by J. Lee Ready
However, then the SS Totenkopf ran into another major defensive position at the Lovat River and was stopped cold. Only on the 27th could Keppler’s men move forward, leaving far too many of their dedicated comrades dead in their foxholes.
By now the SS Totenkopf desperately needed replacements, and the men were surprised by one of them: none other than Paul Moder an SS RSHA Gruppenfuehrer. He outranked even their divisional commander, but here he was volunteering to serve as a hauptsturmfuehrer of the artillery. Another surprise was Oberfuehrer Josef [Juergen] Stroop, who volunteered to serve as a sturmfuehrer. He had named his son Juergen. Now he changed his own name to Juergen, feeling that Josef was perhaps ‘too Jewish’.
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In late August the SS Wiking joined its detachment at Dnepropetrovsk and forced its way forward out of the bridgehead by 7 September. However, the Soviets launched a successful counterattack near here against some army formations, and the army asked the SS LAH to come and save the day. They did. This was the first time army units called upon a Waffen SS unit to save them. It would not be the last.
On 10 September von Kleist’s forces swerved northwards, hoping to meet General Guderian’s Panzer Group coming down from Army Group Center. If they could link up they would encircle a vast portion of the Ukraine. Among Guderian’s forces was the SS Das Reich, which sneaked across the Desna River, capturing a bridge intact, and despite being accidentally bombed by the Luftwaffe, continued to advance.
On 15 September the columns of Guderian and von Kleist met at Lokhvitsa. They had trapped no fewer than five Soviet armies. Naturally the enemy tried to break out, and Kleist had to call in everyone for this huge battle. When no more German reinforcements were to be had, he called in Slovakian and Hungarian troops. Within a week the Soviets began to give up - 600,000 walked into German prison camps!
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Simultaneously in the north the SS Totenkopf was battling hard every day along the Pola River. Sturmbannfuehrer Walter Bestmann earned the Knight’s Cross for gallantly leading the divisional reconnaissance battalion. Obergruppenfuehrer Eicke, having recovered from his wounds, returned to command on 21 September, just in time, because on the 24th his SS Totenkopf was hit by a major Soviet assault. For four days the SS men fought back frantically. On several occasions Eicke felt it necessary to join his infantry, rifle in hand, to bolster morale. He gained a new respect among his men for this.
Eicke also learned to respect one of his ordinary soldiers, a lonely sturmmann by the name of Fritz Christen. Lonely is the correct word. With all of the men around him killed, Christen could have retreated with honor, but instead he manned an anti-tank gun by himself and over a two day period he knocked out thirteen tanks. Eicke informed Himmler, who told Hitler, and Christen was flown out to be decorated by the Fuehrer personally.
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In late September the SS LAH was given a task that even these hardened warriors thought tough. They were to break into the Crimean Peninsula, which contained perhaps a quarter of a million Soviet troops, and the only way in was over an isthmus barely wide enough for one division to attack at a time. Naturally, at odds of 25:1 against, their first attack failed. But over the next few days they shifted emphasis, i.e. created a new schwerpunckt, and they broke through. Many an army general now began to take notice of the Waffen SS.
Along the Black Sea coast the Romanian Army had butted its head against several Soviet last-ditch positions, and the Romanians had been slaughtered by the tens of thousands! One of the units attached to the Romanians was the Walloon Legion. The Soviets, sensing a weakness here, what with the Romanian butcher’s bill being so high, chose to counterattack on 26 September, and they flattened a Romanian brigade in one day. Hitler directed one of his favorites General Erich von Manstein to save the Romanians. Von Manstein grabbed two German mountain divisions and the SS LAH and hit the advancing Soviets in flank. The plan worked, but the Soviets had an ace up their sleeve, a second formation, and they used this to attack a few miles away. The SS LAH rushed to the new battlefield and crushed that Soviet formation too. Von Manstein, not one given to praising his troops, lauded the performance of these Waffen SS.
Jochen Peiper was wounded twice in these encounters, but he refused medical evacuation both times.
It was beginning to look as if there was nothing the Waffen SS could not do. Hitler was elated and Himmler was proud as punch.
While the Soviets were reeling from von Manstein’s riposte, which captured 42,000 Soviet soldiers, von Kleist attacked on 30 September across the Samara River with his armored formations, including the SS Wiking, and he sliced right through the Soviet rear and reached the Sea of Azov, trapping 65,000 Soviets, who then surrendered.
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While Waffen SS soldiers by the tens of thousands were risking their lives daily, other members of the SS were calmly studying at their desks how to devise new and better ways to kill helpless people. In September 1941 at Auschwitz Hauptsturmfuehrer Karl Fritsch decided to experiment with a new killing method while his boss, Hoess, was on leave. The Gestapo had combed the prisoner of war camps within the Auschwitz complex and had identified 600 Communist commissars, who should have been executed on the battlefield by the army and Waffen SS, and they brought them to Fritsch at the main concentration camp requesting he give them ‘special treatment’. Normally Fritsch would have ordered his inner perimeter guards to shoot them, but instead he forced all 600 into a cellar along with 250 sick camp inmates that the camp psychiatrist had written off, and he then commanded a solitary inner perimeter guard to pour Zyklon B crystals [an industrial pesticide] into the cellar through an air intake pipe. The crystals combined with the air to create an acid that quickly gave off a gas that over an hour or so killed everyone in the cellar. Fritsch proudly informed his superiors of the successful experiment: 850 people killed in one hour by just one man, who himself never even saw the victims.
The inner perimeter guards in the Auschwitz camps did not know what to make of this, but by now they had become institutionalized, kicking and whipping prisoners by pure reflex. Some of the cruelest guards were female aufseherinen, including Margot Dreschler, Irma Grese, Hildegard Lachert, Johanna Langefeldt, Elisabeth Voelkenrath, Luise Danz, Therese Brandl, Juana Bormann and Herta Ehlert. All but Danz had been trained at Ravensbruck.
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Meanwhile at Kovno ghetto in September 1941 the SD issued new work permits, this time with no names on them. Anyone caught without one was to be dragged away and handed over to SS Einsatzkommando Jaeger. Naturally the Jews rioted amongst themselves fighting tooth and nail for possession of these few cards that would guarantee life for oneself and one’s family. Jewish policemen tried to separate the fighting people, but Lithuanian policemen and German SD members just stood back and laughed at the result, until the riot started to get out of hand whereupon some Lithuanian policemen opened fire on the mob, but their shooting in such close narrow streets caused ricochets and one stray bullet killed a German police advisor. Rather than blame their own lack of discipline, the Lithuanians blamed the Jews and as punishment for the killing of the German they rounded up a thousand elderly Jews and handed them to the SS einsatzkommando for ‘special treatment’.
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By the time Standartenfuehrer Paul Blobel reached Kiev with his element of SS Einsatzgruppe C in September 1941, he had recruited several hundred Ukrainian hiwis. Their first move was to make sure it was safe to enter the city, for these killers did not want to risk their own lives. They then ordered all Jews in the city to assemble for resettlement. Anyone who refused, they said, would be hunted down and shot. They were absolutely flabbergasted when 34,000 Jews reported, suitcases in hand.
With just a few hundred Ukrainians and Germans Blobel marched the thousands of men, women and children out of the city to a wood near Babi Yar. The perimeter was guarded by Ukrainian hiwis and policemen and by Germans of Police Regiment South to keep the Jews in and partisans out. Th
ere Blobel selected a few of his men to start shooting. The rest herded the prisoners and brought up a continuous flow of ammunition. Though well planned - Blobel was an architect - the shooting was sloppy as usual, some of the killers being drunk, so that many wounded adults and children managed to drag themselves away. Furthermore the perimeter guards allowed thousands of local Ukrainian Christian men, women and children to come in and watch, who had taken time off work and school to turn the occasion into a picnic. Many took photographs. Some filmed it.
Days later Brigadefuehrer Hans Haltermann arrived at Kiev to take up his position as SSPF, and there is no doubt that he and his staff were shocked by the news of the massacre.
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By late September Army Group North was stuck at the suburbs of Leningrad on the west, south and east of the city, and the Finns had arrived on the north, so that this city of three million people was surrounded, but the Soviet garrison, now retitled the Leningrad Front, held out fiercely. More German reinforcements were needed, and one of the units to arrive was the 250th Spanish Blue Division.
The SS Totenkopf was not at Leningrad and on 8 October they advanced. Their one time commander, Georg Keppler, had been evacuated with a brain tumor. On the 16th they ran into yet another defense line, at Samoskye. A ferocious battle began.
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On 4 October Army Group Center launched an offensive with the declared intention of taking Moscow, though its troops and vehicles were worn out. The Germans were glad to have thousands of hiwis with them by now, who by this date had been regularized with their own uniforms, rank insignia and medals. Fighting at desperate odds, Hausser’s SS Das Reich Motorized Division and Guderian’s panzers managed to trap two Soviet armies of the Bryansk Front at Bryansk. Other elements of Army Group Center succeeded in trapping six Soviet armies near Vyasma.
However, on 14 October Hausser’s luck ran out. Shrapnel smashed his jaw and tore out an eye. These were fearsome injuries for any man, but Hausser was 61 years old, and many assumed he would succumb to his wounds or be forced to retire. He was hurried to a hospital and replaced by Brigadefuehrer Willi Bittrich. The latter no doubt felt honored by this promotion. This one time fighter pilot had never expected to become a divisional commander. He was a good choice. Within the parameters of this war he was an ‘honorable’ man.
Next day Johannes Muehlenkamp was seriously wounded at Jelnja.
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Following their escapades under von Manstein the men of the SS LAH had to drive 250 miles eastwards in order to catch up to the main German advance. On 11 October they did so and attacked the city of Taganrog on the Mius River. It took six days of courageous assaults, but they took the city.
The SS Wiking Division was now transferred to XIV Panzer Corps in order to advance eastwards past Stalino, but heavy rains intervened, turning the dirt roads into streams of mud, an annual occurrence known as the Rasputitsa.
Yet von Kleist was not finished. Regardless of heavy rains, he ordered his exhausted troopers, including those of SS Wiking, the Walloon Legion and the SS Finnish Infantry Battalion, to advance eastwards towards the port city of Rostov, hoping to capture it.
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On 1 October three hundred Germans of SS Einsatzgruppe A and hundreds of Lithuanian hiwis prepared themselves for an ‘aktion’ just outside the city of Vilnius, while inside the city’s two ghettoes the Lithuanian Police arrested all Jews caught without work permits. That night they came out of the ghettoes: scores of Lithuanian policemen marching 3,000 Jewish men, women and children, who were carrying lit candles to see their way. This surrealist funeral procession marched out of the ghettoes through the city streets and into the countryside to the woods at Ponary, where the Jews were calmly lined up neatly on the edge of pits. Then a handful of Germans began shooting them. The Germans and their hiwis wondered why there was no panic among these Jewish victims. Perhaps the sting of death was preferable to the constant fear of dying?
Days later in Vilnius the SD now decided that Jewish parents could not keep more than two children under sixteen, meaning that these fathers and mothers were forced to decide which ones should go for ‘special treatment’. Parents scrambled to get childless couples to ‘adopt’ their kids. Moreover, a Jewish policeman might be induced to forget how to count by the bribe of a warm coat or a piece of cheap jewelry or a sexual favor.
On 24 October Lithuanian policemen scoured the Vilnius ghettoes looking for unproductive people without work permits, and they found 5,000, many of whom were hiding in cupboards and secret compartments. The policemen dragged them out and handed them over to members of SS Einsatzgruppe A for another ‘aktion’.
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On 4 October, the Judenrat of Kovno ghetto informed the SD that a contagious disease had broken out in the ghetto hospital. The SD had enough medical expertise to know how to cure this problem. They ordered Lithuanian policemen to burn down the hospital with all patients and staff still inside.
The chief of the Jewish Police in Kovno, Jacob Gens, had sometimes voluntarily picked out Jews too weak to work and handed them to SS Einsatzgruppe A. Such dedication by this Jew did not go unnoticed and the SD promoted him to head the ghetto Judenrat.
On 28 October Gens and his Jewish policemen together with Lithuanian policemen, SD and Gestapo scoured the ghetto looking for unproductive people. They found 10,000, many of them in hiding, and they dragged them off and delivered them to members of SS Einsatzgruppe A for ‘special treatment’.
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Just thirteen Germans of Einsatzgruppe C entered the town of Janowitschi, but they had enough Ukrainian hiwis with them that they were able to round up and execute 1,025 Jews.
On 13 October at Dnepropetrovsk members of SS Einsatzgruppe C and a hundred Ukrainian hiwis rounded up every Jewish man, woman and child they could find, 11,000 in all, and massacred them.
A team from SS Einsatzgruppe A along with some Lithuanian hiwis ransacked the town of Slutsk looking for Jews. They shot them where they found them and severely beat any Christians who tried to intervene. Later the German 11th Police Battalion and Lithuanian 12th Schuma Battalion arrived to finish the job of searching the town for its Jewish residents. They also took time to steal anything of value they could find, regardless of who owned it.
In November at Borisov members of SS Einsatzgruppe B, together with their Byelorussian hiwis and the Lithuanian 12th Schuma Battalion held a pre-‘aktion’ party, becoming as drunk as possible. Early the next morning the staggering drunks went from house to house rousting out Jews. Jews who ran were shot down on the spot, and some Christians who pleaded for the life of their ‘one good Jew’ were also shot or beaten. Subsequently 8,000 hapless victims of all ages were gathered and marched into the woods. But the perpetrators of this crime were drunk, and as for the schumas, well their heart was not in it. The result was that upwards of 2,000 Jewish men, women and children were able to escape. The remaining 6,000 were shot, including mothers with babies in their arms. The crying babies were usually beaten to death to conserve ammunition.
Fortunately the arrival of bad winter weather curtailed the mobility of the einsatzgruppe. They did not wish to risk catching a cold.
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Meanwhile at Majdanek just outside Lublin in Poland the German Army set up a prisoner of war camp for captured Soviets, while the SS KZL set up a new concentration camp nearby commanded by Standartenfuehrer Karl Koch. Here the inner perimeter guards of the SS KZL established an extermination center to kill slaves unfit for work. At first they used firing squads, but found this method to be difficult, so they began using rooms filled with carbon monoxide gas fed by truck engines.
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The Nazis finally decided that the Ukrainian Nationalist Revolutionary Army that had been formed by Army Group South was not working out. Its members had complained about Nazi atrocities. So in a typical Nazi response the SD arrested several of them for disloyalty. This provocation caused the entire fo
rce to desert. Like Bandera’s men, they would continue to battle Communist partisans, but henceforth they would battle Nazis too. One can only imagine the frustration of Army Group South at the blundering of the SD.
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Despite heavy rain and plenty of mud in the path of the SS Wiking, these SS warriors continued to advance; literally carrying their artillery and trucks by hand on occasion and watching horses drown in mud before their very eyes.
However, just a few miles to the north the SS LAH was experiencing colder weather, which froze the muddy ruts so that at last they could begin advancing at speed again. Von Mackensen’s III Panzer Corps, including the SS LAH and the Walloon Legion, took advantage of this and charged forward and on 19 November they assaulted Rostov. Next day the SS LAH pleased everybody by capturing a vital bridge over the Don River intact. The following day they captured Rostov and 10,000 Soviet prisoners. The victory had not been cheap. Brave men were dying here, including Hauptsturmfuehrer Gerd Pleiss, the hero of Klidi Pass.
To be sure the worn out soldiers of the SS LAH and SS Wiking were glad that the front could now shut down for the winter.
But, Juergen Stroop was disappointed by the failure to advance beyond Rostov into the Caucasus, because Himmler had withdrawn him from the SS Totenkopf Division, had reactivated his Allgemeine SS rank of oberfuehrer and had promoted him to HSSPF for the Caucasus, but now Stroop had to await the occupation of that region.
The SS Totenkopf, along with the rest of Army Group North, was stationary by November, frozen solid in deep snow. Here the Totenkopf was joined by the Netherlands Legion and the 2nd SS Motorized Brigade, the latter containing parts of the 4th SS Ostmark Totenkopf and 5th SS Totenkopf Regiments. Two Latvian schuma battalions were attached to the 2nd SS Motorized Brigade, which no doubt shocked these Latvians as they had never volunteered for front line service.
