Waffen-SS

by Adrian Gilbert

  Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, a higher SS and police leader for Belorussia (Belarus), had demonstrated his efficiency in the killing of Jews in Latvia as well as Belorussia. Following the issue of Directive 46, he was made inspector of Bandenbekämpfung, to better organize antipartisan operations in the East. Success in this post led to his promotion on 19 June 1943 to chief of Bandenbekämpfung, with responsibilities for operations throughout the Reich. Philip W. Blood, a historian of German counterinsurgency, summed up the contradictory nature of its senior officer: “Bach-Zelewski was an intelligent man, a Junker, a political opportunist, and a self-confessed serial killer . . . and as a Great War soldier, he was awarded medals associated with heroism and courageous deeds. He was an exponent of modern warfare, security actions, resettlement programs, and mass killing. In addition, he held a close personal relationship with many senior officers in the German Army high command; they trusted him.”9

  THE TACTICS OF armed insurrection in World War II differed little from guerrilla actions in other wars. If the insurgents were to have any chance of success, they required wide expanses of rugged terrain—impassable to road-bound regular forces—within which they could operate, a civilian population that either supported or at least tolerated their actions, and some level of military and economic assistance from the outside. Western Europe, for example, lacked suitable terrain, forcing resistance movements to adopt more circumscribed tactics such as sabotage, assassination, and intelligence gathering. On the rare occasions when insurgents tried to take on the Germans in open confrontation—as happened with the French Resistance at Vercors in 1944—they were destroyed.

  On the Eastern Front, the vast Pripet Marshes were ideal for partisan operations, while the dense forests of southern Poland and Belorussia also provided necessary sanctuary for insurgent groups. The mountains of Greece and Yugoslavia performed a similar function in the Balkans, as, at a later date, did the Apennines in Italy. Partisan strategy at a military level was to concentrate on hit-and-run attacks against enemy weak points and to avoid large-scale combat, while, by contrast, the Germans sought to bring the partisans to battle where their superior military resources would give them a decisive advantage

  The German conduct of antipartisan operations was influenced by Kleinkrieg (Little Wars), a 1935 study into the subject by counterinsurgency expert and Abwehr officer Arthur Ehrhardt. During the war he transferred to the Waffen-SS and worked in the Reichsführer’s headquarters, analyzing antipartisan operations.10 Ehrhardt argued for a more subtle approach than was usual in the German armed forces, which included a “hearts-and-minds” element within a wider counterinsurgency doctrine. This, of course, ran counter to Nazi philosophy on the treatment of its non-Aryan subjects, where it was a case of all “stick” and no “carrot.” Inevitably, the Nazi view prevailed, with a consequent alienation of most people under its rule.

  On a tactical level the Germans worked hard to assimilate the lessons of counterinsurgency. They emphasized a need for flexibility in the field, as an “adherence to rigid principle has to be avoided, since the [partisan] bands quickly react and take the necessary counter-measures.”11 At Bad Tölz a course on antipartisan warfare was organized for Waffen-SS officer cadets.

  In active operations against partisans, a linked three-tier system was adopted.12 Hunter patrols (Jagdkommandos) consisted of companies or platoons used in small-scale actions, such as intelligence gathering or pursuing insurgents on the run. At the next (battalion) level, attack-pursuit operations, hopefully based on good intelligence, were intended to catch partisan leaders by surprise and destroy their strongholds with superior firepower. At the highest level were encirclement operations that might involve a multitude of units and formations, their function to act as a steadily constricting ring around the partisans until they had nowhere to hide.

  TO CARRY OUT these operations on the Eastern Front, the Waffen-SS supplied specialist antipartisan formations. Himmler was sufficiently impressed by the SS Cavalry Brigade to have it upgraded to divisional status in June 1942, when it became 8th SS Cavalry Division. It was subsequently given the title of “Florian Geyer,” after the German knight who led his “Black Company” during the German Peasants’ War (1524–1525). The division now had three cavalry regiments, each equipped with machine-gun and mortar units. Fire support was provided by an artillery regiment and mechanized antiaircraft, antitank, and assault-gun detachments, along with engineer, intelligence, and medical units.13 At the end of 1943 the division was expanded to include a fourth cavalry regiment, which gave it a strength of around 13,000 officers and men.

  The additional manpower needed for the SS Cavalry Division came from Hungarian Volksdeutsche, on the basis that Hungary’s famous light-cavalry tradition would still have meaning in the 1940s. This was of little interest to the division’s training staff, however. Few of their new recruits had a grasp of German, a problem amplified by an absence of the semimilitary background that was standard for young Reich Germans entering the armed services. This made the training process all the more difficult and inevitably led to strained relations between staff and recruits. Once again, Himmler and senior officers of the division had to repeatedly remind the instructors not to insult the men, especially refraining from calling them “gypsies”—a grave racial slur in Nazi Germany. Such was the problem that a list of acceptable “disciplinary insults” had to be issued; it included descriptions such as “dirty pig,” a “sad sack of shit,” and even a “limp dick” (Schlappschwanz).14

  Himmler assigned command of the new division to the highly experienced Das Reich officer Brigadeführer Wilhelm Bittrich. Himmler and Bittrich had a difficult relationship that would not improve as the war went on, and this appointment to a second-level Waffen-SS formation could be seen as a slap in the face for Bittrich. But for the division itself, securing the services of a highly experienced battlefield commander was an obvious plus. Bittrich would continue to lead the SS cavalry formation in antipartisan operations until February 1943, when he was released to take over the new 9th SS Panzer Division. He would be replaced by SS police officer Fritz Freitag (before his assignment to the SS Ukrainian Division) and then by Hermann Fegelein, commander of the original SS Cavalry Brigade.

  From the summer of 1942 onward, Himmler and Bach-Zelewski worked to improve the coordination of the disparate antipartisan units under their control. Among these was the Sonderkommando Dirlewanger. Previously based in Poland, Oskar Dirlewanger’s antipartisan unit had earned a reputation for corruption, disorder, and depravity sufficient even to shock the SS authorities, who preferred a more orderly approach to the ongoing destruction of the Polish state. Complaints made to Himmler led to the redeployment of Dirlewanger’s thugs into the badlands of Belorussia, where they could operate with virtual impunity.

  The SS Cavalry operated alongside the 320th Infantry Division with some success, the staff of the army formation commenting favorably on the “passion” of the SS troopers as they went about their pacification duties. Indeed, such was the SS cavalrymen’s enthusiasm for the chase that in December 1942, they were censured by their own officers for not providing enough prisoners for interrogation. During the winter months of 1942–1943, the pace of operations slowed, although growing confidence among partisan units began to make itself felt with unfortunate consequences for the Germans. In one instance, in January 1943, an SS patrol was ambushed by a superior partisan force, with just six men escaping to safety. The survivors reported how their badly wounded comrades had shot themselves rather than be captured.15

  Once the campaigning season had begun in earnest in the late spring of 1943, the SS Cavalry Division became increasingly stretched. As well as operating over its old battlegrounds in Belorussia and the Pripet Marshes, the division was also committed to support Army Group South in the Ukraine. The days of simply rounding up and killing civilians were over; the division faced well-armed partisans whose strength was increasing. The Soviet insurgency campaign of the summer of 1943�
��to destroy German infrastructure, especially bridges and railway lines—was bearing fruit, with OKH complaining of its inability to move supplies and reserves where they were needed.

  The way in which the main war on the Eastern Front was turning against Germany was replicated in counterinsurgency operations. And as the Red Army drove westward, so German antipartisan units increasingly found themselves being used in conventional operations. In January 1944 the SS Cavalry Division was withdrawn from the Eastern Front for a thorough overhaul in Croatia, although its 17th Cavalry Regiment remained in place until April, supporting the Wiking Division in the defense of Kovel. The two SS infantry brigades had already lost their main antipartisan function through their divisional upgrading in early 1944.

  THE FOCUS OF antipartisan warfare on the Eastern Front moved toward central Europe, especially Poland and Slovakia. In April 1943 the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto had risen up against their persecutors, who were finalizing plans for the final transfer of Warsaw’s Jewish population, around 60,000 strong, to the death camps. Jewish leaders in the Ghetto knew their uprising would have no chance of success but reasoned that it was better to die fighting than submit to the gas chambers.

  The uprising began on 19 April, catching the Germans unawares. A scratch force of just over 2,000 men under Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop was assembled to deal with the unrest. Stroop, a veteran of the Totenkopf Division, relied on a mix of units from the Wehrmacht, the German and Polish police, and the Waffen-SS, the latter providing the bulk of the military muscle in the form of two training and replacement battalions, one from Totenkopf and the other from the SS Cavalry Division.16

  The Jewish insurgents were armed only with rifles, pistols, and hand grenades but managed to fight on until 16 May, when, with the destruction of the city’s main synagogue, Stroop declared the uprising over. He calculated that 56,065 Jews had either been killed or captured, with around 5,000 unaccounted for, although, in his words, they were “destroyed by being blown up or by perishing in the flames.” Stroop had nothing but praise for his troops: “The longer the resistance lasted, the tougher the men of the Waffen-SS, Police, and Wehrmacht became; they fulfilled their duty indefatigably in faithful comradeship and stood together as models and examples of soldiers.”17

  A second, far larger, revolt took place in Warsaw in the following year. On 1 August 1944 resistance fighters of the Polish Home Army attacked key German-occupied buildings within the city. Once again, the Germans were caught by surprise, and within twenty-four hours much of central Warsaw was in Polish hands. An outraged Hitler gave Himmler responsibility for the suppression of the uprising, to be carried out with the utmost brutality.

  Himmler passed direct control of the operation to Bach-Zelewski with instructions that all Poles—including women and children—were to be killed. Bach-Zelewski followed orders with his usual enthusiasm. A key role was assigned to Oskar Dirlewanger’s unit—upgraded as the SS “Dirlewanger” Brigade—which had been forced back into Poland from Belorussia as a result of recent Soviet advances. Bach-Zelewski was able to call on a ragtag collection of other antipartisan units that had been raised in the Soviet Union by the German Army but had now been handed over to the SS. The most notorious of these was the Kaminski Brigade, led by Bronislav Kaminsky, whose gang of anti-Bolshevik Russians grandly called themselves the Russian Army of Liberation.

  Warsaw was subjected to mass bombing from the Luftwaffe and heavy shelling from the army, while the Dirlewanger and Kaminski Brigades (along with a unit of Azerbaijanis) ran riot through the city, murdering and raping with impunity. The brutality of their actions set a new low in Nazi antipartisan operations. Civilians were herded into factories, which were then set on fire, while hospital patients were killed in their beds. According to one account of the operation, “The Dirlewanger Brigade burned prisoners alive with gasoline, impaled babies on bayonets and stuck them out of windows.”18

  During the opening five days of the German operation, approximately 40,000 Poles were massacred.19 Despite the ferocity of the German assault, the Polish Home Army continued to fight, above and below ground. The Germans brought in heavy artillery to pound the Polish positions and used flamethrowers and high explosives to break down resistance house by house. An exasperated Bach-Zelewski was forced to admit that “the Poles fought like heroes.”20

  On 1 October Polish commander General Bór-Komorowski concluded that without outside help, his forces could no longer continue the struggle. He suggested a negotiated surrender to the Germans, who, exhausted by their efforts, were prepared to accept. As a result, most of the insurgents of the Home Army were recognized as combatants and instead of being shot out of hand were sent into captivity as officially recognized POWs.

  Warsaw’s remaining inhabitants were expelled from the city, and Himmler—with vengeance in his heart—set about destroying the remains of the city center. The final toll of casualties amounted to 15,000 insurgents killed, along with at least 200,000 civilians. Total German casualties amounted to 17,000.21 For their efforts in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, Dirlewanger and Bach-Zelewski were both awarded the Knight’s Cross. The drunken, volatile Kaminsky was considered a liability, however. He was shot on Bach-Zelewski’s orders, his death attributed to Polish “bandits.”

  WHILE THE FIGHTING in Warsaw was at its height, elements of the Slovak Army, supported by nationalists, social democrats, and communists, rebelled against the Nazi puppet government of Jozef Tiso. The revolt began on 29 August 1944, but on this occasion the Germans had some forewarning of the conspiracy and were swift and decisive in taking appropriate countermeasures. Gottlob Berger achieved his long-held ambition of leading troops in the field when Himmler gave him command of the military units to be used in the suppression (although he was subsequently replaced by the more experienced SS police general Hermann Höfle). The Waffen-SS reinforced the German Army with units from the Ukrainian 14th SS Division and the 18th SS Division Horst Wessel, followed by the SS Dirlewanger Brigade.

  The Slovak insurgents had assembled a strong force, rising to 60,000 men, but they were poorly organized and received little or no help from the Allies. Consequently, the Germans were able to overwhelm Slovak resistance with relative ease. Terror was effectively used as a weapon to subdue the population, as this account of the uprising explained:

  The brutality began almost immediately as the German troops, aided by the Tiso government’s loyal Hlinka Guard, plundered livestock and equipment for their own needs and torched scores of Slovak communities. The fear of the local populations was palpable. This fear limited assistance to the [insurgent] Slovak army as ordinary citizens learned the Germans were murdering entire families and burning down the homes of anyone caught sympathizing with the rebels. Following their brutal suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, the infamous SS Sturmbrigade Dirlewanger arrived to assist with the suppression, using notorious “mediaeval methods” against the Slovaks.22

  The uprising was declared over on 28 October, although guerrilla warfare continued into early 1945, as remnants of the Slovak resistance retreated into the mountains. While other Waffen-SS formations were withdrawn from Slovakia in October, the Ukrainian Division remained in place to root out the last Slovak rebels. Before this could be achieved, however, the Red Army began to break through the barrier of the Carpathian Mountains and enter Slovakia. The Ukrainians were only partially involved in this phase of the fighting, as on 21 January 1945 the entire division was transferred to Slovenia. According to senior staff officer Wolf-Dietrich Heike, the division’s experience in Slovakia was extremely useful: “It armed itself there, capturing the necessary weapons from the partisans; it kept peace and order in its perimeter; it gained anti-partisan experience and attained a high degree of physical fitness thanks to the constant marching and action in mountainous terrain. It also gained experience in action against the Red Army. The Division left Slovakia as an operational military unit ready for battle.”23

  By early 1945, partisa
n operations against the Germans on the Eastern Front had come to an end for the simple reason that Germany had lost control of most of its conquered territories. The counterinsurgency units of the Waffen-SS, which had earned such an infamous reputation in the East, were now thrown into the desperate battle to defend the German Reich from the Red Army.

  Chapter 24

  PARTISAN WARS: THE BALKANS

  UNDER THE LEADERSHIP of Josip Broz “Tito,” the communists partisans of Yugoslavia would become the chief hindrance to German domination of the Balkan region. Other insurgent movements emerged in Greece and later in Italy, but it was against Tito’s partisans that the Germans were forced to devote their main military effort. Within Yugoslavia, Germany deployed troops from the Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS, and the Croatian armed forces, plus a formation of Cossacks transferred from southern Russia. In theory, at least, Germany also had the support of Italy, with several of Mussolini’s infantry divisions stationed along Yugoslavia’s Dalmatian coast.

  With a few exceptions, notably the German Army’s crack 1st Mountain Division, the quality of the Axis troops engaged in the region was below average. A strong Luftwaffe presence—until the end of 1943—was a partial compensation for these shortcomings, with German ground commanders able to call upon a variety of aircraft for support in antipartisan operations. They included the Fieseler Storch for aerial reconnaissance, the Ju-52 for the swift transport of men and supplies to the battle zone, and the Ju-87 Stuka for ground-attack sorties.

  The 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen was the largest and longest serving of the Waffen-SS formations operating in Yugoslavia. As a mountain infantry division, it was organized around its two infantry regiments, each with four “overstrength” battalions. The mountain battalion had the standard three infantry (Jäger) companies and one machine-gun company but, in addition, received a heavy company (with engineer, antitank, infantry-gun, and mortar platoons) and a specialist patrol company, responsible for reconnaissance and flank security. Initially, armament was distinctly second-rate and included Yugoslav rifles, Austrian and Czech machine guns, and French and Czech artillery, with obsolete French tanks for the panzer company.1 Over the course of time, they would be replaced by superior German weapons.