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

by J. Lee Ready

  In fact the plethora of armor available to the Western Allies in Normandy came as a tremendous surprise to the Germans. This armor was divided among British and American armored divisions and British and Canadian independent armored brigades. Each of the brigades contained as many tanks as a US armored division. Moreover, the Americans had assigned one tank battalion of Sherman tanks and one battalion of Wolverine or Hellcat tank destroyers [de facto tanks] to each of their infantry divisions, so that a US infantry division had as much armor as a panzergrenadier division. More importantly, and the Germans were continually surprised by this, the Allies seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of fresh tanks to replace those knocked out in battle or broken down, whereas the Germans in Normandy were pretty much ignored by the German tank factories.

  Meyer called off his assault before dusk. He knew when to quit. Already his men were under heavy artillery fire including that from warships directed by spotter planes, which flew overhead with impunity. Moreover, the 21st Panzer Division supposedly on his flank was nowhere to be seen, and he suspected the Allies were turning his left [western] flank. Additionally he knew his boys were in their first action. They had done remarkably well and he did not want to push his luck.

  Dietrich was pleased that Meyer with but a solitary battlegroup had done so well, so rather than wait for the three panzer divisions to be fully assembled, which at the current rate of travel might be several days, he ordered a full-scale counter offensive the following morning with whatever was available.

  Meanwhile there were some nasty little firefights during the night. Mohnke’s panzergrenadier regiment arrived on Meyer’s left flank and went straight into the fight in the dark. One of Mohnke’s battalion commanders was Bernhard Krause, a hardened veteran. The HJ’s reconnaissance battalion under Gerd Bremer also advanced in the dark down narrow country lanes, until he encountered British tanks and repelled them, though Bremer’s command vehicle was blown apart and he was wounded.

  With just two hours to go before Dietrich’s dawn assault, Dietrich received orders from Generalfeldmarschal Rommel, one of the many members of the chain of command, to change the location of his attack. Rommel wanted a charge towards the beachhead.

  Dietrich did as ordered, but his advance was not a charge, but rather a crawl. Nonetheless come dawn a battalion of Mohnke’s panzergrenadiers pushed a Canadian infantry battalion out of Putot and then repelled a probe by tanks of the British 50th Infantry Division, while other elements of Mohnke’s forces reached Brouay and were surprised to find the lead element of Panzer Lehr there. Unfortunately everyone was still within range of naval gunfire and the Panzer Lehr had been especially devastated.

  Late in the day Mohnke’s men were forced out of Putot by a Canadian counterattack.

  Throughout the day units of Dietrich’s corps had been trying to reach the battlefield, but Allied air power had slowed them down considerably. Fritz Bayerlein, commander of Panzer Lehr, was slightly wounded when his car was strafed.

  Rommel toured the front visiting Dietrich and Bayerlein, telling the latter to move his division to Tilly. Witt was allowed to consolidate his front, and that meant Meyer had to take Bretteville and Rots, while Mohnke had to take Norrey. Meyer would be reinforced for his night assault by forty Panther tanks and a few Wespe self-propelled 105mm guns.

  But in the last rays of the setting sun Bremer’s troops were attacked by the British 8th Armored Brigade and 50th Infantry Division, odds of 13:1, and furthermore every German along the line was targeted by artillery concentrations. Bremer’s people fell back by 2130 hours, while Bremer himself was wounded a second time and evacuated.

  Despite this Meyer attacked on schedule that night, taking Rots, and then pressing on to Bretteville, but he became bogged down in this village in a fierce action against Canadian infantry and anti-tank guns, and eventually had to pull back to Rots, having lost six Panthers and 91 casualties.

  Mohnke’s men also failed in their attack, losing 61 casualties.

  The following day, 9 June, while awaiting orders, Meyer sent a probe of a dozen Panthers towards Norrey. He should have known better - they were caught in an ambush by Canadian infantry, tanks and artillery. Only five Panthers survived to retreat.

  Orders soon came from Rommel to remain on the defensive.

  On the 10 June one third of the 17th SS GvB Panzergrenadier Division reached the front in Normandy around Carentan, following a terrifying five day drive from Poitiers under constant air attack. They went straight into action against the US First Army. The following day they were pushed back by the US 101st Airborne Division. The paratroopers were no match for SS panzers, but the soldiers of the SS GvB found that they were no match for massive American artillery concentrations.

  On this day Dietrich and his corps staff were busy receiving reports from Panzer Lehr, which had its hands full in the Tilly area on Dietrich’s left flank fighting off the British 56th Infantry Brigade and 7th Armored Division.

  Meanwhile Witt permitted Sturmbannfuehrer Siegfried Mueller to attack Norrey with his pioneer [engineer] battalion of the SS HJ. Mueller failed, losing 80 men, and withdrew at the end of the day.

  Of particular bitterness among the SS officer corps was the constant news of the loss of ‘old hares’, such as Wilhelm Beck the brilliant tank commander and hero of Kharkov, who would not see his twenty-fifth birthday.

  Five days of battle had cost the SS HJ almost a thousand casualties, and the entire division had yet to assemble. The combat had been fierce. More than once a soldier killed an unarmed prisoner while in the throes of grief and anger from the loss of his buddy. Sometimes the shooter was a German, and sometimes he was a Canadian or Briton.

  It is true that some of the SS veterans of the Russian Front had become anesthetized to the killing of prisoners, and in Normandy they continued to do so without stopping to think about it. At the same time the Allied troops had been told by Allied propaganda that all SS were Nazi volunteers and cold-blooded murderers of women and children, so many of them deemed it simple justice to shoot the SS, unarmed or not. Moreover, some Allied personnel who had this mindset thought that anyone in a black uniform was SS. [Owing to poorly made cinema films]. Not true. The only combat troops that wore black uniforms were tank crewmen, whether SS, army or Luftwaffe. All other Germans including SS and army wore gray or greenish-gray uniforms. Luftwaffe troops wore a purple-blue color. However, Luftwaffe paratroopers and SS had a tendency to fight in camouflage overalls.

  On 11 June the SS HJ was hit by a full-scale Allied offensive. In the Le Hamel - Rots sector a few Panthers and some of Mohnke’s panzergrenadiers were assaulted by British commandos and a brigade of the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division. After a spirited defense these SS had to withdraw. In mid-afternoon just south of Cristot Bremer’s reconnaissance battalion was struck by part of the British 50th Infantry Division, while at Brouay a battalion of Mohnke’s panzergrenadiers was slammed by other elements of that division. A few Panthers counterattacked and enabled Mohnke and Bremer to hold.

  At this same time the Canadians were attacking Norrey and Le Mesnil-Patry with part of their 3rd Infantry Division and 2nd Armored Brigade. Artillery of the SS HJ plastered these attackers as they approached, and then a battalion of Mohnke’s panzergrenadiers together with some of Bremer’s men and a few Panthers opened fire at close range, followed by a counter charge by more Panthers. For the loss of three Panthers and 189 men, the SS repulsed the Canadians, knocking out 37 Sherman and Firefly tanks and inflicting 179 casualties.

  Obviously the Allies were suffering from a lack of coordination as much as the Germans were.

  The German armor here was handled impeccably by such officers as Rudolf von Ribbentrop, who earned the German Cross in Gold here, and Kurt Bogensperger, who earned two Iron Crosses. The German Cross in Gold was the highest medal for merit. Two iron crosses for an officer was in effect the third and fourth highest medals for courage.

  By 12 June more German units were catching up t
o their divisions, and one of Dietrich’s personal units began arriving: fourteen Tigers of the 101st SS Heavy Panzer Detachment. Moreover, one of the Tiger company commanders was Hauptsturmfuehrer Michael Wittman. Soon the 102nd SS Heavy Panzer Detachment would also arrive. Wittman had become legendary for his tank killing skills, earning swords to his Knights Cross, only the 71st person to achieve this. The press photographed him and wrote about him. But he had his human side too - he had recently wed.

  The Tigers had been traveling for a week under air attack, but Dietrich was so desperate that he gave the Tiger crews no time to rest or pull maintenance. The latest emergency was created by an attack on the left flank of Dietrich's corps, held by Panzer Lehr, by the entire British 7th Armored Division (the famed Desert Rats). At Livry a solitary German anti-tank gun and some infantry held up the British for several hours, but Dietrich knew the British would come on again the following dawn, the 13th.

  Wittman put five Tigers under cover on the slope of a hill, Point 213 northeast of Villers-Bocage. There he waited, and on the morning of the 13th an entire British armored unit emerged from behind a tall thick hedgerow and then suddenly stopped in full view of the silent hidden Germans. The Tiger crews could not believe their luck - the British offensive was stopping to brew tea!

  At one radio command the Tigers opened fire, Wittman’s own tank engaging a host of targets - tanks, self-propelled anti-tank guns, armored personnel carriers, trucks and infantry. Finishing them off, he then advanced, swerved his Tiger down the road and drove into Villers-Bocage, where he found hundreds of British troops milling about awaiting orders. He charged them. Needless to say this was a suicidal attack and eventually his Tiger was knocked out by a shell. But Wittman and his crew escaped unhurt and walked back to safety!

  Wittman and his five Tigers had stopped the entire 7th Armored Division dead in its tracks and had knocked out forty-six armored and fourteen soft-skinned vehicles. The Tiger crews took 172 prisoners by the simple expedient of sticking their heads out of hatches and pointing to the German rear.

  In the afternoon the remaining nine Tigers of the 101st SS Heavy Panzer Detachment and fifteen Mark IVs of Panzer Lehr advanced into Villers-Bocage. However, the British were waiting for them with an all arms force, including brave infantrymen who threw bombs at the tanks from upper floor windows. After losing six Tigers and two Mark IVs, the Germans withdrew.

  These Germans attacked again, this time with panzergrenadiers from Panzer Lehr, and they found the British pulling out. Evidently the British were under the assumption that they had been counterattacked by the complete 2nd Panzer Division - which in fact was miles to the east.

  The German Army generals were pleased with Dietrich so far. With three incomplete armored divisions {Panzer Lehr, 21st Panzer and 12th SS HJ Panzer} and scattered pieces of the 716th Infantry Division he had held back an equivalent of six divisions for a week: specifically the British 8th Armored Brigade, 56th Infantry Brigade, 7th Armored Division and 3rd, 49th and 50th Infantry Divisions, plus the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division and 2nd Armored Brigade; and all this despite the fact that Dietrich was totally outgunned by enemy artillery [land and naval] and under constant air attack with no sign of the Luftwaffe, and with his supply lines under air raids and sabotage by French anti-Nazi guerillas. By anyone’s criteria this was a magnificent performance.

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  In May 1944 the Anglo-Americans had launched a major offensive out of the Anzio beachhead in Italy causing the SS Italien Sturmbrigade and 16th SS Reichsfuehrer Panzergrenadier Division and others to begin a slow fighting withdrawal up the boot of Italy.

  On 4 June the Axis forces including Kappler’s Gestapo evacuated Rome. Despite being in retreat, the Germans were not worried for the Allies were not so much chasing them as simply following them. In fact Allied fighter planes and Italian partisans caused bigger headaches than the British Eighth and US Fifth Armies combined.

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  Simultaneous to the Normandy invasion and the fall of Rome the Soviets launched an offensive into Poland, and the 3rd SS Totenkopf Panzer Division was sent here to hold back the advancing hordes. Yet despite the Soviet onslaught the 9th SS Hohenstaufen and 10th SS Frundsberg Panzer Divisions were rushed by rail from the Eastern Front to Normandy.

  Meanwhile along the Russian-Latvian border the VI SS Corps of the 15th and 19th SS Lettische Grenadier Divisions and 106th SS Lettische Panzergrenadier Regiment were holding the line, and the 20th SS Estnische Grenadier Division was defending the southeastern part of the Russian-Estonian border. Further to their north on the coast at Narva Steiner’s III SS Panzer Corps of the 4th SS Nederland Panzergrenadier Brigade and 11th SS Nordland Panzergrenadier Division continued to hold back the Soviets. The Danes of the SS Nordland repulsed a major attack on 12 June. Danish unterscharfuehrer Egon Christofferson performed so bravely he was awarded the Knights Cross.

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  In France on June 7 Brigadefuehrer Heinz Lammerding, the ‘old man’ [commander] of the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzer Division, was ordered to sweep the area Clermont Ferrand-Limoges-Brive-Tulle for signs of anti-Nazi guerillas. Actually, at thirty-eight years old he really was the division’s oldest man.

  By this date Lammerding’s division consisted of 4,000 ‘old hares’ and 11,000 recruits of which 3,000 were Volksdeutsch conscripts from Hungary and Romania and 8,000 were seventeen-year old conscripts from the German provinces of Lothringen and Elsass - which the French considered to be theirs [Lorraine and Alsace]. In other words these boys had been French citizens until four years earlier. There was no lack of interpreters in the SS Das Reich. There was a celebration when it was learned that twenty-three year old Untersturmfuehrer Karl Muehleck had been awarded the Knight’s Cross for his courage in Russia.

  The men were not angry that they were ordered to hunt guerillas instead of driving to Normandy to fight the Anglo-American invaders, for they had a score to settle with these ‘terrorists’. In the previous month twenty of the division’s soldiers had been murdered by terrorists, including one soldier and his wife in a particularly brutal killing.

  Moreover the previous day 6 June tens of thousands of guerillas had been alerted by the Allies that this was the time to strike. The Allies used coded messages broadcast by the BBC World Service. From now on the Germans in France would be subjected to ambushes everywhere.

  Most of these ‘terrorists’ were de Gaullists, i.e. taking orders from French General Charles de Gaulle in London, who was an ally of the Anglo-Americans. Indeed British, American and de Gaullist paratroopers had dropped into France to train and arm these guerillas. [De Gaullists aka Free French. Their guerillas were FFI – French Forces of the Interior.]

  However, there were also Communist guerillas in France who took orders from Stalin, and this morning 7 June they began sniping at the SS Das Reich troops as soon as they drove out of their barracks. The scared recruits fired back at windows and trees indiscriminately. Here and there they stopped to surround a building and kill all the guerillas found inside - which usually meant all the adults found inside even if unarmed - but the division still suffered 14 killed and 21 wounded by nightfall.

  This same day in the small town of Tulle Communists attacked the Axis garrison, which consisted of a German military police platoon, a guard detail of older men from the German Army’s 95th Security Regiment, a French GMR detachment, some French local police and an RSHA office full of German and French members of the SD, Gestapo and Kripo. The garrison must have thought they were under attack by thousands of guerillas, because they telephoned not just for reinforcements, but also for air support! However, at 11am the local police and GMR made a truce with the Communists that allowed them to leave, thus abandoning the remainder of the garrison to their fate.

  Next morning the German defenders of Tulle also tried to make a deal with the Communists, but during the truce a Communist guerilla recognized a man in plain clothes as a French Gestapo agent and he shot him dead on the spot,
whereupon shooting broke out again and the truce was off. By noon 99 Germans had been killed and 40 captured, and only 80 Germans, half of them wounded, were still holding out.

  Then at dusk the SS Das Reich drove into town, their vehicles spraying machine gun bullets at concentrations of startled Communists. In the short exchange of gunfire, three of the SS Das Reich’s soldiers were killed and nine wounded, but they rescued the trapped garrison. The Communists scattered in the darkening night.

  The following morning Obersturmbannfuehrer Heinrich Wolff of the SS Das Reich ordered his men to search the town building by building and round up all able-bodied men. They apprehended 3,000 men, but found almost no weapons. It seemed the guerillas had either fled the town during the night or had hidden their weapons well. But the search did uncover the 40 German soldiers that had been taken captive, or rather what was left of them. They had been horribly mutilated and murdered, some obviously tortured to death.

  Obersturmfuehrer Walter Schmald now stepped forward. This Belgian Volksdeutsch member of the SS RSHA had survived the attack by hiding in a burning building, and he was probably still trembling from his ordeal. He demanded retribution for the deaths of the German members of the garrison, many of them killed after surrendering. Following a short conference among the officers it was decided that 400 men aged 17 to 42 would be punished for the murder of the 40 German prisoners: a rate of ten to one.

  As the young SS recruits picked out 400 men from those they had arrested, a German munitions factory manager ran up with horror on his face at what was about to happen. Unable to stop the punishment, he did manage to grab 27 of his employees from the 400. But the recruits were told to simply find another 27 men to make up the total. Wolff allowed the local priest to take hurried confessions.