SS und Polizei: Myths and Lies of Hitler's SS and Police

by J. Lee Ready

  The sky above the retreating Germans was filled with Allied warplanes, as if they were somehow nailed to the sky. ‘Don’t they have to refuel,’ the German soldiers wondered? Every few minutes they pounced, like leopards toying with their prey.

  Yet in truth the Allies had stumbled into this advantageous position like a drunk staggering onto a bed of roses, and they continued to stumble. Polish 1st Armored Division was actually told to halt on the 16th! Five miles east of Falaise, at Domblainville, a small ad hoc force of two companies of SS HJ’s panzerjaeger self-propelled guns and some 85th Infantry Division stragglers were dug in, and they were soon attacked by the spearhead of the Canadian 4th Armored Division. Miraculously, these 200 or so Germans stood their ground. About six miles east of Domblainville Wuensche gathered together a provisional battlegroup from elements of the SS HJ and he repulsed an advance by the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division. Meyer showed up to offer advice, but while he was observing the situation a shell landed nearby and shrapnel lacerated his head, and he was carried to the rear.

  Falaise itself was now held by Sturmbannfuehrer Bernhard Krause with two companies of panzergrenadiers, two anti-tank guns and two Tigers - not much to defend such an important city.

  On the afternoon of the 16th Krause was assaulted by the Canadian 2nd Infantry Division and 2nd Armored Brigade supported by aircraft of all kinds and much artillery. At such odds against him [36:1 in infantry, 75:1 in tanks] it would not have been dishonorable for Krause to capitulate, but he probably never even considered it. He and his men fought like trapped rats.

  During the day Hitler approved a slight withdrawal, and as a result, Meyer, who with bandaged head was back in business, ordered Krause and the other remnants of the SS HJ to fall back to the Ante stream at Domblainville and Eraines.

  This same day in an all day fight the SS LAH at Ranes was unable to prevent American armor from passing them and reaching Fromental. That night Brigadefuehrer Theodore Wisch ordered his division to retreat across the Orne River at Putanges where a bridge was still standing. The SS LAH began to move out.

  By the morning of the 17th the defenders of Domblainville were now all on the east bank of the Ante and had been reinforced by two Tigers, and this morning they repulsed an attempt by the Canadian 4th Armored Division to cross the stream.

  To the southeast of this fight the Polish 1st Armored Division approached Trun on the Dives River. Untersturmfuehrer Robert Hartwig had a battery of 88mm flak guns here, and he opened fire on the enemy tanks. He held them off long enough for some army tanks from the 21st Panzer Division to reinforce him. Together they stopped the Poles, but it cost Hartwig his life.

  Not all of Krause’s people in Falaise had received the withdrawal order and sixty-odd SS panzergrenadiers fought on until morning. A mere handful survived as wounded to be taken prisoner.

  Throughout the 17th an SS LAH rearguard held Fromental, while the rest of the division retreated across the Orne. Sturmbannfuehrer Knittel had been wounded and was taken to the rear. He was sent to the rear to command the divisional replacement battalion - as a convalescence?

  On the morning of the 18th Meyer was ordered to counterattack into and through Trun, and for this he was to join up with a battlegroup of all arms from the 21st Panzer Division. Meyer had already told Krause to hold Fresne, three miles east of Falaise and two miles south of Domblainville, while he sent Wuensche and most of the shattered remnants of the SS HJ to La Hoguette about two miles southwest of Fresne. Olboeter had a small battlegroup at Crocy about three miles southeast of Fresne. Thus Meyer faced the enemy along a triangular line with Wuensche on the bottom left up to Krause and then down to Olboeter, while six miles southeast of Olboeter the battlegroup of the 21st Panzer Division would attack Trun.

  On the morning of the 18th the US 3rd Armored Division attacked Putanges from the west and the British 11th Armored Division attacked the town from the north and they united at the bridge, thus linking British Second Army and US First Army, but SS pioneers blew the bridge at the last moment. The Allies had tied the bag, but too late. The bulk of Hausser’s and Dietrich’s forces had escaped.

  The 1st SS LAH, 2nd SS Das Reich, 9th SS Hohenstaufen, 10th SS Frundsberg and 12th SS HJ Panzer Divisions and the battlegroup of the 17th SS GvB Panzergrenadier Division were now fighting a withdrawal action alongside army formations. In fact the situation was so fluid that the battlegroup of the SS GvB was itself further divided into four task forces to better escape the chasing Americans. One of the many men wounded in this retreat was Oberscharfuehrer Sven-Erik Olsson, the personal radioman for the commander of the SS Frundsberg, Standartenfuehrer Heinz Harmel. Olsson was a highly decorated soldier who had grown up in Estonia - but ethnically he was Swedish and German.

  Obersturmfuehrer Franz Grohman, a panzer battalion commander in the SS Das Reich, was informed during the retreat he was being awarded the Knight’s Cross. This twenty-four year old was a Sudeten. Hauptsturmfuehrer Bruno Hinz of the GvB was awarded oak leaves to his Knight's Cross.

  The retreating Germans were in danger from three dimensions: from the chasing Allies, from above by aircraft, and along their path by French guerillas. An Austrian battalion commander in the SS GvB, Sturmbannfuehrer Ludwig Kepplinger, was killed in a guerilla ambush.

  As a result of such partisan activity Himmler ordered the SS Siegling Police Brigade to France to fight guerillas. He also assigned more troops to the brigade and renamed it the 30th SS Russische Grenadier Division. Despite the title there were far more Byelorussians in the division than Russians. Ethnic accuracy was never one of Himmler’s strongpoints. The error was eventually corrected. After the division arrived on the French-German border, it sent out small patrols into the Belfort-Muehlhausen-Auxonne area, and its troops were soon deemed by other Axis units in the region to be poor performers. Some of its troops even defected to the guerillas.

  In response to the Allied breakthrough Hitler fired the overall commander in the west, Generalfeldmarschal von Runstedt, and replaced him with General von Kluge, but now Hitler fired von Kluge and replaced him with Generalfeldmarschal Model. Additionally, Hitler demanded to see Von Kluge in person. He committed suicide rather than visit Hitler, probably to save his family from imprisonment. General Dollman had already committed suicide, and now von Kluge. And now Hitler ordered Rommel to commit suicide. To protect his family this outstanding strategian obeyed the Fuehrer. Goebbels’ propaganda machine announced that Rommel had died of wounds. Hitler was now ruling his military like Stalin ruled his.

  Unlike most German army generals, Generalfeldmarschal Walther Model was a true Nazi, but he was also a fine general and when he took command in the west and looked at his war maps, he saw an absolute fiasco. He could do little but order a phased withdrawal eastwards to the Seine River.

  With the two armies in the west now commanded by SS officers and a Nazi in overall command, and with three of the Normandy generals dead by suicide, the political structure of the German armed forces was showing signs of cracking. The German generals did not like this situation at all, but they had lost all influence with Hitler. From now on Himmler would be at Hitler’s side, whispering in his ear.

  Throughout 19 August many German units used bridges over the Dives River to escape eastwards, despite attempts by Canadian and Polish armor to catch them.

  This day Meyer told all of his people to get out in a hurry. He knew they would do so in a cohesive fashion, namely rear echelon first, then the bulk of the combat echelon and lastly the rearguards. They were still west of the Dives and could not go through Trun, which was now in Polish hands. Fortunately Hans Waldmueller appeared and he brought with him a battalion of the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division. The entire battalion had been transferred lock stock and barrel to the SS HJ. He was told to dig in just east of the Dives.

  At a meeting between Meyer and Hausser the latter ordered the SS HJ to retreat across the Dives along with the rest of his army. Olboeter drew the short straw, as it were, and
would command the rearguard. Hausser informed Meyer that Bittrich’s II SS Panzer Corps with its 2nd SS Das Reich and 9th SS Hohenstaufen Panzer Divisions was reforming east of the Dives and would soon counterattack.

  By evening Wuensche’s people were retreating in the dark when they ran into parts of the British 53rd Infantry Division and 4th Armored Brigade. The battle was confused and deadly.

  All the Germans involved in this night’s retreat from the lowest rank to the highest often times found themselves moving with a group of fewer than a dozen men on foot and sometimes within earshot of Allied troops. Not many German vehicles were able to cross the Dives, but one that did carried Brigadefuehrer Teddi Wisch, who was severely wounded in the legs. Another carried Hausser, who had also been wounded. Once again a serious head wound. Thirty-three year old Standartenfuehrer Wilhelm Mohnke took over the SS LAH.

  Gruppenfuehrer Willi Bittrich’s II SS Panzer Corps began its counterattack at 0400 hours on the 20th. They ran into elements of the Polish 1st Armored Division east of the Dives.

  Throughout the day German stragglers of many different divisions reached the safety of the II SS Panzer Corps. Wuensche was not one of them. He was wounded and captured.

  Every German stayed away from the roads, unless he had to cross a bridge. The roads were impassable because they were thoroughly blocked with the wreckage of tanks, guns, trucks and horse-drawn carts and the corpses of men and horses, most of which had been shot up by aircraft. In some places this wreckage had been mashed into a pulp by heavy tanks that drove right over them.

  Hourly news of more casualties reached the various commanders. The loss of the ‘old hares’ was particularly disheartening. Sturmbannfuehrer Hans Becker was killed. He had been with the SS LAH since before the war.

  Late on the 20th Bittrich’s II SS Panzer Corps began to retreat, for Patton’s US Third Army was continuing its race eastwards in Bittrich’s rear. Patton wanted to reach Germany before the German Army did!

  Tiny elements of the SS HJ and SS LAH were still available to offer resistance and under such veteran leaders as Bremer and Waldmueller they did so, making a fighting withdrawal, but for the vast majority of the SS soldiers the next few days would be spent walking without equipment to assembly areas. As divisions, the LAH and HJ were ‘kaput’. One of the saddest losses was Obersturmfuehrer Josef Armberger a twenty-four year old Austrian tank company commander of the SS LAH. His heroic deeds brought him a posthumous Knight's Cross.

  The four task forces of the 17th SS GvB Panzergrenadier Division retreated through Paris towards Metz. It was planned that the division would be restructured there and was to gain two very large combat formations, the 49th SS Panzer Regiment and the 51st SS Panzergrenadier Regiment. Both of these had originally belonged to the division, so it would be a sort of family reunion. To fool the Allies the German high command referred to these regiments as brigades and sometimes as divisions. However, the reunification did not go off without a hitch. The 49th SS collided with the advancing US 5th Infantry Division at Romilly and was then chased though Verdun by the US 7th Armored Division, while the 51st SS crashed into the American 4th Armored Division at Troyes and after a two day fight was forced to retreat.

  __________

  On August 8 Himmler had finally gained control of the Indian Legion. Apart from some light sentry duty in partisan-infested areas of France, this formation had been purely a propaganda tool. Once inside the SS these Moslems from the Indian sub-continent found their duties did not change. Himmler actually tried to excuse his admittance of these Asians into the SS with the story that they were Aryans. Though claptrap, this story was actually closer to the truth than Hitler’s tales of ‘Aryan’ Germans. By now the legion had three infantry battalions plus artillery, antitank guns and pioneers. Himmler appointed Oberfuehrer Heinz Bertling as commander, but this may have been more honorary than real.

  But come the Allied breakthrough in France, Himmler ordered the transfer of these Indians by rail to Germany. On the 15th the SS Indian Legion was riding aboard a train, when they were ambushed by French guerillas, several Indians being wounded. They soon had to leave the rail lines and walk towards Germany under constant sniping and ambushes and air raids. By month’s end they had reached Allier.

  ________

  By 17 August the guerillas in Warsaw had been isolated into several pockets: the city center, the old town, Zoliborz, Sielce, Mokotow and Powisle. This day General Rohr, the German in overall control of the Axis forces in the battle, made radio contact with the guerilla chief, now known to be General Komorowski, codename Bor, asking him to surrender. Bor refused.

  On the 19th after nineteen days of heroic struggle the last flickers of resistance in the city police headquarters died down. Of the 164 German and Polish policemen and Ukrainian hiwas that had been trapped in the building, 36 had been killed and most of the others had been wounded. The guerillas were now finally able to enter and take everyone prisoner, and then they shot them. This same day the guerillas also captured the telephone exchange, but its 116 German and Polish defenders were taken alive and would remain so.

  By the 20 August the SS Dirlewanger Brigade was down to 1,335 men owing to high casualties and desertions. These survivors psyched themselves up for another assault, this time against the Old Town. Attacking alongside them were the 608th Security Regiment, the 654th Engineer Battalion, a detachment of army officer cadets and some armored vehicles from the Hermann Goering and the 5th SS Wiking Panzer Divisions.

  Other assaults were launched this day: in the city center by the 3rd Cossack Police Regiment, 2/Bergmann’s Azerbaijani Regiment, the Sarnow Police Battalion, the Liebisch Battalion, and a company of German gendarmerie; from the south by a battalion of self-propelled artillery, the 1/3rd Azerbaijani Regiment [minus a company] and by the SS RONA Sturmbrigade, now down to 1,585 troops including new arrivals from the Lokot militia; and from the north by the Reck-Liebisch Battalion, the 7th/Bergmann’s Azerbaijani Regiment, the 5th Panzergrenadier Battalion and a company of German gendarmerie, with support from the army’s 201st Mortar Battery.

  Also entering the middle of the city was Battlegroup Schmidt, which consisted of a company of the 1/3rd Azerbaijani Regiment supported by the 507th Artillery Detachment and armor from the 500th Armored Assault Engineer Battalion.

  Rohr also committed his reserves: Police Battalion Burckardt, the army’s 246th Security Battalion, the 580th Russian Cavalry Detachment, the 619-strong 572nd Cossack Battalion, the 773 men of the 69th Cossack Detachment, the 4th Cossack Battalion of the 750th Security Regiment and the 960th Detachment of the 3rd Cossack Cavalry Brigade.

  All told about 13,000 Axis troops were attacking.

  Rohr had been reinforced by the 3rd SS Flak Battalion [of the 3rd SS Totenkopf Panzer Division], which used its self-propelled flak guns to demolish buildings at close range. At night these gunners were offered aerial targets as aircraft of the western Allies had begun flying over Warsaw at night dropping supplies by parachute to the guerillas.

  However, Rohr knew the battle had passed the hump by now as the area of conflict began to shrink. Soon only a few units could be crammed into the small spaces. Indeed by the 26th the assaults only required the use of about 12,000 troops drawn from two battalions of the SS Caucasus Moslem Regiment, the SS RONA Sturmbrigade, SS Dirlewanger Brigade, two battalions of the 3rd Azerbaijani Regiment, 3rd Cossack Police Regiment, the Bergmann Azerbaijani Regiment, the 4/57th Cossack Security Regiment, 572nd Cossack Battalion and two squadrons of the 3rd Cossack Cavalry Brigade, with the 579th and 580th Russian Cavalry Detachments in reserve.

  Rohr now studied his casualties. In twenty-five days the losses of the garrison and the relief column combined were 657 killed and 3,204 wounded, with several hundred missing.

  On 30 August, speaking to the Polish Red Cross, Rohr stated that he had ordered all summary executions to cease when he arrived, which was true, that they had ceased, which was not true, and that from now on all surrendering gu
erillas would be treated as bona fide soldiers and sent to normal prisoner of war camps.

  __________

  On 23 August 1944 the Soviets suddenly broke through the Romanian defenses along the old Romanian-Soviet border. Hitler reacted at once, fearful the Romanians would surrender, and he ordered all German forces in that country to seize power. His suspicions were proven correct within hours when King Mihail announced a surrender to the Soviets. The very next day German and Romanian forces in several cities began shooting at each other. However, some Romanians, primarily the Fascists of the Iron Guard and the Blueshirts, refused to surrender to the Soviets and they sided with the Germans against their fellow countrymen.

  Skorzeny ordered the 500th SS Parachute Battalion to Bucharest Airport, but the transport aircraft carrying them came under heavy fire from Romanian flak guns, and the SS paratroopers who survived simply joined the beleaguered German garrison.

  Within four days the Soviets had swept through Romania and were on the Bulgarian border on the south and the Yugoslavian/Hungarian borders on the west. The Germans and the Fascists inside Romania fled in a helter skelter fighting withdrawal.

  __________

  As yet Slovakia was not threatened by a Soviet invasion, but local anti-Nazi partisans were becoming more and more aggressive now that they could see the Germans were on the ropes and that the Soviets were close and that Soviet parachuted supplies were reaching them. The Slovakian Army divisions were either in training or recuperating from battle, which left only the Slovakian police to combat the guerillas. They could do little but observe. Therefore the Germans decided to root out these guerillas themselves, before they became a major problem. For this operation the Germans grabbed whatever was available: 108th Panzer Division, Tatra Panzer Division, Schill SS Panzer Regiment, 86th SS Regiment, SS Battlegroup Schaefer [using personnel drawn from the 18th SS Horst Wessel Panzergrenadier Division and the 1st SS Charlemagne Sturmbrigade], and most of the 20th SS Estnische Grenadier Division, just arrived from Estonia.