5Spaeter, Die Brandenburger, p. 197. Report from 1st Company, south of Stalingrad.
6FSB Public Relations Group for the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania, http://osetia.info/articles/460/
770 летие битвы за Кавказ.Фронтовой путь Бучукури A.M. http://nsportal.ru/ap/library/drugoe/2013/05/05/neugasimoe-plamya-pamyati
9 Regeneration, 1943
1Kriegsheim, Getarnt, Getäuscht und doch Getreu, pp. 303–4. The term ‘08/15’ references the machine gun MG 08/15 that had garnered a terrible reputation for malfunction. The term became commonly used slang by German soldiers when referring to anything that was wrong with the Army in general. Kriegsheim’s interesting book is split into two sections. The first is a thinly fictionalised account of his war, the second an overview of the history of the Brandenburgers.
2Lieutenant Colonel John S. Bird Jr., North African Campaign: A Case Study (US Army, US Army War College, April 1991), pp. 26–9.
3Various secondary sources state that Arab agents later reported Slouka captured by French troops and shot.
4Letter from Willi Clormann, 1958, quoted in Spaeter, Die Brandenburger, p. 262.
5Alastair Mars, Unbroken: The Story of a Submarine (Frederick Muller, 1953), p. 202.
6Mallory-Falconer was later transferred to Germany and held in captivity in the Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald concentration camps before being liberated at Tyrol in May 1945.
7Haehling von Lanzenauer was buried in Baden Baden and posthumously promoted to Generalmajor on 20 April 1943.
8National Archives, KV2/173.
9German Naval Staff (Seekriegsleitung) War Diary, 26 May 1943.
10Spaeter, Die Brandenburger, p. 308.
11Notes on the Situation Reports and Discussions at Hitler’s Headquarters from 12 August 1942 to 17 March 1943, taken by Helmuth Greiner. US Army Military Institute. Historical Division, Headquarters, United States Army Europe, Foreign Military Studies Branch.
12Spaeter, Die Brandenburger, p. 238, quoted from a personal letter written and received in 1960 by Steidl. Max Horlbeck emerged later as the commander of 2nd Battalion, 435th Infantry Regiment and won the Knight’s Cross on 12 August 1944. He was killed in action in Gotenhafen on 26 March 1945.
13Höhne, Canaris, p. 497.
14Gestapo chief SS Gruppenführer Heinrich Muller’s report to Bormann of his interrogation of Pfuhlstein, 8 September 1944, p. 370. Quoted in Höhne, Canaris, p 575.
15Christiansen, Mit Hurra gegen die Wand, pp. 9–10.
16Ibid., p. 23.
17Ibid., p. 48.
18CIA Archives, SCI Weekly Operations Report, Wednesday, 10 January thru Wednesday, 17 January 1945. Nebel, Ludwig, Vol. 2_0008. Schwinn later went on to join Skorzeny’s SS Jagdverbände.
19Neugebauer was subsequently moved on from the Hôtel Continental, being replaced there by Leutnant Striefler during November 1943 while he transferred to the 1st Regiment in Greece.
20Testimony from Gerhard Blank; Karl Heidinger, Widerstand gegen die Wehrmacht (Books on Demand, 2004), p. 120.
21Testimony from Demetrio; ibid., p. 123.
10 Partisan War in the Balkans
1Hoffman, History of the German Resistance, p. 276.
2Alexander von Pfuhlstein, Bericht über meine Erlebnisse in Verbindung mit Herrn Heinz, 10 June 1953, quoted in Höhne, Canaris, p 497.
3Hoffmann, History of the German Resistance, p. 617, n. 74.
4Walter Lucas, ‘In Greece, “Quislings” are pro-British’, Daily Express, 11 October 1944.
5Konrad Steidl’s personal diary, quoted by Spaeter, Die Brandenburger, p. 288.
6Ibid., pp. 289–90.
7National Archives and Records Administration, T315 roll 2112, ‘Brandenburg Division’, Tatigkeitsbericht fur die Zeit vom 10.8.1943–10.9.1943, 2 Regiment Brandenburg, dated 11.9.1943.
8Internal strife in the Chetniks and lack of activity against Axis forces led to the Allies ceasing all useful support by the end of 1943 and subsequently breaking all contact by spring 1944.
9Four German divisions (1st Gebirgs, 118th Infantry, 369th Infantry and 7th SS Gebirgsjäger ‘Prinz Eugen’), three Italian divisions (Taurinenze, Ferara and Venecija), one Bulgarian-German divisional battle group (comprised of the bulk of 61st and 63rd Bulgarian), Croatian 4th Jäger Brigade, elements of 4th Regiment ‘Brandenburg’ and a German motorised pioneer battalion. Two additional German divisions (117th and 373rd) were located in the area of Sarajevo and in the Neretva River valley and four Italian divisions (Emilija, Peruđa, Murđe and Marke) in the coastal area of the Bay of Kotor to the lower course of the Neretva.
10Bundesarchiv, BA-MA, film MFB4/56160, file 34404/2, frames 407–09. Befehlshaber der deutschen Truppen in Kroatien, 12 January 1943. Befehl für die Kampfführung im kroatischen Raum.
11http://www.friedrich-wilhelm-heinz.de/ p. 45.
12Bundesarchiv, BA-MA RH 31 X/1, 11 September 1943, quoted by Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece (Yale University Press, 2001), p. 149.
13National Archives and Records Administration, T315 roll 2112, ‘Brandenburg Division’.
14Christiansen, Mit Hurra gegen die Wand, p. 26.
15Ibid., p. 29.
16Höhne, Canaris, p. 575.
17National Archives and Records Administration, T315 roll 2112, ‘Brandenburg Division’, p. 131.
18OKW War Diary, 29 November 1943.
19National Archives and Records Administration, T315 roll 2112, Weihnachts und Neujahrsbefehl, December 1943. The emphasis is in the original.
11 Metamorphosis, 1944–1945
1Institut fur Zeitgeschichte Archiv, Bf v. Pfuhlstein o.D. betr. d. dt. Militär-opposition (m. Anschr. von Witzleben v. 8.3.55) Bl 34-35.
2Otto Skorzeny, Skorzeny’s Special Missions (Greenhill Books, 2006), p. 36.
3Lahousen transferred to the Eastern Front in January 1944 to take command of a combat unit. He was wounded on 19 July 1944 and would subsequently be overlooked during the purges that followed von Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt.
5Record of the interrogation of Leutnant von Gustedt, 18 January 1944, reproduced in Höhne, Canaris, p. 538.
5Geheime Kommandosache, Der Führer, Chef OKW, Nr. 1/44, 12 February 1944.
6Hansen was an ‘absolute foe of the system and of Hitler’ according to Lahousen (CIA Archives, Arnim Lahousen documatation). He had been appointed the head of Abwehr I after the departure of Oberst Hans Piekenbrock who had left to take command of 208th Infantry Division in 1943.
7Kirchner provides an example of how unsuitable the Brandenburg Division had become for any counter-revolutionary purposes; he had previously been a Hitler Youth leader and remained a devout National Socialist.
8Division Brandenburg, Abt.Ia Nr. 351/44 gKdos, 18.8.1944.
9A small assault unit designated Kampfgruppe Hettinger had also previously captured the island fortress of Maddalena where it was believed Italian partisans had incarcerated Mussolini.
10See Lawrence Paterson, Weapons of Desperation: German Frogmen and Midget Submarines of World War II (Chatham Publishing, 2006).
11Erasmus received his Knight’s Cross on the day that Kühlwein took command, for his service as Chief of Staff of the XXXXVI Panzer Corps in the southern Ukraine.
12Division Brandenburg, Abt.Ic. 23/44 g.Kdos. Anlage 3a zu WFSt IOp (H) Südost. Nr. 005734/44 g.Kdos.
13Division Brandenburg, Abt.Ic. 23/44 g.Kdos. Anlage 3a zu WFSt IOp (H) Südost. Nr. 005734/44 g.Kdos
14Walther, lame in one leg after his injury, later joined Skorzeny’s Jagdverbände as an Obersturmbannführer. He appears to have been involved in the provisioning of so-called ‘Werewolf’ supply dumps that Skorzeny was organising: the ‘stay behind’ resistance groups that never became properly established in war-weary European countries.
15There are conflicting accounts that he was badly wounded and taken prisoner by the Red Army, though the lack of information about this version of events leads one to believe that it is unlikely.
16National Archives, KV2/403, Otto Skorzeny file.
17Höhne, Canaris, p. 570. Hansen was executed for his role in the 20 July plot.
18Nuremberg, Germany, International Military Tribunal, 1945-04-10, Ref No. SAIC/2, 10 April 1945, Seventh Army Interrogation Centre, US Army; 20 July Putsch, held by Cornell University Law Library, Ithaca New York.
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1. Kampforganisation Jablunka photographed before the attack on Poland. Leutnant der Reserve Dr Hans-Albrecht Herzner is the uniformed officer sitting in the front row.
2. A second, poorer-quality, photo taken at the same time, but with an additional uniformed member of the Wehrmacht.
3. Theodor von Hippel; veteran of the East African campaign of the First World War and father of the ‘Brandenburgers’.
4. Officers of the Deutsche Kompanie in their Slovakian base at Sliač, August 1939. Leutnant Siegfried Grabert stands second from right.
5. Hauptmann Hans-Jürgen Rudloff inspecting his men of the 3rd Baulehr Kompanie z.b.V. 800 before crossing the Belgian border as the spearhead of ‘Case Yellow’.
6. A bridge over the Juliana Canal, captured by Leutnant Hermann Kürschner’s West Platoon, one of whom still wears his Dutch uniform disguise.
7. The Gennep railway bridge after its capture by Oberleutnant Uwe-Wilhelm Walther’s 4th Baulehr Kompanie z.b.V. 800, a feat for which Walther was awarded the Knight’s Cross.
8. The Nieuport bridge after its capture by Leutnant Siegfried Grabert’s assault group on the night of 27 May 1940.
9. Grabert’s original drawing of the new regiment’s insignia, included in a letter to his brother written after the capture of the Nieuport bridge and sluice controls.
10. Born in Schorndorf/Württemberg in 1916, Siegfried Grabert entered the Reichswehr in 1934 before a sports injury forced an end to his military career and he embarked on medical studies. Grabert later joined Freikorps Ebbinghaus and gravitated to eventually lead the 8th Company, II Battalion ‘Brandenburg’. Awarded the Knight’s Cross on 10 June 1941, he was posthumously awarded Oak Leaves on 6 November 1943 after being killed in action in the Bataysk bridgehead on 25 July 1942.
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