combat achievement and they did it with inferior material.

 

I think Guderian mentions the same issue with "splitting" the Panzer regiments in half. But I remember that the Germans realized that their Panzer divisions in France and Poland had too few infantry for many roles. A more ideal unit, in my opinion, would be a formation that kept the same large number of tanks but with dramatically increased motorized infantry components. Maybe a 20-25,000 man unit.

Was Lehr specially targeted for destruction by Allied forces? They knew of its existence and seemed to carpet bombed its positions like no other German tank formation.

 

The Poland/France Panzer division had 3 or 4 batallions of tanks and an infantry regiment of 2 or 3 lorried infantry batallions plus the motorcycle batallion.
The Standard 1941/44 division normally had just two batallions of tanks and four (6 in the SS units) panzergrenadier batallions. So the tank/infantry ratio was altered in favour of infantry after the French campaign. But a 4 tank 6 or 8 infantry batallion unit like you immagine would be more a corps than a division and would probably require doubling the size of the support arms so making two divisions and joining them in a corps often with the addition of a 6 batallion motorized infantry division as happened historically made more sense.
Out of the 250+ tanks of the 1939/40 unit more than 2/3 would be two man Pz I or 3 men Pz II so the roughly 130 5 crew tanks of the 1942-44 batallion would have nearly the same number of men and a lot more firepower. The panzer divisions also gradually acquired more and heavier organic artillery as the war went on and the Luftwaffe was increasingly unable to fill the heavy support role.
BTW the most notable exceptions to the 1941/44 TOE were the Afrika Korps units (15 and 21) that kept only one two batallion motorized regiment each while the rest of the available infantry was used to create Afrika/90th light.

 

Totenkopf was somewhat of a wildcard as their had been numerous occasions where they had lost so many men before they were pulled out, they had to be rebuilt by scratch.

 

The original TK division was built out of not very well trained or experienced SS officers and its men were fanatical concentration camp guards.

The 3.SS the 1.SS were lead by Hitler lackeys rather than well educated military professionals. Dietrich had no staff school training and was Hitler's driver. Eicke was just a concentration camp commander.

In stark contrast, the 2.SS "Das Reich" division was actually controlled and led by very good military men (Hausser, Bittrich, etc.). It seemed like a serious elite formation from the start.

I think that the 2.SS was the best SS division deployed in the West. It was the most highly decorated of the SS divisions and had the highest tank destruction record. Its combat history, in keeping with strategic circumstances, was solid throughout the entire war.