by J. Lee Ready
Hitler informed Himmler that his Army Group Vistula would control the Second and Eleventh Armies. But of course these armies were made up of units that had been decimated. Obergruppenfuehrer Felix Steiner was promoted to command the Eleventh Army, a well-earned promotion thought many, but he found this army only consisted of Degrelle’s SS Corps West and the III SS Panzer Corps. While under Steiner’s command the formation was known as the Eleventh SS Panzer Army.
Besides these two armies Himmler would have in reserve the 23rd SS Nederland Grenadier Division, the 15th SS Lettische Grenadier Division, a newly raised regiment of Russians under Oberst Sakharov and a company of Arabs.
Himmler studied the map: the defensive positions of Army Group Vistula were strung along the line Zehden-Grudziadz, i. e. they faced southwards against the 2nd Byelorussian Front. His right [west] flank was on the Oderhaff at Stargard-Stettin, his back was to the sea and his left [east] flank was already crumbling. In fact the only thing between Himmler and immediate total defeat on the battlefield was the fact that the Soviets had outrun their supplies yet again.
The 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division now arrived at Stettin.
This month, Himmler congratulated Standartenfuehrer Otto Skorzeny on his performance with his 150th SS Trojan Horse Panzer Brigade, and promoted him to command SS Provisional Division Schwedt, currently forming at Schwedt on the Oder, 35 miles south of Stettin. Skorzeny probably knew he was out of his class commanding so large a force – after all he had been a mere recruit only seven years earlier. But he was highly ambitious. Oddly enough he need not have worried, because when he reached Schwedt he saw that his new division did not exist except in Himmler’s mind!
So in true Waffen SS fashion Skorzeny set about creating the ‘division’ on his own. Using his SS Trojan Horse Brigade as a nucleus, he commandeered part of the 1st SS Romanian Regiment, coerced 600 local Volksturm 2nd Levy to join him [mostly old men in their fifties], grabbed some army engineers, took over a mob of hiwis, seized 180 army officer cadets, stopped about 400 SS men in transit or in training, and confiscated some flak guns that were manned by a combination of Luftwaffe troops, hiwis and German boys and girls as young as fifteen, and he toured a hospital forcibly taking those he considered fit enough for some form of duty. His Volksturm 2nd Levy when assembled in formation looked like a fashion revue, as they wore uniforms of the postal service, state railroad, Allgemeine SS, SA and fire service or civilian clothing, and all with a Volksturm armband, and they brandished an assortment of rifles and other hand held weapons. They marched like a crowd at a fair.
Skorzeny, noticing that he now commanded men from Germany, Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden, began to refer to his command in dispatches as the SS European Division.
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At this time it was decided that the headquarters of Oberkommando Oberrhein was no longer required, so Hausser was out of a job. The Germany Army agreed that he could have Army Group G, for this was a headache no one wanted. Hausser’s mission would be to keep the US Seventh Army and French First Army west of the Rhine for as long as possible.
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The saying ‘ better late than never’ was never more inappropriate than in January 1945 when Hitler recognized the independence of Russia with the ROA as its bona fide army under General Andrei Vlasov, who was now permitted to form real military units. Most of the hundreds of thousands of Russians in German uniform flocked to the ROA, for it was what they had been fighting for, but they were scared to let go of their status as German SS, police, army or hiwis. There was safety in numbers they believed. Still, entire units transferred from the Germans to the new ROA including Himmler’s two ‘Russian’ divisions, the 29th SS RONA Russische and the 30th SS Weissrussische. Frankly, Vlasov and his generals were more impressed with the hiwis and small battalions of Russian osttruppen than they were with these two SS divisions. Nor did the leadership of the Waffen SS shed a tear at their leaving.
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Many OT labor camps were abandoned in January as the Allies approached. Some OT kommandants marched their slaves towards the center of Germany, while others suddenly gave weapons to their slaves and ordered them to fight in actual OT infantry battalions. Those slaves that were ordered to fight the Soviets did so willingly for the most part, but those who were sent to fight the Anglo-Americans usually surrendered as soon as possible.
The SS KZL guards at Stutthof main concentration camp abandoned the site in a hurry and failed to destroy it as per orders.
On 18 January the guards of the Auschwitz complex of camps was ordered to evacuate their 60,000 prisoners. Those too weak to march were to be murdered, and the camps were to be totally erased from the face of the earth. However, the guards were so scared of being caught by the advancing Red Army, that they failed to destroy the buildings, and did not take time to execute all the weaklings. They fled, abandoning about 6,000 live prisoners at various camps. On the 27th Soviet troops began liberating the Auschwitz camps. By this date, an estimated two million persons had been murdered here, of which about three quarters of a million had been killed owing to their Jewish race.
At Mauthausen Standartenfuehrer Franz Ziereis received an order from Kaltenbrunner to execute a dozen or so American spies that had been caught behind German lines. The order was carried out.
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In late January 1945 Himmler created yet another Waffen SS division, by amalgamating SS Battlegroup Kurmark [now renamed 87th SS Regiment] with the veteran 86th SS Regiment, and he called the new formation the 32nd SS ‘30te Januar’ Grenadier Division. By pulling out trainees from various SS training bases, the Waffen SS high command managed to provide the division with an artillery regiment, a self-propelled panzerjaeger battalion, an engineer battalion, a reconnaissance battalion and an extra infantry battalion. By coincidence the date of inception was late January, but the division’s title ‘30th January’ referred to the date in 1933 when Hitler became chancellor of Germany. To give the division some punch it was reinforced by the 561st SS Panzerjaeger Battalion equipped with Hetzers led by the Austrian Hauptsturmfuehrer Jacob Lobmeyer, plus the 550th SS Flak Battalion and the 506th SS Mortar Battalion. The divisional commander was to be Standartenfuehrer Johannes Muehlenkamp, but then Himmler changed his mind and gave it to Standartenfuehrer Joachim Richter.
Himmler also authorized a new corps, the XVI SS Corps, and gave it to Obergruppenfuehrer Karl Maria Demelhuber, with Oberfuehrer Adolf Ax as chief of staff. Their mission was to guard the Baltic coast. Demelhuber and Ax were slightly disappointed that Himmler did not bother to give them any soldiers!
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After almost two months of marching, the 31st SS Boehmen-Maehren Grenadier Division finally reached the Alpenvorland, and the men settled down to ease their feet. But Italian partisans were a serious threat here: the divisional adjutant was soon killed. The division began to restructure, while continually sending out patrols.
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Chapter Forty-two
FEBRUARY 1945
In February all members of the 8th SS Florian Geyer and 22nd SS Maria Theresa Cavalry Divisions who were outside Budapest [on leave or temporarily attached to another unit or in a school or in hospital recuperating] were ordered to assemble at Bratislava in Slovakia to help create the new 37th SS Luetzow Cavalry Division, named after a 19th century German military unit. Standartenfuehrer Karl Gesele. Took command. Sturmbannfuehrer Toni Ameiser would be one of his regimental commanders. These veterans would be the cadre of the division. The remainder of its soldiers would come from the Hungarian Army.
Dirlewanger had been wounded in action yet again, and of all people Himmler chose Brigadefuehrer Fritz Schmedes to take over the 36th SS Dirlewanger Division. Schmedes was already in the doghouse for criticizing the war leadership, and he was appalled by what he found when he arrived at his new job. He instantly realized he had been sent to command these dregs of socie
ty as a punishment. At least by now the division did have some army troops - an infantry regiment, a pioneer battalion and a jagdpanzer detachment. It was a sad state of affairs when the best part of an SS division was its army component.
Himmler formed another unit at this time by ordering the Police School at Dresden, Police Weapons School at Hellerau and the SS School at Braunschweig to close down and send all their instructors and students to the new SS Police Brigade Wirth [which in turn would be divided into the 29th SS Police and 30th SS Police Regiments]. Its initial organizer would be Johannes Wirth, a polizei oberst and reservist SS oberfuehrer. The instructors and students did as ordered, but the policemen remained police and did not join the SS. Moreover the unit was to be commanded in the field by Rudiger Pipkorn, who, though he had been serving in SS units for over a year, had staunchly refused to join the SS and remained an army oberst. Notwithstanding Pipkorn’s lukewarm attitude to the SS, Himmler soon added the 14th SS Police Regiment, and then upgraded the brigade to divisional status as the 35th SS Polizei Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS.
The creation of this division was in fact a shrewd move, for Hitler had ordered all remaining German policemen to enter the local Volksturm 2nd Levy, which meant they would be called to fight as infantry if their home towns or duty stations were attacked by enemy ground forces. They would be managed by the Nazi Party, thus Himmler would no longer control them. By assigning instructors, trainees and 10,000 policemen to this division, Himmler retained control over them. Furthermore, he managed to get Hitler to excuse all policemen over age forty-nine from the Volksturm. Hitler knew what Himmler was up to, but he agreed to the move and assigned the division to the Fourth Panzer Army.
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This month in Yugoslavia the 7th SS Prinz Eugen Mountain Division held back a Soviet probe at Brcko.
Also this month the 14th SS Galizien Grenadier Division was reassembled and sent to Slovenia in order to regroup and reprovision, but while here they came under the rule of the local HSSPF Obergruppenfuehrer Rosner, who took advantage of their presence and sent them on patrols looking for Titoist partisans. The division also received new blood, but many of the veterans did not appreciate this influx of manhood, for among them were those Ukrainians who had spent the last few years as hiwis for the SS KZL. No longer having prisoners to guard they were sent to this division to fight, but it was obvious they had no intention of fighting for the cause. Rather they intended to hide, and then hoped to be taken prisoner of war as a soldier. This way they hoped to hide from the prying eyes of Allied criminal investigators.
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In February Brigadefuehrer Otto Kumm took over the 1st SS LAH Panzer Division. He found that like all of the divisions of Dietrich’s Sixth SS Panzer Army the LAH had to be rebuilt, and this was done with the help of shipments of new and repaired equipment, the return of healed soldiers, the transfer in of yet more sailors and Luftwaffe personnel, and the arrival of new conscripts as young as fifteen. Jochen Peiper finally returned, having recuperated from the strain of his ordeal in the Ardennes, and Kumm put him in charge of a battlegroup.
The division was proud to hear that one of their battalion commanders, twenty-nine year old Josef Diefenthal, had been awarded the Knight’s Cross.
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Meanwhile in Budapest, Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, knowing the end was near, authorized several decorations. Obersturmbannfuehrer Rainer Gottstein, the commander of all Orpo in the city, received the Knight's Cross. Also receiving this medal was Obersturmfuehrer Werner Dallmann an adjutant in the Maria Theresa. Twenty years old, he lay dying in an underground shelter. The Austrian Obersturmfuehrer Erhard Moesslacher of the SS Florian Geyer was awarded a posthumous decoration.
Yet on 8 February Hitler belatedly gave approval for Pfeffer-Wildenbruch and his Budapest garrison to break out. The SS ‘general’ and his staff would have laughed had they not been so exhausted. They were holding onto Castle Hill and a few blocks of the city, and they were surrounded by a quarter of a million Soviets. Nonetheless they made the break out attempt as ordered. The Soviets did not expect this and were taken aback by the maneuver, so much so that some Axis troops did indeed squeeze through the ring, but it was hopeless for the bulk of the garrison. The next day Pfeffer-Wildenbruch surrendered his remaining men. There was shooting for another five days, because some defenders fought to the death rather than experience the humiliation and degradation of a Soviet prison camp. Brigadefuehrer August Zehender was one. Brigadefuehrer Rumohr committed suicide.
Incredibly, of those Axis troops that had attempted to escape, about 700 reached the German lines.
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On the main front line in Hungary the fighting was stationary, cold, tough and dangerous, as Dietrich’s Sixth SS Panzer Army found out when they entered the line. No one was safe. They learned that the IV SS Corps had lost its operations chief, Sturmbannfuehrer Fritz Rentrop. On 19 February the 12th SS HJ Panzer Division lost one of its greatest soldiers killed in action, Bernhard Krause. Within another week Kumm’s SS LAH was complaining of heavy losses.
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Meanwhile this month the 31st SS Boehmen-Maehren Grenadier Division was ordered to the front line in Eastern Germany near the Neisse River. This time they did not have to walk but could travel by train, but on 13 February while one artillery component was passing through Dresden rail station the heavens burst into flame and destroyed the city: the most fearsome Anglo-American aerial bombing of the war. [More deadly than the atomic bomb attacks on Japan.] If any of these soldiers had thought that the Anglo-Americans were more humane than the Soviets, this terrifying ordeal dispelled their illusions. Once the divisional troops arrived at their destination, they found the front line here manned by a hodge podge of formations, including the SS Szalasi Battalion and SS Police Regiment Brixen. The latter were South Tyrol policemen, a disgusted bunch that felt they were being used as cannon fodder.
East of the front, i.e. behind Soviet lines, scores of bypassed German units were trying to fight their way to safety. Oberfuehrer von Obwuerzer’s 15th SS Lettische Grenadier Division tried to break past the advancing Soviets in the Flederborn area, but while on the road the divisional headquarters collided with the enemy, and several staff officers were killed, including chief of operations Sturmbannfuehrer Erich Wulff. Obwuerzer was captured. Oberfuehrer Adolf Ax, the chief of staff of XVI SS Corps, was ordered to the Latvian division to take command, but could he reach them before they were completely surrounded, he wondered?
Brigadefuehrer Ernst Hartmann did not retreat fast enough and was killed in action.
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There is no doubt that Obergruppenfuehrer von dem Bach Zelewski’s pride had been hurt when he was assigned to command the XIV SS Corps that consisted of just one division, and not even an SS one, so he was probably relieved when he was offered X SS Corps instead, and perhaps he felt sympathy for Gruppenfuehrer Heinz Reinefarth, his replacement, but surely his attitude changed markedly when he reached the Oder front to find that the X SS Corps did not even have one division. It existed only in Himmler’s imagination. Zelewski informed his chief of staff, Standartenfuehrer Herbert Golz, that the best they could do would be to commandeer some local Volksturm 2nd Levy and a few depleted army battalions.
On 5 February the Soviet 1st Byelorussian Front launched attacks against the Oder River south of Kuestrin. This caused serious concern for those troops who were trying to hold this river. Yet of greater concern was the fate of Army Group Vistula, Third Panzer Army and Fourth Army, which still had the bulk of their troops on the east bank of the Oder and in some cases a hundred miles to the east.
At Stargard Degrelle launched a counterattack with the 28th SS Wallonie Grenadier Division. It failed quickly. Degrelle’s Spanish contingent suffered badly here. He demanded reinforcements, and received the local 2nd Levy of the Volksturm, members of the SA Wehrmannschaft, the 118th Infantry Regiment of the Allgemeine SS, and all local policemen and firemen un
der age 50. But their contribution to the battle was negligible.
Theoretically the Oder was defended by the 12th Signals Company and 27th Infantry Regiment of the Allgemeine SS, but if any of these fellows did see combat it was under the orders of the Volksturm 2nd Levy. As actual combat formations the Allgemeine SS were worse than useless.
A tributary of the Oder was the Neisse River, and on 8 February the Soviet 1st Ukrainian Front began heavy attacks towards the district of Silesia, soon bypassing Breslau and driving on towards the Neisse. The 20th SS Estnische Division was now thrown into this cauldron with orders to stop the enemy or die. These Estonians had recently been reinforced by Estonian ground crew from the Estonian ‘Air Force’ that had been flying alongside the Luftwaffe. They were available because their planes had run out of fuel!
In desperation to prevent the Soviets from crossing the Neisse, a battlegroup was created from the 18th Training and Replacement Battalion of the 18th SS Horst Wessel Panzergrenadier Division. This rear echelon battalion contained a few veteran instructors and some warriors who had recently recuperated from wounds and/or sickness, but most of its manpower was sixteen-year-old recruits. It was placed on the Neisse with orders to help hold back the Soviet 1st Byelorussian Front. Nearby was its parent, the 18th SS Horst Wessel Panzergrenadier Division, but having lost so many people it was by now not much more than a few companies and was in fact being referred to in dispatches as SS Horst Wessel Battlegroup. Recently its commander Gruppenfuehrer Josef Fitzhum had been killed in a traffic accident.
When the large training base at Neuenhammer was threatened by the Soviet advance an emergency unit was created from trainees, most of them members of the 25th SS Hunyadi and 26th SS Ungarische Grenadier Divisions and 1st SS Hungarian Ski Battalion. These Hungarian youngsters and their veteran instructors fought bravely until overrun.
