Waffen-SS

by Adrian Gilbert

  The “sharp criticism” referred to by Eicke had been made by his immediate superior, General Hoepner, and by the Reichsführer-SS himself. The war diary of Hoepner’s XVI Corps, while acknowledging the bravery of SS officers, contained this admonishment: “Higher level commanders and company commanders were not capable of leading their men by means of clearly stated combat orders.”3

  Hoepner’s already poor opinion of Eicke fell even further when rumors of the Le Paradis massacre reached him. Outraged, he ordered a full investigation of the incident, although Himmler and the SS administration made sure the whole matter was swept under the carpet. Fritz Knöchlein, the chief suspect, continued his successful career within the Waffen-SS, which would include the award of a Knight’s Cross in 1944.

  On 30 May 1940 Himmler arrived in northern France to inspect the division, calling Eicke to a conference at Bailleul. Although no record of the interview remains, from associated correspondence it seems fairly clear that Eicke received a severe dressing-down.4 As well as the bad publicity engendered by the Le Paradis massacre—the killings of civilians earlier in the campaign seemed not to figure in the reprimand—Himmler was primarily concerned at the substantial losses in men and materials incurred by the division. Most serious was the disproportionate loss of officers: out of 1,140 total casualties, an extraordinary figure of around 300 were officers.5 They were impossible to replace through the normal reserve system, forcing Himmler to draw upon partially trained cadets from the two officer training schools at Braunschweig and Bad Tölz.

  Himmler was also determined to rein in Eicke’s independence and bring the division fully back within the SS system. As part of this process, he personally nominated Brigadeführer Kurt Knoblauch as Montigny’s successor. Knoblauch was Himmler’s man, however, and a suspicious Eicke studiously kept him at arm’s length. Another unwelcome intrusion was the arrival of Oberführer Matthias Kleinheisterkamp to replace the deceased Götze as commander of the 3rd Totenkopf Infantry Regiment. Although a promotion for Kleinheisterkamp, the transfer from a battalion command in the crack “Deutschland” to a Totenkopf regiment was something of a poisoned chalice.

  On 6 June Totenkopf departed its base in the coastal town of Boulogne to begin a leisurely move southward to St. Omer and then to Peronne, which was reached on the twelfth. There it acted as part of a general reserve before commitment to active operations on the fourteenth.

  No such luxury of time was given to Hausser’s SS-V Division. On the evening of 1 June, its units were ordered to take up position for the proposed assault against the French, now holding a new position along the Somme and Aisne Rivers. Dietrich’s Leibstandarte followed in the wake of the SS-V. The balance of power now lay firmly in Germany’s favor, some 104 divisions set against the 60 or so French formations on the Somme-Aisne line.

  On 5 June Panzer Group Kleist opened its offensive against the French holding the south bank of the River Somme. The artillery of the SS-V Division supported the German attack, and on the following day the panzers broke through the French defenses with the SS troops following in support. The seemingly easy advance came to a halt on the seventh when the SS-V infantry hit the main French defensive line along the River Avre.

  Preparations were made for a continuation of the assault for 8 June, to expand the bridgehead and then drive on through the French defenses. But at 9:20 A.M. the attack was suddenly canceled and the SS-V Division ordered on the defensive. The reason for this abrupt halt lay in General von Bock’s concern that Panzer Group Kleist was becoming bogged down in this sector. German attacks elsewhere were making better progress, and Bock decided to redeploy Kleist’s mobile forces farther east.

  In the early hours of 9 June the men of “Der Führer” wearily returned over the Avre, rejoining the division that was now swinging east to support the breakthrough already achieved in the Aisne-Oise area. Leibstandarte was also part of this transfer, and on 12 June it joined other German forces in bridging the Marne; two days later it reached the Seine. The Totenkopf Division—released from the reserve—joined the SS-V and Leibstandarte as part of an increasingly powerful Panzer Group Kleist.

  German success on the battlefield was mirrored by encouraging developments in the political sphere. On 10 June the French government fled Paris for Bordeaux, declaring it an open city two days later, so that on 14 June the Germans entered the French capital unopposed. When troops of Leibstandarte heard the news, they rang the bells in a local church to celebrate. French resistance began to crumble, the German breakthrough turning into a pursuit. The motorized troops of the Waffen-SS drove at speed across the rolling French countryside.

  In order to prevent the French Army from having any chance of recovery, Hitler and OKW ordered the pursuit to continue deep into the French heartland. While the German infantry trudged through central France, the mobile formations were given free hand to chase the enemy. Kurt Meyer, leading Leibstandarte’s motorcycle company, described their hectic progress: “At dawn, my advance guard was moving through the tree-dotted, undulating landscape, clearing the road with gunfire. The fleeing French units repeatedly tried to form lines of resistance to gain time and space for their retreat. These attempts didn’t bother us anymore. We had only one aim: to gain ground to the south. The flanks had become unimportant. We moved down the roads like a fire-spitting dragon. Halting was taboo. Firing was only conducted from moving vehicles. The advance was beginning to look like a wild hunt.”6

  As the mechanized formations of the Waffen-SS drove through France, they were followed by the foot-slogging, horse-drawn Polizei Division. Under the command of Obergruppenführer Karl Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, it had crossed into France and by 9 June was ready to participate in the assault across the Aisne River and Ardennes Canal. On the ninth, the army’s 26th Infantry Division had waged a fierce battle against the French defenders along the Ardennes Canal, the Germans making little progress.

  On the tenth the Polizei Division was ordered into the battle. The 1st Polizei Infantry Regiment crossed the canal and advanced toward the wooded high ground to the west of Voncq, only to find itself repeatedly counterattacked by the French. A seesaw battle continued throughout the day, until the 2nd Police Infantry Regiment captured the town and forced the French to retire to avoid encirclement.

  The Polizei Division then took part in the advance into the Argonne Forest, harrying retreating French rear guards. A final engagement took place at Les Islettes on 14 June, when the French made a stand against the Germans. According to Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, they “defended themselves with the same toughness and skill as the French troops at Voncq.”7 But in scenes of close-quarters combat, the SS troops eventually overwhelmed the enemy. This marked the end of the division’s involvement in the campaign in the West; on 20 June it was withdrawn to Germany.

  THE GERMAN ADVANCE into the Argonne was part of a wider strategy to encircle the French holding the Maginot Line. On 14 June Army Group C had begun its assault on the much-vaunted French defenses, and two breaches were made at Saarbrucken and Colmar. The French fell back from the Maginot Line and the Vosges region in an attempt to link up with what remained of the main French Army in the southwestern area of the country. The SS-V Division was one of a number of German formations ordered to contain the French breakout attempt.

  The main fighting took place on 16 and 17 June, the SS-V colliding with French units trying to escape from the fast-closing encirclement. After a few sharp actions, the SS soldiers became aware that the fight was going out of their opponents. Hauptsturmführer Christian Tychsen, an officer in the reconnaissance battalion, recalled his experiences when his company neared Mussy-sur-Seine on the seventeenth: “We entered villages and towns with bravado, capturing countless prisoners. Artillery pieces with horses still in harness stood by the road. Everyone surrendered without a fight as we continued still further. French approached us from out of a small forest. Hundreds. An interpreter came up to the front. It was useless to explain to the French that we would shoot if th
ey tried to escape. They were all happy that the war was over for them.”8

  There was little more fighting for the SS-V Division after 17 June; from then on it was a case of collecting and disarming French troops whenever they came upon them. Hausser was able to announce that the division had captured approximately 30,000 French soldiers in just ten days of campaigning.9

  On the right flank of Panzer Group Kleist’s advance, Totenkopf had even less to do. Although the pursuit across France was undoubtedly exhilarating, it had one disadvantage, as one officer grumbled: “The quick pace of the advance prevented the division from collecting up the captured booty, and it had to be left where found.”10 Eicke always maintained his interest in accruing material resources for the division, regardless of where or how this might be achieved.

  The only real action experienced by the division took place on 18–19 June at Tarare and L’Arbresle, where Totenkopf infantry were involved in two fierce clashes with French Moroccan troops. Of the L’Arbresle action Charles Sydnor writes, “In clearing out this rearguard position, the SS men refused to take any prisoners and killed every one of the 30 Moroccan soldiers involved in the skirmish.”11 The implication that these men were massacred was refuted by Totenkopf officer Karl Ullrich: “That more whites than blacks were captured is due to the fact that the Moroccans defended themselves with an unbelievable sense of death defiance and hatred.”12

  The German armed forces as a whole had been strongly imbued with a sense of the racial inferiority of Africans, and during the 1940 campaign there were several well-recorded instances of Wehrmacht troops killing surrendered African soldiers.13 Given this tendency and the fact that the division had only recently massacred British prisoners and French civilians, these unauthorized killings seem quite probable. And within the Wehrmacht, reports of Totenkopf killing African prisoners were commonplace. A Luftwaffe crewman described how a friend in the division told him that “in the campaign in the West they took no colored prisoners whatever. They simply put up a machine gun and mowed them all down.”14

  LEIBSTANDARTE CONTINUED ITS march into east-central France, reaching Riom and then Clermont-Ferrand on 20 June. At this point, the French had opened discussions with the Germans for an armistice, but while talks were ongoing the drive continued. A final push was made toward St. Étienne on 24 June, and it was just north of the town, in the village of La Fouillouse, that Leibstandarte fought its last action of 1940. To their surprise, the SS infantry found themselves faced by several French tanks of World War I vintage, slowly lumbering toward them along the main street. A soldier from the 10th Company witnessed a duel between one of these tanks and a 3.7cm antitank gun:

  There is an alarm of gunfire in the street. At only 20 meters distance the French tank and the anti-tank gun face each other. The anti-tank gun fires first, and we hear the shrill whistle of the shell ricocheting off the tank. A second round also fails. The steel plates are too strong for the 3.7cm rounds. We now see the tank fire directly on the gun, scoring a direct hit. Fortunately the tank retreats, its turret jammed. The 10th Company platoon commander shouts back to bring forward the 15cm infantry guns. The guns force the tanks to withdraw.15

  On 25 June Leibstandarte took St. Étienne, marking the deepest penetration by German forces during the entire battle for France. In the evening, Dietrich was informed that the armistice had come into effect and the war in the West was over.

  On 21 June, while armistice negotiations were still ongoing, a substantial portion of Panzer Group Kleist was ordered to drive along the Loire Valley and then advance south toward Bordeaux. France was to be divided in two: a German-occupied zone comprising northern and western France and a zone administered by a puppet French government in the south. The SS-V and Totenkopf joined 9th and 10th Panzer Divisions in a dash to take control of what would become the German-occupied zone that ran along the Atlantic coast. Although there was little fighting, the two countries were still in a state of war, so a resolute display of German military might was the order of the day. On 24 June the SS-V Division raced through the Angouléme, to the surprise and dismay of the local civilians, as described by one officer: “Without firing a shot the armored spearhead pushed into the town, which crawled with armed French soldiers and refugees. It was a picture of unholy disorder. The surprise occupation of the city by German troops took place in front of the populace, who stood along the road with questioning, astonished, confused or frightened looks on their faces. Several times the frightened and bewildered cry of ‘Mon Dieu—les Allemande!’ rang from the roadside.”16

  On 27 June, the reconnaissance battalion pushed on past Bordeaux (then the seat of what remained of the French government) and on to the coastal resort of Biarritz and the Spanish border. They received a friendly welcome from the Spanish border guards, who threw open the barriers to welcome the SS men into Bidassoa. They were given an official reception by the local Spanish commander, with much mutual congratulation. For the next few days the men of both the SS-V and Totenkopf Divisions were allowed to rest, swimming in the Atlantic and basking in the warm sun. “They were dream-like days,” recorded the SS-V divisional history, “during which we almost forgot the past battles and hardships of the Western Campaign.”17

  THE WEHRMACHT HAD won a stupendous victory against the combined forces of France, Britain, Belgium, and Holland, the Austrian corporal achieving in six weeks what the Kaiser’s generals had failed to do in four years. The contribution of the Waffen-SS was necessarily small in terms of securing overall victory, but it had, for the most part, acquitted itself well.

  The SS-V Division and Leibstandarte had demonstrated the aggressive fighting qualities and tactical acumen that would become the hallmark of the best Waffen-SS formations in the years to come. The performance of the Totenkopf Division was mixed, its clumsy battlefield skills set against its undoubted determination. Not much had been expected of the Polizei Division, but given the indifferent quality of its manpower and lack of training and equipment, it had performed creditably enough. Himmler wasted no time in providing his master with stories of his soldiers’ triumphs, which Hitler readily acknowledged in his speech to the Reichstag on 19 July 1940, singling out the Waffen-SS for special praise.

  Rewards for the SS soldiers’ performance in 1940 included a wide distribution of Iron Crosses (both 1st and 2nd Classes) and the award of the totemic Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross to six recipients. Dietrich was unsurprisingly one of those rewarded, although Hausser missed out in this round of awards in favor of two of his regimental commanders, Felix Steiner and Georg Keppler. The other three medals were awarded to Ludwig Kepplinger, Fritz Vogt, and Fritz Witt, all from the SS-V Division.

  The award of the Knight’s Cross to officers and men would become increasingly important as the war went on. For an officer, to have a “tin collar” was the sign of combat success, bringing the wearer the respect of his fellow soldiers and the slavish admiration of the public. When a photographer was present, the Knight’s Cross holder would make sure the medal was prominently on display, while in the civilian world the mere sight of the award would ensure the best seats in a restaurant or free tickets to a theater performance. Otto Weidinger—Knight’s Cross holder in Das Reich—enjoyed the perks the medal afforded him, but on one occasion he became embarrassed by the preferential treatment accorded him: “I found a seat in a fully occupied train and wanted to offer it to a woman and child, who had boarded the train after me, and absolutely refused to accept it. Only after an energetic talking to could I convince her to do so.”18

  In total, 448 officers and enlisted men of the Waffen-SS would be awarded the Knight’s Cross (see Appendix B for awards by division).19 There was some grumbling in the Wehrmacht that the Waffen-SS received more than its fair share of Knight’s Crosses, so that, for example, one naval lieutenant complained that the “SS get their badges not for what they’ve done but for their political and moral attitudes.”20 Yet a detailed examination of the award system saw the Waffen-SS re
ceiving the decoration at broadly the same rate as other ground soldiers in both the army and the Luftwaffe.21

  Some awards of the Knight’s Cross were undoubtedly given for political or other nonmilitary reasons, but insomuch as this was true of the Waffen-SS, it was equally so of other service arms. If there was any marked unfairness in the system, it would have to be directed at the Luftwaffe’s airmen and the Navy’s U-boat commanders, where medals were routinely dispensed for exaggerated figures claimed in enemy aircraft shot down and ships sunk.22

  WHILE THE WAFFEN-SS had proved itself in combat, there was its other, darker, side to consider. The Waffen-SS atrocities in the 1940 campaign were as surprising as they were shocking, committed against Western opponents where it was customary to follow the rules of war as laid out in The Hague and Geneva Conventions. Despite its many and increasingly hollow protestations as to its honor, the Wehrmacht had been fatally compromised by its association with National Socialism. The German Army was increasingly becoming Hitler’s army, with an attendant blurring of moral boundaries. The men of the Waffen-SS, as Hitler’s standard-bearers, were even more compromised.

  This is, of course, not to say that Waffen-SS soldiers were incapable of behaving in an honorable and humane fashion. After the civilian massacres at Aubigny carried out by Totenkopf troops, other men from the division separately came forward to help the victims, providing food and medical assistance.23 Yet at the same time, if Waffen-SS troops committed atrocities, they faced no effective legal sanction. This had proved to be the case in Poland and was also true in the West. Soldiers understandably took their lead from their superiors, and when senior officers such as Eicke made it clear that moral qualms were for the weak, it was hardly surprising that in times of extreme tension their subordinates crossed the line into barbarity.