Hitler's Foreign Executioners

by Christopher Hale

  In Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Daniel Goldhagen singles out a remarkable story of wartime heroism to bolster his case that the Holocaust was a German phenomenon.21 In 1943, Danish government officials and ordinary civilians saved the lives of 7,000 Jews who were about to be deported by the German occupation authorities. According to Goldhagen, ordinary Germans willingly participated in ‘exterminatory anti-Semitism’ or, at best, exhibited cruel indifference to the fate of European Jews. Danes behaved in an exemplary, heroic way; the majority of Germans did not. But analysis by a younger generation of Danish historians has shed a less flattering light on the Danish record. Denmark, as well as other Scandinavian countries, contributed many thousands of ‘Germanic’ Waffen-SS volunteers, who eagerly participated in the German crusade against Bolshevism. Many hundreds of these SS volunteers worked for the police and terror units that helped to round up Danish Jews who had not been able to escape in 1943.

  It was not, of course, the fault of northern Europeans that the Nazi elite so fervently believed that Scandinavians were blood brethren. National socialist ideology embraced Danes and Norwegians, Dutch and Flemish as Germanic peoples, related by blood. Hitler said in 1934: ‘the Nordic countries … as well as Holland and Belgium [belong] to Germany.’ Alfred Rosenberg believed in ‘the big common destiny of Scandinavia and the people of the Baltic Sea’; the necessity of ‘one entire awareness of the Nordic countries’. According to Rosenberg, this ‘Nordic ideal’ made it imperative to form a ‘German-Scandinavian Block’ charged with defending Northern Europe against the Bolshevik menace. Himmler warned that ‘all good blood on this world, all Germanic blood, which is not German … could be our ruin’. What he meant by this was that because Nordic blood possessed such potency, it might be used against Germany if it was purloined by enemy nations. That’s why a ‘Germanic empire has to be created … as a home for Nordic blood’, as ‘his will be the strongest magnet, which can attract this blood’. Himmler declared that he had been ‘assigned by the Führer, to advance the Germanic idea of the empire’. Hitler, he emphasised, did not intend ‘to let one Germanic go to America. We must integrate all the Norwegians, Swedes, Danes and Dutch’.22 And in the Nordic nations, Himmler’s ‘pan-Germanism’ was reciprocated. There were many Danes, as well as Norwegians and Swedes, who longed to be integrated into Hitler’s European union.

  In his autobiography, the late Swedish film and theatre director Ingmar Bergman confessed not only that his father held ultra-right-wing opinions but that he had himself been deeply impressed by Hitler when he visited Germany on an exchange visit in 1936 and lived with a family of ardent national socialists. They proudly took Bergman to hear Hitler speak at a Party rally – ‘unbelievably charismatic’, he recalled. When he returned to Sweden, Bergman, his brothers and some friends attacked the house of a Jewish family and daubed it with swastikas. Bergman’s confession provides yet another reminder of the centrality of anti-Semitism in National Socialist ideology, and how easily it contaminated other national cultures. Clergy of the Church of Sweden applied the German Nuremberg Laws when Swedish couples applied for permission to marry and prohibited marriage between Swedes and partners of Jewish descent. A mythology of racial superiority infected the national cultures of the Nordic nations – and when Himmler and Berger set up recruiting offices in Copenhagen and Oslo, many young men eagerly signed up. By the end of the war, 13,000 Danish citizens had volunteered to serve in the armed forces of the Third Reich; just over half ended up enlisting. The majority, about 12,000, volunteered for service in the Waffen-SS and ended up serving in three different formations: the Frikorps Danmark (Danish legion), the SS Division ‘Wiking’ and, following the disbandment of the Danish legions, the SS Division ‘Nordland’. About 1,500 SS volunteers came from the German minority in southern Jutland; they ended up serving in the SS Totenkopfdivision and the 1st SS Brigade – both units had a direct involvement in ‘special actions’ against Jews in the east.

  Many Danish volunteers embraced German racial doctrines. And, crucially, these beliefs shaped how they acted as SS volunteers. Here are two extracts from letters written by Danish SS volunteers:

  A Jew in a greasy Kafkan walks up to beg some bread, a couple of comrades get a hold of him and drag him behind a building and a moment later he comes to an end. There isn’t any room for Jews in the new Europe, they’ve brought too much misery to the European people.

  The other day we visited a large lunatic asylum near Munich and attended a lecture on racial science. It was fantastic to watch the mob of human wrecks they’d gathered there, I just wonder why they keep them alive … Afterwards we visited the famous concentration camp Dachau and saw it from one end to the other. It was a great experience; you all know what one hears about concentration camps in Denmark, like the rest, it’s lies from end to end [sic].23

  One of the most revealing documents discovered by the Danish historians is the wartime diary of an SS volunteer called Harald.24

  Harald was recruited on 30 July 1941 and discharged on 17 January 1944. His diary records the history of the Frikorps Danmark from its beginnings in 1941 to 1943, when it was dissolved and replaced by the SS ‘Nordland’. When he volunteered Harald was 40 and because of his age was appointed quartermaster in charge of supplies. He did not have front-line experience. Nevertheless, Harald served with the Frikorps in Demjansk, Neval and Zagreb and had daily contact with Danish SS recruits who ‘did the real fighting’. He provides a grim picture of everyday service in the Danish SS and we hear a lot about the boredom, complaining and drinking; the longing for home and family:

  When one just returns from leave, one can really see much of the stupidity there is in the ‘Frikorps’, and then one just wants to be alone with his thoughts. I think that everything is idiotic and straight to hell today, but it will probably be better in a couple of days.25

  But the diary offers a lot more than just a record of often banal experience; it is the testimony of a believer. For Harald was a member of the Danish Nazi Party (DNSAP) and among the first wave of Danish SS recruits.

  We know very little about Harald before he began writing his diary in 1941. He was an illegitimate child and seems to have endured an unstable childhood. When he was just 13 he was accused of fraud, but escaped punishment when he was adopted as a ward of court. Later he was in trouble again for assault, probably a pub brawl. Harald eventually married although very little is known about his partner. By the time he volunteered to join the Waffen-SS in 1941, the couple had a grown-up daughter. Harald often refers to family, and when his periods of leave ended he often suffered depression. In 1940, Harald joined the Danish National Socialist Party, which had been established in 1930, and was led by a doctor, Frits Clausen. The DNSAP, like most of the European far right, had modest electoral success and was plagued by schisms. Many DNSAP members grumbled that Clausen was not radical enough about Denmark’s ‘Jewish problem’. The Danish Anti-Jewish League split away from the DNSAP and tried to forge closer links with the German NSDAP. Its leader Aage Andersen published a newspaper Kamptegenet, modelled on Julius Streicher’s poisonous Der Stürmer.

  After the German occupation began in 1940, Clausen hoped to be appointed Danish national leader. Instead the German Plenipotentiary in Copenhagen, Cecil von Renthe-Fink, marginalised the DNSAP. Fanatics made Hitler nervous. Later in the war, Himmler cultivated Clausen, who served on the Eastern Front, and later had him sent to a German sanatorium to cure his chronic alcoholism. For Harald, the DNSAP was a family affair: his wife also joined up and later worked as a cleaner for German staff stationed at Kastrup Airport.

  In June 1941, following Hitler’s authorisation of national legions, the Germans ordered the Danish government to launch a recruitment drive for the Waffen-SS. For Clausen and the failing DNSAP, the German invasion was a godsend. On 23 June, he made a speech calling on Danes to enlist in the war against Der Weltfeind (World Enemy), meaning of course ‘Jewish-Bolshevism’. The Danish government protested. Clausen turne
d for help to a Danish army officer and nationalist Lt Col C. P. Kryssing, who persuaded the Danish War Ministry to permit foreign military service. Danes had already enlisted in the SS ‘Nordland’ regiment, now Clausen and Kryssing offered enough volunteers to form a separate battalion, the Frikorps Danmark. On 19 July, 435 officers and men, led by Kryssing, whose two sons also enlisted, staged a ceremonial passing out parade in Copenhagen, attended by Danish officials, to the sound of a German marching band.26 Recruitment offices staffed by DNSAP men were set up all over Denmark. On a cloudy summer’s day Harald walked into the Copenhagen SS office. Soon afterwards he and 600 other SS volunteers took an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler and pledged to ‘struggle against Bolshevism’.27 Many officers came from regular and reserve ranks in the Danish army. To be accepted, volunteers like Harald had to prove Aryan ancestry, financial solvency and that they had no criminal record.

  Over the next two and a half years, Harald’s diary was his loyal companion. He made daily notes – and there is rarely more than a week between full entries. In Copenhagen, he boarded a train for Langenhorn near Hamburg, where he was placed in a mixed SS regiment, the SS ‘Standarte Nordwest’, which comprised Danes, Dutchmen and Flemish volunteers. After just one week, the Danish volunteers transferred to the Frikorps Danmark. As training began, the German officers became increasingly impatient with the patriotic Kryssing. Although he had cooperated with Clausen, he was not at all a convinced ideological National Socialist and openly objected to any ideological training of his recruits. In October 1941 the Germans transferred the Frikorps Danmark to barracks in Treskau. It was here that serious tensions escalated between Kryssing and the SS, and then between Kryssing and the fanatical DNSAP volunteers. A German Hauptsturmführer, Masell, recommended that the Frikorps relocate to another camp closer to the SS ‘Junkerschule’ at Posen-Treskau. Here, he argued, the Danish recruits could be properly inducted in SS discipline and doctrine. Kryssing strenuously resisted. In November 1941, Harald made this entry in his diary:

  I guess the Germans will loose their patience soon with the ‘Frikorps’: it is not the rank and file with which there is something wrong – it’s the officers. The Danes are used to having it their way, and Kryssing is too old for an undertaking like this: it should instead have been a younger man with initiative, like Hauptsturmführer von Schalburg. It could be that the day is not far away when changes are going to happen within the command of the Frikorps.

  This was prescient. At the beginning of 1942, Himmler, who had followed the disputes with Kryssing, was informed that neither the Danes nor the Norwegians were ‘combat ready’. He sent SS-Gruppenführer Krüger to find out why. His report concluded that, as Harald had observed, the Danish officers in the Frikorps were either incompetent or covertly hostile to Germany. He claimed that Kryssing and his deputy Sturmbannführer Jörgensen often expressed anti-Nazi sentiments and were incapable or unwilling to impose discipline. Feuds between rival Danish factions unsettled both officers and men. There was an obvious solution: get rid of the Danish officers and replace them all with Germans. But the cautious Krüger persuaded Himmler to replace Kryssing with another Danish officer, SS-Hauptsturmführer Christian von Schalburg, then serving with the SS ‘Wiking’ division. Schalburg, Krüger believed, was a ‘reliable national socialist’. That was an understatement.28

  Schalburg was a monster. He had been born in St Petersburg; his father was Danish and his mother an aristocratic. When Christian was 11, the family became caught up in the Russian Revolution and fled to Denmark. From his parents, especially his Russian mother, Schalburg inherited a visceral hatred of communists and Jews – in his mind, one and the same. In Denmark, the Schalburgs gravitated towards the DNSAP. Christian was devoted to DNSAP leader Clausen, who appointed him leader of the youth wing. After leaving school, Schalburg joined the elite Danish Royal Guards (Den Kongelige Livgarde); in an official report he was described as ‘dangerous and unstable’ – mere Jewish slander, responded Schalburg. When the Winter War broke out between the Finns and the Soviet Union, Schalburg took a brigade of DNSAP youth members, the ‘Blood Brothers’, to fight alongside the Finns. It was on the Finnish front line that Schalburg and his comrades heard that Denmark had capitulated to the Germans. He said later that he was ashamed. But in September 1940 Schalburg volunteered to join the Waffen-SS and, by the time the German invasion of the Soviet Union began the following summer, he had been promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer. As Harald had intuited, the no-nonsense, politicised Schalburg proved to be the right man to whip the Danish SS into shape. This he proceeded to do with characteristic ruthlessness.

  Harald’s diary entries, which inevitably became shorter and less frequent, show that he was increasingly confused about serving with the Frikorps Danmark. From the spring of 1943, Harald began to submit requests for a discharge. His diary reveals that he was frustrated by the harsh, sometimes frightening life of a soldier – but there were also other discontents. Harald remained an ardent National Socialist. The second wave of SS recruiting after June 1941 had attracted a different class – more bourgeois, less fanatical. Here is one vitriolic diary entry from September, 1941:

  Not all of the people who have come down here to the Frikorps are entirely good. It is said that the corps is apolitical – therefore there are people from all camps, amongst the ordinary ranks as well as between the föhrers and the unterföhrers [officers]. There are some bad examples in particular amongst the two latter categories: father’s sons, who only have on their minds to become decorated as Christmas trees or Shrovetide birch twigs, with as many stars and cords as possible. But let us see what the gentlemen are worth once we get to the front.

  Harald had also become disillusioned with Clausen: ‘When I joined the Waffen-SS, I was an ardent Fritz Clausen supporter, today I am an ardent Frits Clausen opponent.’ Harald explains why he had turned against Clausen:

  Why should we who are a pure white Aryan nation, have a Southern Jutlander as a leader? Those people are a minority: we might as well have an Icelander – a native from Bornholm [a small Danish island in the Baltic Sea] or an Eskimo. We demand a pure white free-born Danish man!

  Harald’s diary provides some evidence that he knew a good deal about German racial ‘eliminationism’. The ‘Final Solution of the Jewish problem’ had its roots in the treatment of mentally ill patients in German clinics and hospitals who were systematically murdered by euthanasia specialists both in Germany and later on the Eastern Front.29 This escalation is reflected in Harald’s experience. In Treskau, the Danish Frikorps were allocated a barracks that had formerly been a psychiatric hospital. In November 1939, German SS soldiers removed some 900 of the 1,000 remaining patients, marched them into a nearby forest and executed every one. The Waffen-SS then occupied the empty building.

  Here is Harald’s comment on those events:

  We are moving to the barracks tomorrow. The barracks have previously been used as an asylum for the mentally ill. The story goes that when the Germans arrived at Treskau, during the war against Poland, the mentally ill were provided with knives and sent against the Germans. But the SS occupied these barracks, and the around 1200 patients marched out of here under SS-command, and nobody has seen them ever since. But this doesn’t matter, tomorrow ‘Frikorps Danmark’ will take the barracks.

  It is hard to believe that Harald did not know about the fate of those 1,200 patients. But in any case he has no interest: ‘it doesn’t matter’. Per Sørensen, another Danish SS volunteer, certainly knew all about those executions: ‘The barracks [in Treskau] was once a “loony bin” and apart from that a former monastery: when the Germans moved in here they shot all the idiots and converted the asylum into a very nice SS barracks.’30

  Harald noted other casual brutalities:

  We have Russian deserters and prisoners to work for us to remedy the roads. One of them stole 3 packages of cigarettes today from one of our vehicles. A strm [abbreviation of Sturmmann] Marius was supposed to take him back to
the prison camp, on the way he stopped the prisoners in the woods and let the one with the cigarettes dig a hole, after which he shot him. The other prisoners fought over his clothes. I think it is a little rough [sic], if I had been a prisoner of war, I would probably also have stolen cigarettes if there was an opportunity.

  Sørensen had a more visceral response: ‘The other day I saw a column of Russian war captives, they looked disgusting, such fanatical criminal types that one defends oneself against believing that these are white people, well, they also looked more Asian than European.’31

  Like the Germans, the Danish SS volunteers regarded Russians as ‘Untermenschen’. Here another volunteer writes home in June 1942:

  You should see some of the faces of the prisoners we have here presently. It is not a reproduction of Raphael’s angels, but the most horrendous Mongolian face one could imagine … they are horrendous, but hypocritical as well, cunning as hell, but one knows what one is dealing with and takes them for what they are. They are not one bit too pretty to shoot down every one of them. My opinion of most of the Russians is that they are not humans, but animals.

  In a letter written to his young son at the end of 1941, SS Commander von Schalburg passed on his poisonous thinking: ‘Your parents have fought the Tartars, the yellow cross-eyed ones. The holy [Tsar] Alexander beat them and kept them away from the Russians, so they could not destroy their houses. We fight today against the Jews, who took the houses and churches and the bread from the Russians.’32

  In the autumn of 1941, when Harald was in Treskau, he witnessed a German SS officer beating Jewish forced labourers:

  In the last couple of days half a score of Jews with the Star of David on their bags, have been working in the garden of the commander’s house, under supervision of a German Sturmmann. They are being appropriately beaten with a stick, and, according to orders, they report to work in the garden with bare legs. The temperature is minus 10 degrees. Cannot sanction that, do not think it is worthy of the German spirit. Even though I don’t like Jews, I don’t think they should be exposed to mistreatment by a bloody Sturmmann, even though they say that his parents were killed and mistreated by Jews.