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

by J. Lee Ready

  This appeared to be a good move, because the Cossack National Council was soon asking for something in return. They asked that their current headquarters at Tolmezzo in Kuestenland [part of Italy taken by Hitler in September 1943] be recognized as sovereign Cossack soil, and that they be allowed to rule the town. Hitler seemed amenable to the idea. Soon Cossack women and children began arriving at Tolmezzo. Surprisingly the only complaint by the local Italians was that the Cossacks sometimes stole food while on their anti-partisan sweeps.

  Himmler was also agreeable as this gave him the opportunity to grab other Cossacks. He began commandeering every Cossack he could, hiwis of the army as well as osttruppen, including a bicycle battalion, a heavy mortar battalion and several infantry battalions. [Not all Cossacks were horsemen!] Soon he had enough units to create the 2nd SS Cossack Cavalry Division. Himmler placed both divisions into the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps, and now he withdrew them from anti-partisan activity and entrenched them along that part of the Drava River that forms the Croatian-Hungarian border. They dug in and awaited the Soviet advance.

  To the south of the Cossack Corps, the Serb Army and Police chose not to defend their own capital, Belgrade on the Danube, but fled in terror as the Soviets approached. The German 5th SS Police Regiment also retreated. However, German Army troops remained to defend the city. The 7th SS Prinz Eugen Mountain Division was ordered to defend the city of Nis in this their first battle against the Soviets. The Yugoslavian Volksdeutsch of this division were particularly unnerved by Soviet fighter-bombers, but nonetheless they fought well. However, they knew that they and their flanking German Army units could not hope to stop an onslaught by the Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front, the Bulgarian Army and the Titoists all at the same time. So, on the 15th they withdrew from Nis.

  Yet, the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps did defeat an attempt by the 2nd Ukrainian Front to cross the Drava River just north of Virovitica.

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  Even before the Soviets overran southern Yugoslavia to reach the Albanian border, the Albanian Communist partisans had already launched a major assault on the cities of that country, and the Germans and their Albanian allies had begun to pull out. By mid-October Obersturmbannfuehrer Graaf reported that he could no longer control his 21st SS Skanderbeg Mountain Division owing to mass desertions. His 900 Germans and Volksdeutsch were still cohesive, but only 537 of his Moslems had stayed with him, about six per cent! In response Himmler approved the formal disbandment of the division and the creation of the SS Skanderbeg Battlegroup with these loyal survivors. The battlegroup would fight alongside the SS Prinz Eugen.

  The 13th SS Handschar Mountain Division, which was really a shrunken remnant by now, suffered a setback when its headquarters was attacked at Janja north of Sarajevo by a large Titoist force. However, the division’s field units did defeat a partisan brigade at Jablanica on the Neretva River west of Sarajevo. In both incidents no quarter was given.

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  By late October Standartenfuehrer Paul Blobel’s Sonderkommando ‘1005’ had not finished digging up and burning corpses on their tour of Eastern Europe, but neither had they stuck around to welcome the Soviet Red Army. These men had lived a nightmare. And now that they could no longer perform their duty, things got even worse, because they were suddenly redesignated SS Einsatzgruppe Ilsit and were ordered to fight partisans. In other words they were to actually risk their own lives, something they had never bargained for. There was an added cause for alarm - their combat duty would be in Austria - specifically Carinthia, where local Slovenes had gone into the hills to fight under Tito’s orders. Blobel’s people would be expected to fight alongside the 10th SS Police Regiment.

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  On 30 October Sturmbannfuehrer Toni Ameiser and his SS Battlegroup Ameiser reached the German lines, having been surrounded for days. He had forty-eight men left.

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  Chapter Thirty-nine

  NOVEMBER 1944

  In November 1944 one of Himmler’s fantasies came true. Since he was a boy he had dreamed of leading an army to victory and at last he was given the chance. Hitler placed him in charge of Oberkommando Oberrhein [High Command Upper Rhine], which was the administrative headquarters for all German Army, Luftwaffe and Waffen SS ground forces building up in the Rhineland for Hitler’s great winter offensive. This offensive was a secret, but in fact everybody knew about it, for one could not help but notice the buildup of tanks, self-propelled weapons, artillery and supplies just east of the Schnee Eiffel.

  Already some SS officers had attained high military positions. Though Gruppenfuehrer Curt von Gottberg was not able to take a unit into combat, this much had been proven, he was made deputy commander of the Replacement Army with responsibility for catching stragglers and draft dodgers. Gruppenfuehrer Gottlob Berger had already achieved a major military position owing to Himmler’s influence, namely chief of staff of the Home Army and chief of all POW camps. By coincidence Berger’s brother had been captured by the Americans in World War One: but they had executed him!

  However, these were Berlin desk jobs. The German Army generals did not mind that these positions had gone to SS officers. Nor did they mind Hausser and Dietrich gaining major combat commands, because these two had proven themselves time and again. Nor did they concern themselves with Wolff’s promotion to head of internal security in Italy. Nor did they disapprove of Bach-Zelewski’s position as head of the anti-partisan war in the east, for these jobs were major headaches. But for Himmler to actually take control of the movement of combat troops: that was too much. The generals complained vociferously. Even the Waffen SS ‘generals’ thought his appointment was a joke.

  One might have expected Himmler to have jumped into this job with ferocity, but frankly by this date Himmler was so overworked running his own empire within the empire that he could not spare the time to administer these troops. In any case he was completely out of his depth when giving orders for troops to actually move from one place to another. He had no tactical or strategic or logistical sense. Himmler was a great administrator and a powerful motivator, true, but he was no general.

  Therefore, he allocated army deputies to do his work for him and in reality he was no more in command of this army group than his chauffeur was.

  Himmler had other things on his mind, such as what to do with the many thousands of political prisoners in Eastern Europe who might be rescued by a sudden Soviet thrust. He ordered the destruction of the buildings and crematories at Birkenau and other camps in the path of the Soviets and told all of the SS WVHA and SS KZL personnel in the east to begin withdrawing into central Germany.

  This was a terrifying prospect for these thugs, who had bullied, beaten, teased and murdered helpless victims in concentration camps and slave labor camps, because if they killed their prisoners, and withdrew to Germany as ordered, they would no longer have an essential occupation, and could be conscripted into the Waffen SS, where they would actually be expected to risk their own lives.

  They solved the problem by bringing their prisoners with them! They had the authority to commandeer trucks and trains. They could even empty a medical train of Waffen SS wounded for their own use, and in the past they had done such despicable things, but now they chose to walk their prisoners to the west. This would take longer, and that is exactly what they wanted. No matter that such sick prisoners would die like flies crossing snow-covered mountains and rain swept plains with inadequate food and no medical attention in late autumn and in the depths of winter. As long as these guards [hiwis included] had prisoners to guard they could not be conscripted. Over the next months this movement became tragic and comical at the same time. Sometimes a walking column would reach a concentration camp in Germany consisting of three times as many guards as prisoners.

  For their part the camp kommandants in Germany screamed in horror. Where would they put these new arrivals? The prison huts were already overcrowded.

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  Since the An
glo-American push towards Arnhem in September the Western Front had been stationary, because the Allies had outrun their supplies. This gave the Germans a much prayed for breather. Their Nineteenth Army was down to forty tanks, a smaller number than was available to each American infantry division!

  But stationary did not mean quiet. Along the northwest sector the ad hoc forces of SS, police and others were trying to hold onto part of Antwerp and the mouth of the Scheldt River, against a continual assault by the Canadian First Army. Further east the SS Landstorm Grenadier Brigade and other forces faced the stationary and quiet British Second Army.

  On the northern sector German forces including the 2nd SS Panzer Division successfully halted the US Ninth and First Armies, inflicting heavy casualties at such places as Aachen, Monschau and the bloody Hurtgen Forest. In November Gruppenfuehrer von Treuenfeld’s 10th SS Frundsberg Panzer Division arrived in the Monschau area.

  In the central sector the garrison of Metz continued to hold out against the US Third Army.

  Initially on the southern sector the US Seventh and French First Armies settled down quietly on the western border of Alsace and Lorraine, but in November they too became aggressive. In October Nazi propaganda had said the Americans were throwing their soldiers’ lives away in meaningless attacks in desperate hopes of gaining a victory in order to make President Roosevelt look good for the November elections. Many a GI agreed with this opinion.

  German Army Group G was charged with keeping the Allies out of Alsace and Lorraine, but was given little human material with which to accomplish that mission. As these two provinces were now part of Germany again [having been part of France 1919-40] German military conscription was in effect taking all boys who would be sixteen before year’s end, all old men aged sixty and every man in between. The interesting situation was that most of the local men aged 42 to 60 had served in German uniform once before, in World War One, and they thought of themselves as Germans, but they were too old to make good infantrymen. The youngest age group 15-21 was full of Nazi spirit, but little else. Only those men aged 22 to 42 would make good infantrymen, but most of them had served in the French Army 1939-40 against the Germans, and they hated the Nazis. As a result local conscription was not really very productive.

  New divisions were joining Army Group G all the time, but they were small volksgrenadier formations with poorly trained conscripts of all ages. What the German generals needed, they admitted, were some SS divisions.

  And Himmler provided them. The 17th SS GvB Panzergrenadier Division was warmly welcomed and by 5 November was asked to hold the Seille River south of Metz under the authority of the army’s LXXXII Corps. This SS division was newly equipped and possessed large panzer forces. The XIII SS Corps was nearby, but only controlled two weak army divisions: the 48th Infantry and 559th Volksgrenadier.

  However, the army generals were surprised by the next two divisions to arrive. The 29th SS RONA Russische Grenadier Division was based upon the Russian Lokot militia. The remaining soldiers were Ukrainians, Cossacks, Poles and Byelorussians, mostly police veterans. There did not appear to be much discipline in this division. The other arrival was Oberfuehrer Siegling’s 30th SS Weissrussische Grenadier Division of Byelorussians, Ukrainians and Russians. At least some of these men seemed soldierly enough. General F. W. von Mellenthin, chief of staff of Army Group G, expressed serious concern about the combat capability of these two formations.

  On 8 November General George S. Patton’s US Third Army sent five divisions against the German LXXXII Corps and XIII SS Corps of First Army of Army Group G. A day later, Patton added another five divisions. With but eight worn out divisions to stop Patton, the First Army threw in its last reserve: the SS GvB. Much was expected of these SS warriors. Unfortunately American heavy bombers blasted apart the headquarters of the SS GvB.

  Still, the SS GvB did stop the US 5th Infantry and 6th Armored Divisions, but the flanks of the SS GvB were completely overrun, and after three days the SS were permitted to withdraw.

  As part of the greater Allied plan, on November 11 US Seventh Army attacked the northern flank of German Nineteenth Army of Army Group G. After three days these Germans began retreating. On the 14th, Nineteenth Army’s southern flank was struck by the French First Army, and within six days the French broke through to the Rhine River.

  Nineteenth Army now threw in its last available reserves, the 198th Infantry Division and 30th SS Weissrussische Grenadier Division, and ordered them to cut off the French advance. The 198th made no progress at all, being stopped by heavy artillery fire. However, the ‘Ruskies’ of the SS ignored the artillery salvoes and charged ahead. They came close enough to inflict some casualties on the French, but they paid a high price in blood. Next day they began to fall back.

  The 19th SS Police Regiment was also thrown into the front line, and one of its officers, Hauptsturmfuehrer Wilhelm Engelbrecht, earned the Knight's Cross for this action.

  The French 2nd Armored Division broke through to capture Strasbourg on the Rhine. All seemed lost for Army Group G, but then the Allies stopped. Once again they had outrun their supplies. [Unknown to the soldiers on both sides, they were also held back by ‘political considerations’.]

  The German generals took advantage of this to send the two ‘Russian’ SS divisions back to Himmler with a sort of ‘thanks but no thanks’.

  However, they retained the SS GvB, and sent it to the XIII SS Corps, which by now commanded five army divisions: two infantry, two volksgrenadier and the 11th Panzer.

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  In Yugoslavia the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps was in good condition holding the Drava River line on the Hungarian border. Holding other parts of this line were units of the German Army and Croatian Army, plus the Russian Self-Defense Corps and Standartenfuehrer Harzer’s 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division. Thirty-two year old Harzer, wearing the Knight’s Cross he had earned at Arnhem, had taken over the Polizei Division when Brigadefuehrer Fritz Schmedes was dismissed for his lack of enthusiasm for the war. The stationary riverbank combat was bloody. Sturmbannfuehrer Alois Etthoefer, one of the SS Polizei’s most decorated officers was killed leading his tank battalion.

  In the rear in Bosnia and Croatia, HSSPF Gruppenfuehrer Konstantin Kammerhofer was fighting Titoist guerillas with his police forces – namely Croatian police, German police, and five regiments and fifteen battalions of Croatian schumas. Further north in Slovenia Obergruppenfuehrer Erwin Roesener was fighting Titoists using German policemen and anti-Communist Slovenian militia.

  On the southern front line in Bosnia the 7th SS Prinz Eugen Mountain Division, SS Skanderbeg Battlegroup and 13th SS Handschar Mountain Division were holding the enemy between Nis and Sarajevo. Here Obersturmfuehrer Harry Paletta of the Prinz Eugen, a twenty-two year old Serb Volksdeutsch, gave his life so heroically he was posthumously awarded the Knight's Cross.

  Himmler and his staff finally realized that the SS Handschar was a division in name only, so they dismissed those of its remaining troops that had been judged to be poor quality and made them laborers. The good soldiers, almost all of whom were Volksdeutsch, were transferred to a new formation, the 13th SS Regimental Group Handschar Battlegroup Hanke, led by Obersturmbannfuehrer Hans Hanke. [It always appears that the smaller the SS unit the bigger its name. For convenience sake this unit will be referred to as SS Battlegroup Hanke.]

  The 31st SS Boehmen-Maehren Grenadier Division was still in the front line in the Kiskoeszeg-Dunaszekscoe sector alongside the SS Szalasi Battalion, and had been reinforced by an army training regiment and the 1st SS Tatar Mountain Brigade. On November 7 this division and its neighboring units came under a heavy Soviet onslaught, and over the next few days they were unable to prevent the Soviets from gaining a bridgehead at Kiskoeszeg, but they did stop them at Mohacs.

  However, by November 26 the 31st SS Boehmen-Maehren Division, SS Szalasi Battalion, 1st SS Tatar Mountain Brigade and neighboring army units could no longer hold, and this day they were ass
aulted by four Soviet divisions at Mohacs. The next day the defenders simply collapsed into small pockets.

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  Meanwhile in Hungary Himmler began forming a new SS unit from actual Hungarians. Theoretically these were all volunteers, but in truth this was theft, pure and simple. Himmler simply stole the Hungarian Army’s 13th Division of General Josef Grassy, and renamed it the 25th SS Hunyadi Grenadier Division, named after a 15th century Hungarian general. This outfit had performed well in the Stalingrad affair in 1942. Most of its men were given equivalent SS ranks, Grassy becoming a gruppenfuehrer. Some of these Hungarian troops were from those ethnic Hungarian regions of Czecho-Slovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia that the Hungarian Army had overrun between 1938 and 1941.

  On the front line in Hungary Soviet tank advances were only stopped by a combination of fanatic Hungarian and German resistance and rain-sodden dirt roads. But the Soviet infantry of the 2nd Ukrainian Front could still advance. By 3 November Rumohr’s 8th SS Florian Geyer and Zehender’s 22nd SS Maria Theresa Cavalry Divisions had backed up to Budapest, until their trenches were only six miles from the town center. In the Vesces area the SS Maria Theresa launched counterattacks almost every time the Soviets pressed them.

  The defenders were now reinforced in the Roth sector by the 25th SS Hunyadi Grenadier Division and the 18th SS Horst Wessel Panzergrenadier Division. On 10 November SS Battlegroup Deak became part of the SS Hunyadi, and Laszlo vitez Deak became a regimental commander within the division.