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6th Panzer Division - Sources

1. Panzer Operations, Raus
2. Panzers on the Eastern Front, Tsouras
3. The Initial Period of War on the Eastern Front, Glantz
4. Barbarossa 1941, Glantz
5. When Titans Clashed, Glantz/House
6. Panzers on the Eastern Front, Tsouras
7. The 6th Panzer Division 1937-45, Ritgen
8. Panzer Aces, Kurowski
9. Panzer Truppen 1, Jentz
10. Panzer Truppen 2, Jentz
11. Tigers in Combat 1, Schneider
12. Tigers in Combat 2, Schneider
13. Barbarossa to Berlin 1, Taylor
14. Barbarossa to Berlin 2, Taylor
15. The Road to Stalingrad, Erickson
16. The Road to Berlin, Erickson
17. Army Group North: Wehrmacht in Russia 1941-45, Haupt
18. The Battle for Leningrad 1941-1944, Glantz
19. After Stalingrad, Glantz
20. German Battle Tactics on the Russian Front 1941-45, Newton
21. War Without Garlands, Kershaw
22. Military Improvisations During the Russian Campaign
23. Operation Barbarossa 1941: Army Group North, Kirchubel
24. Operation Barbarossa 1941: Army Group Centre, Kirchubel
25. Moscow 1941, Forczyk
26. German Mechanised Army Divisions 22.06.41, Niehorster
27. German Mechanised Army Divisions 28.06.42, Niehorster
28. German Mechanised Army Divisions 04.07.43, Niehorster
29. The German Order of Battle: Panzers and Artillery in World War Two, Nafziger
30. Soviet Order of Battle World War II Volume I, Sharp
31. Soviet Order of Battle World War II Volume II, Sharp
32. Red Army Handbook, Zaloga
33. Soviet Tanks and Combat Vehicles of World War Two, Zaloga/Grandsen
34. German Panzers in World War II, Bishop
35. Die 6. Panzer-Division 1937-1945, Scheibert
36. Beyond Stalingrad, Sadarananda
37. The Battle of Kursk, Glantz/House
38. Ostkrieg, Fritz
39. The Drive on Moscow 1941, Zetterling/Frankson

Sources vary widely, often contradicting one another, which makes researching the progress of the division, particularly the composition of the units involved, very tedious work. Often it is a case of trusting one source over another, but again, there is no rule of thumb - an author can be accurate on one point, but way off the mark on another. I have even found the same author contradicting themselves, usually in two different books. This may be down to an earlier work being improved in a later work as the result of further research, particularly in the case of the Soviet side of events, where records were unavailable before the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Unit organisation is the most difficult to track down. More often than not, the data is just not available. It then becomes a case of finding the total number of weapons in a unit, then allocating them to the sub-units based on theoretical Tables of Organisation and Equipment (TO&E). This is pure guesswork as units will be under-strength, but it is much easier to assume they are all at full-strength and reduce the number of units, e.g.: a Soviet heavy tank company is composed of three platoons, each of three tanks and one in the company HQ, but if there are only 7 tanks available, the number of platoons is reduced to two. This is adequate for wargaming the battles as the total number of weapons involved will be taken into account, rather than the total number of tactical units.