by J. Lee Ready
On the Eastern Front General Schoerner’s Army Group Center, including the 20th SS Estnische, 31st SS Boehmen-Maehren, 35th SS Polizei Grenadier and 36th SS Dirlewanger Grenadier Divisions and SS Horst Wessel Battlegroup, was battling to protect Slovakia and the Czech Protectorate and a sliver of Eastern Germany. Schoerner believed Berlin was a deathtrap and he had no intention of sending reinforcements there. In fact he asked for troops. When Hitler responded by sending Schoerner four veteran panzer divisions, General Heinrici the commander of Army Group Vistula complained, for he wanted them. Goering stepped in and offered Heinrici 100,000 airmen to replace the panzer troops, and Admiral Karl Doenitz commander of the Kriegsmarine then offered 12,000 of his sailors. Himmler loved to play politics like this so he offered 25,000 of his Allgemeine SS to Heinrici. The army generals were disgusted with this fairy tale attitude to the destruction of their country. Neither Allgemeine SS, sailors nor airmen were on a par with veteran panzer troops, and not surprisingly few of the promised men ever arrived and of those who did, most came without weapons!
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At the beginning of April in Italy the Allies [including a considerable pro-Allied Italian Army] began their spring offensive. Everyone knew this would be the last battle there. By now Hitler knew that Himmler had recruited three Italian combat units: the 24th SS Karstjaeger Italien Mountain Division, 29th SS Italien Grenadier Division, SS Battalion Debica and SS Italien Sturmbrigade. Hitler worried about these Italians, but he still trusted the majority of his SS in Italy to pull the fat out of the fire because of their fanatic Nazism and German racial strength.
However, here we have another lie and the joke was on Hitler, for of the 162,000 SS troops under Wolff’s command in Italy only 15,000 were Germans. The remainder consisted of about 100,000 Italians, 10,000 Slovenes, 10,000 Croats, 5,000 Slovaks, 3,500 Indian Moslems and 20,000 Cossacks, Mongols, Byelorussians, Russians and Caucasians. And of the 15,000 Germans many were in fact Austrians, South Tyrolese, Sudetens and Volksdeutsch from Eastern European countries. Probably fewer than five per cent of the SS stationed in Italy had been born in Germany.
And as for Wolff? He had his own agenda and it did not involve fighting to the death.
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On 3 April the 7th SS Prinz Eugen Mountain Division abandoned Sarajevo. Throughout Yugoslavia the mass retreat was on, and now every Serb, Bosnian and Croat who had fought against the Communists had to retreat too. This included Cetnik partisans who on occasion clashed with retreating Croat Ustaci.
At Bila Goza in the Papuk Mountains the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps dug in, hoping to rest awhile. Here they received reinforcements including the German Army’s 630th Cossack Infantry Regiment commanded by the Russian Volksdeutsch Oberst von Renteln. They also gained several companies of Cossack osttruppen and hiwis as well as some non-Cossack Russians. The Germans still thought any Russian who could sit on a horse was a Cossack. With these new people the corps began forming the 3rd SS Cossack Infantry Division.
On 12 April the Soviets, Bulgarians and Titoists advanced into Croatia, quickly seizing Zenica. The Croatian government ordered its policemen to man the front line, but they simply joined the retreat. Everyone was retreating.
On the 14th the SS Prinz Eugen lost Obersturmbannfuehrer Richard Jungclaus, killed in action. He was here because he had refused to kill unarmed prisoners in Belgium.
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By now the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp complex had grown significantly. Several of the old Auschwitz hands had survived to become guards here including the female SS Aufseherinen Juana Bormann, Herta Ehlert, Irma Grese and Elisabeth Voelkenrath. Other female guards working here were Herta Bothe, Gertrude Feist, Ida Forster, Ilse Forster, Hildegard Hahnel, Irene Haschke, Anna Hempel, Hilde Lisiewitz, Charlotte Klein, Joanna Kurd, Hildegard Lippman, Gertrud Neumann, Klara Opitz, Gertrud Rheinholt, Erna Rosenthal, Gertrude Sauer, Emmi Schotig, Ilse Steinbusch and Freida Walter.
By 15 April when British troops reached the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp complex, the kommandant Standartenfuehrer Josef Kramer was in command of thousands of guards and a unit of 1,500 Hungarian troops that had recently arrived, yet he not only ordered them not to resist, but told them to surrender and he actually took some British officers on a guided tour, expecting praise for his work under such trying conditions. He pointed out the 30,000 stick-like humans who were still breathing and the 30,000 stick-like corpses that lay everywhere in the open, and he explained the camp complex had originally been built to hold just 5,000 inmates. The prisoners were so emaciated it was almost impossible to tell their gender, even though many were naked. Typhus and other diseases were rife and the sight of such a living nightmare brought the battle-hardened ‘Tommies’ to tears. They reported: “both inside and outside the huts was a carpet of dead bodies, human excreta, rags and filth.”
The guards at Buchenwald either fled or gave up when the US 6th Armored Division arrived. Those who surrendered informed the few hundred American medics that they had suddenly inherited 120,000 patients. The division practically demanded that General Patton visit the camp, and when he did the next day he was so filled with anger that he ‘arrested’ the entire population of the nearby city of Weimar and ordered them to be taken to the camp to see what the SS KZL had been doing in their name. The townsfolk were appalled. Following the tour the mayor of Weimar and his wife committed suicide.
On the 16th Brigadefuehrer Bierkamp, the butcher of the Jews, was home in Hamburg on leave at the wrong moment. He got caught up in the fighting when the British arrived and was killed. The city police of Hamburg and Harburg were put into the temporary Knolle Police Battalion and were thrown into battle alongside the 28th Allgemeine SS Regiment and local Volksturm. They were overrun quickly.
In Nuremberg the defenders - 17th SS GvB Panzergrenadier Division, Volksturm, 3rd SS Infantry Regiment of the Allgemeine SS and several army units - were still fighting tenaciously defending the city against the US 3rd, 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions. The defenders were soon reinforced by towed anti-tank guns and self-propelled panzerjaegers belonging to the 38th SS Nibelungen Division. Day after day they held onto each pile of rubble as if it was the Fuehrer bunker itself. Vinzenz Kaiser was an extremely brave man and Knight’s Cross winner, but here courage was not enough.
Inside the Ruhr Pocket all was lost. In the city of Duesseldorf Polizei Oberstleutnant Juergens declared the city open to the Americans and he directed his policemen to arrest Brigadefuehrer August Korreng, the commander of the 6th Cavalry and 20th Infantry Regiments of the Allgemeine SS, but within minutes some of Korreng’s men arrived, liberated Korreng and shot Juergens and four of his officers for defeatism. But hours later the US 13th Armored Division arrived and Korreng and his men, murderous cowards the lot of them, meekly surrendered.
By now the Eleventh Army including SS Panzer Brigade Westfalen was surrounded by the Americans in the Harz Mountains. There was no longer any thought of rescuing the Ruhr Pocket. In any case on the 17th the Ruhr was finally overrun. Generalfeldmarschal Model gave the ‘every man for himself order’ and then committed suicide. Model knew what befell an officer’s relatives if Hitler could not get his hands on the officer to punish him. Whereas following a suicide Hitler usually left the family alone. Perhaps Model’s death should be placed in this context.
By 19 April SS Battlegroup Dirnagel was trying to hold Schwabach against a plethora of US tanks, artillery and infantry aided by close air support.
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On 12 April the German Army put together yet another formation, the Steirmarck Mountain Division. In order to fill its ranks the army grabbed men from the SS Mountain Warfare Replacement School at Leoben and from the 13th SS Training and Replacement Battalion. Within days the division was thrown into action in Austria.
By 12 April it looked like Vienna was about to fall. As a last desperate measure the XVII SS Corps of the 25th SS Hunyadi and 26th SS Ungarische Grenadier Divisions and the army’s 3rd Panze
r Division counterattacked at Hohenruppersdorf northeast of the city, and they did in fact surround the Romanian 2nd Armored Regiment, but even this small enemy formation was too much for the attackers and after a couple of days the XVII SS Corps withdrew.
In any case their contribution had come too late, for on 13 April the last defenders of Vienna died or gave up. Just a few thousand yards outside the city the SS LAH, SS Hohenstaufen, SS Totenkopf, SS Das Reich, SS Wiking, SS Luetzow, SS Galizien and SS Reichsfuehrer Divisions and their attached units began backing away from Vienna northwards and westwards.
SS Battlegroup Schweitzer had performed much better than expected, and its commander was awarded the Knight's Cross.
However, just two days later Gille’s IV SS Panzer Corps, controlling the SS Totenkopf, SS Wiking and SS Galizien Divisions as well as two battalions of the SS Nordland, turned and launched a determined riposte against the Soviets. They did well, but on the next day their assault was called off, because flanking German army units had fallen back under Soviet pressure. Gille withdrew his corps a few miles and then anchored it on the 16th SS Reichsfuehrer Panzergrenadier Division, which had already dug a new defensive position. As the SS Wiking fell back to Judenburg yet another ‘old hare’ bought it at this time: Hans Dorr, ten days after his thirty-third birthday. Obersturmfuehrer Otto Schneider, a Czech Volksdeutsch tank commander was declared missing in action. The SS Das Reich now received a temporary commander, Standartenfuehrer Karl Kreutz, the division’s artillery chief. For the moment he would wear two hats.
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On April 16 the long anticipated Soviet hammer blow that intended to break through to Berlin began with an unbelievable artillery barrage. Guns of the 1st Byelorussian and 1st Ukrainian Fronts opened fire on the Oder-Neisse line. Hitler, in his Fuehrer bunker in Berlin could hear the pounding of the shells, and he immediately ordered General Busse to use the reserve of his Ninth Army to counterattack the Soviets at Frankfurt and destroy them. The general obeyed, knowing the mission was futile. The Soviets had built up an incredibly large formation here. When Busse’s 344 artillery pieces replied to the enemy guns, the noise they made was completely drowned out by the din of the Soviet’s 17,000 guns! There were so many gun flashes and explosions that the night was bright as day. Alongside the German Army divisions huddled on the ground underneath this sledgehammer of shrapnel were the 10th SS Frundsberg Panzer and 32nd SS ‘30te Januar’ Grenadier Divisions, though both in reserve. Above them 300 Luftwaffe planes battled 7,500 Soviet aircraft.
Busse’s reserve was led by General Weidling, who had his own LVI Panzer Corps [the army’s 18th and 25th Panzer Divisions] and Brigadefuehrer Juergen Ziegler’s III SS Panzer Corps [11th SS Nordland and 23rd SS Nederland Panzergrenadier Divisions, plus the 101st and 102nd SS Spanish Companies]. These soldiers knew they were going into their last battle - ‘Old hares’ like the artillery officer Oskar Schwappacher, Siegfried Scheibe the German commander of the SS Seyffardt Regiment of the SS Nederland, Miguel Ezquerra Sanchez the leader of the Spanish SS, Obersturmbannfuehrer Klotz the German leader of the 1st SS Danmarck Regiment, the Dane Per Soerensen, the Swedes Hans-Goesta Pehrsson and Erik Wallin, Willi Hund a twenty-two year old German company commander in the SS Nordland, who had just been told he was getting the Knight’s Cross, and Rudolf Saalbach Knight's Cross holder and commander of the Nordland’s reconnaissance battalion. They were all under no illusions about forcing the enemy to make terms. They were trapped rats and there was no way out, but surrender, and that was not an option.
Rather than hit the advancing Soviets head on, Weidling allowed them to pass him by on his northern flank and then he charged northeastwards, striking the Soviet lines of supply. However, the Soviets were protecting their communications so well that this counterattack made no impression upon them. Ziegler protested that his SS Nordland was so dangerously low on fuel that some of its armored vehicles had run out and had to fight as immobile bunkers. Hauptsturmfuehrer Richard Sperle was killed. This well decorated infantry battalion commander was a four year veteran of the Eastern Front.
At the same time just west of the Neisse River between Spremberg and Cottbus the 10th SS Frundsberg Panzer Division was struck by a major Soviet assault, though it was supposed to be on the reserve line. Obviously the front line had collapsed.
Meanwhile at Guben on the Neisse the 35th SS Polizei and 36th SS Dirlewanger Grenadier Divisions were being hammered by Soviet forces. Come the third day of battle they were surrounded.
On the 18th about 600 retreating members of the SS Charlemagne are caught by American troops near Wartenberg. The fight is quick and bloody, as the SS men run southwards.
By the 19th these French SS joined up with survivors of the SS Nibelungen Division and fought a rearguard action against the Americans at Moosburg.
Also on the 19th at Spremberg the SS Frundsberg plus the army’s Fuehrer Escort Division and 344th Infantry Division were completely encircled by the Soviet advance. Hitler ordered the commander of the SS Frundsberg, Standartenfuehrer Heinz Harmel, to take command of all three divisions and any local Volksturm he could find and not only break out of the trap, but advance to Berlin to reinforce the city garrison. It was a tall order.
Weidling’s LVI Panzer and III SS Panzer Corps now began a series of leapfrog motions trying to continue to hit the left flank of those Soviets who were pushing on for Berlin, hoping to slow them down so that the remainder of Busse’s Ninth Army could withdraw, regroup and counter attack before the Soviets reached Berlin, but by the 20th Busse had failed to retain the integrity of his army and the bulk of his men were trapped in several pockets. Of Busse’s people only elements of Weidling’s troops managed to reach Berlin, and they got there just in time to stop the leading Soviet elements, the Eighth Guards Army, but it cost the life of Obersturmbannfuehrer Klotz, the leader of the 1st SS Danmarck Regiment. The Dane Sturmbannfuehrer Per Soerensen replaced him. Thus the ground battle for Berlin had begun. Over the next few days the Berlin garrison would suffer extraordinarily high casualties - in effect each morning’s strength would lose twenty-five per cent by nightfall.
By now the 32nd SS ‘30te Januar’ Division was backing up south of Berlin, trying to keep from being surrounded as Soviet tanks swirled around the exhausted soldiers.
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From the 16th onwards General Manteuffel’s Third Panzer Army, manning the Oder northeast of Berlin, expected that they too would be assaulted by the 2nd Byelorussian Front any minute. Manteuffel in fact possessed only eleven divisions, none of them panzer. They included the 15th SS Lettische, 27th SS Langemarck and 28th SS Wallonie Grenadier Divisions, SS Provisional Division Schwedt and SS Charlemagne Sturmbrigade. All these units had already been badly torn up, and the SS Wallonie could put barely 800 men into the line and the SS Charlemagne slightly better with 1,100 soldiers. The SS Schwedt was still a mish mash of nationalities. Additionally Manteuffel was outnumbered in armor 4:1 and in artillery 6:1.
Degrelle passed on recommendations for medals for many of his men, aware that the time for praise was running out. Untersturmfuehrer Jacques LeRoy was awarded the Knight's Cross.
Then on the 20th Manteuffel’s battle began with a huge Soviet artillery bombardment. Within hours of the Soviet assault just about everyone in Third Panzer Army knew he had to retreat or die.
By now Fourth Panzer Army to the southeast of Berlin was also under heavy attack from the 1st Ukrainian Front, the latter including the Polish Second Army. Within hours of this attack the 20th SS Estnische and 31st SS Boehmen-Maehren Grenadier Divisions and Standartenfuehrer Heinrich Petersen’s SS Battlegroup Horst Wessel began a fighting withdrawal southwards away from Berlin towards the Sudetenland.
By this date Busse’s Ninth Army had been sliced into four main pockets: the southern pocket was surrounded near Spremberg due west of Guben on the Neisse and included the 10th SS Frundsberg Panzer and 32nd SS ‘30te Januar’ Grenadier Divisions; while the pocket at Kuestrin consisted of the remn
ants of the XI SS Corps; and the central pocket consisted of Weidling’s LVI Panzer and III SS Panzer Corps that were both backing up into the Koepenick suburb of Berlin; and the fourth pocket was a small one of ad hoc units to the northeast of Berlin.
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On the 20th throughout Germany boys and old men and veterans of countless battles fought to save their homeland. Sixty-year-old Gruppenfuehrer Joachim Eggeling was killed in the battle for Halle. Yet, others were desecrating the very name of Germany, men such as the SS KZL guards at Bullenhuser Damm, who hanged twenty small children, because they were Jews. While the toddlers dangled from ropes, a few miles away in the Fuehrer bunker Hitler celebrated his 56th birthday. It was a quiet affair - just a few friends including Goering, Speer, Ribbentrop, Goebbels and Himmler. Hitler allowed the clink of champagne glasses, though he himself was teetotal. Goebbels planned to stay with him to the end he announced, but the others intended to be out of Berlin before nightfall.
While it was still daylight the Fuehrer went topside and within earshot of the battle in the suburbs he handed out some decorations to gallant soldiers including some members of the SS Frundsberg and to some Hitler Youth boys as young as thirteen, who legally should not have been at the front line.
Some of the Fuehrer’s party guests were already trying to seek peace with the Allies and that very night in Berlin Himmler attended a meeting that would have sent Hitler into a conniption fit, had he known about it. The Master of the Holocaust sat down to talk with none other than Norbert Masur, the representative of the World Jewish Congress. Himmler agreed to countermand all orders from Hitler to kill the remaining Jews in Nazi custody!