Hitler's Brandenburgers

by Lawrence Paterson

  Below them, the Küstenjäger had come ashore on the north side of Mount Apetiki, though heavy enemy fire left not a single officer unwounded. Quickly ashore, they scaled the heights and attacked an Italian 150mm artillery battery, occupying the mount’s summit. However, exhausted by the climb and decimated by enemy fire, they went rapidly on to the defensive as the Royal Irish Fusiliers counter-attacked. Having permanently silenced the battery’s guns, the Brandenburgers retreated down the slopes to find cover and contented themselves with pinning down the Irish troops by accurate sniping.

  The confusion of the landings began to subside with dusk and the last Luftwaffe raids of the day. An uneasy calm descended upon the battlefield in which both sides appeared to take stock of their situation. The thunderbolt attack envisioned by Müller had failed to achieve every objective thus far, but German forces were firmly lodged ashore. The frustrated western assault force was still at sea and had now been so for an entire day in deteriorating conditions as a bad weather front swept towards the island. They had escaped detection by the Royal Navy, but the longer they remained at sea the greater the peril became. Müller requested more Brandenburgers brought to the island and on the night of 15 November Froboese’s 3rd Battalion was landed under enemy fire from two Italian torpedo boats. On the British side gloom permeated through the ranks, most men unaware that they had repulsed an attempted landing and plagued with the knowledge that German troops were now dug in on the island and would be difficult to dislodge.

  The rescheduled landing of troops of the western group on the east side of Leros was finally carried out at about 0600hrs on the second day of the battle under heavy fire but covered by an all-out operation by Kriegsmarine U-Jäger and R-boats. In bad weather casualties were moderate but the large body of men were finally put ashore, reinforcing the beachhead and glad to be on terra-firma once more. Approximately 150 Brandenburger Fallschirmjäger were then dropped into the same zone as that of the previous day, while the Küstenjäger made a second drive on Mount Apetiki, dislodging British troops and taking hold of Kastro, a Byzantine castle on a promontory from where their own fire could dominate the surrounding area.

  While the balance of the battle tilted irretrievably towards the German invaders there was still fierce fighting until, on 16 November, the Allies finally surrendered and Leros was conquered. A section leader of the reinforcing 3rd Battalion, Oberjäger Haake, recorded the end of the struggle in his diary:

  At about 2 o’clock we walked over a saddle and came unmolested into the village of Leros. We push through and reach the heights south of the city at day break. Strong infantry fire. I’m going for a Flak position when Klette and Berger are wounded. I occupied the position with Lascyk and Tadewald. Huesmann is wounded. At three o’clock in the morning, the commander stormed Peak 204. The commander, Oberleutnant [Hans-Günter] Lenssen, Oberfeldwebel [Edmund] Thiele and Gefreiter [Robert] Hangen fell in this attack. An English General was captured, as well as about two companies of British and Italian troops. Our Stukas continually attack the English positions and the hinterland.In the evening the defenders of the island capitulate. General Müller negotiates with three English Generals. I move into a gun position which we captured with three of my group. At night, the dead are buried.

  Gustav Froboese had been wounded during the attack, his place as battalion commander taken by Oberleutnant Max Wandrey who continued to lead the men as they stormed the hill and captured Brigadier Tilney. Froboese was awarded the German Cross in Gold on 30 December 1943 while Wandrey would receive the Knight’s Cross on 9 January 1944 for his bravery leading the relentless German assault against heavy enemy fire. Four hundred and eight Germans had been killed in the attack on Leros while the defending British troops lost 357 men. Unlike some other islands, there were no summary executions of surrendered Italian troops.

  The 1st Company/Küstenjäger Abteilung was based in the Dodecanese until the end of the war, redesignated ‘Küstenjäger Kompanie Rhodos’ under the command of Oberleutnant Bertermann. Meanwhile the remainder of the company transferred to the Dalmatian islands to do battle against small units of the Royal Navy and Tito’s Partisans.

  The northern Aegean island of Samos was soon bombed into submission and occupied on 22 November 1943, by Major Walther leading a small group of men from the 1st Regiment. With the capture of this island and the Dodecanese now firmly in German hands, the Aegean was once again under Axis control; by early December all British and Greek forces had been withdrawn from the region apart from a tiny force left on Kastellorizo which, despite some isolated commando raids, the Germans were content to ignore. Hitler expressed his appreciation for the execution of ‘Taifun’ via a message to Wehrmachtsbefehlshaber Südost (Commanding General, Armed Forces South-east) Generaloberst Alexander Löhr:

  The capture of Leros, embarked on with limited means but with great courage, carried through tenaciously despite various set-backs and bravely brought to a victorious conclusion, is a military accomplishment which will find an honourable place in the history of this war.

  On Samos, many of the island’s small towns were now ruins after the aerial bombardment and Walther’s Brandenburgers spent weeks on uneventful patrol, visited by General Müller on 4 December who distributed sixty EK IIs and eight EK Is amongst them. They returned to Piraeus four days later aboard the destroyer TA15 that travelled in convoy with torpedo boat TA16, an R-boat and the freighter Leda, the procession narrowly being missed by four torpedoes from the submarine HMS Unruly which was on patrol in the Aegean. The remainder of the 1st Regiment also returned to mainland Greece – temporarily under the command of Hauptmann Hans Gerlach while Walther was on leave in Germany – and began operations against Andartes in central Greece along the shores of the Gulf of Euboea. They were also responsible for guarding the narrow coastal passage at Thermopylae, the area made famous by King Leonidas’ Spartans centuries before. By the year’s end, they had taken heavy losses in battle with the Greek guerrillas in snow-covered forests and over unfamiliar and inhospitable terrain. With a severe manpower shortage biting deep into all branches of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS, officer replacements were now arriving directly from battle schools in Germany and by the end of 1943 the strength of the Brandenburg Division had been whittled away on all fronts.

  A general reorganisation of the division’s Balkan deployment took place in the final weeks of the year after a Führer Order issued on 4 October included explicit directives for Generaloberst Löhr as Commander-in-Chief South-east. In the order, Walther’s 1st Regiment was to remain on station as coastal defence troops under the command of Army Group E in the Peloponnese (LXVIII Corps), while most of the division ‘was to be employed guarding lines of communication in the rear and participate in the war against the Partisans’. Oberstleutnant Pfeiffer’s 2nd Regiment was gradually moved in stages to Raška, Montenegro, while a complicated exchange of the Kampfgruppe 1st Battalion/4th Regiment, under the command of Hauptmann Hollmann, with Pinkert’s 2nd Battalion/1st Regiment was made to take advantage of the large number of Bosnian Volksdeutsche among Hollmann’s troops. Under the leadership of Austrian officer Oberleutnant Blöckl they were clearly, as Pfuhlstein put it in his movement order, ‘not in the right place’ in Greece and more use back with their parent battalion in Yugoslavia. By the time of their return to Oberstleutnant von Hugo’s control near Sarajevo, the 4th Regiment, attached to XV Gebirgs Corps, maintained the following units: 1st Battalion/4th (Major Hollmann); 2nd Battalion/4th (Hauptmann Lau); 3rd Battalion/4th (Hauptmann von Koenen); 1st Battalion/1st – on attachment – (Hauptmann Rosenow).

  On the Eastern Front, 1st Battalion/3rd Regiment was still heavily engaged in fighting Soviet troops after the Red Army had fully exploited the weakness of the boundary between Army Groups North and Centre at the transport and supply hub of Nevel on 6 October. Catching the Germans by surprise, the Soviets severely battered the 2nd Luftwaffe Field Division and captured the town. Hitler ordered Nevel recaptured immediately, the Bran
denburgers holding a line that stretched between Ordovo and Jeziaryšča lakes in the Soviet guerrilla heartland.

  7.10.1943: Lying in the front line south of Nevel. Russian armoured attack. Four were shot up. One, which I had initially taken for a German panzer, was settled by a hollow charge. Stuka, ground attack aircraft from both sides. Strong operation. 81 Stuka attacks. One dead man with us. At night, the Russians try to attack and are beaten. Two dead.14

  The Hauptkampflinie (main battle line) of the battalion came under incredible pressure from armour, infantry and artillery with support from Sturmovik aircraft. Isolated pockets of German resistance faltered and the Soviet troops began to breach the line.

  12.10.1943: The Russians have got past us and sit right behind us. Machine-gun fire spits at us from this direction, whistling around our heads. An unpleasant feeling. In the evening, Russian armour attacks to the right of us. The Luftwaffe Field Division is on the verge of running again and can only be brought to a halt and held by us by force, i.e. machine-gun fire. Our Sanitäts Unteroffizier is shot at close range by one of these brothers. He probably thought he was an Ivan.15

  Throughout November and December, the Germans were forced gradually back, the Brandenburg Battalion fighting for every metre of ground using slit trenches and hastily built bunkers to try and withstand the Red Army onslaught. It was, ultimately, to no avail. While 3rd Battalion/3rd Regiment had finally been withdrawn to the area south-east of Minsk with a strength of only 360 able-bodied men, 1st Battalion continued to fight and at the end of 1943 was situated in Lepiel, Belarus. The 2nd Battalion had already been shipped south for rest in Abruzzo, Italy, where it was transformed into a mobile unit and began operations against the new threat of Italian guerrillas.

  Pfuhlstein found little assistance from the Abwehr who had virtually ceased all attempts at influencing either the division’s use in combat or its future development. Indeed, both Pfuhlstein and the ‘political soldier’ Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz would later complain of the ‘unmilitary’ atmosphere in Abwehr headquarters. Heinz later related that Canaris was frequently attempting to prevent the division being assigned to combat duties. Furthermore, after he had brought a newly designed silencer for automatic weapons for evaluation by Oster and Canaris, he was dumfounded to be asked what the point was of ‘continuing to produce new instruments of murder – enough terrible things were happening in the world as it was’. Heinz subsequently took the silencer and its Brandenburger Feldwebel designer to Reichsminister Albert Speer for evaluation and testing.16 Following requests for information regarding the quantity of men and equipment needed to expand the division, Pfuhlstein delivered an impassioned plea to the Wehrmacht General Staff at Führer Headquarters for sustained recruiting while his men were taken out of the line to refit. Within the statistics that he presented was a plan that would raise his troop level by 2,000 men within six months and double that within a year. But, first he painted a grim picture of the Brandenburg Division’s condition:

  All parts of the Brandenburg Division have been used in combat since spring this year. Essential parts of the division have been at the focal points of the fighting for many weeks.

  a) Eastern Front.

  1.3rd Regiment. With 1st Battalion, again in heavy defensive fighting at the region of Nevel, the other battalions involved in severe fighting against bandits around Mogilev.

  2.The Legionnaire Battalion of the Division is from 9 November at the focal point of fighting around Zhitomir.

  b) South-Eastern Front

  1.1st Regiment. 3rd Battalion, 1st Küstenjäger Company, Fallschirmjäger Company and 1st Company of 4th Regiment have been previously used to captured the Dodecanese Islands.

  2.2nd Regiment. In north Montenegro, in the region of Sjenica, fighting against an enemy stronger both in weapons and numerically.

  3.4th Regiment has had considerable losses from ‘Operation Black’ and the ensuing battles around Banja Luka.

  Unfortunately, the losses incurred so far are quite substantial. With only weak battalions (only two light companies of two platoons each and one small heavy company), these losses are of great importance. Individual companies only have a fire strength of 30–35 men. Losses in the fight for the island of Leros were particularly severe. Of the 450 officers, NCOs and men of the division, 171 men were killed or wounded, ten of them officers. Fresh casualties occur every day.17

  The ranks of the Brandenburg Division had been severely depleted during almost constant combat throughout 1943 on several different fronts. Their war had predominantly become one of anti-guerrilla operations with little scope for the ‘behind the lines’ techniques at which the Brandenburgers had excelled. During October OKW had already begun considering the reclassification of the division and on 29 November Generalmajor Walter Warlimont, Deputy of the Wehrmachtführungsstab (Armed Forces Operations Staff) wrote to Pfuhlstein regarding the elimination of difficulties hindering the expansion of the division and encouragement to build ‘on a “country-like” basis, following the model used by the SS’.18 Pfuhlstein asked for permission to form four training battalions; he was granted permission for two.

  There was also at least one ambitious undertaking that harked back to the original Brandenburgers during June 1943. African-born Leutnant der Reserve Hans Brügmann and five men of South-West and East African origin – Unteroffizier Bill Fesq, Feldwebel Wilfried Moll, Obergefreiter Rudolf Otto and Obergefreiter Otto Hand – boarded the long-range Type IXD2 U-boat U-200 in Kiel. Their mission appears to have been sabotage in South Africa, principally the Australian-built dry-docks in Durban. Once their main mission was complete they were to coordinate with the Afrikaner pro-German Ossewarbrandwag to harass Allied outposts in South Africa and sow widespread discord. The U-boat commander, Korvettenkapitän Heinrich Schonder, was to land the sabotage troop on a deserted stretch of coastline before heading onwards into the Indian Ocean and ultimately Penang, Malaya. A brief layover on the outward voyage at Bergen allowed disembarkation practice for the Brandenburgers before they began the long voyage south.

  Making good speed into the Atlantic after circling north of Britain, Schonder’s desire to reach the open ocean was his undoing. Spotted while running surfaced south-west of Iceland by a Coastal Command Liberator bomber that was on distant convoy escort, the boat was straddled with two depth charges despite accurate Flak from the frantically manoeuvring U-200. The U-boat momentarily disappeared in spume cause by the blast as the Liberator circled for a second attack. It proved unnecessary; U-200 was clearly seen to be sinking and at least fifteen swimming survivors were observed after the U-boat made its final dive. However, running low on fuel, the Liberator was forced to return to its base and the survivors from U-200 were never seen again.

  Yugoslavia: Operation ‘Kugelblitz’

  In Yugoslavia, the Wehrmacht were about to launch Operation ‘Kugelblitz’ (‘Ball Lighting’, known to the Partisans as the ‘German Sixth Offensive’). The strategy, devised by the commander of the 2nd Panzer Army, Generaloberst Rendulic, was to attack Tito’s main forces estimated to number 30,000 fighters of the 2nd, 5th, 17th and 27th Divisions that had assembled east of Sarajevo in preparation for a possible advance into Serbia. Rendulic’s attacking forces numbered approximately 70,000 troops under the overall control of V SS Gebirgs Corps. The operational plan was to make a wide sweep around the Partisan enclave in order to encircle them, before constricting the pocket and annihilating the four divisions through conventional battle. Rendulic considered this a tried and trusted strategy that had accorded success previously, though this time the Partisans were not so easily trapped.

  The Axis forces included Croatian and Bulgarian troops, the two primary German units the 7th SS Gebirgs Division and 1st Gebirgs Division to which Pfeiffer’s 2nd Regiment was attached. Pfeiffer’s initial orders were for Oberleutnant Steidl’s 1st Battalion to take and hold the bridge at Prijepole, a town held by strong Partisan and ex-Italian Army forces that included light armour and some artille
ry. Prijepole marked the front line as the most forward German units held the wooded heights immediately to the south, troops quartered in the scattered houses of the village of Koševine barely 2km away. The capture of the bridge over the Lim River was of paramount importance to the entire operation and Steidl prepared his men accordingly.

  At 0200hrs on 4 December, a spearhead platoon led by south Tyrolean Feldwebel Wladimir Mark began the descent towards the enemy, all conversation held in Italian lest they be overheard by enemy pickets. Before long they were in contact with Italian sentry lines, Mark attempting to engage them in conversation, though apparently unconvincingly as the Italian troops opposite opened fire. All attempts at subterfuge now over, the Brandenburgers attacked. The initial Italian bunker line was swiftly overcome and Steidl’s battalion marched on to the town itself, taking advantage of swirling fog to obscure their identity to defending troops as they approached. Once in the town’s outskirts they became embroiled in savage hand-to-hand combat as they cleared their way towards the bridge one house at a time. The night was alive with gunfire and the explosion of grenades until, at 0630hrs, Steidl radioed Pfeiffer that the bridge was undamaged and in German hands. However, the toll had been severe; only thirty Brandenburger men were still in action, the remainder either dead or wounded, Mark himself having taken a bullet in the shoulder. They had accumulated about eighty prisoners and would struggle to guard them while holding the bridge. During a brief pause in the fighting Steidl could hear the sound of the other battalions in action and as he took a moment to survey the situation with the wounded Mark, a sudden burst of fire hit the wounded Brandenburger in the head, killing him instantly and only missing Steidl by inches. The fighting resumed and before long Steidl had only eighteen men left to hold the bridge. Expecting to be overwhelmed by the desperate enemy attacks, the young officer was relieved to finally see the arrival of German armour and, alongside the first tank, his regimental commander Pfeiffer. The entire 3rd Battalion was soon holding the town as German forces funnelled over the Lim River into action. A strong Partisan force held a barracks on Prijepole’s outskirts and Steidl led an attack that evening that took possession, killing 180 Partisans in the process.