12th SS Panzer Division "Hitlerjugend" (Ger. 12. SS-Panzer-Division "Hitler Youth" ) was formed in June 1943 in Antwerp, based on youth from the Hitler Youth organization (hence the name of the division) and officers from the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler and the Wehrmacht. The officer cadre of the unit was largely composed of veterans of the Eastern Front. The unit also received very good equipment during the process of formation, including a relatively large number of armored personnel carriers and Panther tanks. It began its combat route during the fighting in Normandy in June-August 1944, where it operated in the Caen region. She also fought at Falaise, but despite a good start, she managed to get out of the encirclement near this city. After rebuilding its personnel, it took part in the offensive in the Ardennes at the turn of 1944-1945, and later also fought in Hungary in 1945. In March this year, the division participated in the offensive on Lake Balaton (Operation Frühlingserwachen). The unit capitulated in Austria. The soldiers of the 12th SS Panzer Division committed many war crimes and crimes against the civilian population.
Despite their defeat in World War I, the German officer corps in the interwar period still saw the main means of victory in a future war in an offensive operation. Thus, he drew a different experience from the Great War than his French counterpart. Based on the experience of 1914-1918, including the infiltration tactics used by the Stosstruppen troops, but also noticing the intense development of aviation and armored weapons, part of the German officer corps (e.g. Gen. Heinz Guderian) developed theoretical assumptions of the so-called lightning war (German: Blitzkrieg), that is, striving to knock down the enemy with one decisive offensive operation carried out in the shortest possible time and with the maximum intensity of forces and resources. The German officer corps was also trained according to this offensive doctrine of war in the 1930s and during the world war. It is also worth adding that German officers of almost all levels in the course of World War II used the principle of the so-called command by task (Ger. Auftragstaktik), that is, they outlined to their subordinates the task to be achieved and the forces at their disposal, while the execution of the task was entirely up to them. Such a model of command, based on very well and uniformly trained officers, led to the fact that the German army was highly flexible in action and was able to react faster to various levels than its opponents (e.g. the French army during the campaign of 1940 or Soviet army of 1941). This system proved successful (especially at lower levels) throughout World War II. It is also worth adding that many outstanding commanders served in the German officer corps from the Second World War, including: Erich von Manstein, Heinz Guderian, Erwin Rommel and Walter Model.