| Peter Frantz was born in Leipzig
on 24 July 1917, and joined the military in 1936, opting to serve in Artillery Regiment 4
in Dresden. Serving as an aspirant officer during his initial years of service, he
was commissioned as a Leutnant on 1 September 1938, moving to Panzer Artillery Regiment 74
of the 2nd Panzer Division. Frantz served in Poland as an orderly officer in the regimental headquarters of Panzer Artillery Regiment 74, earning the Iron Cross II Class, and afterwards moved to Vienna, then the artillery school at Jüterbog where the first battery of assault guns was raised by the German Army. This battery, Battery 640, was assigned to Infantry Regiment Grossdeutschland in April 1940 and became the 16th Company of the Regiment shortly after. Leutnant Frantz commanded a platoon of the 16th Company in France, earning the Iron Cross I Class and being promoted Oberleutnant after the surrender. Hard service as a platoon commander during the first six months of the Russian Campaign earned Frantz both a "Certificate of Recognition" by the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army in October 1941, but also the German Cross in Gold in December. |
|
| Oberleutnant Frantz rose to
command the entire 16th Company; in defensive battles near Tula in December 1941 his
company destroyed many enemy armoured vehicles, including 15 enemy tanks on 13 December
alone. He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. By March 1942,
Frantz was a battery commander in the reorganized Assault Gun Battalion GD. On March 14, 1943, Frantz led a group of assault guns in battle, destroying some 43 T-34 tanks, for which he was decorated with the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross. In April, Adolf Hitler personally award Frantz with his Oak Leaves in Berlin. Frantz served with GD Assault Guns until January 1944, when he was transferred to the War Academy for general staff training, being appointed Major of the General Staff (Major i.G.) in August 1944. He saw action as a corps headquarters officer in the west, was captured in May 1945 by the Americans, and remained in captivity until April 1946. |
 |
| Reproduced above is a famous colour photo of Frantz that appeared in Signal Magazine. The picture was actually the first news that his family would recieve that Frantz had been awarded the Knight's Cross, when it was published a few months after the award was made to him. The photo was reprinted in a collection of similar photos captioned by a German veteran. His comments regarding the photo deserve to be quoted in full: "...Captain Frantz...was a particularly distinguished officer of the Großdeutschland Division. He had been cut by a fragment from a hand-grenade, but nevertheless went on issuing orders to the assault gun unit under his command and displayed his imperturbability by smoking a cigarette. When the author of this caption was serving in an armoured car regiment the penalty for smoking a cigarette in an armoured vehicle was quite severe!" - Gunther Heysing, former Deputy Editor of Signal Magazine, from the book SWASTIKA AT WAR. | |
