by J. Lee Ready
Following the double conquest Himmler told his SS RSHA and other SS departments that they had to tread warily in Yugoslavia and Greece, because the region was to be dissected like a jigsaw puzzle. Within the boundaries of Yugoslavia northeast Slovenia was annexed by Germany, so the SS RSHA was ordered to treat that district like any other in Germany. The Volksdeutsch in this district automatically became German citizens [Volksdeutsch Class IV] eligible for military conscription, so Himmler’s recruiters did not get much of a bag here. Moreover, to Himmler’s anger, Viktor Lutze’s SA was allowed to set up a militia here, a branch of his SA Wehrmannschaft. Another part of Yugoslavia, Croatia, became an independent state and an Axis partner, so any SS operations here could only take place with the permission of the Croat dictator Ante Pavelic. Furthermore, the Volksdeutsch here were now Croat citizens, thus free from German conscription. Serbia itself became a protectorate of Germany, and Himmler in theory had to ask the new Serb government for permission to station SS RSHA personnel here, but in reality he could do as he wished. However, the Volksdeutsch here were now Serb citizens, thus free from German conscription. So Himmler’s recruiters went to work in Serbia at once. German Army recruiters also arrived to ask for volunteers and they formed a Volksdeutsch militia for home defense - the Heimwehr – to protect the Volksdeutsch villages. The remainder of Yugoslavia was occupied by Italians, Hungarians and Bulgarians, and thus off limits to Himmler.
To the anger of the Serbs the Gestapo rounded up all Jews within the Volksdeutsch villages and dumped them in territory that was mostly Serb. The Serb police responded by arresting these Jewish interlopers and they built a concentration camp just for them.
Himmler asked the Croats if they needed help with their Jewish problem. They replied that they had it well in hand. They did indeed, for they had created a Fascist militia, the Croatian Ustaci, which was already arresting Jews and placing them in their new concentration camps.
The carve up of Greece was simpler: most of that nation went to Italy with some of the northeast to Bulgaria. The Germans were allowed a presence in Athens and Salonika. That was enough for Himmler. He set up SS RSHA offices in both cities.
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Chapter Eleven
HITLER’S CRUSADE
In spring 1941 Hitler secretly invited his Axis partners to a crusade, [he used this word] literally a Christian expedition to destroy the atheistic Communists of the Soviet Union. The Japanese and Bulgarians declined, but the other Axis partners accepted. The Finns even changed their armed forces flag to reflect that they were on a crusade, choosing the Christian hakiristi [swastika]. Though the Japanese had fought the Soviets as recently as 1939, they refused to join in this new war, not telling Hitler why. They were in fact planning to attack the USA and Britain.
By June 1941 Hausser’s Waffen SS was a powerful armed force of almost 150,000 men divided into five divisions: the SS LAH [newly expanded from brigade size], SS Das Reich, SS Totenkopf, SS Polizei and SS Wiking [Viking]. The SS Polizei Division was still not formally a part of the Waffen SS, and was thus its own branch of the SS, but in daily affairs it was treated as a Waffen SS unit. These divisions were all motorized infantry: i.e. unlike most German infantry they did not have to walk to the battlefield.
The SS Polizei Motorized Division was a battle-hardened force by now, and though it consisted of men who had been forced to serve, they had been propagandized for a year by the SS.
The SS Totenkopf Motorized Division was based upon Eicke’s camp guards, but in truth few of its members had ever set foot inside the prison huts of a concentration camp, and probably no more than half had ever sat in a camp guard tower. Moreover, most of them had never volunteered for combat duty. Nonetheless Eicke liked to pretend that his division was a unit of 10,000 killers. Had these men been as brutal as their image, then Himmler would simply have siphoned off 3,000 of them for his new SS einsatzgruppe. Eicke was a good soldier, but he liked his mind games.
Almost all the personnel in these divisions were citizens of the Reich, but these days that did not just mean ethnic Germans from Germany, for there were also Frisians, Wends and Danes from their respective ethnic regions of Germany, and also Austrians, Sudetens, Memellanders, Warthelanders, Danzigers and Luxemburgers, and also Volksdeutsch from the Eupen area of Belgium and the Alsace and Lorraine regions of France.
Moreover the SS Wiking under the command of Brigadefuehrer Felix Steiner was quite a mixed force. It had three motorized infantry regiments: the SS Nordland [North Land] containing two battalions of Norwegians and one of Danes; the SS Westland containing Dutch, Frisians and Flemings; and the SS Germania containing Swiss, Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, Finnish Swedes, Lichtensteiners and Volksdeutsch from a host of nations including Italy, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, the Czech Protectorate, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. One of the Swedes, Hans Goesta-Pehrsson, soon proved to be an excellent soldier.
The commander of the Westland, Standartenfuehrer Hilmar Waeckerle, was a tough master who had once been charged with the murder of a prisoner whilst in command of Dachau concentration camp. Another ex-commander of Dachau was Sturmbannfuehrer Berthold Maack, now one of the SS Wiking’s battalion commanders. Another battalion commander was the Austrian Hauptsturmfuehrer Franz Augsberger, who had risen through almost every rank of the SS starting with sturmmann [private]. Standartenfuehrer Arthur Phleps was a Romanian Volksdeutsch. Entering the Austrian army in 1900, he rose to oberstleutnant during World War One. Following combat as a member of the Austrian Freikorps, trying to retain control of Volksdeutsch villages, he returned to his hometown, which was now under Romanian occupation and he joined the Romanian Army, retiring as a lieutenant general at the age of 59. Then Himmler recruited him. The divisional artillery commander was the excellent Herbert Gille. Hauptsturmfuehrer Walter Schmidt, a German who had fought with the SS Germania Regiment in Poland, was now a company commander in the division.
The other components of the SS Wiking such as artillery and engineers were as mixed as the SS Germania.
In addition the SS Finnish Infantry Battalion was temporarily attached to the Wiking.
Besides these five divisions there were several smaller Waffen SS units in training including some infantry battalions of Yugoslavian Volksdeutsch, the SS Norwegen Ski Battalion of Norwegians, the SS Nordost Regiment of Finns, the SS Ost Battalion of Latvians and Estonians, and the SS Nordwest Regiment of Dutch, Frisians and Flemings. [Owing to race restrictions the Latvians were not formally inducted into the SS, but were known as legionnaires, their rank only having authority within the unit.] Additionally, Brigadefuehrer Karl Maria Demelhuber was forming the SS Nord [North] Battlegroup with the 5th [part], 6th, 7th and 9th SS Totenkopf Regiments that had been serving in Norway. He had a smattering of veterans to help him whip these ‘soldiers’ into shape, such as Obersturmbannfuehrer Martin Kohlroser and Obersturmfuehrer Georg Ahlemann.
Despite the huge growth of the Waffen SS in the last few years, it must be remembered that for the coming invasion of the Soviet Union the Waffen SS would make up less than three per cent of the attacking Axis forces.
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On 22 June 1941 Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. He divided his army into three prongs: Army Group North aimed for Lithuania, which had been oppressed by the Soviets for a year by now, and Army Group Center attacked that part of Poland conquered by the Soviets twenty-one months earlier: and Army Group South attacked into that part of Polish Ukrainia (Galicia) that had been under Soviet occupation for twenty-one months. Each army group was allotted a police regiment for rear security. E.g. Polizei Oberst Hermann Franz commanded Police Regiment South that followed Army Group South. [He had recently become an SS reservist]. Naively Hitler thought that no other policing units would be needed. Within days the armies of Finland, Slovakia, Croatia, Italy, Romania, Hungary and Spain would join Hitler’s offensive. Though the Spanish had not joined the Axis, they sent an infant
ry division and an air squadron into this new war. The Spanish dictator, Francisco Franco, wanted to pay the Soviets back for having fought him in the Spanish Civil War 1936-39.
Stalin had been warned by British intelligence of the coming attack, and his own agents had easily discovered the massive military preparations, yet he did nothing. It was as if the possibility of his defeat was too fantastic for him to take seriously. Or perhaps he thought his people would fight better if they were invaded first, rather than if he made a pre-emptive strike. Either way as a result the invading Axis armies rolled in against bitter, but uncoordinated resistance.
In Lithuania the people rose in revolt as they saw the Red Army running away before their very eyes. Grabbing whatever weapon was handy, whether shotguns or butcher knives, they shot and stabbed the fleeing Soviets, and then they went hunting for those who had collaborated with Stalin’s NKVD. Near Kovno they found 500 fresh corpses of Lithuanians butchered by the NKVD. At Telsiai they found 73 bodies. They broke open the NKVD prisons and found corpses and torture chambers. The mobs became frenzied.
The Lithuanians were Roman Catholics and the ethnic Russians who had lived among them for generations were Russian Orthodox Christians, and the Volksdeutsch among them were Roman Catholics or Protestants [usually Lutherans]. Though possessing different religions and different languages, they had all tried to intermingle and live and let live. But most of the Jews among them were unassimilated outsiders who spoke Yiddish, who lived alone in their own neighborhoods and often dressed differently. When the NKVD had arrived it was noticeable that this militia of killers had a high proportion of Jews among its ranks, and furthermore they eagerly sought fellow Jews as collaborators. No one knows if the Jews of Lithuania were truly more susceptible to Communist propaganda than were the Christians, but the Christians gained that impression. As a result when the Soviets turned tail and ran on 22 June 1941 the hunt for collaborators quickly turned into a hunt for Jews. The luckiest Jews were just beaten senseless. The unlucky ones were shot or beaten to death or hanged from lampposts. In Kovno alone probably 3,800 Jewish men were murdered.
When the German soldiers arrived they were astonished to see dead Jewish men everywhere. They watched the executions and some took photos of the killings, but then German officers came and put a stop to the killings immediately and arrested the killers.
When the Lithuanians saw German army and SS vehicles bearing the Christian cross, they cheered deliriously. Upon further inspection they saw that the German Army belt buckle was inscribed “Gott Mit Uns” [God is with us]. And when they learned that the German Army had Christian chaplains, they knew they had been truly liberated from atheistic Communism.
Behind the invading soldiers followed the German Police Regiment North, which allowed the local police to continue operations under their guidance. They also began to recruit Lithuanians into auxiliary battalions of the German Orpo, i.e. the Schumas - Schutzmannschaften.
It took only four days for the Germans, including the SS Totenkopf and SS Polizei Divisions, to cross Lithuania and enter Latvia. Here too the crowds were ecstatic at their liberation, and here too mobs went hunting for collaborators. Fortunately the anti-Jewish aspect was not as rampant here as in Lithuania. Nonetheless the Germans put an immediate stop to the rioting and murdering. One of the happy Latvians was Voldemar Veiss, who had long been a Latvian nationalist. Refusing to take the Soviet occupation lying down he had organized a resistance group. Now he was liberated. Understandably he offered his services to the Germans.
Within days the Germans, still including the SS Totenkopf and SS Polizei, passed through Latvia, advancing 155 miles in the first four days in July. On the 6th they repelled a counterattack by elements of the Soviet North West Front, and then they charged into Estonia. Eighty Estonian members of ERNA, a German army intelligence team, had infiltrated into this country to perform sabotage, for they knew the Red Army would be allowed more time here to carry off essential equipment. As the Soviet retreat was more leisurely here, the mobs of vengeance seeking townsfolk did not materialize to the same degree as in Lithuania and Latvia. Furthermore, the Estonians were not as anti-Semitic and so there were fewer murders of Jews. But Communist brutality had been just as rampant here, and once the Red Army did flee the people opened an NKVD prison and found the corpses of 450 men and women who had been beaten to death recently.
Police Regiment North now entered Latvia and Estonia and allowed the local police to remain in being and they recruited locals as schumas.
German Army Group North battled its way across Estonia and pushed on into Russia itself. The Germans were pleasantly surprised to find Russian civilians welcoming them. Already Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians had asked to join the Germans to fight the Communists, and now Russians were coming forward asking for the same thing. Often Red Army soldiers surrendered, asking to be allowed to keep their rifles to fight the Red Army! Officially German Army unit commanders could not accept them, but unofficially they began to employ these volunteers as cooks, laundry workers, mechanics, drivers, guides, interpreters and manual laborers. The SS Totenkopf and SS Polizei Divisions accepted them too. Within days a uniformity of sorts was created, in that these volunteers were given armbands that read: “In the service of the German armed forces”. Known as Hilfeswillige [Volunteer Help], everyone soon nicknamed them ‘hiwis’ [pronounced hee-vees].
Again we have the lie. Politically the war was supposedly a crusade against Communism, but every Nazi rabble-rouser had claimed it was also a war against the Slavic peoples that made up the Soviet Union. Indeed ERNA was allowed to be put together only because Estonians are not Slavs. Yet within days of the invasion the Germans including the Waffen SS were employing Slavs.
Finally in mid-July Army Group North came to a halt in order to re-supply and erase bypassed pockets of enemy troops.
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Hundreds of miles to the north along the Finnish-Soviet border near Salla the SS Nord Battlegroup launched its own offensive, but these Totenkopfverbaende soldiers, many of whom were Danzigers, Sudetens and Czech Volksdeutsch, were soon stopped by Red Army resistance. The German and Finnish troops fighting alongside them decided that this SS formation was not an elite unit.
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On June 22 Army Group Center, which included the SS Das Reich Motorized Division, had begun its part in the offensive by bypassing the fortress city of Brest-Litovsk, and advancing at the rate of forty miles a day led by the Das Reich‘s reconnaissance battalion commanded by Hauptsturmfuehrer Johannes Muehlenkamp. Periodically the SS Das Reich infantry had to jump out of their trucks to battle an enemy rearguard, but the Soviet West Front was in a complete state of flux.
On June 28 the SS Das Reich fought its first real battle in this campaign by attacking towards the Beresina River. Untersturmfuehrer Otto Skorzeny was now proudly leading a platoon in this action. Another of the divisional officers who distinguished himself was Sturmbannfuehrer Joachim Rumohr who commanded an artillery battalion. It took a week of fierce combat to cross the Beresina, and then the division charged on for the Dnepr River. A company of the division’s pioneers was repairing a bridge when they were assaulted by a by-passed Soviet unit. The pioneers were all but wiped out.
After just eighteen days of this new war Army Group Center reached the Dnepr River, where a Red Army formation of 300,000 surrendered! The Germans now ploughed forward into Byelorussia and liberated millions of those hapless people. [Byelorussians are not Russians, no matter what the Russians say.] At Chervene the local Byelorussian civilians found a mass grave of thousands of victims of the NKVD. They begged the Germans to be allowed to fight the Communists, and here too the Germans, including SS Das Reich, began accepting hiwis.
However, on 29 July Hitler himself ordered Army Group Center to advance no further eastwards until things were tidied up.
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Army Group South, which included the multinational SS Wiking Motorized Division, also advanced on June 2
2, and encountered tearful Ukrainian villagers who crossed themselves in the Eastern Catholic manner as the German vehicles drove by, thanking God for their liberation. When the SS Wiking reached Lwow [Lemberg] they found the local civilians praying over 3,500 corpses that had been discovered inside an NKVD prison. It was becoming obvious that the NKVD were massacring their political prisoners before escaping from the advancing Germans. The NKVD would shoot any Soviet soldier they saw running away, but they themselves always ran away. Like all bullies they were cowards. Over the next two years the Germans and local civilians throughout the western part of the Soviet Union would continue to discover scores of mass graves, the result of NKVD butchery. The victims included some 14,000 Polish soldiers captured in 1939.
Invading alongside the SS Wiking were two Ukrainian legions led by Stepan Bandera that had been recruited in Germany, Austria and Poland from anti-Communist Ukrainian immigrants. These legions now grew stronger as they recruited their Ukrainian brothers in every town they passed through. Bandera’s men had been promised some sort of Ukrainian autonomy if they fought for the Nazis, but the Nazis had no intention of fulfilling this commitment as they believed Ukrainians [who were Slavs] to be sub-human, and yet here they were treating Bandera’s soldiers equally. This was all part of the lie. However, the ordinary German soldiers including those of the SS Wiking began to accept local Ukrainians as hiwis, believing that they were truly liberating these poor people. Thus a lie within a lie.
The SS Wiking [still accompanied by the SS Finnish Infantry Battalion] drove on and soon ran into fearsome Communist rearguards, and though still advancing it was no push over, and to cross the Slucz River they had to launch a formal assault. The division’s Dutch, Frisian and Flemish troops were shocked to see the dead body of their regimental commander, Standartenfuehrer Hilmar Waeckerle, who had been killed ‘up front‘.
