Meanwhile, a relief force—based around a reinforced X Corps—was being assembled, though not ready for action until 21 March. After a promising start, the relief effort stalled in the face of determined Soviet resistance, and it was only on 14 April that it captured Ramusho, the halfway point to the Demyansk pocket. This was the signal for the defenders to mount their own attack to link up with X Corps.
As Eicke’s units were closest to the relief force, they led the breakout. While the operation was in progress the spring thaw began, as described by Totenkopf engineer officer Karl Ullrich: “For all practical purposes there were no longer any roads. The streams were bursting their banks; the thaw had turned fields and meadows into mud and swamps. Wherever there was a small depression, a lake soon appeared. The dugouts and bunkers sank into the morass. No one had worn dry clothes for days.”23
Offensive operations were now all the more difficult, the SS troops struggling through chest-high water and mud. Eicke drove his men onward with his customary vigor, yet the advance was pitifully slow, little more than a mile a day. On 21 April Totenkopf soldiers finally reached the swollen River Lovat, now more than a half-mile wide, with troops of the X Corps just visible on the far bank. On the following day supplies were ferried over the river, officially marking the end of the seventy-three-day siege.24
For Hitler, his order that the Germans hold Demyansk had been triumphantly vindicated, a success that would influence his later decision to defend Stalingrad, but, in this case, with disastrous consequences. Hitler oversaw a generous distribution of medals for the defenders, which included a then unprecedented eleven Knight’s Crosses for Totenkopf. But while the siege was over, the fighting continued with little respite. The Red Army attempted to sever the land bridge that connected the former pocket to the main German lines; so tenuous was this link that German sources continued to refer to the salient as the Demyansk “pocket.”
After the razing of the siege, Eicke made the first of several fruitless demands that his men be withdrawn from the front to recuperate. The division in early May had a strength of just 6,700 men, roughly a third of its regulation figure. And of these men, their physical and mental state was greatly reduced. Dr. Eckert, a medical officer in the division, concluded that as a result of food shortages, intense cold, and inadequate shelter, 30 percent of the battalion’s soldiers were unfit for military service, while the remainder were desperately in need of rest. Without a hint of irony, he compared the physical state of the worst of his soldiers to the inmates he had come across as a concentration-camp doctor.25
The Totenkopf Division did at least receive some reinforcements, which included the Danish Legion (Freikorps Danmark), flown into Demyansk on 8 May 1942. On 22 May the Danes were committed to a local offensive alongside the Totenkopf reconnaissance battalion, a successful action that inflicted a sharp blow on the Soviet forces opposite them. The legion’s commander, Christian von Schalburg, was killed on 2 June during a Soviet counterattack. His replacement, the German Hans von Lettow-Vorbeck (nephew of the German World War I hero), was killed a few days later in the battle for Bolshoi Dubowyzi, an action that cost the Danish battalion 346 casualties.26
With its third commander, Knud Børge Martinsen, the Danish Legion settled down to the positional warfare typical of the salient during the summer of 1942. Heavy rainfall through much of the period turned the scrub into swamp, the troops sloshing around in mud and water on a near-continuous basis, with the attendant miseries of dysentery, malaria, and swamp fever. Per Sørensen, a soldier in the 1st Company, wrote home with this complaint: “Unfortunately it has been raining for two days and nights in a row and most of the men fled their bunkers last night around one o’clock, because they feared drowning.”27
Despite these wretched conditions, the Danes held their section of the line, earning a commendation from the German corps command in Demyansk, which noted that they had displayed “exemplary toughness and endurance.”28 But there was a price to be paid: from an original strength of 702 soldiers, the legion had been reduced to 219 officers and men by the end of July. It was then that the legion was withdrawn from Demyansk for rest and reorganization back in Denmark.29
Eicke was recalled to Germany in June, as his wounds had failed to heal while in the field. Eicke handed the division over to Max Simon, and while Eicke was reluctant to leave his men in such difficult conditions, he welcomed the chance to argue his case to his superiors on a personal level. Following meetings with both Hitler and Himmler, Eicke was assured that should conditions permit, the Totenkopf Division would be relieved in August and re-formed as a fully equipped panzergrenadier division, complete with a tank battalion. In July recruits were sent to the training grounds at Sennelager for the establishment of new infantry units, while officers assigned to the tank battalion began training at Buchenwald.
While Eicke waited impatiently for the withdrawal and reorganization to take place, the existing division was facing yet more Soviet attacks, preventing any summer transfer to Germany. Common sense called for a German withdrawal from the exposed salient—little more than a few ruined villages in a swamp—but Hitler’s prestige was at stake and the defense continued.
Standartenführer Simon tried to maintain a grip over his troops, but declining morale led to increased instances of theft and self-inflicted wounds. The strain of command began to tell on Simon, too, evident in a series of increasingly despairing letters sent to Eicke. Shades of paranoia fell across Simon, who began to believe that the army was deliberately sacrificing his men for its own advantage. The only good news, Simon reported, was the covert removal of 170 key personnel from Demyansk, so that they could be sent to the re-forming Totenkopf in Germany (officers returning from leave or convalescence were redirected to the “new” division).30
Eicke demanded to be allowed to return to Demyansk, but Himmler refused and sent him on indefinite convalescent leave. With Eicke fuming on the sidelines, the remains of the Totenkopf Division fought on. In early September the Soviet assaults lost impetus, although the division’s combat strength had been reduced to that of an infantry battalion.31 With enemy pressure removed from the salient, Hitler finally agreed to Totenkopf ’s withdrawal, which began in mid-October 1942.
The salient was quietly abandoned in March 1943, rendering the Germans’ heroic defense largely irrelevant. There was understandable bitterness among the Totenkopf survivors when they heard the news. One of them wrote, “The men of Demyansk considered the great sacrifice [was] made in vain. Words can’t describe what the men in the Demyansk pocket suffered and experienced from winter 1941–42 on.”32
The removal of Totenkopf was part of the transformation of the best Waffen-SS field formations into panzergrenadier and then fully fledged panzer divisions. Other Waffen-SS formations still remained at the front, however, among them the SS foreign legions and the Wiking Panzergrenadier Division, the latter earmarked for a lead role in Hitler’s summer offensive of 1942.
Chapter 16
AT THE EDGE: THE EASTERN FRONT, 1942–1943
FOR GERMANY’S 1942 summer campaign Hitler focused his resources on a drive into the southern Soviet Union. The Wiking Division would help spearhead the advance toward the Caucasus Mountains, crossing the old geographic boundary from Europe into Asia. Elsewhere on the Eastern Front, Germany would remain on the defensive. In Army Group North’s sector, the recently arrived SS national legions would face the full might of the Red Army.
The Flemish Legion (Legion Flandern) was the first of the SS national legions to see action, subordinated to the 2nd SS Infantry Brigade. It was organized as a reinforced motorized infantry battalion, with the standard three rifle companies and heavy-weapons company, plus an antitank company (with heavy mortars). Although dispatched eastward in November 1941, a shortage of vehicles and the necessity of acclimatizing to the bitter winter conditions meant the legion was initially held back behind the front, nominally engaged in antipartisan duties. The Soviet offensive in January 1942 trans
formed the situation, with all available forces—including the Flemish Legion—rushing forward to defend the Volkhov Line.1
Under the command of Sturmbannführer Michael Lippert, the Flemish troops fought alongside the Spanish Division, volunteers from Franco’s Spain under German Army direction. The men of the Flemish Legion had received only the most basic training, and while they fought with commendable tenacity their lack of combat experience brought censure from their German operations officer. A report of March 1942 criticized the battalion’s uncertain leadership and poor coordination with other units. By June, however, lessons seemed to have been learned, and the battalion was praised for its combat skills. At this point, the Germans had gone over to the offensive, encircling the Soviet Second Shock Army. A breakout was attempted, but it failed miserably, and in early July the pocket was liquidated.
Some six months on the front line had greatly reduced the Flemish Legion; its original strength of just over a 1,000 had fallen to a combat deployment of 13 officers, 26 NCOs, and 288 men.2 Lippert had been one of the casualties, replaced by Obersturmbannführer Konrad Schellong. A former soldier in the Totenkopf ’s “Oberbayern” Standarte, he would continue to lead Flemish troops throughout the war. Despite the heavy casualties sustained by the battalion, the men were given little opportunity for rest but instead were sent into line on the Leningrad front. Reinforcements arrived from Belgium to bring the unit back up to strength, and it remained in this static position through the winter of 1942–1943, helping repel a Soviet offensive south of Lake Ladoga in February. By early spring, the Flemish Legion was reduced to less than half strength, and with no prospect of immediate reinforcement it was transferred to the SS Polizei Division until withdrawal from the Eastern Front in April 1943.
The Danish Legion (Freikorps Danmark) had won its spurs fighting with the Totenkopf Division in the Demyansk salient. Withdrawn from Demyansk at the end of July 1942, the battalion returned to Copenhagen, receiving a generally hostile reception from the Danish people, who, in the main, considered the “Crusade against Bolshevism” as collaboration with a hostile power.
Transferred from Denmark in the fall of 1942, the Danish Legion was reorganized, and by October it could field approximately 1,100 officers and men. In November it returned to the Eastern Front, engaging in antipartisan sweeps with the 1st SS Infantry Brigade. In December the brigade took part in a failed attempt to rescue a German force trapped in the rail junction of Veliki-Luki. After that, the Danes within the 1st SS Brigade settled down in the trenches and outposts between Veliki-Luki and Newel. They departed the front on 24 March 1943, to be disbanded a couple of months later.
In the Norwegian Legion (Legion Norwegen), uncertain relations between the volunteers and their German commanders continued after reaching the front at Leningrad as part of the 2nd SS Infantry Brigade. To the Germans, the men from the fjords proved to be awkward individualists who failed to conform to military demands with the alacrity that was expected. Vidkun Quisling, Norway’s fascist leader, also soured Norwegian-German relations. He repeatedly argued that Norwegian participation in the war against the Soviet Union should be rewarded by increasing levels of national independence. Apart from the fact that Hitler and Himmler instinctively opposed any form of national autonomy, the Norwegian contribution to the SS remained far too small for any consideration to be given to such a notion.
The five-company-strong Norwegian Legion was deployed on the Leningrad front in February–March 1942, subsequently becoming part of the 2nd SS Infantry Brigade. Jutte Olafsen, the former teacher suborned into the SS, was taken out on patrols into no-man’s-land to prepare him for any subsequent action, but most of his time was spent in a quiet sector: “Our lives then took on a routine, for day after day we were either on watch or sleeping in the dug-outs, with very little sign of the enemy.”3
The absence of enemy pressure could not last indefinitely, and a few weeks after their arrival at the front the Norwegians found themselves under fire. Olafsen’s account of the Soviet assault revealed his own fears during the action, the high quality of the German NCOs organizing the defense, and the effectiveness of the machine guns and antitank guns providing fire support:
I heard a whistle which meant the Russians were coming. I was as usual very frightened, I’m sure we all were. But we leapt out of our holes and into the firing trench as the German NCOs rushed along to get us organized. Our training had included this kind of thing and the NCOs told us to keep calm as the Russians would be stopped. Our anti-tank guns were blazing away from concealed positions and two of the enemy tanks went up in flames. The noise was tremendous, one great racket as we opened fire with all our weapons and we saw lots of Russians staggering and falling about, but many more came on. Most of the execution was done by our machine guns.
Our NCOs were shouting at the Russians, partly to encourage us I believe, but still the remnants came on, and these were now firing with rifles and machine carbines, and you could hear the whistle and whine of the bullets. The remaining Russian tanks were knocked out but not before one of them reached our lines where its guns did a lot of damage. It was then attacked by our resolute NCOs and went up in flames. It happened in about five or ten minutes, and during that time the Russians had lost 12 tanks, all T-34s, and I don’t know how many hundred men. I sat down in the trench and drank some water and the German NCOs went through the trench system making sure we were in good shape.4
The Norwegians remained on the Leningrad front throughout 1942 and into early 1943. A steady drain of casualties was not countered by sufficient numbers of replacements, and the battalion’s combat effectiveness steadily declined. Added to this was a similar decline in the unit’s motivation, with only 20 percent of the volunteers being prepared to extend their period of service.5 And while a “ski company” of Norwegians was raised to serve with the SS Nord Division in northern Finland, the prospects for the Norwegian Legion as part of Army Group North were not promising. In March 1943 it was withdrawn to Germany.
The Netherlands Legion (Legion Niederlande) comprised a full three-battalion infantry regiment just under 3,000 men strong. Arriving at the front in January 1942, it took part in holding the assault by the Soviet Second Army and then eliminating it in the Volkhov pocket. General Seyffardt, the legion’s commander, had remained in the Netherlands to supervise further recruitment but was assassinated by the Dutch resistance on 6 February. He was replaced briefly by Otto Reich—a former comrade of Dietrich’s and one of the SS executioners during the Night of the Long Knives—and then by Obersturmbannführer Josef Fitzthum, who had briefly led the Flemish Legion. More sensitive to the needs of a non-German force, Fitzthum proved an effective and generally popular commander of the Netherlands Legion.
At the end of July the Netherlands Legion was redeployed farther north to the Leningrad sector, where it joined other national contingents as part of the 2nd SS Infantry Brigade. For most of the remainder of 1942 the Dutch troops were engaged in static positional fighting.
In January 1943 the Red Army launched an offensive to relieve the siege of Leningrad. The Dutch troops were heavily involved, their antitank guns prominent in the defense. Recently appointed as gun-crew leader, nineteen-year-old Geradus Mooyman proved a skilled tank hunter. Equipped with the latest 7.5cm Pak 40 antitank guns, the well-dug-in Dutch troops had little difficulty halting the repeated Soviet assaults.
On the first day of action Mooyman knocked out two T-34s, and by the close of the offensive in mid-February he had amassed a combined figure of twenty-three destroyed Soviet tanks. On 20 February 1943 Mooyman became the first foreigner to be awarded the Knight’s Cross. An exultant Himmler whisked the teenage hero back to the Netherlands for an extended propaganda tour to increase the still modest number of Dutchmen coming forward for SS service. Himmler also had other ideas for the Netherlands Legion, which was taken out of the line in April 1943, the last of the SS legions to depart the Eastern Front.
Despite extended teething problems,
the national legions under SS control had fought well on the Eastern Front, but they were too small to effectively operate on their own and so were combined with the two SS infantry brigades. The legions’ German commanders also resented political interference from the various national politicians who had been part of the legion concept and maintained close ties with their soldiers.
As Gottlob Berger began a new recruitment drive in early 1943, Himmler decided to abandon the legion concept and instead develop a new Germanic division on similar lines to that of Wiking, which had proved such a success in the Ukraine. Although predominantly a formation of German Reich nationals and Volksdeutsche, Wiking’s contingent of Germanic soldiers was seen as an example that might successfully be developed further if sufficient recruits could be found.
WHILE THE LEGIONS had played a minor and static role in the northern sectors of the Eastern Front, the Wiking Division would win further laurels in the drive to the Caucasus Mountains and then in the defensive fighting in the southern Ukraine during the winter of 1942–1943. The spring of 1942 was a relatively quiet time for Wiking, Steiner incorporating lessons learned from the Barbarossa fighting. Among these was an organizational change to “Westland,” converting it into a “light regiment” of two five-company battalions, the fifth company acting as the heavy-weapons unit containing pioneer, infantry-gun, and “attack” platoons.
New arrivals included a battalion of Finnish infantry and an assault-gun battery, to replace the StuG IIIs lost in the February fighting south of Kharkov. And in June, with only a few weeks to spare before the opening of the new campaign, the division received its panzer battalion (Abteilung ) under the command of Sturmbannführer Johannes Mühlenkamp. Hausser and Steiner had long campaigned for their divisions to have a tank capability, enabling them to act independently without help from other panzer units.
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