by J. Lee Ready
Obersturmfuehrer Hugo Kraas led an assault in boats across the Yssel Canal against light Dutch opposition. Kraas, who was ex-army and ex-SA, had already been decorated for similar daring in Poland. Once across, the SS LAH swerved southwards aiming to link up with other German formations near Rotterdam.
Meanwhile the SS Der Fuehrer was also fighting its way across the Yssel, and then it advanced into Arnhem. On Day Two this regiment burst through the Dutch defenses along the Grebbe Line and reached the coast at Zandvoort by Day Three.
On that day the SS LAH drove into a crowd of Dutch troops. Not seeing any Germans present, the SS opened fire. It was a legitimate error. They had not realized that Luftwaffe Paratrooper General Kurt Student was among the Dutch negotiating a local ceasefire. One of the bullets hit Student in the head. Fortunately, he survived.
On Day Five of their advance the SS troops were informed the Dutch had surrendered. ‘Already’, they asked? The SS soldiers could not believe it. Praise went out to the young officers, men such as Gerd Bremer, Georg Keppler, Hubert Meyer, Wilhelm Mohnke, Kurt Meyer [who had recuperated from a wound received in Poland], Hans Scappini, Franz Steineck, Gerd Steinert, Hugo Kraas, Wilhelm Keilhaus, Wilhelm Weidenhaupt, Max Wuensche and the Austrian Sylvester Stadler. All of these were often referred to in the SS magazines as Himmler’s ‘knights’. Michael Wittman, who had risen to unterscharfuehrer in command of an armored car, probably did not think of himself as a knight, but he too was hypnotized by this victory. Wuensche had been an aide to Hitler and had come under his spell, believing the Nazis were invincible, but even he thought this victory was remarkable.
Obersturmfuehrer Peiper, released from his job as Himmler’s adjutant, joined the SS LAH too late to see action and was surprised to learn that the regiment’s casualties were just five dead and seven wounded and they had not needed their StuGs.
On May 10 the German Army had also invaded Belgium, and Theodore Eicke was especially eager for his SS Totenkopf Motorized Division to accompany the army into Belgium. To fill out his formation to divisional size, Eicke had ordered several SS reservists to ‘volunteer’ for concentration camp guard duty, which the army could not prevent. He had also ordered the entire SS Danzig Heimwehr to ‘volunteer’. However, these ‘volunteers’ never really saw a concentration camp except in the distance and were rushed straight into this new division. As Eicke still had ‘pull’, it behooved these men to accept his offer graciously. So much for the myth that all SS soldiers were fanatic volunteers. By this method Eicke gained some men that had seen combat with the army in Poland.
After the Dutch collapse to Hausser’s elation Hitler agreed that the SS Verfuegungstruppe Division could fight as a division. The army generals obeyed this order, but gave Hausser an inglorious mission: clear the marshy islands off the Dutch coast.
Meanwhile the SS LAH Regiment drove on southwards into Belgium with cocky arrogance, and ran straight into a French counterattack. The fight was tough, but the SS men [and neighboring army units] were victorious.
Eicke was finally allowed to push his division across the Belgian border and he drove them night and day to catch up to the whirlwind German advance, and here and there his men overcame French, British and Belgian stragglers, and then they reached the French border.
Near Cambrai in France on 21 May Eicke’s men were counterattacked by 130 British and French tanks, which proved invulnerable to the German 37mm anti-tank guns. Seeing their shells bounce off the tanks harmlessly, the SS Totenkopf soldiers ran ignominiously. Eicke was shamed, of course, but he did not feel too badly when he learned that Hausser’s SS Verfuegungstruppe Division, which had now entered Belgium, had also been stopped by French tanks. Both divisions found the German 37mm anti-tank gun to be worthless.
Dietrich’s SS LAH reached the Aa Canal in Belgium, which was defended by British, French and Belgian troops. Suddenly Dietrich was handed an order that had come from Hitler himself. He was to halt all attacks. The order seemed incomprehensible. Dietrich’s men were under British artillery fire, so he could hardly stay where he was, and he had no intention of retreating, so he ignored the order. On May 25 his men charged, swam and sailed across the canal in a furious combat assault and gained a bridgehead in exchange for light casualties, one of whom was Peiper who was wounded.
Meantime the SS Verfuegungstruppe Division was given a new assignment. They were ordered to drive the British out of the Nieppe Forest.
Finally on May 27 Hitler lifted his halt order and the Germans advanced. The SS Totenkopf soon ran into serious resistance from British troops at Bethune and Le Paradis, where Obersturmfuehrer Knoechlein’s company incurred heavy casualties. Moreover, a British sniper shot dead Standartenfuehrer Hans Goetze [late of the Danzig Heimwehr]. No doubt after this the men’s blood was up, but then suddenly the hundred or so British facing them threw up their hands. These SS troops had been taught by Eicke to see every enemy as a dangerous enemy, even after capture, and they were suffering from grief at having lost so many friends, so they placed the Brits against walls and hedgerows and shot them all.
This same day the SS Verfuegungstruppe Division led by Steiner’s SS Deutschland Regiment crossed the Lys Canal in a furious assault against British ‘Tommies’. Hauptsturmfuehrer Karl Kreutz, commanding an artillery battery, was wounded this day.
The following day Dietrich’s SS LAH was held up at Wormhoudt by a serious rearguard manned by members of the British 48th Infantry Division, but eventually they overcame it and took eighty British prisoners. Members of Wilhelm Mohnke’s battalion shot them.
On May 28 Steiner’s bridgehead on the Lys was counterattacked by British tanks, and he and his men were soon in deep trouble, but a detachment of the SS Totenkopf arrived in the nick of time and drove off the British. It stuck in Steiner’s throat to have to say ‘Danke’ to Eicke’s men.
This same day Dietrich and his adjutant Max Wuensche were pinned down in a ditch by enemy fire for several hours, until Dietrich’s ‘boys’ rescued them.
Shortly after this the Waffen SS units were recalled to rest and regroup.
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Conscientious SS officers reported the two incidents in which British prisoners had been shot, and the army generals demanded that the men responsible be court-martialed. However, Himmler refused to even consider prosecuting them. It must be noted that the Waffen SS including the SS Totenkopf took thousands of prisoners as the French, Dutch, Belgian and British armies collapsed, and there were no further major incidents of murder. Sepp Dietrich kept a firm hand on his ‘boys’ and he was unhappy about the murders, as much for its sign of a lapse of discipline as it was a sign of a lapse in morals.
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Again Himmler’s recruiters showed up at the most surprising places. Following the one-day conquest of Luxembourg, the German government announced that it planned to annex the nation to the Reich, but before it could do this, which would make Luxemburgers eligible for conscription into the German armed forces, Himmler’s SS recruiters rushed in. They accepted men whose native language was German or Leztebuergesch or French, though the latter did not fit the SS racial profile.
Though the combat in this region of Europe was still raging, Himmler authorized Berger to put recruiters into the Netherlands and Belgium to recruit Dutch, Frisian and Flemish recruits. Himmler deemed these people to be racially acceptable.
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The British began to evacuate by sea from the Dunkirk area, and on 28 May the Belgian government surrendered. The Waffen SS was ordered to finish regrouping and join the invasion of France, which was already in progress.
On 5 June the SS LAH Regiment and SS Verfuegungstruppe Division launched their offensive southwards into the heart of France. Within days the SS Der Fuehrer Regiment of the SS Verfuegungstruppe had fought its way across the Aisne River, and on 9 June the SS Polizei Motorized Division entered the war by attacking across the Aisne. All along the river the French offered determined opposition.
Still by 12 June the SS LAH had fought its way across the Marne River at Chateau Thierry, the SS Polizei Division was advancing through the Argonne Forest and the SS Totenkopf Division was attacking southwards towards Lyon.
On the 17th the French government announced it was seeking terms. The SS had been given no instructions to halt or ceasefire so they continued to advance, but now they spent their time rounding up prisoners, or sometimes they drove past them, allowing the walking army infantry to have the honors.
On the 20th alone the SS LAH accepted the surrender of 4,000 enemy troops and 242 parked aircraft at Clermont-Ferrand, having driven almost 400 miles in sixteen days.
At Tarare the SS Totenkopf Division met some dedicated resistance for a few hours, but even here they took 6,000 prisoners.
On 22 June the French surrendered. The war was over.
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Many SS officers won well-earned decorations for bravery in this campaign, including Sepp Dietrich, Hugo Kraas, Fritz Witt, Jochen Peiper, Otto Baum, Adolf Ax, Georg Keppler, Felix Steiner, Fritz Vogt, Gustav Knittel, Max Wuensche, Karl Kreutz, Max Hansen, Wolfgang Joerchel, Otto Kumm, Rudolf Lehmann, Martin Gross, Albert Frey, Kurt Meyer, Joachim Rumohr, Gerd Bremer, Berthold Maack and Heinz von Westernhagen. Baum had been an SS enlisted man for three years before becoming an officer. Maack served in the SS Germania Regiment as a hauptsturmfuehrer, though his Allgemeine SS rank was brigadefuehrer. Westernhagen was a Latvian Volksdeutsch that had immigrated to Germany as a boy. Of the rank and file who came to prominence, several were recommended for officer’s training, including a German, Sturmmann Rudolf von Ribbentrop, and two Austrians, Scharfuehrer Otto Skorzeny and Hauptscharfuehrer Ludwig Kepplinger. Ribbentrop was the son of Hitler’s Foreign Minister and had spent his youth in England, was an ‘old boy’ of Westminster School and a boyhood friend of British actor Peter Ustinov.
Just as Dietrich and Hausser were proud of their ‘boys’, so Eicke was of his ‘boys’, such as Friedrich Jeckeln, Heino Hierthes, Fritz Biermeier, Hellmuth Becker, Georg Ahlemann, Heinrich Albrecht, Max Simon, Walter Bestmann, Max Seela and Heinrich Petersen. Simon proved to be of extraordinary value. A cavalry veteran of World War One and a Freikorps veteran of the Polish War 1919-23, he had spent ten years as an army non-com, had then become an outer perimeter guard at Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and had risen to command the 1st SS Oberbayern Totenkopf Regiment.
The Dutch, Luxemburgers, French and Belgians had been conquered and the British had fled. Sometimes the fighting had been tough, and each of the SS formations had suffered major casualties.
Feldwebel Heinz Reinefarth of the army’s 208th Infantry Division earned the Knights Cross in this campaign. [Equivalent to the UK Victoria Cross or US Medal of Honor.]
After the French surrender he was discharged and allowed to go back to his old civilian job as an SS sturmbannfuehrer. He requested duty in the Wartheland his homeland, an obvious attempt to gain revenge for having been pushed out of his homeland by the Poles twenty years earlier.
The string of German victories impressed the world: March 1938 Austria annexed; October 1938 Sudetenland ‘liberated’; March 1939 Memelland siphoned off from Lithuania, the Czech portion of Czecho-Slovakia conquered and victory achieved in the Spanish Civil War; September 1939 Poland crushed; April 1940 Denmark occupied; May 1940 Luxemburg, the Netherlands and Belgium captured; and in June 1940 the conquest of Norway was completed, France was totally defeated, and the British were driven out of mainland Europe.
Considering how tough Hitler could have been on France [witness his treatment of Poland], his dictates to the French were magnanimous to the extreme: he stated that the Germans would take back Alsace and Lorraine, but as for France they would only occupy the north and the Atlantic coast and only for a limited time, and they would take none of the French colonies [some of which the French had stolen from Germany in 1919] and they would allow the French to retain a large armed forces. Furthermore the French government, now under Henri Petain, was allowed to remain, and there would be no war reparations on the scale imposed by France on Germany in 1919. The French collectively breathed a sigh of relief. However, Hitler could not resist a little ‘showbiz’: he made the French sign the surrender in the very same rail car that had hosted the German surrender in 1918!
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Chapter Nine
A NEW EUROPE
The world had been focused so much on Germany that the Soviet conquests were hardly noticed: September 1939 eastern Poland; March 1940 parts of Finland; and in June 1940 Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and part of Romania. Moreover the Soviet treatment of these conquered peoples was as oppressive as that of the German treatment of Poles.
And as part of the deal between Hitler and Stalin, any Volksdeutsch populations that Stalin happened to occupy in these lands were to be handed over to Hitler. In June 1940 the SS VOMI was suddenly alerted to find camp space for another 363,000 Volksdeutsch. As these refugees began arriving from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Romania, bringing nothing but a few suitcases, Himmler’s recruiters plied their trade among them to ensnare the bitterly angry men before the German armed forces could conscript them. None of these refugees had ever been Germans or Austrians. Gruppenfuehrer Gottlob Berger arranged for his son-in-law, Andreas Schmidt, to take charge of recruiting amongst the displaced Romanian Volksdeutsch. He succeeded in recruiting about a thousand of them for the SS, circa two per cent of the eligible men folk. As the SS [i.e. the VOMI] was one of the organizations helping these people, alongside the Red Cross etc., it appeared that enlisting in the SS was by no means an immoral act. And of course it guaranteed an income plus food and housing for one’s wife and children.
Himmler’s recruiters showed up everywhere, even in camps full of British prisoners of war. Many of the British Union of Fascists Blackshirts had been taken into the British Army, and Himmler wondered if any had been captured so far, so he sent recruiters to explain that Hitler meant no harm to the British people and that it was the Jews who had started it all. These recruiters were aided by the Englishman John Amory, who was working for the Nazis [an embarrassment to his uncle, a senior British politician]. A few score Brits did indeed step forward, and Himmler established the Legion of St. George [also known as the SS British Free Corps]. They would wear an SS uniform with a small British flag on the sleeve. As their unit was of far greater propaganda value than military value, they were not expected to fight, but were used to assist in prisoner of war interrogations and to help the SD with intelligence matters. Actually so few Brits signed up that the SS was forced to recruit Canadians, South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders just to make up a decent-sized platoon.
After German troops peacefully occupied Jersey and Guernsey, island nations off the coast of France that were part of the British Empire, Himmler’s recruiters plied their trade here too, but found no takers. They discovered 800 Irish laborers working here. The German Army gave them the opportunity to either go home to the Republic of Ireland [which was neutral in this war] or work for the Germans in France. Most of them chose to work. SS recruiters visited these fellows too, but made no gains. These men were willing to work to send money home to their families, but they were not willing to take sides in someone else’s war.
Himmler learned that many Irish had been captured in British uniform, so he sent his recruiting teams back to the prisoner of war camps, this time accompanied by ‘soldiers’ of the IRA - Irish Republican Army, a guerilla army that had been waging a low key conflict against the British in Northern Ireland, that part of Ireland still controlled by Britain. But here too his recruiters’ speeches fell on deaf ears. Himmler’s people had not done their homework. Citizens of Northern Ireland in British uniform were volunteers. There was no conscription there. Furthermore half the Irishmen in British uniform were citizens of the neutral Republic, who had voluntarily moved to Northern Ireland to enlist. Those citizens of Northern Ireland that were anti-British were still at home. Thus Himmler’s Irish Le
gion became a non-starter, and he never formally inducted it into the SS. The SS even promised free booze and prostitutes – a powerful inducement to an Irishman – but gained no more than about a dozen volunteers.
After this fiasco, the IRA ‘soldiers’ went back to their normal duties: training German spies and interrogating British prisoners of war.
The most celebrated of the Irishmen who supported the Nazis was William Joyce, who broadcast nightly on powerful broadcast radio transmitters in the English language. The British people listened to him because he played great music, and in mockery they nicknamed him ‘Lord Haw-Haw’. This Irishman had in fact been born in the USA and was a British citizen.
Himmler had better luck with the Finns. Finland had put up an outstanding defense against the Soviet Red Army from December 1939 to March 1940 and had retained her independence, losing only a piece of territory, from which the Finn population fled. Though Germany and the Soviet Union were currently pals, Himmler’s SS recruiters roamed Finland, secretly informing small groups of Finnish Army veterans that this friendship between Hitler and Stalin was just a ploy and that someday Hitler would attack Stalin. That was good enough for some, and upwards of 2,000 Finns joined the Waffen SS. Those Finns who were ethnically Swedish matched the SS race regulations and were put into the SS Germania Regiment, but those who were ethnic Finns were totally outside the regulations. Nonetheless they were accepted and placed into the new SS Finnish Infantry Battalion. This is further evidence that the race regulations were hogwash.
Himmler had even greater luck in northwest Europe. In Denmark Himmler had to deal with three political groups: the Danish Nazis, the Volksdeutsch and the Danish government. The Danish Nazis were not pleased by Hitler’s invasion, because instead of putting them in power he preferred to deal with the left-leaning Danish government. In fact when the Storm Afdelingr, a Danish home-grown imitation of the SA, demonstrated in public, the Danish police dispersed them, while German troops looked on. Nonetheless with the help of Frits Clausen and his gang of Danish Nazis Himmler was able to set up an actual Danish SS, which theoretically owed allegiance to Clausen not Himmler. Clausen was an ethnic Dane who came from a Danish-speaking district of Germany and had fought in World War One as a German soldier. But in 1919 Denmark had annexed his hometown.
