WHILE THE MAIN German thrust through the southern Netherlands appeared to be back on track, farther north Keppler’s reinforced “Der Führer” Regiment faced a difficult test in breaking through the Grebbe Line. As the slower-moving units of the 207th Infantry Division had not yet arrived on the battlefield, Keppler ordered an immediate attack on the morning of 11 May in the hopes of exploiting the confusion caused by the previous day’s rapid advance.5
The II and III Battalions of “Der Führer” were used for the attack on the Grebbeberg, but their advance was broken up by small groups of Dutch troops using the many hedgerows and orchards to good effect. After a full day’s fighting the Germans had managed only to breach the enemy outpost line. An SS night attack was also repulsed by the defenders.
Keppler was forced to admit he had made a mistake in throwing his infantry against a well-defended position without supporting fire. But with the arrival of the SS artillery battalion and the various batteries of the 207th Infantry Division, Keppler renewed the attack on 12 May. At 2:00 P.M. the guns opened fire; smoke shells were combined with high explosive to provide concealment for the advancing infantry.
Attacking with their customary aggression, the SS troops used submachine guns and grenades to clear the defenders from their bunkers, who by late afternoon were forced back to the summit of the Grebbeberg. Keppler then came forward to discuss the next stage of the attack with Wäckerle, who believed that the time was right for a further push to break through the last line of Dutch defenses. Keppler agreed and ordered the III Battalion to form into three attack groups and open the assault at 10:00 P.M., with the other two battalions in support.
The strain and excitement of the battle had clearly gotten to Wäckerle, who abandoned his command post to lead one of the assault groups. The battalion broke into the Dutch lines, and urged on by an intemperate Wäckerle his group rushed toward their final objective, the railway line near the town of Rhenen. It proved a precipitate advance, however, as Wäckerle’s troops were without support, and when the Dutch rallied the Germans were surrounded. Wäckerle was wounded in the arm and back; he ordered Hauptsturmführer Otto Kumm to crawl back to German lines to organize a rescue.
As dawn broke on 13 May General von Tiedemann, commander of the 207th Infantry Division, sent an infantry regiment to support the SS troops still closely engaged with the Dutch. Already pounded by withering fire from German artillery and Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers, the arrival of German reinforcements proved too much for the defenders, who retreated off the Grebbeberg. A unit commanded by Kumm fought its way forward to rescue Wäckerle.
By the end of the day’s fighting the Grebbe Line had been breached. “Der Führer” had suffered total casualties of 364 men killed, wounded, and missing, testimony to the determination of the Dutch defense.6 On the following day, the regiment reorganized itself in preparation for the next phase of the campaign, the assault on Fortress Holland. But by the evening of 14 May, events elsewhere had rendered the action unnecessary.
IN THE SOUTHERN Netherlands, the SS-V Division continued to guard the German open flank against interference from Allied forces in Belgium. Meanwhile, on 12 May tanks of 9th Panzer Division had reached the vital road and rail bridges over the Maas at Moerdijk, held intact by Student’s paratroopers. The panzers advanced over the bridge in readiness for the assault on Rotterdam, which, following the arrival of Dietrich’s Leibstandarte, was to be launched on the fourteenth.
The continuing resistance of the Dutch Army was causing growing disquiet at OKW, which wanted a speedy conclusion to the campaign in the Netherlands so that its mobile forces could be redeployed to join the main battle against France. The Germans had opened negotiations with the Dutch commander of Rotterdam for its surrender, but Hitler and Göring decided to force the issue and ordered the Luftwaffe to bomb the city into submission. During the afternoon of 14 May negotiations between the two sides continued, and following a German threat to bomb Rotterdam the Dutch commander conceded to German demands. As the agreement was reached, however, squadrons of Heinkel He-III bombers closed on the city. German attempts to abort the mission failed, and the first bombs fell at around 3:30 P.M. The bombardment produced a massive conflagration, which killed more than 800 civilians and left many thousands homeless.7
Dietrich had already been given orders to lead his regiment through or around Rotterdam toward The Hague, to rescue German airborne forces who were still surrounded by the Dutch. With Kurt Meyer’s motorcycle company to the fore, Leibstandarte advanced through the city, much of it now on fire. “People were fleeing towards the port area to escape the flames,” Meyer wrote. “My motorcyclists were moving through the narrow streets as if possessed by the devil. Shop windows exploded about our ears. Burning decorations and clothed mannequins presented an unearthly picture.”8
In this confused situation Leibstandarte infantrymen fired on a group of Dutch soldiers. Unknown to the SS troops, they were preparing to lay down their arms as part of the surrender negotiations being supervised by General Student. On hearing the commotion, Student looked out from his command post and was hit in the head by a stray bullet and severely wounded. Although Student subsequently recovered, Leibstandarte had nearly killed the founder of Germany’s elite airborne army. The SS soldiers, unaware of the incident, continued to race on through the burning city toward The Hague. They successfully rendezvoused with the airborne soldiers at the end of the day, although by then the fighting was drawing to a close as the Dutch opened negotiations to cease all hostilities. The following morning the Netherlands government surrendered.
Immediately after the surrender, the Leibstandarte and 9th Panzer Divisions took part in a ceremonial drive through Amsterdam and other major cities to impress upon the Dutch the power of the German armed forces. On 18 May the German column crossed the Belgian border to resume hostilities against the Allies.
AS LEIBSTANDARTE WAS moving to attack Rotterdam on 14 May, the SS-V Division was continuing to defend German positions from French interference and preparing to advance into the coastal province of Zeeland. Demelhuber’s “Germania” was assigned the responsibility of containing the French and forcing them back toward Antwerp. The remainder of the division would attack the strong Franco-Dutch force in Zeeland, concentrated in South Beveland and the adjoining island of Walcheren. Steiner’s “Deutschland” would lead the assault, supported by the division’s artillery and pioneers. For greater tactical effectiveness, “Deutschland” was divided into two reinforced Kampfgruppen based around Witt’s I Battalion and Kleinheisterkamp’s III Battalion.
On 15 May the SS troops advanced along the isthmus connecting the mainland to South Beveland before encountering their first major obstacle, the South Beveland Canal. It was a formidable barrier, more than one hundred yards wide in places and with good fields of fire for the defenders. It was, however, defended along its five-mile length by just two battalions of French infantry.
During the night of the fifteenth, artillery was brought forward for a prepared assault at 10:00 A.M. the following day. As the German shells hit home, Steiner ordered Kampfgruppe Witt and a company of pioneers to launch their rubber assault boats without delay. By midday a lodgment over the canal had been established. The defenders began to retreat, allowing Kleinheisterkamp’s infantry to cross farther north against minimal opposition. Once over the canal the SS raced through South Beveland, capturing 2,000 prisoners before reaching the narrow causeway that separated it from Walcheren.
Following the Dutch surrender on 15 May, the French began the evacuation of Walcheren, but the process was far from complete when the Germans arrived at the causeway on the evening of the sixteenth. To cover the final stages of the withdrawal, a strong French rear guard was established on their side of the causeway
Led by “Deutschland’s” 9th Company, the German attack went in on 17 May, but for the SS troops a daunting 1,600 yards of open ground separated them from the French defenses. Despite heavy suppressive fire from artillery a
nd the Luftwaffe, the attack faltered, with the SS troops forced to go to ground, as described by infantryman Paul Schürmann:
The ground trembles perpetually from the bursting shells. A comrade rushes past my position to the rear, his shirt ripped from his shoulders and a gaping hole in his back. I see the rapid pulsing of his lungs. To the left goes another, walking upright in an almost festive manner, paying no attention to death while shots whistle around him. His neck and chest have been quickly bandaged. The bandages are already soaked with blood. He looks past me with large, open eyes. His face is gray. The Ninth is pulled out of combat. We move back slowly, unit by unit.9
After this failure, Steiner regrouped and called upon the Luftwaffe for extra effort. Under the protection of a fierce Stuka bombardment, the 10th Company of Kleinheisterkamp’s Kampfgruppe managed to secure a position on the far side of the causeway, swiftly followed by the rest of the battle group. By 7:15 P.M. Witt’s men had also crossed over, with the French rear guard falling back to the port of Vlissingen. As they arrived in the port, the Germans were able to see the last French destroyers sailing out to sea.
The SS-V Division was given just a day to recuperate, with “Der Führer” rejoining the division for the first time in the campaign. On 20 May it combined forces with Leibstandarte, both coming under the control of Colonel-General von Kluge’s Fourth Army, which was already exploiting the gains made by the German panzer attack through the Ardennes.
Chapter 7
THE ASSAULT ON FRANCE
AS THE PANZERS of Army Group A crashed through the flimsy Allied defenses in the Ardennes, the Totenkopf Division stood idle as part of the general reserve. The impatience felt by Theodor Eicke at this lack of action briefly lifted on the afternoon of 12 May when he was instructed to move his division to the Belgian border. But to Eicke’s continuing frustration, the division spent the next four days waiting for further orders. Finally, on 17 May Totenkopf was ordered to reinforce 5th and 7th Panzer Divisions of General Hermann Hoth’s XV Panzer Corps.
The extraordinary success of the armored thrust had caught even the German high command by surprise. On 15 May the panzers had emerged from the hills of the Ardennes and in what became known as the “race to the sea” drove straight for the English Channel, reached just five days later. The Allies were now split in two, the northern half—forty-five French, British, and Belgian divisions comprising nearly 1 million men—was separated from the remainder of the French Army to the south.
Although a brilliant feat of arms, the extended panzer corridor was vulnerable to Allied counterattack. The German planners had correctly gambled that the Allies would be slow to react, but the need for infantry to protect the corridor remained paramount. Accordingly, as one of the few uncommitted motorized formations, Totenkopf was rushed to the front.
Despite the need for alacrity, Totenkopf—slightly over strength with 21,000 officers and men—found itself held up by the infantry of Army Group B, advancing into Belgium across the SS division’s line of march. Karl Ullrich, a Totenkopf officer, complained that the “roads were often jammed by undisciplined individual vehicles, creating double and triple traffic in some spots. Traffic control by Army Group B at junctions and intersections was insufficient and flawed.”1 Despite the best efforts of Totenkopf ’s chief operational officer, Oberführer Montigny, to clear the congestion, it was only on the evening of 19 May that the rear echelons of the division finally shook themselves free of the army columns and found clear roads into France. From that point on the division entered the battle zone.
At the head of the Totenkopf Division, Standartenführer Max Simon’s 1st Regiment was engaged by French colonial troops on the morning of 20 May, but after a fierce firefight the French were driven off. This action was merely a foretaste of what was to come the following day. Eicke had been ordered to support Major General Erwin Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division, driving westward past the town of Arras. It was at this point that the Allies finally mounted a counterattack in an attempt to break into the panzer corridor. The attack was intended to be launched from both the north and the south of the corridor, but due to Allied failures of command and coordination, only the northern assault took place, and this was marred by poor Anglo-French cooperation. Nonetheless, it threw the Germans into temporary disarray.
Just after 2:30 P.M. three British tank columns caught the advancing Germans in the flank as they marched in an arc around Arras. Two of the columns engaged Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division, while the third hit Totenkopf, which also had to contend with a French attack later in the afternoon. Surprised by the British intervention, some troops from both German formations broke and ran, causing an atmosphere of panic. But they were soon rallied, with Rommel himself running between frontline units in his own division to restore order. Totenkopf was more dispersed than the panzer division, and Eicke lacked the sure tactical instincts of Rommel to be at the right place at the right time. Consequently, it was left to individual SS commanders to repel the Allies.
Although the Totenkopf antitank battalion was at the fore of the battle against the British tanks, the light 3.7cm rounds of its guns were no match for the frontal armor of the British Matilda II tanks bearing down on them. The gun was contemptuously nicknamed the “door knocker” by its crews and was effective only against the Matilda’s tracks or side and rear armor, and then only at short range.
The SS troops hung on to their battered defensive line, sufficiently long for the British advance to lose momentum. The fighting became increasingly confused as the British tanks—lacking sufficient infantry support—fought a cat-and-mouse battle with the Totenkopf antitank guns and infantry. Hein Schlect, operating with Totenkopf gunners, described an encounter with Allied armor in the village of Berneville:
There was a lone, friendly anti-tank gun firing on the main street. The men were holding out in spite of the heavy pace of fire. Then a direct hit struck the gun. The gun’s shattered armored shield split open the main gunner’s skull and he fell to the pavement dead. At that moment, the platoon leader jumped through the smoke to take up the dead man’s position at the gun. It fired and continued to fire [but] another wave of fire and smoke foamed over the gun, and steel shards smashed the lead gunner’s face. Nothing worked, and the anti-tank men tried to find a way out of their desperate situation. Help arrived after three hours when an infantry assault team fought its way into the village.2
Although the defense by the antitank gunners slowed the Allied advance, the turning point in the action came with involvement of Totenkopf ’s artillery—including 8.8cm Flak guns—firing over open sights at the enemy tanks. Around the hotly contested village of Mercatel, twenty-three out of twenty-five British tanks were knocked out by German artillery at ranges of 2,200 yards or less.
At around 6:00 P.M. the SS soldiers heard the distinctive howl of Stuka dive-bombers going into the attack, forcing what remained of the Allied armor into a full retreat. The action had cost the Totenkopf Division just over 100 men killed, wounded, and missing, and apart from a few minor instances of panic, the division had fought with commendable resolve in repelling the Allied assault. Rommel would subsequently take the credit for the victory, but it was very much a combined Waffen-SS and army effort.
The fighting on 21 May initiated or certainly coincided with a series of massacres by Totenkopf troops against the local civilian population, which included the burning of houses and farms as well as numerous executions and random killings. The first took place in Mercatel immediately after the end of the fighting, with six civilians shot by Totenkopf soldiers.3 More killings followed in the village of Simencourt, also the scene of fierce fighting, with 24 civilians executed. The soldiers’ ugly mood continued, culminating in the atrocity in the village of Aubigny-en-Artois. Some 30 people had been killed on the twenty-first, and on the following day 64 civilians were rounded up and taken to a nearby quarry, where they were mown down by machine-gun fire.
It would seem that frustration caused by Totenkopf
’s slow progress was a key motive for these atrocities, combined with the naturally violent attitudes toward the enemy encouraged by Eicke and his officers. Some insight into the violent behavior of Totenkopf soldiers can be discerned from the testimony of one of the survivors, Madame Sternicki. Rounded up by SS soldiers after one massacre, she asked the officer in charge why it had happened and why they had killed her husband. He simply replied, “This is war.” She then protested that they were merely unfortunate refugees, to which he countered, “Since there are no soldiers here, we make war on civilians.”4 As Totenkopf marched due north in pursuit of the retreating Allies, the killings continued, with a total of 264 civilian fatalities recorded against Totenkopf by 28 May.5 By this time the division was hotly engaged with the British rear guard holding the La Bassée Canal.
AFTER THEIR SUCCESS in the Netherlands, the SS-V Division and Leibstandarte joined the vast traffic jam that followed the panzer breakthrough into France. As the most disciplined of the Waffen-SS formations, the SS-V was able to thread its way through the congested roads better than most. Much of the division’s movement was carried out under cover of darkness, making progress especially difficult for a mechanized formation of its size. In the early hours of 21 May it crossed the border from Belgium to France, northeast of Hirson. The divisional history described some of the problems of an advance in the dark: “The night march to Hirson is particularly strenuous and nerve wracking. The road is continuously congested. Enemy aircraft search for opportune targets by the light of their parachute flares, which hang in the sky endlessly, and drop their bombs but cause no damage. Adding further difficulty are a pitch-black night, driving without lights in thick clouds of dust, rear-end collisions, individual vehicles becoming separated and lost, constant turning around and renewed congestion.”6
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