Waffen-SS

by Adrian Gilbert

  Chapter 17

  KHARKOV COUNTERSTROKE

  DURING 1942 LEIBSTANDARTE, Reich, and Totenkopf had been transferred to France for conversion into panzergrenadier divisions. The choice of destination was a consequence of Hitler’s belief that the Western Allies might attempt some form of cross-Channel invasion of northern France. The Waffen-SS formations were earmarked as a temporary quick-reaction force. The Anglo-Canadian attack against Dieppe on 19 August confirmed Hitler’s suspicions, and while Leibstandarte was put on alert, the raid was easily contained by local Wehrmacht forces.

  After a victory parade through Paris on 29 July, Leibstandarte was stationed between Falaise and Caen, the very area they would be defending against the Allies two years later. The degree of coincidence was heightened by the arrival of Reich close to St.-Lô in Normandy in October, where they too would be deployed against Allied forces in 1944. Georg Keppler resumed command of the division, having recovered from meningitis. The Totenkopf Division was dispatched to southwest France, with Theodor Eicke back in charge after his enforced convalescence.

  Replacing the soldiers lost in Operation Barbarossa and the ensuing winter battles was a priority in the process of reconstruction. On Hitler’s insistence, many of the former barriers limiting Waffen-SS recruitment of German Reich citizens were removed, so that in early August 1942 OKW allowed the Waffen-SS to triple the previously authorized number of men to be selected from the class of 1924. At the start of Operation Barbarossa (22 June 1941), the Waffen-SS possessed a frontline strength of just less than 100,000 men, with a further 60,000 in reserve or undergoing training. At the beginning of September 1942, the Waffen-SS could field nearly 142,000 frontline troops, with a little more than 45,000 in reserve or training; on 1 September 1943, it deployed 280,000 men in frontline units, with 70,000 in reserve or training.1

  The Totenkopf Division was assigned 6,000 recruits from the class of 1924, who were joined by Totenkopf reservists in Poland and the remnants of SS Infantry Regiment No. 9 to ensure the division was at full regulation strength.2 The other two divisions were also predominantly reinforced by young Reich Germans.

  Hitler’s regard for the Waffen-SS produced a lavish allotment of weapons and equipment. Panzergrenadier divisions were usually assigned a single tank battalion, but the Waffen-SS formations were upgraded during 1942 to include a two-battalion tank regiment, along the lines of a standard panzer division. Measures were taken to mount towed artillery—and antitank and antiaircraft guns—onto armored vehicles, although this remained an ongoing process during 1942–1943.

  In line with the divisional change of status, the infantry were reassigned as a panzergrenadiers. This was followed by the introduction of armored half-track vehicles to transport the panzergrenadiers into battle. The SdKfz 251—a forerunner of the postwar APC (armored personnel carrier)—had a two-man crew and could carry an infantry squad of up to ten men within an armored, open-topped rear compartment, armed with a fixed machine gun. The half-track—able to negotiate terrain otherwise impassable to trucks—allowed the infantry to ride into battle with tanks and other armored vehicles. The SdKfz 251 was intended to provide a reasonable degree of protection from shell splinters and small-arms fire, although in field conditions the armor plate was found to be inadequate. The panzergrenadier crews made their own ad hoc improvements, fitting extra armored plates, sandbags, and even wooden beams to vulnerable areas.3

  As well as transporting infantry, the SdKfz 251 could be modified in a variety of ways, to provide fire-support (antitank, antiaircraft, infantry gun, mortar, flamethrower), command-and-control, engineer, and medical vehicles. Unsurprisingly, these half-tracks were always in short supply; just one battalion in any panzergrenadier regiment was so equipped, the remaining battalions still forced to rely on trucks.

  During this period Waffen-SS field units began to receive the new MG42 machine gun, supplementing and then replacing the existing MG34. Cheaper to manufacture than the old MG34, the MG42 also possessed a fearsome rate of fire of up to 1,400 rounds per minute, its distinctive ripping sound earning it the title of “Hitler’s saw” from Soviet soldiers. Although potentially wasteful of ammunition, the MG42 was a superb infantry weapon in the hands of experienced soldiers.

  The upgraded Waffen-SS divisions were also supplied with the PzKpfw Mark VI (Tiger I) tank. The Panzer IIIs and IVs that equipped the German panzer units had been developed in the 1930s, and even with continuous upgrades they were inadequate for the conditions encountered on the Eastern Front. In the autumn of 1942 the Tiger entered service, a fifty-seven-ton heavy tank that gave the panzer divisions a decisive qualitative edge over their opponents until at least early 1944. Despite being overly complex to manufacture and too heavy for its engine and transmission, the Tiger was a fearsome weapon. It was armed with an 8.8cm main gun, which, with its advanced optical sights, could hit and destroy a T-34 at a range of 1,500 meters, while its 100-millimeter frontal armor was all but invulnerable to Soviet tank and antitank guns. Each division was assigned a heavy company of approximately fifteen to twenty Tigers, although Totenkopf would not receive its company until after the 1943 Kharkov campaign.4

  SENIOR OFFICERS IN the Waffen-SS had wanted to use their forces in a semi-independent manner, free from the constraints of army supervision. The development of the Waffen-SS’s own corps system during 1942 was a step in realizing this ambition, its first tangible expression coming with the formation of the SS Panzer Corps—comprising Leibstandarte, Das Reich, and Totenkopf—under Obergruppenführer Hausser. The intention was to use this powerful formation as a strategic reserve on the Eastern Front, capable of making decisive interventions where required. Great things were expected of the corps: its troops were commanded by battle-hardened veterans, and every effort had been made in the supply of the latest weapons and equipment. Training was conducted in earnest, so that even as the strategic situation on the Eastern Front deteriorated during the final months of 1942, the SS panzer divisions continued with their instruction in armored warfare.

  The only disturbance to the training program came with Hitler’s decision to occupy Vichy France. The successful Anglo-American landings in North Africa in November 1942 made Hitler fearful of the loyalty of his French ally, especially the possibility that the remnants of the French Fleet based in Toulon might slip anchor and sail across the Mediterranean to join the Allied-sponsored Free French. To forestall such an eventuality, the Wehrmacht sent armored columns across the old demarcation line on 10 November. The occupation was unopposed so that the whole country was under direct German rule by 27 November. A number of motorized units from both Leibstandarte and Das Reich briefly took part in the operation, although they were unable to prevent the French Navy from scuttling its ships in Toulon’s harbor.

  Due to its closer proximity to France’s Mediterranean coast, Eicke’s Totenkopf Division played a more substantial role in the operation and stayed on through much of December as part of the occupying force. This change in deployment seriously undermined the division’s already wobbling training schedule, so much so that Eicke pleaded with Himmler for extra time to complete the process. Himmler was convinced by Eicke’s entreaties, so that when the order came to transfer to the Eastern Front he persuaded Hitler to give the division an extra month to complete essential training and the integration of its new weapons and equipment.5

  Himmler had been remarkably sympathetic to Eicke’s predicament in light of the situation on the Eastern Front. The Soviet Stalingrad offensive—Operation Uranus—had begun on 19 November 1942 and in a two-pronged thrust had routed the predominantly Romanian, Hungarian, and Italian troops holding the line on either side of Stalingrad. The city was encircled by Soviet forces on 24 November, beginning the siege that ended on 2 February 1943 with the surrender of what remained of the German Sixth Army.

  Part of the Red Army was directly involved in the reduction of Stalingrad, but larger forces drove into the 300-mile gap left by the collapse of the Axis armies i
n the eastern Ukraine. As Soviet armor drove forward, there was a real possibility that the Germans in the southern Ukraine would be encircled and crushed against the Black Sea. Toward the end of December Leibstandarte and Das Reich were ordered to prepare for a return to the Eastern Front to help plug the gap.

  Throughout January the troops feverishly made ready for military operations in the Soviet Union. Training exercises gave way to the conversion of vehicles and equipment for winter fighting, in marked contrast to the absence of winter preparation for the 1941–1942 campaign. Herbert Maeger, a panzergrenadier in Leibstandarte, recalled that “in the second week of January we received a new issue of winter clothing. This consisted of quilted fur-lined jackets with fur hood and reversible warm fur-lined trousers white on one side and of a brown-grey pattern on the other, fur boots and fur-lined gloves. White meant Russia, we could all see that.”6 Vehicles and heavy weapons received a coat of whitewash.

  The transport of an armored division by rail was an enormous undertaking, with Leibstandarte employing 200 separate trains for the operation.7 The first trains left France in mid-January, taking around ten days to reach the railheads in and around Kharkov. A few trains were, however, given special priority and took just five days to cross Hitler’s empire, all other traffic held back in sidings to let them pass.

  The situation encountered by the SS troops in the Ukraine was grim; as they unloaded their vehicles, they came under long-range Soviet artillery fire and witnessed the tattered remnants of the beaten Axis armies in full retreat. It was still winter, with temperatures regularly falling to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit. A soldier from the 1st Panzergrenadier Regiment wrote, “The cold was so severe that the sausage given the men had to be cut with an ax and the bread had to be thawed over the soldering gun.”8

  A combination of armor, infantry, and reconnaissance units from Leibstandarte arrived in late January, along with “Der Führer” from the recently renamed Das Reich Division. They were immediately committed to battle, pushed out to defend positions on the far bank of the River Donets, a short distance east of Kharkov. The original conception of the SS Panzer Corps acting as a unified force had to be temporarily abandoned, its units establishing a holding screen to keep the Red Army at bay and to allow German and other Axis units to fall back to safety.

  The Eastern Front in the South, 1943–1944

  The German 320th Infantry Division was slowly retreating back to the Donets, its progress hampered by an unusually large contingent of 1,500 wounded. Without outside assistance, it was quite probable that the wounded or even the entire division might be overwhelmed by the advancing Red Army. Aware of the division’s plight, Hausser organized a rescue mission, a perfect task for one of the new half-track battalions; the wounded would be loaded into the armored vehicles and driven back to German lines.

  The III Battalion of Leibstandarte’s 2nd Panzergrenadier Regiment was chosen for the task, commanded by Sturmbannführer Jochen Peiper, an officer whose career would become synonymous with the division.9 Born into a Prussian middle-class family in 1915, Peiper was a keen horseman and joined an SS cavalry Standarte in 1933. His self-confidence and matinee-idol looks were spotted by Himmler at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally; under the patronage of the Reichsführer-SS, he graduated from the SS officer training school at Bad Tölz and was posted to Leibstandarte in 1936. Two years later Peiper was transferred to Himmler’s personal staff, accompanying him on his travels, whether to foreign capitals or concentration camps.

  During the invasion of France in 1940, Peiper persuaded Himmler to let him return to active duty with Leibstandarte, winning the Iron Cross (2nd Class) for his spirited leadership in the assault on the Watten Heights on 24 May. At the close of hostilities Peiper returned to Himmler’s staff and continued his administrative duties until the autumn of 1941. Both men held each other in high regard.

  In October 1941 the now Hauptsturmführer Peiper was officially transferred to Leibstandarte to take over an infantry company of the 2nd Regiment’s III Battalion, then involved in the fighting along the Black Sea coast toward Rostov. He proved himself an enterprising and forceful soldier, very much in Leibstandarte tradition, although some fellow officers considered him reckless with his men’s lives.10 During the summer of 1942, he was promoted to Sturmbannführer and given command of III Battalion. When the battalion was equipped with SdKfz 250/251 half-tracks, Peiper looked back to his equestrian roots as he attempted to create a modern, highly mobile heavy cavalry.

  On 12 February 1943 Peiper led to his troops through enemy lines toward the Donets to rendezvous with the retreating 320th Division. When Peiper encountered the army formation struggling through the snow, he was immediately reminded of Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow: “In front came those able to walk, then the wounded, with the seriously wounded at the rear. A parade of misery on sleighs and sleds. These were so full that some unfortunates were tied on and carried underneath the sleighs. Our doctors and medics had set up emergency facilities to receive them.”11

  Although aggrieved at the apparently dismissive attitude displayed to him by the division’s commander, Lieutenant General Postel, Peiper successfully ferried the wounded to safety. On his own return to German lines, Peiper discovered that a small detachment from his battalion had been overrun in the village of Krasnaya Polyana. Rottenführer Otto Sierk described the incident: “In the village, the two petrol trucks were burnt and twenty-five Germans killed by partisans and Russian soldiers. As a revenge, Peiper ordered the burning down of the whole village and the shooting of its inhabitants.”12 The destruction of habitations harboring or suspected of harboring Soviet troops was commonplace on the Eastern Front, although Sturmbannführer Jakob Heinrich described Peiper as being “particularly eager to execute the order to burn villages.”13

  THE GERMAN OUTPOSTS screening Kharkov were being pushed in by the advancing Red Army. Hausser also discerned that the main Soviet advance consisted of two thrusts to the north and south of the city. The drive to the south of Kharkov caused Hausser the most concern, as it threatened to capture Dnepropetrovsk, on the River Dnieper, separating his forces from those in the southern Ukraine.

  On 11 February Hausser committed his available mobile troops to parry the Soviet advance. They consisted of mixed units from Leibstandarte and Das Reich, under Sepp Dietrich’s direction. As well as two battalions from Das Reich’s “Der Führer” Regiment and the division’s motorcycle battalion, Dietrich called upon his own troops: Kurt Meyer’s reconnaissance battalion and the Witt Regiment (a reinforced battalion from Fritz Witt’s 1st Panzergrenadier Regiment). They would subsequently be joined by Leibstandarte’s 1st Panzer Battalion, commanded by Max Wünsche. All in all, it was a formidable combination of units led by some of the most aggressive and dynamic officers in the Waffen-SS.

  On 11 February the Kampfgruppe drove through a swirling snowstorm to capture Merefa and then advance farther south. Using speed and surprise to compensate for a lack of numbers, the Waffen-SS troops cut through the Soviet flank. Meyer’s reconnaissance battalion swung round to capture Bereka, well behind enemy lines. The Soviets rallied, however, and Meyer found himself encircled by superior forces, with ammunition running low. “Der Führer’s” II Battalion raced forward to the rescue, borrowing the half-tracks from the III Battalion to speed its progress. They were joined by Wünsche’s panzers, which on 17 February scattered the Soviet troops surrounding Meyer. On the following day the Kampfgruppe was able to establish a defensive line that protected Kharkov from the south.

  Before this action had concluded, the situation in Kharkov itself had become ominous, as the Red Army advanced to the city’s outskirts and threatened to surround it from the north. Kharkov was one of the Soviet Union’s major industrial centers—home of the T-34 tank—and a prestige target for both Hitler and Stalin. Hausser asked to withdraw, but Hitler insisted that there would be no retreat under any circumstances. This placed Hausser in an impossible position. Unconditional obedience to the Führer�
��s orders was a foundation stone of the Waffen-SS, yet Hausser knew it would be madness to tie up the best part of two elite armored divisions in a static position when they should be free to carry out mobile operations. On 15 February, as Soviet forces closed in on the city, Hausser made his decision and withdrew from Kharkov to establish a new line to the west.

  Although incurring the wrath of Hitler, Hausser’s move was entirely in accord with the counteroffensive strategy being developed by Field Marshal Manstein, the commander of the newly formed Army Group South. Manstein reasoned that the farther westward the Soviet spearheads advanced, the more overextended they would become and the more vulnerable to a German counterattack. But if the action was to be successful, Manstein would need to marshal all available mobile forces throughout the Ukraine, so as to fall upon the Red Army advance in a carefully orchestrated manner. Hitler, who wanted an immediate offensive to retake Kharkov, vehemently opposed this idea and even flew out to Manstein’s headquarters to demand that his orders be carried out. On this occasion, however, Hitler listened to reason, as Manstein persuaded him to adopt his own flexible, mobile strategy, which would include the retaking of Kharkov, albeit at a later date.

  On 19 February Manstein put his plan into action. In the southern Ukraine, Kleist’s First Panzer Army (including the Wiking Division) advanced northward into the flanks of the massed Soviet tanks corps led by General Popov, while Hoth’s Fourth Panzer Army (including the SS Panzer Corps) would utilize all the operational skills of a crack German panzer force to outmaneuver the Red Army to the south of Kharkov.

  Manstein instructed Hausser to use Leibstandarte as a defensive shield. Das Reich would act as the maneuver force: driving due south to cut through and destroy the head of the main Soviet thrust (now close to Dnepropetrovsk), then briefly push eastward to rendezvous with the army’s XLVIII Panzer Corps, before swinging north-northwest to hammer the main Soviet thrust against the anvil of Leibstandarte. Then, the combined SS formations would move northward to destroy the Soviet forces in and around Kharkov.