Stalin’s aggressive foreign policy measures—the takeover of eastern Poland, the Baltic States, Bessarabia, and North Bukovina—were essentially defensive in nature, intended to protect the Soviet Union and reestablish its pre-1914 boundaries. The Winter War with Finland in 1939–1940 was designed to provide a buffer zone around the otherwise vulnerable Leningrad. Stalin’s long-term foreign policy plans must remain a matter of debate, but in 1941 he had no intention of invading the West.7
The prime reason for the German invasion was Hitler’s belief that Germany must have Lebensraum (living space) if it were to survive and prosper. The western portion of the Soviet Union would provide Germany with the vast agricultural and mineral resources to make this possible, so that Germany would be virtually self-sufficient in the economic sphere. At the back of Hitler’s mind was the Allied blockade of 1914–1918, which had slowly but remorselessly reduced Germany to the point of starvation. Hitler was determined to avoid any similar outcome. The people of western Russia and Ukraine would be driven off their lands, killed, enslaved, or slowly starved to death. The “Hunger Plan” produced by SS bureaucrat Herbert Backe in May 1941, appropriating Ukrainian foodstuffs for the Wehrmacht, calmly accepted that “tens of millions of people will die of starvation.”8
Traditional animosities between Germans and Slavs were raised to a fever pitch by the Nazis as war approached. For the Aryans to be a superior race, it necessarily meant that others must be inferior, and the Slavs of Eastern Europe were ideally placed for this role. Max Simon, a regimental commander in the Totenkopf Division in 1941, was still in thrall to such views long after the war had ended in Soviet victory. He wrote of the Red Army soldier: “All have in greater or lesser degree the Asiatic characteristics of frugality, cunning, cruelty, hatred of foreigners and indifference to death. The fact that, as Asiatics, they have little or no will of their own, indulging only in mass thinking, but at the same time can face mass death.”9
Extreme racist attitudes permeated much of European society, and in Germany they were held by soldiers in the Wehrmacht as much as the Waffen-SS. Anti-Semitism was conflated with a hatred of Slavs and communism. The hyphenated “Jew-Bolshevik” was a constant of Nazi propaganda, hammering into German minds that somehow the two were indivisible, a Jew was a Bolshevik and a Bolshevik a Jew. Given the Nazis’ belief in the Slavs’ subhuman status and their perceived threat to Germany, it was an easy step to treat them with contempt and brutality. General Erich Hoepner, commander of the Fourth Panzer Group, was far from alone in his views when he gave this order: “The war with Russia is a vital part of the German people’s fight for existence. It is the old fight of German against Slav, the defense of European culture against the Muscovite-Asiatic flood, and the repulse of Jewish Bolshevism. The war must have at its goal the destruction of today’s Russia—and for this reason it must be conducted with unprecedented harshness. Every clash, from conception to execution, must be guided by an iron determination to annihilate the enemy completely and utterly.”10
The Commissar Order, issued by OKW on 6 June 1941, demanded that Soviet political officers were to be summarily shot on capture and that any prisoners thought to be “Bolshevized” should also suffer the same fate. This gave German soldiers great latitude in who should be chosen for battlefield execution. In many postwar Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS accounts,11 much has been made of frontline officers refusing to obey this order, but as German historian Jürgen Förster has revealed, this seldom occurred in practice.12
The war on the Eastern Front was from the start a war of atrocity. Both sides killed and mutilated prisoners, and German forces acted ruthlessly against the civilian population, killing, raping, and plundering as they advanced into the Soviet Union. The mass rapes committed on German women by Red Army troops in 1945 have been well documented, but it should also be remembered that Soviet female citizens suffered at the hands of the invaders, something studiously avoided in German memoirs from the Eastern Front. An idea of the casual nature of sexual assaults on Soviet women can be divined in a covert recording of German prisoners’ conversation in a British POW camp. One prisoner described his time in the Ukraine: “Everywhere we saw women doing compulsory labor service. They were employed on road-making—extraordinarily lovely girls: we drove past, simply pulled them into the armored car, raped them and threw them out again. And did they curse!”13
The savagery of the fighting was not confined to the armed forces, with national and ethnic rivalries exploding into violence among the civilian population. The city of Lemberg (L’viv) in the western Ukraine experienced an orgy of killing during the first two weeks of the invasion. Following news of the German assault, the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (NKVD, Stalin’s secret police) was ordered to kill all 4,000 political prisoners in the city’s crowded jails. As the Germans closed on Lemberg at the end of June, the NKVD fled eastward, with the city briefly coming under right-wing Ukrainian rule. Local Jews were rounded up to remove the bodies from the prisons and prepare them for burial. In the frenzied atmosphere of the period, a Ukrainian mob then fell on the innocent Jews, the first stage in a vicious and bloody pogrom against Jewish communities throughout the western Ukraine.
The arriving German forces also joined in the killings, with the Wiking Division contributing to the bloodshed. According to Heinz Höhne, 600 Jews were killed by Wiking troops in Galicia, the village of Zborov being the center for these massacres.14 The death of Standartenführer Wäckerle, commander of the “Westland” Regiment—apparently shot by a Soviet straggler—was deemed a “justification” for these actions, although other Wiking units joined in the killings. Norwegian Olav Tuff, a volunteer in “Nordland,” broke his silence as an old man to reveal his participation in the atrocities: “The civilian population were driven like cattle into a church. Soon after, soldiers from my unit poured gasoline on the church and somewhere between 200 and 300 people were burned inside. I stood guard, and no one came out. There was a lot of yelling and screaming, and we could hardly believe what we were a part of. But there was little we could do. We had to do what we were ordered.” Tuff subsequently regretted the incident, but with little sense of personal responsibility: “The incident at the church was terrible, but it was still just one of many episodes. I have not felt guilty for it, because we could not do anything.”15 The deadly combination of indigenous rivalries and German racial ideology raised the levels of interethnic violence, not just in the Soviet Union but throughout Europe.
IN FEBRUARY 1941, while planning for the invasion was ongoing, Hitler famously exclaimed to his generals, “When Barbarossa commences, the world will hold its breath and make no comment!” The world of course did neither, but the consequences of Barbarossa spread across the globe, not least to make Britain and the Soviet Union wartime allies. Within Europe, what the Nazis dubbed as the fight against Bolshevism provoked massive interest, especially among the more vociferous right-wing groups in German-occupied countries who clamored to take part in the conflict.
The Germans responded to these requests with alacrity, and on 29 June—just a week after the opening of Barbarossa—Hitler sanctioned the formation of “national legions” to fight in the East. Given the previous experience of the Waffen-SS in recruiting foreign volunteers, it was assumed they would take over the whole operation, but during this period Himmler held strong reservations against including non-Germanics, so the legions were divided along “racial” lines between the army and SS. The army accepted volunteers from France, Croatia, Spain, and French-speaking Belgium (Walloons). The Waffen-SS organized legions from the Netherlands, Flemish-speaking Belgium (Flanders), Denmark, and Norway. The battalion of Finnish volunteers sent to reinforce the Wiking Division remained outside the national legion program.
The strict physical and racial recruiting standards of the Waffen-SS were relaxed for the national legions. As a result, they were not accorded full SS status—as was given to their compatriots in the Wiking Division—but were categorized a
s foreign soldiers in the service of Germany. Although they swore an oath of loyalty to Hitler and were given similar pay and benefits as Waffen-SS soldiers, they were not permitted to wear the SS runes and had, instead, their own national insignia. The recruits were informed that they would be able to speak their own languages and would be led, in the main, by their own NCOs and officers.
Right-wing nationalist parties in occupied Europe were enthusiastic supporters of the legions because they hoped that involvement in the “Crusade against Bolshevism” would raise their own status within Germany’s New Order. Reimond Tollenaere, of the Flemish National Union Party, made this call for volunteers that was typical of right-wing parties within the “Germanic” states: “If we now prove in deed that we are prepared to take on the common European foe—Communism—we shall have our rightful say in building a new Europe. It is a matter of our people. It is a matter of saving Europe. It is a matter of our right to have our say in this era.”16 Tollenaere’s hopes were not, however, shared by those who mattered: neither Hitler or Himmler had any genuine interest in promoting nationalist causes within occupied Europe.
In the first couple of weeks after the start of Barbarossa, there was a surge of volunteers from the Germanic countries, although this subsequently faded, with overall numbers failing to meet the hopes of the fascist parties sponsoring them. The reasons for joining the legions had a more ideological element than in the first phase of Germanic recruitment for the Wiking Division’s “Westland” and “Nordland” Regiments. Olaf Krabbe, a company commander in the Danish Legion, considered the motivations for joining the Waffen-SS among the NCOs in his company and found that around 90 percent had joined up through their right-wing nationalist and anticommunist beliefs.17 A more recent study of the backgrounds of Danish officers serving with the Germans maintains that they were “characterized by a high level of education, intellect and their strong mental character.”18
A virulent strain of anti-Semitism also ran through the national legions, as can been seen in a diary entry of a Danish volunteer after arrival on the Eastern Front: “A Jew in a greasy Kaftan walks up to beg some bread, a couple of comrades get a hold on 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.”19
In Denmark the Danish Nazi Party had contacted a Danish officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Christian Peder Kryssing, who agreed to lead a volunteer force that would be called Freikorps Danmark. The Danish government gave permission for its citizens, including those in the military, to volunteer for service in the Freikorps, which by August 1941 had a battalion strength of just over 1,000 men.20 Kryssing handpicked most of the battalion’s officers, former members of the Danish Army, prior to departure for basic training at the Langenhorn barracks in Hamburg.
Disputes soon arose between Kryssing and the SS staff overseeing the training. Kryssing was an old-school nationalist and resented outside interference in his battalion, while the SS instructors criticized him for not instilling a suitable National Socialist ideology among the men. The arguments continued throughout 1941, until Himmler lost patience and had Kryssing replaced by Hauptsturmführer Christian von Schalburg, a former Danish Army officer who had volunteered for the Wiking Division. A committed Nazi with frontline experience, Schalburg took over the command on 13 February 1942. He increased the tempo of training and integrated ten German officers into the battalion, which in turn led to replacement of Danish with German as the language of command. By May 1942 the battalion was considered ready for frontline service in the East.
In the Netherlands, Anton Mussert, leader of the National Socialist movement, prevailed upon a former chief of staff of the Dutch Army, General Hendrik Seyffardt, to act as a figurehead for the Legion Niederlande. Although some volunteers insisted on serving as part of a home-defense force only, there were sufficient recruits to form a standard three-battalion infantry regiment. The legion, however, relied upon a strong German input, so that out of a total strength of 2,937 men, 700 were German, the latter filling the technical and leadership positions.21 As with the Danish experience, Seyffardt fought against the intrusion of the SS pushing the legion on a National Socialist course, while the ordinary recruits resented the heavy-handed methods of their instructors. Despite these issues, which were never properly resolved, the Netherlands Legion moved up to the Leningrad front at the end of 1941 to engage in behind-the-lines security duties.
In Flemish-speaking Belgium, right-wing nationalist parties had long advocated a split with the French-speaking Walloons in the southern part of the country, with some campaigning for a union with the Netherlands. The German authorities rejected any such idea, which would have flown in the face of their long-term secret plans for the Netherlands and Flanders to become part of a Greater Germany. Accordingly, they opposed associations between the two regions and encouraged the formation of a separate Legion Flandern. Sufficient volunteers came forward to form a motorized infantry battalion with an overall strength of nearly 1,000 men, the Germans providing a leadership cadre. After a hasty period of training, the Flemish Legion was dispatched to the Eastern Front, where it joined the 2nd SS Infantry Brigade in November 1941.
Himmler, with his sentimental attachment to Norway’s Viking past, had high hopes for drawing in modern-day Norse warriors to the German cause. His interest was not reciprocated by many Norwegians, however, although a 1,000-strong infantry battalion was raised to form the Legion Norwegen under the command of Major Jorgen Bakke. Following basic training at a camp near Kiel, the Norwegians were transferred to the Leningrad front in early 1942.
Considerable levels of duress were used to find “volunteers.” Jutte Olafsen, a teacher in a Norwegian school, claimed he faced the threat of deportation to Germany as forced labor: “But they offered an alternative, and this was to join the Legion Norwegen and assist in the anti-Bolshevik crusade, as they called it. I hated communism. So I decided that I would rather join this Legion than go to work in Germany.”22
Olafsen’s choice caused family disagreements. His father refused to speak to him, while his mother waved him off to war in tears: “They felt that while I was possibly following my convictions I was in a real sense a traitor to my own country and would have to pay some price eventually.”23 These conflicting emotions were true of most of the Germanic volunteers; they would indeed pay a price, whether on the battlefield or, if they survived, on their postwar homecoming.
Despite the best efforts of Berger and his recruiting teams, there were never enough volunteers to build an effective Germanic army backed by a working reserve system. After the war, the numbers of volunteers drawn from Germanic nations were inflated by Waffen-SS apologists. In his 1958 book, Die Freiwilligen, Steiner claimed that the Netherlands had supplied approximately 50,000 men, Flanders 20,000, and Denmark and Norway 6,000 each.24 These figures were accepted by a number of historians of the Waffen-SS,25 although more recent research has reduced them to a combined total of around 50,000. The Netherlands was still the largest group, with 23,000–25,000 recruits, followed by 10,000 from Flanders, 6,000 from Denmark, and 5,000 from Norway.26
THE SS NATIONAL legions would face a harsh baptism of fire on the Eastern Front in early 1942, as Stalin’s armies confounded the boasts of Hitler and his generals that the war would be over in a matter of months. The easy victories in the West and the Nazis’ racial contempt for the Soviet people had created a fatal complacency among the German high command.
Stalin’s purges of the Soviet officer corps in the late 1930s and the poor showing of the Red Army during the Winter War against Finland in 1939–1940 indicated fundamental weaknesses within the Soviet armed forces. These included a rigidity in command and control and a recklessness in offensive operations that led to fearful casualties. Yet through poor intelligence and simple hubris, the German planners had failed to take into account the extraordinary resilience of the Red Army. Even if the situation wa
s hopeless, sufficient numbers of Soviet troops would fight on to the end. The “Der Führer” regimental history made this comment on the Red Army soldier a few days after the opening of Barbarossa: “Concerning those first serious battles by the regiment in Russia it must be said that the toughness, stubbornness and skill of the Russian opponent came as a surprise.”27
The German strategy was also undermined by a profound underestimation of the logistical requirements demanded by such a vast undertaking and a failure to comprehend the nature of the terrain its forces would be fighting over. A comprehensive network of all-weather roads was essential for a successful blitzkrieg campaign, and such a network was noticeably absent in the Soviet Union. During the wet seasons in spring and autumn, vehicles simply sank into the mud. Even when the going was good, the Germans lacked sufficient numbers of motorized vehicles for the fast-paced offensive necessary for victory. Given the renowned expertise of the German General Staff—and the fact that many of its senior officers had fought in Russia during World War I—these failings were damning in the extreme.
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