Waffen-SS

by Adrian Gilbert

  Leibstandarte was deployed across northern Italy to overawe the local population and, postarmistice, to supervise the surrender of the Italian Army and the handing over of its weapons. In the process, substantial amounts of Italian camouflage clothing were acquired, subsequently to provide uniforms for both Leibstandarte and the Hitlerjugend Divisions.

  During its time in Italy Leibstandarte took part in antipartisan actions that included the destruction of the village of Boves and the massacre of its inhabitants by Jochen Peiper’s battalion on 19 September. This and a few other similar incidents apart, Leibstandarte troops saw their deployment as something of a holiday. While stationed in Italy Peiper indulged himself in horse riding, sports cars, and taking flying lessons.

  In October the division was dispatched to northeastern Italy on the border with Slovenia to engage in more serious antipartisan fighting. But even this was temporary, and on 27 October the division was ordered to return to the East.

  As the SS troops were enjoying their Italian interlude, a former Leibstandarte soldier was taking part in a daring and highly successful mission: the rescue of Mussolini from captivity at the hands of the new pro-Allied Italian government. Although the operation was primarily organized by paratroopers from the Luftwaffe, it also included a small unit of SS special forces—at this time part of the 502nd SS Jäger Battalion—under the command of Otto Skorzeny, previously a civil engineer from Austria.

  Standing six-foot-four, Skorzeny’s formidable appearance was heightened by dueling scars gained as a student. Joining Leibstandarte in 1939, he later transferred to the Reich Division as an engineer officer. He took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union but was struck down by illness toward the end of 1941. While recovering he became interested in the idea of developing a commando-style unit capable of operating behind enemy lines. His proposal was taken up by higher echelons, and SS intelligence chief Walter Schellenberg tasked Skorzeny with developing a school to create paramilitary soldiers trained in espionage, sabotage, and partisan operations.

  According to Skorzeny’s memoirs, Hitler personally chose him for the rescue mission, which would involve the landing of six gliders on a mountainous ridge at the Gran Sasso ski resort, where Mussolini was being held. On 12 September a mixed Luftwaffe/SS force successfully disembarked at the resort and overcame the guards without a shot being fired. Skorzeny bundled Mussolini into an accompanying Fieseler Storch light aircraft and flew him back to Rome and then on to a meeting with Hitler in Berlin.17 Skorzeny and the SS were quick to take the lion’s share of the credit for the mission, an invaluable propaganda coup for Himmler in his battle for power within the Nazi hierarchy.

  Part Three

  A CALL TO ARMS

  I did not volunteer for the Waffen SS, but was, as were thousands of my year group, conscripted. I did not then know as a 17-year-old that it was a criminal unit. I thought it was an elite unit.

  —GÜNTER GRASS

  Chapter 19

  AN ARMY OF EUROPEANS

  HIMMLER AND HIS trusted lieutenant Gottlob Berger never wavered in their efforts to develop the Waffen-SS as a multinational military organization. The recruitment of ethnic German Volksdeutsche from across Europe had provided a ready pool of reinforcements for existing Waffen-SS formations, and from 1942 onward this program also furnished the manpower for a series of new SS divisions. And in what seemed a bizarre twist, the SS also began to consider recruitment in Eastern Europe and the Balkans from groups normally considered to be well outside the Nazi racial pale. All the while, Berger and his SS Main Office continued in their attempts to mobilize Germanic volunteers from northwestern Europe.

  The invasion of the Soviet Union had provided the impetus for the raising of the Germanic national legions from racially acceptable Europeans, but the program had proved a limited success at best. In northwest Europe, the response to the Nazi “Crusade against Bolshevism” had always been muted; all of the nations involved—Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Flemish Belgium—had fielded units that were too small to have any impact on the Eastern Front. That there was no long-term future for the Germanic national legions was apparent to Himmler by the middle of 1942, and with Berger’s help he began to overhaul the whole system.

  At the front, as a short-term solution, the national legions were progressively absorbed into the 1st and 2nd SS Infantry Brigades in early 1943. For the longer term, Himmler adopted Felix Steiner’s proposal for the development of a Germanic army corps, comprising the battle-hardened Wiking Division and a new formation recruited from Germanic countries, to be called the Nordland Division.

  The ongoing problem for Berger’s recruitment office was to find sufficient numbers of acceptable volunteers, especially now that the first flush of enthusiasm for overthrowing Soviet communism was over. In the home countries—as the Nazi occupation became more oppressive—membership of the Waffen-SS was increasingly less attractive. One way around this was to recruit directly from the tens of thousands of Germanic men working in Germany. They were considered more amenable to extending their support at the military level, free from the inhibiting influences present at home where cooperation was more usually considered to be collaboration.

  In April 1943 Albert Speer’s Organization Todt permitted Berger to draft foreign workers in Germany directly into the Waffen-SS. The results were initially impressive, with 8,105 men coming forward by the middle of August, although this figure was diminished by the still fairly strict selection standards that saw only 3,154 men accepted for military service.1 After this the numbers of volunteers tailed off, forcing recruiters once again to rely on Volksdeutsche and Reich Germans to fill Nordland’s ranks. By the end of the year the division’s ethnic breakdown consisted of 4,100 Reich Germans—who predominantly held senior ranks and technical posts—and 5,900 Volksdeutsche from Romania supplying the majority of the infantry. The actual Germanic element was around 20 percent of the total: 1,400 from Denmark, a little under 800 from Norway, 274 from the Netherlands, plus 38 Swedes and 24 Flemings.2

  That the division contained substantial numbers of Volksdeutsche was taken into account in its full title. First-category formations—composed of Reich Germans and Germanics who were deemed fit to join the SS Order—were designated by their formation number, tactical specialty and name, as in 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking. Nordland, by contrast, was rated as a second-category formation and was designated by formation number, the adjective Volunteer (Freiwilligen), tactical specialty, and name: 11th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division Nordland.

  The experienced military core of the division was based around the “Nordland” Regiment, detached from Wiking in the spring of 1943. Fritz von Scholz, the former “Nordland” commander, was assigned leadership of the new division. Troops from the Netherlands were soon detached to form their own brigade, leaving the division’s two infantry regiments—“Norge” and “Danmark”—to reflect its title. The Nordland Division had the standard artillery regiment and support arms, which included a battalion of Panther tanks.

  Despite Steiner’s hopes, the Nordland Division was never deployed with Wiking but instead fought alongside the Dutch contingent—subsequently designated 4th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Brigade Nederland—commanded by another former Wiking officer, Jürgen Wagner. The Nederland Brigade deployed two infantry regiments, “General Seyffardt” (named after the Dutch legion’s recently assassinated founder) and “de Ruyter” (after the admiral who had fought the English in the seventeenth century). The brigade had a reasonable initial strength of 5,426 men, although only 40 percent came from the Netherlands, the remainder being Reich Germans or Volksdeutsche.3 It was intended that the Dutch brigade would form the nucleus for a full division.

  The two formations were combined as the III (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps, a reduced army corps that possessed few armored vehicles, despite its designation. Although its military potential was limited, Himmler showed great interest in the formation in the hope that it would act as a model for compulsory m
ilitary service in the Germanic countries after the war. In September 1943 the corps was sent to Croatia to complete its training, which included engagement in antipartisan warfare.

  IN MAY 1943 the Flanders Legion was re-formed as SS Volunteer Assault Brigade Langemarck, the “Langemarck” part of its title referring to a 1914 battle fought by the Germans against the British in Flanders and apparently intended to signify Flemish-German ties of friendship. Approximately 600 men crossed over from the old legion, reinforced by new volunteers and others transferred from SS replacement depots. As well as a reinforced infantry battalion, the formation—fully motorized—contained powerful support arms in the shape of a mechanized antitank company, an assault-gun battalion equipped with StuG IIIs, and an antiaircraft company. With an overall strength of just over 2,000 men, the assault brigade was a far more effective combat formation than its infantry-based legion predecessor.

  Langemarck’s training took place at the former Austro-Hungarian Army base at Milowitz in Bohemia. Himmler and Berger again issued orders to the instructing staff to refrain from the insults that were second nature to them and to exercise the greatest “care and attention” to the welfare of the recruits.4 It would seem that these strictures finally began to make themselves felt—at least among the Germanic units.

  Former officers from the various national armies, or those men showing officer potential, were encouraged to complete officer training at the Waffen-SS Junkerschulen at Bad Tölz and Braunschweig. The aim was to make them fully bilingual and well prepared in SS tactical and political doctrine and to be able to work alongside German officers in the field. By the end of 1943 growing numbers of these officers were graduating from the cadet schools, ready to take up commands with troops of their own nationality. These measures certainly helped improve the fighting quality of the Germanics within the Waffen-SS, as would be demonstrated in the campaigns of 1944.

  The formation of the Langemarck Brigade was followed by two other similar assault brigades, but both from unlikely backgrounds. The French-speaking Walloons of southern Belgium and the French had traditionally been categorized by the Nazis as Latin peoples, quite distinct from those North Europeans considered to share a similar racial heritage to Reich Germans. During the early 1940s, however, Himmler’s race experts began to suggest that Germanic racial influence might extend in limited and specific areas to southern Belgium and parts of France.

  This idea was readily adopted by those right-wing politicians in Wallonia and France who wanted closer involvement with the Nazi system. Among them was the Belgian Rexist agitator Léon Degrelle, who was serving in the army-organized Walloon Legion. He had repeatedly lobbied Hitler and Himmler to persuade them that the Walloons were a “lost German tribe,” but to little effect. Degrelle was nothing if not persistent, and as a fluent and persuasive public speaker he eventually managed to convince Himmler to have the Walloon Legion assigned to the SS.

  The army made no objections to the transfer, so that in May 1943 it became the SS Volunteer Assault Brigade Wallonien under the command of Sturmbannführer Lucien Lippert (Léon Degrelle, with only limited military experience, was assigned a vague role of military-political liaison officer). Organization was similar to that of the Langemarck Brigade: a reinforced, motorized infantry battalion, with light artillery, engineer, and antitank companies, plus an assault-gun company transferred from the SS Polizei Division. By November 1943 the brigade—some 1,850 men strong—was considered combat ready and sent eastward to support the Wiking Division in the Ukraine.5

  France had already supplied a national legion for the German Army, the Légion des Volontaires Français, which had seen action on the Eastern Front. Himmler, however, refused to have anything to do with the LVF and instead ordered the creation of a completely new formation—SS Volunteer Brigade Frankreich—that insisted on more rigorous racial selection standards than had been the case with the army-raised unit.

  Training of the 1,700-strong Frankreich Brigade began in the summer of 1943 at the Sennheim camp in Alsace, a seemingly thorough program that included the integration of French officers who had graduated from the Bad Tölz cadet school. The brigade was commanded by former French Foreign Legion officer Paul Marie Gamory-Dubourdeau and comprised two infantry battalions along with antiaircraft, artillery, and assault-gun units. In July 1944 the brigade was dispatched to the Eastern Front to fight alongside the SS Horst Wessel Division.6

  Another unit to see the light of day was the British Free Corps, recruited from British fascists and sympathizers living in Germany when the war broke out. Initially called the Legion of St. George, its leaders attempted to persuade disaffected British prisoners of war to join them, but despite a recruiting campaign conducted during 1943 in several POW camps, it proved an abject failure. When the unit was officially established under Waffen-SS control on 1 January 1944, it had just fifteen members, and throughout its lifetime its numbers at any one time never exceeded fifty.7

  DESPITE SOME POTENTIALLY promising developments in the attempt to integrate Germanics within the Waffen-SS, the resources necessary to drive Himmler’s plans for expansion would have to come from the Volksdeutsche in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Under the guidance of Gottlob Berger, a small number of Romanians had been covertly integrated into the Waffen-SS in June 1940. Although Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany, it remained a sovereign country, and Berger could not openly take its citizens without governmental permission. An easier process was to conscript Volksdeutsche resettled in Germany and from communities under direct German control, which included parts of the former Yugoslavia.

  After the German conquest of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the country was broken up into constituent parts, with chunks of territory seized by German allies Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Croatia, under its brutal fascist leader, Ante Pavelić, emerged as a Nazi puppet state, while Serbia came under German military administration.

  Although Germany had won a stunning military victory in Yugoslavia, two Serb-based guerrilla movements soon emerged, the Royalist Chetniks and the communist Partisans under Josip Tito. To counter this insurgency, the ethnic Germans of the Banat—a region in northern Serbia between Belgrade and the Hungarian border—set up their own “self-defense” units. Berger wasted no time in co-opting them as the basis for a new Waffen-SS division.

  The new formation would become 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen, named after the renowned imperial Austrian general who had successfully fought the Turks in the region during the early eighteenth century (that the prince had been a close ally of the English Duke of Marlborough was glossed over). In January 1942 the newly promoted Brigadeführer Artur Phleps—formerly commander of Wiking’s “Westland” Regiment—was assigned to lead the division. Phleps, whose background as an ethnic German born in Transylvania made him an appropriate choice, set about his task with enthusiasm. His attitude contrasted with that of most other (Reich-born) German officers, who considered a posting to the division as a form of punishment.8

  Military-eligible Volksdeutsche from the Banat were urged in the strongest terms to sign up for the new division. They were subsequently joined by Volksdeutsche from Croatia, Hungary, and Romania, who considered service in a German-organized formation preferable to that of their home nation. Fred Umbrich, a Transylvanian Saxon, was one such volunteer who wrote that “any price was worth paying to avoid the Romanian Army. I shuddered as I recalled the kicks and curses I had witnessed at the area inspection more than a year earlier.”9

  Prinz Eugen was formed on 1 March 1942; thereafter, recruitment began in earnest. After a short flurry of interest, the numbers of volunteers dried up, with Himmler and Berger forced to introduce conscription in the region. In October 1942 the division was considered ready for operational deployment, and was 92 percent Volksdeutsche, the remaining percentage coming from Reich Germans occupying senior or technical positions.10

  Berger then turned his attention to the Nazi puppet regimes of Croatia and Slovakia. As was bec
oming a defining pattern, the Volksdeutsche communities in both states seemed to lack the necessary commitment to the Nazi German cause to provide the numbers expected of them, forcing the SS Main Office to apply various degrees of coercion. The Croat and Slovak governments were sluggardly in cooperating with Berger’s recruiting agents, but they were legally unable to stop the impressment of their ethnic Germans.

  Hungary and Romania were next, and while agreements had to be negotiated, Himmler and Berger pressed hard to gain access to their Volksdeutsche communities. Himmler held the view that Volksdeutsche were not citizens of their “host” countries but Germans who happened to be living in these countries and, as such, were subject to conscription into the Waffen-SS.

  Following the debacle at Stalingrad, the demand for manpower increased ever more, sufficiently so for the SS Main Office to override the wishes of the Hungarian and Romanian governments and impose conscription on ethnic Germans in both countries during 1943. Berger’s measures seemed to work, so that by the end of year the Waffen-SS had inducted the following numbers of Volksdeutsche:11

  Serbia 21,516

  Croatia 17,538

  Slovakia 5,390

  Romania 54,000

  Hungary 22,125

  The obvious problem with Berger’s emphasis on quantity was the consequent loss of quality. As his responsibilities essentially ended once the recruit had signed the SS enlistment papers, he had limited interest in what happened down the line. The training and deployment of this influx of manpower became the concern of Hans Jüttner of the SS Leadership Main Office, and he was understandably outraged at the poor physical and mental standard of the recruits he was receiving. On one occasion Jüttner complained to Berger about a batch sent from Hungary that included men with epilepsy and tuberculosis, pointing out that they had “not been seen by a doctor or SS officer. Because their physical disabilities are so obvious that a soldier could never declare these men fit for military service.”12