German Armor Allocation
The following tables are based on German war-time reports. The main source is the monthly reports made by the Generalinspekteur der Panzertruppen (inspector-general for the armored forces), Heinz Guderian, for Hitler. The numbers in these reports have been supplemented by additional reports.
The following terms are used in the tables:
- Planned
- Translated from geplant, this is the number of vehicles planned to by assigned. Around the beginning of each month, sometimes in the same report as the one reporting the previous month's allocations, a list was presented to Hitler with the allocation plan for that month. This allocation plan was based on the planned number of vehicles available for allocation, typically from vheicle production but sometimes also from homeland repairs.
- Assigned
- Translated from zugewiesen, this is the number of vehicles actually assigned to each unit. Due to production shortfalls, these numbers would frequently be lower than the planned allocation.
- Dispatched
- Translated from davon abgerollt, or just abgerollt (literally, "rolled out"), this is the number of vehicles that had been shipped to their allocated unit at the time of the report. It is important to note that the difference between the number of assigned and dispatched vehicles does not necessarily mean that the unit never received the vehicles. Sometimes, vehicles would not be shipped until the subsequent month, after the allocation report had been created.
- Unallocated for fronts and army groups
- Translated from Nachschub, which can be translated as "replenishments" or "reinforcements". These vehicles were distributed amongst the units on that front. Late in the war, the recipient was sometimes army groups, rather than fronts. It is not stated explicitly why some units are named in the reports to Hitler, while others aren't. Based on the notes in some of the reports, however, at least in some cases it would appear that the units that were named in the reports to Hitler were those being newly formed or re-fitted, whereas the unallocated vehicles were for ad-hoc reinforcements.