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

by J. Lee Ready

  Oddly enough this 2nd Levy included those 1st degree Mischlings who had already been discharged from the armed forces as racially unfit. In fact many were freed from slave labor to fight!

  Ironically at this very moment some 1st degree Mischlings that were still serving as soldiers [enlisted personnel and officers] or working as civil servants suddenly found themselves transferred to OT labor battalions, where they were treated like criminals. But then if their camp was threatened by the enemy, they might suddenly be transferred to a Volksturm 2nd Levy unit and given a weapon. It was bewildering for many.

  To grab just a few more men Hitler agreed to conscript those boys who would turn sixteen by year’s end. He also recruited fifteen year old boys to deliver the mail, thus relieving postmen for military service. And retired firemen in their eighties were recalled to duty.

  By October 1944 Himmler still controlled hundreds of thousands of policemen, and his SS had reached huge proportions: a strength of 1,420,000. The SS KZL now had 25,000 members, but this did not count the many hiwis who helped them guard the camps. The SS WVHA had 24,000 members. The Allgemeine SS, which controlled honorary members and reservists, plus full-time members of such departments as SS VOMI, had no fewer than 250,000 men and women on the books. The SS RSHA reported it had 64,000 personnel of the SD, Kripo and Gestapo, but this did not count foreigners, unless that person had formally enlisted into the SS. An estimate of 100,000 foreign employees of the SS RSHA would not be too far off the mark.

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  SS Battlegroup Ameiser had no sooner been moved to Arad in Romania than it was attacked by a portion of the Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front, and by 6 October these SS troops were surrounded.

  Despite such losses Himmler’s Waffen SS was still growing. He created the 31st SS Boehmen-Maehren Grenadier Division, ostensibly from Czech Volksdeutsch volunteers and Sudeten conscripts ranging in age from fifteen to sixty, hence the name. Boehmen [Bohemia] and Maehren [Moravia] were the two Czech provinces.

  However, to make the formation up to strength he added Volksdeutsch from Hungary, Yugoslavia and Romania, and a few German veterans from the SS Frundsberg Division [and possibly some from the defunct SS Kama Division].

  Actually the so-called Volksdeutsch volunteers were in effect conscripts. Millions of civilians were on the move, trying to escape the Soviet advance. They crammed the roads, carrying their belongings in horse-drawn carts, push carts, wheelbarrows and in suitcases….men, women and children. The SS VOMI had checkpoints looking for Volksdeutsch, whom they would send to Germany by train, bus or truck. In Germany they were temporarily housed in camps until homes and jobs could be found for them, a major challenge as Allied bombers were daily destroying German homes by the thousand. However, able-bodied Volksdeutsch men aged sixteen to sixty were offered immediate employment as SS soldiers. Their families were then placed in SS dependent housing. Many a man enlisted to save his family.

  Command of the 31st Division was given to Oberfuehrer Gustav Lombard, who had a heck of a challenge facing him, namely to weld these various peoples into a fighting formation, and moreover he was given no time. The training had to be done on the move while the recruits retreated from Soviet advances! Furthermore, their columns were subjected to air raids, and once they crossed to the west of the Danube they also came under ambush by Titoist partisans. As if this was not enough, the families of these soldiers retreated with them. Unbelievably as early as 7 October Lombard was ordered to send troops to man the line in Hungary. He told Sepp Syr to create SS Battlegroup Syr for this purpose. Naturally Syr chose combat veterans where possible. Lombard must have been pulling out his hair.

  On 19 October in Hungary the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division launched a counterattack alongside the army’s 24th Panzer Division, and on the first day they defeated elements of the Romanian First Army and crossed the Tisa River near Szolnok. And on the second day they destroyed the Romanian 4th Division. However, the Germans could not keep this up, especially when the Soviet Seventh Guards Army counter attacked them. Over the next week the Germans lost what little they had gained.

  By the 26th SS Battlegroup Syr had been freed from its emergency duty and was able to rejoin Lombard’s Division. Lombard now settled his division into the line between Kiskoeszeg and Dunaszekscoe along a thirty-five mile front! Lombard and his staff now began pulling out a few men at a time for further training.

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  On the western front the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzer Division still manned the stationary, but often bloody Schnee Eiffel sector facing US First Army, while to their rear three SS divisions rested and rebuilt themselves: 1st SS LAH Panzer, 12th SS HJ Panzer and 17th SS GvB Panzergrenadier.

  However, on 15 October the SS GvB was rushed into action in the Vosges Mountains under orders from XIII SS Corps owing to an American push there by four infantry divisions and a Free French armored division. The other divisions of the XIII SS Corps were army formations: 553rd and 559th Volksgrenadier and 48th Infantry. These units were in such bad shape, that even though the SS GvB had not fully recovered from combat it was the ‘anchor’ of the corps.

  The French government had retreated with the Germans and they set up a government in exile at Sigmaringen in Germany. Darnand had retreated with his Milice, and the Germans allowed him to keep a third of his men to guard the French politicians and diplomats. However, Hitler ordered him to send another third to German war factories and to send the remainder to the SS Charlemagne Sturmbrigade, which was down to 1,100 troops. In response Darnand sent 2,500 men to the SS Charlemagne, greater than a third. Correctly he surmised that his veteran fighters would be more valuable as soldiers than as machinists. One of those sent to the Charlemagne was Jean Bassompierre. Another was Henri-Joseph Fenet. Himmler saw his chance here and he began to grab French ‘soldiers’ wherever he could. He even commandeered the French Legion ordering them to volunteer for the Waffen SS. This included Edgar Puaud and Eugene Vaulot. But seventy of these proud veterans refused. The Gestapo arrested them and sent them to a concentration camp: the fact that they had fought bravely alongside the Germans for three years counted for naught with Himmler! As a result of this SS draft French ‘recruits’ began arriving at the SS Charlemagne depot at Wildflecken. Besides the Milice, they included Frenchmen who had joined the SS reserves while working in Germany either as volunteer workers or forced labor. Also included were 2,000 French NSKK troops, hundreds of French OT employees, hundreds of French fascist militiamen, hundreds of policemen, and 800 sailors who had been serving in a French detachment of the German Kriegsmarine.

  Once the SS Charlemagne Sturmbrigade had reached a strength of 7,340, Himmler upgraded it to a grenadier division. Its commander would be fifty-six year old Brigadefuehrer Gustav Krukenberg, a German World War One veteran and professional diplomat, who had once lived in Paris, and who had then reentered the army at the beginning of the war. He had only just joined the SS and had been chief of staff of V SS Mountain Corps. His men must have wondered if this ‘diplomat’ was a fighting general. Fortunately his second in command was a known warrior, Oberfuehrer Edgar Puaud late of the French Legion.

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  In the month of October Himmler’s SS recruited more men for Brigadefuehrer Siegling’s 30th SS Weissrussische [Byelorussian] Grenadier Division - namely 1,383 Russians, 2,354 Byelorussians and 5,953 Ukrainians. Again Himmler ignored the supposed Byelorussian nationality of the formation. Most of these men had in fact already served Himmler either as ordnungsdienst, hiwis, schumas or hiwas. Recently the division had been fighting guerillas in France, but was now behind the lines training for full-scale combat.

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  The Allies had occupied a sliver of the Netherlands around Nijmegen-Eindhoven, but most of that nation was still under German control. Himmler decided to ‘honor’ the Dutch Landstorm and the Dutch SS for their performance in the Arnhem affair by inducting them into the new SS Landstorm Grenadier Brigade of the Waffen SS. Following a mere modi
cum of training they were sent back into the line to face the stationary British and Americans south of Arnhem. At one point in the line they faced the Princess Irene Brigade, a Dutch unit raised by the British!

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  On the eastern front Himmler expanded the 1st SS Tatar Mountain Brigade by adding to it Tatars and Volksdeutsch from the Volga Valley, bringing its strength up to about 3,500 men. Then he paired it with the 6,500 strong East Turkic SS Corps, and named the joint force the SS East Turkic Waffenverband.

  Himmler had already gained enough Caucasus Moslem volunteers to form an SS regiment, which had fought well in the Warsaw uprising, and he now recruited more Caucasus Moslems, expanding the SS Caucasus Moslem Regiment into the SS Caucasus Moslem Waffenverband. He also approached the Georgians and Armenians, dangling the prize of membership in the SS. Recognizing safety in numbers they accepted his offer, becoming the SS Armenian Waffenverband and SS Georgian Waffenverband. Then he placed the Caucasus, Armenian and Georgian Waffenverbaende into the new SS Caucasus Corps, a total of about 20,000 troops.

  Mongolians started to join the SS. Many were sent to Italy as sentries.

  In central Poland the IV SS Panzer Corps of the 3rd SS Totenkopf and 5th SS Wiking Panzer Divisions held static defenses. This did not mean peaceful. Sturmbannfuehrer Fritz Biermeier was mortally wounded. Another sad loss was Hauptsturmfuehrer Gerhard Lotze. This multi-decorated hero had been but ten years old when Hitler came to power!

  When Standartenfuehrer Muehlenkamp was promoted to inspector general of all Waffen SS panzer troops, the SS Wiking gained a new commander, Standartenfuehrer Karl Ullrich, who had led the SS Totenkopf’s pioneers at Demiansk and a panzergrenadier regiment at Kursk.

  The performance of the SS RONA Sturmbrigade in Warsaw had not been exemplary, though the incidents of drunkenness, rape, looting and murder did decrease after the execution of Kaminski. The Waffen SS had hoped Himmler would see the light and disband the force, but instead, ever eager for power, he announced that the brigade would be expanded to divisional size, the manpower coming from the entire Lokot militia, and would be known as the 29th SS RONA Russische Grenadier Division.

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  The III SS Panzer Corps of the 11th SS Nordland Panzergrenadier Division and 4th SS Nederland Panzergrenadier Brigade was still retreating across Estonia and Latvia. A posthumous Knight's Cross was awarded to Hauptsturmfuehrer Martin Guerz of the SS Nordland, who was killed in the retreat, aged twenty-six. To be assigned to a rearguard position here was virtually a death sentence: e.g. Obersturmfuehrer Hans-Goesta Pehrsson ordered his fellow Swedes to retake a hill near Preekuln, and they did, but the bloody fight left his entire company with just 25 men. Nonetheless they repelled several enemy assaults for five days and even counter attacked once. When finally permitted to withdraw Pehrsson had a dozen men left.

  Two Latvians, Hauptsturmfuehrer Zanis Butkus [19th SS Lettische] and Obersturmbannfuehrer Karlis Aperats [15th SS Lettische], were awarded the Knight's Cross for their outstanding performances in the retreat across Latvia. Standartenfuehrer Heino Hierthes took over a regiment in the 15th SS Lettische. He had served with the Totenkopf cavalry, the 1st SS Motorized Brigade and the SS Estnische Division.

  Fortunately these retreating SS units were joined by SS Panzer Brigade Gross, which guarded their flank. Eventually III SS Panzer Corps had to squeeze through the narrow streets of the seaside port of Riga under aerial bombardment and long-range artillery fire. The city was hell indeed with its structures in flames and terrified Latvian and Volksdeutsch civilians fleeing alongside the Germans.

  After passing through the city the III SS Panzer Corps joined with the VI SS Corps of the 15th and 19th SS Lettische Grenadier Divisions and 106th SS Lettische Panzergrenadier Regiment. Both corps were under the orders of Army Group North, which had gathered all its surviving units and had built a defensive line across the entrance to the Kurland Peninsula, with the sea on three sides. One of these units was the 16th SS Police Regiment commanded by Polizei Oberstleutnant Gieseke. Here the generals prepared for a last ditch stand while begging Hitler for the use of the Kriegsmarine to enable them to sail away from this horror. Most of the Estonian units including the local police, schumas and 300th Police Special Purpose Division had been destroyed in the retreat. Indeed a good number of the Estonian and Latvian soldiers had abandoned their units to form partisan bands in the forests. They neither intended to surrender to the Communists nor flee to Germany, but rather they declared the beginning of a partisan struggle against the Soviet invader.

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  In Italy the 16th SS Reichsfuehrer Panzergrenadier Division was still battling partisans. As of 1 November the division was led by Oberfuehrer Otto Baum.

  Italian fascists with some German help were battling several thousand partisans in the Domodossala region of Italy. Here Brigadefuehrer Willy Tensfeld, Wolff’s liaison officer with the fascists, managed to grab another medal for someone else’s courage.

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  In Slovakia the partisans were stronger than ever and in effect had become a regular army. Himmler was exasperated with the slow progress here and he made many threats to the German commanders in the field. They were unable to swiftly advance even though they were attacking with the 108th Panzer Division, Tatra Panzer Division, 20th SS Estnische Grenadier Division, Schill SS Panzer Regiment, 86th SS Regiment, SS Battlegroup Schaefer and SS Einsatzgruppe H, aided by several thousand Slovakian troops under German guidance.

  Himmler decided to reinforce them on a major scale with a battlegroup of the 14th SS Galizien Grenadier Division. Himmler gave these Ukrainians a sop to help morale: the division would now have the sub-title ‘1st Ukrainian’. The battlegroup was led by Obersturmbannfuehrer Wildner, who by coincidence was a Slovakian Volksdeutsch. Himmler dissolved SS Battlegroup Schaefer, sending its Frenchmen back to the Charlemagne and its Horst Wessel troops back to their parent division, but he ordered the entire 18th SS Horst Wessel Panzergrenadier Division to join the Slovakian offensive. The Galizien and Horst Wessel were welcomed by the Axis troops, but another reinforcement sent by Himmler was not welcomed: the SS Dirlewanger Brigade.

  On October 15 while Wildner’s Ukrainians advanced towards Brezno, Dirlewanger’s men attacked alongside the Tatra Panzer Division into the Ostro Mountains. At Kaprina the Schill SS Panzer Regiment was locked in a deadly struggle with the Czecho-Slovakian 2nd Airborne Brigade. German Army reinforcements also arrived, the 271st and 708th Volksgrenadier Divisions, which began an assault from western Slovakia.

  The SS Galizien Ukrainians took Brezno on the 25th. Three days later the partisan command structure suddenly collapsed and over the next week the Axis forces rounded up thousands of prisoners. The Slovak rebellion was all but finished.

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  On the southern section of the Eastern Front on 6 October the Soviet 2nd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts and the Romanian Fourth Army launched a new offensive into Hungary. The Hungarian Army put up a good fight, but even with German aid they were forced backwards. The 8th SS Florian Geyer and 22nd SS Maria Theresa Cavalry Divisions [minus SS Battlegroup Ameiser] fought every step of the way, backing up towards the city of Budapest on the Danube.

  On October 15 Admiral Miklos Horthy the Hungarian dictator announced on public radio he intended to surrender to the Soviets. The Germans struck back swiftly. Obersturmbannfuehrer Otto Skorzeny and his SS Friedenthal Hunting Group kidnapped Horthy’s son, while elements of the 22nd SS Maria Theresa Cavalry Division and the 500th SS Parachute Battalion occupied government buildings in Budapest. By the following day Skorzeny’s troops, with the aid of the Arrow Cross - Hungarian fascist militia - had arrested Horthy. Fortunately for the Germans, the Hungarian soldiers were too busy fighting the Soviets to listen to the radio and few of them had heard the broadcast. Hitler installed a suitable puppet ruler for Hungary, Ferenc Szalasi. This head of the Arrow Cross now announced the war would go on.

  Himmler authorized a Hungarian Waffen-SS
officer, Obersturmfuehrer Dr. Karoli Ney von Polis, to raise a bodyguard unit of Arrow Cross members to protect Szalasi. The unit would be known as SS Battlegroup Ney. Other Arrow Cross members were placed into the new SS Battalion Szalasi and were sent to support the SS Boehmen-Maehren Division at the front.

  Another Hungarian gained favor with Himmler at this time, Laszlo vitez Zelko, who was given a commission as an SS sturmbannfuehrer to recruit the entire mountain warfare training battalion of the Hungarian Army into the SS. He succeeded [probably because these men had no choice] and this unit became the 1st SS Hungarian Ski Battalion.

  The SS Maria Theresa Division was now sent back to the front to hold Debrecen and Nyiregyhaza, but within days these cavalrymen were soon backing up towards Budapest.

  On 28 October SS Battlegroup Deak was withdrawn for a rest, having suffered 30% casualties in seven weeks of action.

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  The 1st Cossack Cavalry Division had been battling Titoists in Yugoslavia for a year and had proven to be a valuable fighting formation. The German officers assigned to the division were more like liaison officers than cadre, for the Cossacks needed no supervision. They knew how to kill Communists. In fact they had gained recruits here, veterans of the Russian Self-Defense Corps, some of whom had been born and raised in Yugoslavia. Simultaneously some Cossacks of the division had been fighting Italian partisans near Tolmezzo across the border in Italy. Himmler had been wooing this Cossack division for a year and finally in autumn 1944 the Cossacks felt they might have a better chance of survival with Himmler. So the unit now became the 1st SS Cossack Cavalry Division. The few German Army officers serving with the unit, including its commander Oberst von Pannwitz, were not required to take the SS oath.