Despite these criticisms, Berger’s obsession with numbers remained unchecked. The once fixed racial lines were also becoming increasingly blurred, something not lost on bemused Waffen-SS veterans. One of these was Karl Hummelkeier, who had volunteered for the “Germania” Regiment in the 1930s. He recalled how the decline in standards “was one of amazement for us, after all the concepts of racial purity, the true Aryan race and how precious the SS were, the need to be kept pure, and all the rest of it. To see this huge variety of soldier material bearing the SS insignia was rather staggering.”13
At a practical level, Untersturmführer Hans Werner Woltersdorf of Das Reich was exasperated at the low caliber of the Volksdeutsche he was expected to train at Montboyer in France during 1943. Among the recruits was Alfons, assigned as his orderly:
Alfons could neither read nor write, and there were others who hadn’t learned more than to scrawl their names in capital letters. They came from Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania or Poland—“adopted Germans.” They had never learned to march or stand properly, in the scouts or other youth organization, and came to us from the sugar-beet field, the cow stall, or a herd of goats. Some had volunteered, others had not, but none of them had any idea of what was in store for them. In October 1939 twenty per cent of my company of recruits might have consisted of college students, athletes, or at least well-trained scouts with a minimum of average intelligence, but in Montboyer I found a motley crew that made a mockery of any idea of “elite.”14
The Volksdeutsche recruits—many with little interest in Germany or National Socialism—found military life especially hard, forced to undergo the rigorous training methods of the Waffen-SS while constantly ridiculed by their instructors and other Reich-born recruits. In the Nordland and Wiking Divisions they also found themselves scorned by Germanics, who resented their presence in otherwise select military formations. One former Danish farmer claimed the sound of Romanians eating was worse than a “bunch of old seasoned sows.”15
For those Volksdeutsche who had genuinely volunteered for the Waffen-SS, the disparaging comments from those who were supposed to be their comrades was particularly hard to endure. After being insulted by a German officer at his training camp, Fred Umbrich wrote: “We all felt as if the Reichsdeutsche saw us as second-class soldiers who did not measure up to ‘real’ Germans. We all felt bitterly disappointed. We had thought we were joining a good cause; we had thought we were helping Germany and Romania in their fight with the Russians.”16
THE WEHRMACHT’S VICTORIES during 1941–1942 brought a large swath of Muslims under German control in southern Russia and the Balkans. While the German Army recruited extensively from Muslims in southern Russia and the Caucasus region, the Balkans became the preserve of the Waffen-SS. Nazi racial experts had conveniently come to the conclusion that the Croats—and the Bosnian Muslims within Croatia—were not, in fact, South Slavs but were descended from Aryans and thus suitable candidates for inclusion within the wider Germanic community.
During the latter part of 1942, Himmler began to show interest in the idea of inducting Muslims into the Waffen-SS, claiming an affinity with what he considered the inherently martial nature of the Islamic religion. His interest was encouraged by the grand mufti of Jerusalem, an anti-Semitic, anti-British Islamic cleric who had sought refuge in Nazi Germany. Berger welcomed the formation of an entirely Muslim division within the SS, which he also saw as a useful propaganda tool: “Through the creation of the Croatian-Bosnian Division, it is our desire to reach out to Muslims all over the world, who number around 350 million people and are decisive in the struggle with the British Empire.”17
Croatia—which had already lost many of its Volksdeutsche to the Waffen-SS—opposed the creation of a Muslim division recruited from its own subjects, but objections by the Croatian government were ignored by Himmler and Hitler, the latter also showing an interest in a Muslim military commitment. The division was ordered into being on 10 February 1943, with Artur Phleps assisting in its formation. The grand mufti arrived in Bosnia to coax the local Muslims to take up arms against the communist partisans, fraudulently promising them that the SS would act as a protector of Islam.
Several thousand men came forward, although the overall standard was very low, few having any prior military experience. Most were illiterate, and many suffered from diseases and other physical ailments that should have immediately barred them from military service. Others arrived at the recruiting centers in rags, with the promise of new uniforms a major incentive to sign up. Wilhelm Eberling, one of the German recruiting officers, wrote that “some of the men took their newly issued uniforms and sold them on the black market. They would then report in again the next day as if they were new.”18 The recruits had no interest in Himmler’s empire-building program, but joined the division primarily to secure weapons to protect their own communities from the depredations of Serb partisans and Croat paramilitaries. The prospect of regular pay and the opportunity to loot the villages of ethnic opponents were further incentives to accept the SS offer.19
The Muslim division was a major departure for Himmler and Berger, the first time a formation had been raised for service in the Waffen-SS that had no Aryan or German connection. In contrast to the anti-Christian tone set in most of the rest of the SS, care was taken not to offend the religious sensibilities of the recruits, the grand mufti helping organize the supply of imams to act as military “chaplains.” The uniforms issued to them were those of German mountain troops, but instead of caps the men were kitted out with fezzes, gray for field conditions and red for ceremonial occasions.
The new division was rated as a third-category formation and was designated accordingly: the term Waffen was followed by its tactical specialty and the phrase “of the SS” (der SS), then its name and, in brackets, its nationality. Thus, this division raised in Croatia became the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (Croatian). The name Handschar referred to the Bosnian scimitar, which was also used in the formation’s collar insignia.
By the summer of 1943 a little less than 10,000 men had been selected from the volunteers, insufficient for a full-strength division. This shortfall led to the imposition of conscription, so that from 11 July onward the SS took two-thirds of those Muslims who would have otherwise been conscripted into the Croatian armed forces.
The German Reich and Volksdeutsche officers and NCOs engaged in organizing the division were fearful that if training took place in Bosnia, it would be too easy for unhappy recruits to simply slip away to their hometowns and villages. Rather than choose somewhere else in the region, the Handschar recruits were transported to an isolated camp in the French Pyrenees, a cause of disquiet among the men.
As yet, Handschar had no commander, but on 9 August Colonel Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig was appointed to lead the division. The expansion of the Waffen-SS during 1942–1943 was such that there were insufficient SS officers to fill senior and staff positions, forcing Himmler and Jüttner to arrange the transfer of officers from the army. Promoted to Oberführer, Sauberzweig had been severely wounded during World War I (losing an eye), had no knowledge of the Balkans, and spoke no Serbo-Croat. Despite these limitations, he was considered a good organizer, and he seemed to have won the affection of at least some of his subordinates, one imam recalling that “he was a fine man. He treated the young soldiers as if they were his own children.”20
Further batches of recruits arrived during the summer so that by September, the division mustered 20,000 men, although this figure contained a number of Catholic Croats included to make up the numbers. Hidden among these reinforcements were partisan sympathizers, who helped further the sense of discontent felt by the recruits. They also brought news of the massacre of the Muslim Bosnian village of Kosutica, carried out during a counterinsurgency sweep by their supposed comrades in the Prinz Eugen Division. This brought matters to a head, with the secret pro-Tito supporters leading a mutiny on 17 September 1943. The revolt came to little, however, and was soo
n suppressed, but Himmler was sufficiently alarmed at the incident to have the division transferred to Germany to complete its training. In February 1944 the Handschar Division was judged to be combat ready and was dispatched to Croatia to take on Tito’s partisans.
STALIN’S BRUTAL TREATMENT of the Ukrainian people during the 1930s helped create a groundswell of support for the Germans as they drove into Ukraine in 1941. Berger had argued from the start that the Waffen-SS should exploit this support, but Himmler and Hitler rebuffed all Ukrainian offers, not only for racial reasons but also because this would provide an opportunity for the well-organized Ukrainian nationalist movement to press for independence. The Germans preferred to use Ukrainians in paramilitary antipartisan battalions or as forced labor. Despite the Nazis’ vicious overlordship of the Ukraine, many Ukrainians still held hopes of accommodation with Germany in order to free themselves from the Soviet-Russian yoke. And post-Stalingrad, offers of military support became more acceptable to the Nazi hierarchy.
In April 1943 the order was given for the creation of a Ukrainian Waffen-SS division. Himmler overcame his scruples in accepting Slavs into the SS on the basis that the western Ukraine had formerly been the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia and consequently had a German connection; his race experts claimed that roughly half of the people from the former province had a substantial amount of “Germanic blood.”21 This was reflected in the name of the new formation, which after several changes became the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (Galician).
Recruiting centers were established across the western Ukraine, and the response to this call for arms proved remarkably effective, with some 80,000 men registering to join the division by November 1943. The motivations for joining were not pro-German but anti-Soviet. One anonymous volunteer described his reasons: “There were three choices, work in Germany, join the Division, or wait for the Russians and be conscripted into the Soviet Army to fight and die for the hated Stalin and his regime or be sent to Siberia.”22 The numbers seemed impressive but were progressively winnowed down to a far smaller figure: 53,000 were admitted to the Waffen-SS; 25,000 were considered fit for military service, and 13,245 of the volunteers went forward to undergo training.23 Some dropped out during training, but others arrived to provide sufficient men for an infantry division.
The quality of the Ukrainian volunteers was generally considered to be good, and their training was taken seriously. But by the end of 1943 the whole Nazi empire was facing a universal and chronic shortage of almost every important war material, and this became apparent to the Ukrainian recruits who not only lacked suitable weapons and equipment but were often short of such basics as food and uniforms as well.
Although these shortages were eventually overcome, a more fundamental problem remained in the quality and attitude of the German officers and NCOs assigned to the division. As was the case with most of the other foreign SS formations, the instructing staff had little knowledge of the men they were expected to train, with language barriers a continual hindrance. This problem extended to the top with the appointment of Brigadeführer Fritz Freitag as commander. Freitag, promoted from 4th SS Polizei Division, was a difficult, inflexible character who showed little interest in his Ukrainian troops.
Wolf-Dietrich Heike—an army officer seconded to the division as its chief operational officer—got to know Freitag well and in a scrupulously honest assessment of his superior wrote that he “was driven by an almost pathological ambition to succeed, often manifested by excessive discipline towards his subordinates. He was suspicious of most people and made life unpleasant not only for his colleagues but also for himself. He was a theoretician who wanted to command a military unit from behind his desk.”24 These shortcomings would have serious consequences, initially in training but more so when in battle against the Red Army.
In February 1944 a number of Ukrainian units—about 2,000 strong and commanded by Sturmbannführer Friedrich Bayersdorff—were committed to antipartisan operations on the Polish-Ukrainian border. Otherwise, training continued until June, by which time the division was considered operational but with a recommendation that it be assigned to a quiet sector of the front.
STALIN’S ANNEXATION OF the Baltic States in 1939–1940 was followed by systematic repression as the Soviet Union sought to impose communist control over the former Russian-ruled territories. Thus, it was hardly surprising that in the summer of 1941, the advancing German troops should be greeted as liberators by the peoples of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Local elites within the Baltic States were keen to offer their services to the Germans in exchange for the return of their countries’ independence. The Germans, once again, refused to countenance any idea of national self-determination, especially as Himmler had thoughts of annexing the states within his Greater German Reich.
Nazi Germany had a complex and often contradictory attitude toward the three nations. Lithuania—with its former association with Poland—was considered to be racially unsuitable for any close cooperation with the Reich. The Lithuanians, for their part, demonstrated little interest in cooperating with their German conquerors, in contrast to substantial numbers of Latvians and Estonians.
After initial reservations, Himmler decided that the peoples of Latvia and especially Estonia were racially acceptable for limited inclusion in the SS. As a consequence of Nazi determination to thwart any movement toward independence, military cooperation was initially limited to the formation of paramilitary police battalions who rounded up and killed Soviet sympathizers and aided the Germans in counterinsurgency warfare against Red Army partisans. In Latvia, the German arrival also occasioned an orgy of violence against the country’s substantial Jewish population.
The failure to defeat the Soviet Union during 1941–1942 encouraged the Germans to look again at utilizing manpower from the Baltic States. In August 1942 the creation of the Waffen-SS-organized Estonian Legion was formally announced, a brigade-strength organization that first saw action late in 1943 in defensive fighting around Nevel. While the legion was undergoing training, a battalion was raised from the more promising volunteers and dispatched to the Ukraine to reinforce the Wiking Division after the loss of its “Nordland” Regiment. The formation of the Latvian Legion followed, also deployed near Nevel. The puppet regimes in both countries had hoped that this display of military support would encourage the Germans to adopt a more favorable attitude toward independence, but when this was not forthcoming cooperation slumped.
The Germans imposed conscription in Estonia and Latvia during 1943. The idea was to convert the Baltic legions into infantry divisions, albeit with limited supporting arms. The ominous westward advance of the Red Army in early 1944 became an incentive for many Estonians and Latvians to take up arms against the Red Army, Germany being considered the lesser of the two evils. As a result, the Germans were able to field a substantial force from Latvia and Estonia.25
The first of the Baltic divisions was formally created in May 1943: the 15th Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS (Latvian No. 1), comprising three infantry regiments whose cadre was drawn primarily from the old Latvian Legion, with new recruits arriving through the introduction of conscription. The German officers sent to command the division were, in the main, former police officers of inferior quality; they repeatedly clashed with the junior, but more experienced, Latvian officers and NCOs.26
A second Latvian formation—the 19th Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS (Latvian No. 2)—was formed in February 1944. The Latvian troops in this formation were better trained and possessed more military experience than their comrades in the 15th Division. The origins of the 19th Division lay in the old 2nd SS Infantry Brigade. Three Latvian Schuma (police) battalions had been integrated into the brigade in January–February 1943. Himmler was impressed by the conduct of the Latvians, and following the withdrawal of Germanic legion units from the brigade early in 1943, he decided to convert it into an all-Latvian force, incorporating three battalions from the Latvian Legion and redesign
ating it as the 2nd SS Latvian Brigade. The brigade took part in the defense of the Volkhov River sector on the Leningrad front, before its upgrading to the 19th Waffen-Grenadier Division.
The introduction of conscription in Estonia in March 1943 witnessed the expansion of the Estonian Legion, which in turn led to the establishment of the Estonian SS Volunteer Brigade in May 1943. A further general mobilization in February 1944 produced sufficient recruits to create the 20th Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS (Estonian No. 1) under the command of Brigadeführer Franz Augsberger. A veteran SS officer from Das Reich and the Wiking Division, Augsberger had been sent to organize the formation of the Estonian Legion at the end of 1942, and he continued to lead the Estonians at the divisional level. His sense of empathy with his soldiers was appreciated, and his death in action on 19 March 1945 was greatly mourned. As with the other Baltic divisions, the Estonian Division was an infantry-heavy formation with limited fire support.27
HIMMLER’S DESIRE FOR an SS-dominated Pan-Germanic Europe and the need to find extra recruits for the Waffen-SS ran hand in hand for a long time. By mid-1944, however, the rapid expansion of the Waffen-SS—to include national and ethnic groups with little or no affinity to the ideas and prejudices of National Socialism—was beginning to undermine the project. Himmler had been wildly overoptimistic to expect men conscripted from the European periphery to even understand, let alone adopt, his vision; their viewpoints were understandably local in character, reflecting their own ethnic and national interests.
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