by J. Lee Ready
Meanwhile the 36th SS Dirlewanger Grenadier Division was being slaughtered near Taubendorf south of Berlin.
Also this day US troops had advanced so far east they had now entered Austria and they approached the Mauthausen concentration camp complex, but the guards abandoned most of the camps and took 17,000 surviving prisoners with them to Gunskirchen. These prisoners were a guarantee that the guards would retain deferred occupation status and would not be conscripted into the Waffen SS to fight at the front. None of the guards actually wanted to risk their own lives for the cause.
In Bavaria when the US 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions approached the Dachau camp complex near Munich they had a mixed reception. Standartenfuehrer Martin Weiss might have enjoyed being a camp kommandant, for after all he had experience at Neuengamme, Majdanek and in the Vilna ghetto, but when he arrived to take over Dachau in March 1945 he knew his days were numbered. On 28 April hearing artillery fire he fled, as did most of his guards. A Red Cross official took charge of the prisoners. Opposite the camp across a narrow river was a large Waffen SS base and a military hospital, but currently only about 560 SS personnel were stationed here. When the Americans arrived they surrendered. However, once the GIs entered the concentration camp and saw for themselves what had been going on and saw the condition of the inmates they reacted with revulsion and blind anger and began to shoot any SS man they had captured including the Waffen SS across the river. These shootings did not occur in a random sense, but in organized firing squads using rifles and tripod machine guns, and in some cases they handed the SS over to the prisoners and provided iron bars so that the strongest of the inmates could beat them to death. With more than a score of prisoners hitting one SS soldier, it was a brutal death. A combat cameramen filmed the executions. Eventually senior American officers put a stop to the killings. Estimates range from thirty or so SS men murdered to possibly as many as 400. They were Germans, Austrians, Volksdeutsch and Hungarians. Almost none of them had anything to do with the concentration camp. The Americans were never prosecuted and their government hid the murder for years.
Unfortunately, the Americans had never been trained to recognize the difference between Waffen SS and SS KZL from the piping on their uniforms, nor had they ever been informed that there was a difference. To the average Allied soldier all SS were the same: i.e. Kurt Meyer the combat leader and Rudolf Hoess the butcher of Auschwitz were alike, and a forty year old professional Ukrainian executioner and a sixteen year old German conscript were equally guilty. If their uniform said ‘SS’ then they were all ‘SS’. As a result many a Waffen SS soldier who was captured in the vicinity of a concentration camp was executed.
To be sure the Waffen SS pleaded that they were true soldiers, but few Americans understood German, and in any case the SS KZL also claimed to be soldiers.
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Back in Berlin Hitler learned from the BBC that Himmler was trying to make a deal with the Allies. Moreover Himmler now made the fatal move of inquiring if Hitler required him to take over governing Germany. Hitler exploded into one of his well-known rages. He immediately ordered that Himmler be dismissed from all posts. Obergruppenfuehrer Alfred Wuennenberg, the chief of Orpo, would now be the top policeman in the nation, and Obergruppenfuehrer Karl Hanke would become the new Reichsfuehrer SS. Hanke had begun the war as an army officer and then became a full-time Allgemeine SS officer.
Fortunately for Himmler he was physically out of Hitler’s reach, but Gruppenfuehrer Hermann Fegelein was not. He was under room arrest a few feet away. Hitler gave the order, and Fegelein was dragged upstairs to the surface by Hitler’s own SS bodyguard, where they shot him.
Despite having just murdered her brother in law, Hitler had no difficulties in getting Eva Braun to say ‘Jawohl’ when he asked her to marry him. They were married within hours in a quiet ceremony [apart from the noise of artillery, bombs and machine guns]. They had no plans for a honeymoon.
Reality broke the spell. A signaler brought the news that General von Vietinghoff had agreed to surrender all German forces in Italy in three days time. Naturally Hitler relieved him of command.
Yet Hitler did agree that he had been hasty with his judgment of Brigadefuehrer Ziegler. He ordered that officer to resume his command of III SS Panzer Corps.
It took only minutes for Ziegler to get back to his headquarters, because it was now just yards from the Fuehrer bunker. He learned that a few hundred men of the Muencheberg Panzer Division and 2,000 SS troops of the III SS Panzer Corps were battling for the Reichstag building, Kroll Opera house and Gestapo headquarters. Soviet troops were rampaging all over the city like locusts.
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Many units saw that the end was near, so the issue of medals, some long overdue, was rushed through. E.g. within the 503rd SS Heavy Panzer Detachment four Knight's Crosses were awarded at this time, and three members of the 502nd SS Heavy Panzer Detachment received this coveted medal, as did a member of the 561st SS Jagdpanzer Detachment.
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On 30 April Mr. and Mrs. Hitler took poison, and then Adolf shot himself. As per his last instructions, the Fuehrer’s personal SS escort took the bodies topside and burned them amid Soviet shellfire. Hitler had named loyal Goebbels as chancellor, but this propaganda wizard was still in the Fuehrer bunker. Now his wife murdered their children and then he shot his wife and ordered his SS orderly to shoot him.
Hitler had also designated Admiral Karl Doenitz as president. The honor came as a shock to everyone. To be sure Doenitz was a Nazi, but he had never delved into politics and had tried to distance himself and his Kriegsmarine from Hitler’s crimes. He announced that he planned to rule what was left of the Third Reich from the city of Flensburg.
But even in death Hitler could not resist one last lie. He had ordered the radio stations to broadcast that he had died fighting in the streets like a soldier. From the beginning to its end the Third Reich was a mountain of myths and lies.
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Chapter Forty-five
MAY 1945: War Without Himmler And Hitler
By May Day the few remaining remnants of SS Battlegroup Dirnagel and 17th SS GvB Panzergrenadier Division were battling American troops in the Achensee area of the German-Austrian border. The 38th SS Nibelungen Division had managed to outrun the US 14th Armored Division and had crossed the Isar River, and this day continued to flee towards the Inn River. The Americans were pushing towards Northern Austria with six armored divisions [3rd, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th and 20th] and ten infantry divisions [3rd, 36th, 42nd, 44th, 45th, 65th, 71st, 86th, 99th and 103rd]. From Italy the US 88th Infantry Division and much of the British Eighth Army were also pressing into southwestern Austria.
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Through super human effort Wenck’s Twelfth Army had come within fifteen miles of the Fuehrer bunker and had rescued 30,000 soldiers of Busse’s Ninth Army, but on 1 May Wenck finally had to call it a day. He ordered his army to retreat to the Elbe so that they could all surrender to the Americans.
Inside Berlin almost all of the defenders had surrendered or had been killed or badly wounded or had deserted and were in hiding. A few had managed to escape. Willi Hund lay dead, his shiny new Knight’s Cross at his throat now bloody and dirty. The only defenders still battling on were the few hundred Germans of the Muencheberg Panzer and 18th Panzer Divisions, perhaps two hundred members of SS Battlegroup Mohnke, and fewer than 2,000 or so mixed troops of III SS Panzer Corps [11th SS Nordland Panzergrenadier Division, 101st and 102nd SS Spanish Companies, Fenet’s French SS Charlemagne task force and Neiland’s SS Lettische Battalion, plus a few Dutchmen from the SS Nederland]. Most of these die-hards were Swedes, Danes, Norwegians, Spaniards, Latvians, Dutchmen, Frenchmen, Romanian Volksdeutsch, Hungarian Volksdeutsch, a few Americans of the American Free Corps and perhaps one surviving member of the British Free Corps. It is ironic that in his last twenty-four hours of life Hitler had been protected by more non-Germans than Germans, especially as he had written in his
last will and testament that the German people were not worthy of him.
Learning of Hitler’s death, Brigadefuehrer Ziegler realized he and his men were free of their oath to him, so he tried to organize a surrender of the Berlin garrison, but near the Friedrichstrasse rail station enemy shellfire stopped him dead, literally. There was no telling which Soviet unit had fired this fatal shot, for by now the besieged defenders were battling no fewer than seven armies: First Guards Tank, Second Guards Tank, Third Guards Tank, Third Shock, Fifth Shock, Eighth Guards and Twenty-eighth. In other words odds of several hundred to one!
The eighty or so survivors of Obersturmbannfuehrer Neiland’s SS Lettische Battalion had barricaded themselves at the Air Ministry building. However, during the night they sneaked out intending to try to infiltrate through the enemy lines to the west.
The only remnant of the SS Nederland in Berlin was led by Sturmbannfuehrer Oskar Schwappacher, an artilleryman of that division. Ordinarily this prestigious position would have been his crowning glory. Instead it was a suicide mission.
The surviving Frenchmen were holed up in the basement of Gestapo headquarters.
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In Italy partisans had captured Mussolini, finding him disguised as a German airman. They shot him. Already the two top German commanders in Italy, General von Vietinghoff and Obergruppenfuehrer Karl Wolff, had called for a ceasefire to be effective 2 May. However, German high command ordered the ceasefire call to be rescinded and sent General Schultz to relieve von Vietinghoff. On the morning of 1 May Schultz arrived at von Vietinghoff’s headquarters and was immediately arrested by SS guards under Wolff’s orders. Wolff and von Vietinghoff then explained the true situation to him. While talking they heard on the radio that Hitler had been killed in action fighting in Berlin. Finally at 10pm Schultz agreed to confirm von Vietinghoff’s call to surrender.
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On 2 May General Weidling surrendered Berlin. Perhaps no more than thirty of Fenet’s Charlemagne fighters were still in the ‘line’ when they heard the surrender announcement. Twenty-one year old Eugene Vaulot lay dead in the rubble, his new medal covered in dust. The Spaniards were down to a hardy few, their commander Hauptsturmfuehrer Sanchez among them. He surrendered. Krukenberg also agreed to obey the surrender order, speaking for III SS Panzer Corps. Most of the Swedes were dead, but Hauptsturmfuehrer Hans-Goesta Pehrsson tried to break out in his half-track. It was blown up, his driver killed and he was captured. Schwappacher and the last of the SS Nederland soldiers chose to fight to the death. Rudolf Saalbach and the dozen or so members of his SS Nordland reconnaissance battalion went down firing. Finally Mohnke asked his men for their wishes and most chose to try to break out or die trying. With Mohnke leading they managed to cover a few hundred yards over the next several hours, but when they heard Weidling had surrendered the city they agreed to obey and surrender – though a few of his men chose to put their pistols in their mouths.
Suddenly the shooting stopped. Now plainly the SS prisoners of the Soviets could hear the screams of German women being raped by the thousand. A drunken Russian shot Unterscharfuehrer Brunet dead.
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This day a few members of the 502nd SS Heavy Panzer Detachment were still battling the Soviets in the Kummersdorfer Forst just south of Berlin under the command of the Austrian Hauptsturmfuehrer Alois Kalss, a highly decorated tank commander with over fifty successful engagements, and still only twenty-five years old. But in this last action his men fought as infantry, their Tigers having run out of fuel. And when they saw Kalss killed right before their eyes, they began to surrender, though some tried to infiltrate through the woods.
SS KZL guards at the port of Luebeck had packed thousands of their prisoners aboard ships, obviously intending to sail somewhere for safety, probably to Denmark. Even now they were terrified of being asked to fight like real soldiers. However, fate caught up with them, in the form of British aircraft, which attacked in broad daylight. Two ships were caught at sea and struck by bombs, and in their panic to reach lifeboats the guards shot dead any equally panicky prisoners blocking their path. When the ships disappeared beneath the waves they took possibly 7,400 prisoners with them!
At Scharnitz in Austria the US 103rd Infantry Division was advancing rapidly, when suddenly a mixed band of SS soldiers opened fire. The Americans wiped out the opposition in a short but bloody fight.
Trieste was a city claimed by Hitler, Mussolini, Tito and the pro-Allied Italian government. At the end of April soldiers loyal to all four began battling for the city: Titoists and Italian partisans attacking the garrison of German SD, Gestapo, Kripo, Allgemeine SS, the local police [German-controlled Civic Guard] and Mussolini’s fascist troops. No one wanted to be taken alive by the partisans, especially as the Gestapo insisted on executing captured partisans right up to the last moment. At last a solution arrived, in the form of the New Zealand 2nd Infantry Division [part of the British Eighth Army, which had pushed up from Italy]. The Axis garrison was willing to capitulate to New Zealanders, who despite their reputation for killing German POWs promised they would honor the Geneva Convention. The Titoists wanted to save face, so a little charade was organized. The Titoists launched a mock attack whereupon the garrison gave up to the New Zealanders. It would now be up to the politicians to decide who ruled the city.
In the Sudetenland the SS KZL guards at Theresienstadt ghetto, obviously terrified of Allied retribution, turned over their prisoners to the Red Cross.
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On 3 May the XVII SS Corps and the remnants of the 25th SS Hunyadi and 26th SS Ungarische Grenadier Divisions were retreating from the Soviets towards Attersee in Austria, when they collided with American troops. They immediately opened fire and a hot little fight developed before the corps staff officers could shut down the battle. Once done, they began to negotiate with the Americans.
Doenitz sent emissaries to the Anglo-Americans, asking them to open their lines to the German Third Panzer, Twelfth and Twenty-first Armies, so that they would not be caught by the Soviets.
Near Munich a few score survivors of SS Charlemagne surrendered to surprised American rear-echelon troops. In northern Germany the SS construction battalion made up of Charlemagne survivors gave up to the British. Other small bands of Charlemagne troops surrendered all over Germany and Austria. Some were unlucky enough to be caught by Allied French troops, and at least a dozen were executed by their countrymen.
In southwest Austria the British began accepting the surrender of thousands of Cossacks.
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Doenitz’s emissaries to Allied headquarters had been in radio contact with him and on 4 May with his authority they formally signed a surrender to the Western Allies of all German forces in Northern Germany, Netherlands and Denmark.
Immediately upon hearing the news the Dutch and Danish resistance organizations came out into the open and began rounding up German soldiers. Almost all gave up peacefully, but some home-grown Nazis chose to either commit suicide or fight to the death. Some of these were SS members.
Now with Doenitz’s permission other German armies began capitulating to the Western Allies in Southern Germany and Austria. Doenitz also ordered Generalfeldmarschal Schoerner to bring his Army Group Center out of Slovakia and the Czech Protectorate into the Sudetenland to surrender to the Americans.
An unusual incident occurred along the Elbe. The Americans announced that owing to an agreement between their government and the Soviets they could not take entire German units prisoner if those units had been fighting the Soviets recently. This was an order the Americans hated to obey, so they got around it with good old American ingenuity: they accepted the individual surrender of every German in these units one man at a time without formality. Generals surrendered themselves not their units.
Obersturmbannfuehrer Otto Weidinger was ordered to assemble a battlegroup of the SS Das Reich, make his way to the Czech capital Prague and escort thousands of German civilians westwards
out of the path of the Red Army. Weidinger obeyed, but within hours his convoy began running into bands of Czech partisans, though most of the time Weidinger was able to call a halt to the shooting and talk his way through their roadblocks once he explained his humanitarian mission.
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On 5 May US Third Army troops entered Sudetenland to the cheers of thousands of waving civilians. The Americans were as naive as babes. They thought the civilians were Czechs happy to be liberated from the Germans. Actually these civilians were German-speaking Sudetens, who had been suffering from ambushes by Allied Czech partisans and air raids by the Allied air forces. With the Americans in charge they thought the raids and ambushes would cease. Thus Patton’s great and proud US Third Army finished up liberating three million ‘Germans’ from the Allies! To be sure the Sudetens were glad to be free of the Nazis, but there is irony here. Moreover, Americans were under strict orders not to engage in friendly conversation with Germans, an act known as fraternization, but as the US government recognized Sudetens to be Czech citizens rather than German, it was okay to mingle here, to enjoy the beer and date the girls.
When US 11th Armored Division troops reached Gunskirchen concentration camp they ran into some feeble resistance by the guards, during which Standartenfuehrer Franz Ziereis the Mauthausen kommandant was mortally wounded. Inside the Yanks found 5,400 prisoners barely alive, all that survived from the whole Mauthausen complex.
This day the remnants of SS Battlegroup Nord surrendered to American troops in Bavaria.
In Prague the population could not wait any longer: they rose in rebellion against the Nazi oppressors. At once General Vlasov, who had his headquarters nearby, was placed in a dilemma. He was asked by the population to liberate them from the garrison, and he was asked by the garrison to rescue them from the rebellious population. The Prague garrison included an SS officer’s school commanded by Standartenfuehrer Wolfgang Joerchel, plus the Allgemeine SS 108th Infantry Regiment, the Klagenfurt Police Battalion, the 3/20th SS Police Regiment, a unit of Volksdeutsch SA, the city and district Gestapo, SD and Kripo, army and Luftwaffe rear-echelon troops, flak gunners, the local Czech police and a host of paramilitary personnel, all of them now besieged by partisans. Vlasov chose to flip sides again and ordered his 1st Division [some of whom were ex-members or ex-hiwis of the SS] to attack the Germans, and his men quickly captured the radio station and airport.
