SS und Polizei: Myths and Lies of Hitler's SS and Police

by J. Lee Ready

  During a war all combat soldiers of all armies have a tendency to dislike able-bodied men of military age who have never served in the military, though they know that many have essential occupations such as munitions workers and aircraft builders. But, when that civilian begins putting on airs claiming to actually be a ‘soldier’, it makes the fighting man’s blood boil. Waffen SS soldiers were just as likely to be arrested by the SD or Gestapo for some petty ‘political offence’ as anybody in Germany, but it was very noticeable that the SD, Kripo and Gestapo were never to be seen at the front line. If they came to arrest someone and were told: ‘he’s up front’; they turned around and went home.

  It was obvious that there were four types of people in Germany at this time: the bystanders, the Nazis, the anti-Nazis and the users. The vast majority of people, both civilian and military, were just bystanders trying to survive and enable their loved ones to survive. The Nazis, such as many in the Waffen SS, were dedicated to their cause and were willing to die for it. The anti-Nazis were equally willing to die for their cause. However, the users, such as the SS einsatzgruppe, SS KZL, Gestapo and SD, were only willing to kill for the cause not to die for it.

  Whenever a Waffen SS soldier was wounded to the point that he could no longer serve in a front line capacity, he was transferred to a Waffen SS rear unit, but if he was too handicapped to do even that he was discharged from military service. A civilian again he either lived on a pension if severely handicapped or he sought a job. But of course he was still a member of the SS, and he was placed into a reservist Allgemeine SS battalion. If the SS doctors deemed him capable of light duty he was often offered a job with the SS, such as SD, SS KZL, SS WvHA, SS RuSHA or SS VOMI. If he joined the SS KZL the combat veteran was always astonished that the biggest complaints of his fellow guards seemed to be such things as: “That Jew cobbler didn’t make my new boots the way I wanted” or “This makes the third week in a row I’ve had to work overtime.” Usually within days the veterans begged to be reassigned to the Waffen SS, where even in a rear echelon unit they would feel ‘at home’.

  As for loyalty to Hitler - once the Fuehrer began giving orders as if he were a general, and in late 1941 he took over the command of the Russian Front personally, then he took upon himself all the distrust and loathing that combat soldiers feel for generals. To be sure there were exceptions: generals like Rommel, Hausser and Eicke who shared foxholes and dangers with their men. They were loved. However, no one ever saw Hitler leading a bayonet charge: not in this war. Young recruits to the Waffen SS were still full of Nazi idealism, literally worshiping Hitler. The ‘old hares’ smiled and whispered: “Give them a week under an artillery barrage, and then we’ll see if they are still yelling ‘Heil Hitler’”.

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  Chapter Twenty-two

  THE SECOND RUSSIAN WINTER

  According to the calendar for 1942 the winter did not begin until December, but according to the soldiers battling along the immense Russian Front the winter arrived in October. First came the heavy rains, turning the fields and dirt roads into sticky mud. Then the temperature dropped turning the ruts in the roads into channels as hard as concrete. Moreover the combat was still ferocious. Inside Stalingrad a quarter of a million Germans of the Sixth Army with perhaps 20,000 hiwis were battling the Soviets for every building.

  At Leningrad the Germans needed reinforcements badly. All they could do was bring back some units that had had a short rest including the Latvian Legion, Netherlands Legion and Norwegian Legion, which were added to the Flanders Legion to form a temporary battlegroup named after its commander Standartenfuehrer Josef Fitzhum. The Danish Frikorps was also brought back to this sector. The 2nd SS Motorized Brigade was already in line here.

  When the Walloon Legion arrived to fight alongside the SS Wiking in a mountainous sector of southern Russia these Belgians were warned by the Wiking troops that the fighting was suicidal. They went into the attack nonetheless and suffered 85% casualties within days. Degrelle was wounded twice, but remained with the unit.

  The SS Wiking attacked too, and again the medical tents were rapidly filled. Obersturmbannfuehrer August Dickmann, commanding the division’s SS Westland Regiment, was killed. The Austrian Sturmbannfuehrer Erwin Reichel took over. The Finns of the SS Nordost Regiment suffered badly taking Hill 711.

  After this the SS Wiking settled down to a static desultory form of mountain warfare. However, this was deadly too, even for senior officers. Reichel was mortally wounded on a ‘quiet’ day, and Obersturmbannfuehrer Harry Polewacz, a brilliant battalion commander, was killed on another ‘all quiet on the Eastern Front’ day.

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  In November 1942 the Soviets launched their greatest offensive yet. The South West Front, Don Front and Stalingrad Front smashed through two Romanian armies on both sides of Stalingrad, thus surrounding the German Sixth Army. Simultaneously with this offensive, Marshal Giorgi Zhukov, arguably Stalin’s ablest general, launched an offensive west of Moscow with his West Front.

  Immediately the Germans on the Moscow front were in trouble and they called for as many reinforcements as possible. General Maximilian von Fretter-Pico was ordered to go to their rescue in the Blyi area with the XXX Corps of the 19th and 20th Panzer Divisions and the 8th SS Florian Geyer Cavalry Division. He was also told to grab whoever he could pick up along the way. Fretter-Pico was soon frustrated in his efforts, for on the one hand the snow was deep and the temperature extremely cold, and on the other hand the Germans were constantly under harassing raids by Soviet partisans. Indeed the SS cavalrymen found that they had to fight a battle to get to the battle.

  In fact only by 6 December was the SS Florian Geyer able to counterattack the advancing Soviets, but nonetheless within a day they broke through the enemy and set up a blocking position. Then the SS men covered the flank of the 19th Panzer Division as it advanced through Demekhi. The army troops were glad of the support the SS was providing.

  By the 9th Zhukov realized his men were in danger of being encircled and he ordered them to try to break out. The SS cavalrymen staunchly defended their blocking position and few Soviet troops made it out. By the end of December the fighting was over in this sector. Zhukov’s offensive had failed with the loss of 335,000 men.

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  However, further to the south the Axis forces were doing poorly. Two Romanian armies had been destroyed, the German Fourth Panzer Army tried to break through to Stalingrad but was stopped, and then the Italian Eighth Army was swept from the field by yet another Soviet offensive. Still the German Sixth Army in Stalingrad held out.

  With such a gigantic gap in the line west of Stalingrad the Germans were forced to create several provisional units with whatever was handy. One such force that was hastily formed was a battlegroup commanded by Sturmbannfuehrer Heinrich Schuldt that was made up of a company and a battalion from the 1st SS LAH Panzergrenadier Division, a battalion from the 4th SS Polizei Motorized Division and a battalion from the SS Der Fuehrer Regiment of the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzergrenadier Division. Schuldt was an ex-naval officer, who had seen action with the SS Totenkopf Division. His new battlegroup dug in at Millerovo and Meschkoff on December 16, as Italian troops streamed passed them to the rear. Then the Soviets arrived, hard on the heels of the Italians, and the battle was on in a snow blizzard.

  This was catastrophic for the Axis. The German Seventeenth Army in the Caucasus was ordered to evacuate that zone, meaning a retreat of hundreds of miles! They accomplished it, but just barely escaped through Rostov before it fell. Accompanying them were tens of thousands of osttruppen and hiwis such as Caucasus Moslems, Cossacks and Turkestanis, who squeezed through at the last moment under a gauntlet of artillery fire. Many were left behind and had to make their way to the Black Sea coast and sail away in makeshift craft. Others were overrun, and still others were bypassed, so they became anti-Soviet partisans. Behind the Soviet Red Army the NKVD arrived and they expelled entire towns to Siberia for having welcom
ed the Nazis.

  In late December the Germans and Italians managed to build a new and somewhat continuous defense line, but then the Soviets attacked it and burst through. Then for good measure the Soviets attacked and destroyed the Hungarian Second Army.

  Owing to the complete collapse of the Russian Front, Hausser’s SS Panzer Corps was ordered to help stem the tide. He brought the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzergrenadier Division, which had been resting in the mild but rainy climate of Northern France, and placed it alongside the 1st SS LAH Panzergrenadier Division on the frozen snow-covered line between the Rivers Oskol and Donets. The LAH and Das Reich were still short those units loaned to SS Battlegroup Schuldt. What these SS soldiers saw unnerved them. Stragglers from the Hungarian, Italian, Romanian and German Armies were passing through their lines to the rear in exhaustion and sometimes in panic. Attempts to rally them proved futile. Thousands of hiwis and osttruppen also came through, many of them with their families.

  By 13 January 1943 SS Battlegroup Schuldt had withdrawn to Oveschkin, but was still in danger of being encircled and had a hard fight on its hands. Fortunately Schuldt was quickly reinforced by additional members of the SS Der Fuhrer Regiment, and with this help he attempted a counterattack at Slavjanosserbsk, but failed after a couple of days.

  The situation was so desperate that ordinary German police regiments were thrown into the line. Polizei Oberst Emil Kursk rushed his 15th Police Regiment into position, his men terrified. Polizei Major Fritz Schiloel tried to calm the fears of his 13th Police Regiment. Polizei Oberstleutnant Otto Peter gave orders to his 14th Police Regiment, knowing this was a futile gesture. The 8th and 10th Police Regiments joined them at the front.

  Of course these lightly armed ‘infantrymen’ stood no chance against tanks and artillery, and as a result the 8th and 15th Police Regiments were destroyed, the 10th and 13th Police Regiments were badly hurt, and the 14th Police Regiment was all but wiped out near Kharkov. Kursk survived was now given command of the 16th Police Regiment.

  Polizei Oberst Borchert of the SS Polizei Division was severely wounded in the head and evacuated to a hospital in the rear.

  The worst news came at the beginning of February - the entire German Sixth Army surrendered.

  At Archangelskaja the Wiking was astonished to learn of the death of Hauptsturmfuehrer Helmut Pfoertner. This ‘old hare’ infantry officer had won gallantry medals in Poland in 1939, in Belgium/France 1940 and the German Cross in Gold and Knight’s Cross on the Russian Front. He was twenty-nine.

  It was in February that the Soviet South West Front reached Hausser’s position and he soon had a major battle on his hands. But, fully equipped as panzergrenadier divisions by now with armor and self-propelled guns, the SS easily repelled the cocky Soviets.

  Unfortunately the German Army units flanking Hausser’s SS corps on both sides could not hold and the SS were soon in danger. On the 9th Hausser authorized SS Das Reich to make a fighting withdrawal, though some vehicles had to be abandoned as they were stuck in waist deep snow. SS Das Reich’s commander Gruppenfuehrer Keppler had to be evacuated with an illness.

  Hausser wanted to halt on the Donets, but found this river line already threatened, so he ordered another withdrawal to the city of Kharkov.

  Meanwhile Sepp Dietrich suddenly launched part of his SS LAH into a counterattack southwards, hoping that his lead element, Kurt Meyer’s reconnaissance battalion, could break through and reach the German 320th Infantry Division, thereby cutting off the advancing Soviets. Meyer succeeded all too well, charging thirty miles and creating a gap behind him and the remainder of the SS LAH.

  Hausser was worried, for already the Soviets were passing around Kharkov and now the SS LAH was cut in twain.

  As if this was not enough to worry about, the 320th Infantry Division now called for help: it was surrounded. Hausser ordered Sturmbannfuehrer Jochen Peiper and his panzergrenadier battalion of the SS LAH to rescue the division, and he loaned Peiper some precious armored vehicles, but only if he promised to return all of them in good condition!

  Peiper tried to rally his few hundred men, explaining that it was a simple mission: they would only have to fight their way across the Donets River, advance through twenty-five miles of Soviet positions in waist-deep snow during a blizzard and then link up with the 320th and bring that entire division out with them on the return journey. Peiper must have put a brave face on it when he informed his men of this.

  Unbelievably Peiper and his men did it. His only really tense moment was on the way back when he approached Udy and found that the bridge had been destroyed and its German defenders had all been killed, some of them obviously after having surrendered. Peiper ordered an assault, whereupon many of the ‘Ruskies’ threw up their hands. After what they had just seen the SS were in no mood to take prisoners. Peiper’s whole column, including the 320th Division, eventually reached safety, and Peiper returned every one of the armored vehicles to Hausser, no doubt with a smile.

  One of the SS LAH’s officers, Obersturmfuehrer Rudolf von Ribbentrop, was badly wounded, but he refused to consider evacuation until all of his wounded men were evacuated first. He did not want anyone to think he was getting preferential treatment because his father was Hitler’s foreign minister.

  Sturmbannfuehrer Max Wuensche led a battlegroup roaming the countryside rescuing pockets of SS troops. Reaching Alexeyevka he found one pocket commanded by Kurt Meyer. Together they retreated westwards right through the lines of the Soviet VI Guards Cavalry Corps, using the long nights and drifting snow as cover.

  Despite such bravery and expertise on the part of some of the Axis defenders, the main Soviet offensive was still gaining ground.

  Hausser now asked for permission to withdraw from the Kharkov region, otherwise his corps would be surrounded. Naturally the Fuehrer issued another ‘not one foot of soil will be given up’ order, and naturally Hausser disobeyed the Fuehrer and commanded everything of value to be destroyed unless it could be taken with them. His orders were to fight alongside the Kharkov garrison until the last moment, but then to run for it. The Kharkov garrison was commanded by Brigadefuehrer Willy Tensfeld, the Kharkov SSPF, but he was not under Hausser’s orders. Evidently Tensfeld’s heroic days were over [he’d been a u-boat crewman in World War One] and now he saw the way the wind was blowing, and while Hausser’s troops dug in on the outskirts of the great city Tensfeld fled taking with him his Orpo, Kripo, SD and Gestapo. The Waffen SS had expected nothing else.

  On 14 February the SS Das Reich repelled an impudent Soviet attempt to enter Kharkov. This division was now led by Standartenfuehrer Herbert Vahl, a tank expert that Himmler had recently poached from the army. He was a Warthelander. The divisional pioneers performed wonders here, and one of them, twenty-three year old Untersturmfuehrer Heinz Macher, earned the Knights Cross for his courage. The following afternoon Hausser ordered a complete withdrawal. He informed Hitler that the order to hold to the last bullet would have no impact here as the evacuation was already under way. Hausser was gambling with his life. He was aware that Hitler had imprisoned officers for lighter insubordination than this. But obviously he thought the potential sacrifice of his life was worth it, if he could save his men. Hausser brought out his entire corps through a gap in the Soviet encirclement barely 2,000 yards wide. The Walloon Legion also escaped.

  However, just four days later General von Manstein with a scratch force counterattacked in this region, and Hausser turned about and joined him. Hausser advanced with his exhausted SS Das Reich, but held back the SS LAH, replacing it with the 3rd SS Totenkopf, fresh from its sojourn in France and its refit as a panzergrenadier division. Moreover Eicke was back in command of his boys. The SS Das Reich had been reinforced by the loan of the 2nd Company of the 102nd SS Heavy Panzer Detachment, and the SS Totenkopf had been reinforced by the 1st Company of that detachment. These two companies possessed brand new Tiger tanks, huge monsters that were terrifying to anyone who saw them.

  To Hausser’s so
uth the Fourth Panzer Army also counterattacked. By 24 February SS Das Reich had retaken Pavlograd from a Soviet horse cavalry unit. One of LAH’s tank battalions of about forty armored vehicles led by Obersturmfuehrer Wilhelm Beck knocked out 110 Soviet armored vehicles. Now it was the Red Army’s turn to run, and they did so by the hundred thousand, abandoning Russian-built and American-built trucks for lack of fuel. The Germans confiscated these as they needed transportation, and they were impressed by the American trucks. The Soviets in their haste also left behind about 25,000 men, 1,000 guns and 600 tanks. In fact the SS Das Reich was able to establish an extra tank battalion equipped with Russian-built T-34s.

  By the 26th Eicke was well pleased with his division’s advance and he flew in a light aircraft to visit his leading tank force. Unfortunately his plane was shot down. This was the end of a brutal man, a killer, who had taught others to be killers with as little remorse as if swatting a fly. Yet, his men were distraught. Most of them had never seen the inside of a concentration camp, but they had been tarred with the same brush as their leader. Moreover, he had treated them like brothers not like chattel. They launched an attack, risking their own lives, to find the crash site, hoping to find him alive. A day later they found his body. Many a battle-hardened veteran now wept. However, the German Army and the remainder of the Waffen SS breathed a sigh of relief that this man was gone.

  ‘Papa’ Hausser ordered the SS Das Reich and SS Totenkopf, the latter now commanded by Brigadefuehrer Hermann Priess, to continue forging ahead and to ignore the Soviet attack building up to their north. He had a plan. When the Soviets did attack, as he expected, Hausser hit them in their rear with Dietrich’s SS LAH, whose soldiers were ecstatic to see the Soviets run from them in panic. Hugo Kraas was decorated again. Others were praised too, such as Albert Frey, Kurt Meyer, Gerd Bremer, Max Hansen, Max Wuensche and Rudolf Sandig.