Waffen-SS

by Adrian Gilbert

  For much of the war, Yugoslavia had been a “closed arena,” with the Axis forces solely engaged in their war against the partisans. This began to change in mid-1944 with the Anglo-American advance through Italy, exposing Yugoslavia’s coast to Allied intervention. But it was the Soviet invasion of Romania in late August 1944 that transformed the strategic situation. What was left of the Romanian Army collapsed, and on 23 August—following a coup—the country suddenly changed sides and allied itself to the Soviet Union. Bulgaria followed suit on 8 September. The German position in the Balkans was on the verge of disaster. Their forces in Greece were in danger of being cut off, as the Red Army drove through Romania unopposed, in preparation for a direct assault on Hungary and German-held Yugoslavia.

  For the Romanian Volksdeutsche, who formed a large proportion of Prinz Eugen’s rank and file, the news that their towns and settlements had been overrun by the Red Army was deeply unsettling and did little for morale, although Oberführer Kumm and his officers ensured the division’s continuing viability as a military force. This was in contrast to the Handschar Division, which was already beginning to collapse in the summer of 1944; desertions rose from 200 in April–June to 2,000 in the first three weeks of September. In October preparations were made to disarm the division, although a few thousand Muslim soldiers chose to join a Kampfgruppe sent north to defend Hungary.17

  IN 1943 4TH SS Polizei Division had been withdrawn from the Eastern Front to be reorganized as a panzergrenadier division. It was then sent to Greece to act as part of the occupation force. Most of Greece had come under Italian control, but following the Italian surrender in September 1943 there was an immediate demand for German troops to disarm the Italians and maintain order throughout the country.

  The resistance movements in Greece never operated on the same scale as those in Yugoslavia. Much of the military action in Greece directed against the Germans—as opposed to conflict between rival resistance organizations—was sponsored and organized by British special forces and by teams from the American Office of Strategic Services. For every act of resistance, the Germans would enact reprisals. John Mulgan, a New Zealander engaged in British Special Operations Executive activities, witnessed a typical German reprisal action around Kastania in October 1943: “They burned several villages in that area, all those that could be reached easily and without too much trouble, carrying petrol and incendiary grenades. They were very smart, SS troops for the most part and quite young, and very efficient, not only in fighting—for which they had no immediate call—but also in reprisals and incendiarism. During the next month of November and into December it seemed to me that villages were burning all over Greece.”18

  The Polizei Division’s time in Greece was distinguished by its atrocities, two of which were acknowledged as such by the German military authorities and consequently gained a wider notoriety. On 5 May 1944 soldiers of 7th Panzergrenadier Regiment entered the town of Klissoura, following a nearby ambush by partisans that had led to the deaths of two SS men. The villagers were rounded up and 215 were shot, including 128 women and 50 children under the age of ten.19 Little more than a month later, a company of soldiers from the same regiment, under the command of Hauptsturmführer Lauterbach, ran amok in the Distomo area on 10 June. Apart from looting and rapes, 296 civilians were killed before the soldiers moved on.20 In September 1944 the Germans began their retreat northward into Macedonia and Yugoslavia, the SS troops once more leaving behind a string of burning villages as part of their legacy of occupation.21

  THE MILITARY SITUATION in Italy after the Italian surrender in September 1943 was especially perplexing for the Germans. They faced a conventional war with the Western Allies in southern Italy, while at the same time operating alongside fascist Italians in a counterinsurgency war against Italian partisans, amid a population that resented their presence and longed for the war to be over. These contradictions were faced by the 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division Reichsführer-SS, simultaneously fighting the Allies in the long retreat up the Italian peninsula while engaging Italian partisans and enacting reprisals on the civilian population.

  The origins of the division dated back to 1941 and the formation of the Escort (Begleit) Battalion of the Reichsführer-SS, Himmler’s personal lifeguard. The battalion was upgraded to an assault brigade in 1943, the expansion taking place in Corsica, where it was involved in fighting against Italian troops in the immediate aftermath of the Italian surrender. The brigade was evacuated from the island in October, to be upgraded as a full panzergrenadier division. Initially, the division was spread between Livorno in Italy and Ljubljana in Slovenia, its recruits drawn from existing Waffen-SS units and Romanian and Hungarian Volksdeutsche. Max Simon, the former Totenkopf commander, was sent to lead the new division.

  The Allied landings at Anzio on 22 January 1944 called for an immediate response from all German units in the vicinity. Although it was still undergoing training, a Kampfgruppe from the Reichsführer-SS Division was dispatched from Livorno to confront the seaborne invaders. The Germans were able to contain the Allied beachhead around Anzio for several months, and the Reichsführer Kampfgruppe took part in what became a grim attritional struggle, until transferred back to its parent division in April. By this time the Reichsführer-SS Division had been sent to Hungary in support of Operation Margaretha, the German occupation of the country that had taken place in March to prevent it from breaking away from the Axis and negotiating a separate peace with the Soviet Union.

  The division returned to Italy at the end of May and took up positions opposite the U.S. Fifth Army. During heavy fighting on 17 June the forward headquarters of the Reichsführer-SS was overrun by troops from the U.S. 34th Division, although elsewhere the SS troops were able to hold their positions. In early August the division was pulled out of the line for rest and refitting. From then on it was primarily engaged in antipartisan warfare, countering the growing strength of the Italian partisans.

  Obersturmbannführer Walter Reder, commander of the Reichsführer-SS reconnaissance battalion, was tasked with destroying the troublesome communist Red Star Brigade, operating in the Apennine Mountains south of Bologna. Reder was a Waffen-SS soldier to the core, a former Totenkopf officer who had fought on the Eastern Front from Barbarossa onward. Wounded on numerous occasions, he lost an arm during the fight for Kharkov in March 1943, for which he was awarded the Knight’s Cross.

  Reder despised the Italians and set about destroying the partisan threat with a vengeance. Civilian massacres inevitably followed, at Sant’Anna di Stazzema on 12 August and then at San Terenzo Monti on the nineteenth. The operation culminated in a major action against the Red Star Brigade around Monte Sole, beginning on 29 September.

  The Germans surrounded the partisan position and in a well-executed five-day operation, they closed the net, killing partisans and civilians alike. The final action took place around the scattered commune of Marzabotto, the terrified villagers hoping for sanctuary in the local churches but killed without mercy. Initial reports from the locality claimed a death toll of 1,835 people, although later estimates suggested a lower figure of around 770; Reder totted up a figure of 728 “bandits” killed in his after-action report.22 Nonetheless, the operation was a military success for Reder’s men, with partisan activities in the area greatly reduced thereafter. During the fall of 1944 the Reichsführer-SS Division withdrew into reserve, in preparation for a transfer to Hungary in January 1945.

  IN ITS COUNTERINSURGENCY warfare strategies, Germany experienced mixed fortunes. Himmler was well prepared for antipartisan operations, although he failed to anticipate the growing power of Soviet-organized insurgency on the Eastern Front and, especially, the effectiveness of Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia. The partisans tied down large numbers of Axis formations—including those from the Waffen-SS—which could have been better employed in conventional operations against the Allies. Nonetheless, Himmler’s troops had a number of successes, not only against such obviously soft targets as Jewish c
ivilian communities but also against more serious military opponents, as was the case in the suppressions of the 1944 uprisings in Warsaw and Slovakia.

  In counterinsurgency warfare, Himmler had the advantage of being able to call upon powerful forces from the Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht when required. He also had the advantage of not being bound by the ethical factors that typically constrained other nations’ actions. Indeed, the use of terror to intimidate opponents was a deliberate Nazi policy and was often highly successful. Yet, despite the intensity and violence of antipartisan operations, they would have only limited influence on the overall course of the war, which, in the end, would be decided by the conventional clash of arms on the battlefield.

  Part Four

  WAR IN THE WEST

  Make peace you Fools!

  —FIELD MARSHAL VON RUNDSTEDT, ON BEING ASKED BY OKW FOR HIS RESPONSE TO THE NORMANDY LANDINGS

  Chapter 25

  BATTLE FOR THE BEACHHEAD

  BY THE SPRING of 1944 the German high command was aware that an invasion of France was imminent. The more perceptive officers also knew that the Allied amphibious landings must be defeated on the beaches without delay; if they failed in this, then the campaign would almost certainly be lost. Substantial German forces had already been deployed in the West and would subsequently include five Waffen-SS panzer divisions. But what was not clear to the Wehrmacht was exactly where or when the invasion would take place.

  The 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend and the army’s 21st Panzer Division were deployed close to what would become the actual invasion site in Normandy. On the night of 5–6 June, increased aerial activity along the coast suggested to Brigadeführer Fritz Witt, the Hitlerjugend’s commander, that this might be the beginning of the assault. Witt, with a reputation for a cool head in a crisis, calmly woke his chief of staff at 1:30 A.M. and instructed him to prepare the division for action.

  Witt’s hunch was confirmed when reports began to filter in that enemy paratroopers had landed along the coast north of the city of Caen. Yet there was no official reaction to news of the invasion, largely a consequence of the cumbersome, overlapping command structure established by Hitler in France. Field Marshal Rundstedt was nominally in charge of all forces in France and Belgium but was repeatedly overruled by Hitler and OKW. Command of Army Group B—responsible for northern France—was assigned to Field Marshal Rommel, while the vital armored formations were part of a separate panzer group under General Geyr von Schweppenburg. There was little agreement between the various senior commanders of how best to repel any Allied invasion. Overall, the German reaction to the D-Day landings was sluggish and poorly coordinated.

  Only at first light on the sixth was Witt’s division ordered to move toward Caen. Formed in June 1943, the Hitlerjugend Division had been organized and trained by officers and NCOs from Leibstandarte SS “Adolf Hitler,” and together the two formations—along with a heavy artillery battery and a battalion of Tiger tanks—made up Sepp Dietrich’s I SS Panzer Corps. As a leader of men in battle, Dietrich had few equals, but his military ability at a higher level was dismissed by army and Waffen-SS colleagues alike. The complexities of leading an army corps seemed beyond him, but the German system of command, dating back to the Franco-Prussian War, had taken this into account: every senior commander was given a highly trained staff officer, with the knowledge and authority to actively direct operations where necessary. In Dietrich’s case his “coequal” was former army colonel Fritz Kraemer. They worked well together, Dietrich providing the public face and heart of the team, Kraemer the behind-the-scenes brains.

  The Hitlerjugend Division drew its rank and file from members of the Hitler Youth born in 1926.1 Some of the recruits had been “persuaded” to join, but the majority had come forward of their own free will, the thrill of being part of a military elite a sufficient inducement to sign up for the division. Observers were impressed by their enthusiasm. They included Fritz Kraemer: “Again and again it was gratifying and surprising to see the zeal and ardor with which these young men endeavored to attain the skill of soldiers.”2

  Military instruction began as the recruits arrived at the division’s main training ground at Beverloo in Belgium. The emphasis at Beverloo was on improving physical fitness (many recruits were considered undernourished) and providing realistic battlefield training. The instructing staff from Leibstandarte, with recent frontline experience, were of the highest quality, and the transformation of the recruits from boys into soldiers went smoothly. Witt, who was well known for his acts of kindness to the men under his command, insisted that the instructing staff adopt a fatherly approach to training. When satisfied with the progress of the recruits’ transformation from boys into “young men who know the military craft,” he had their candy ration replaced by tobacco and alcohol.3

  There was no lack of recruits. In fact, by May 1944 the division was sufficiently overstrength for 2,000 NCOs and enlisted men to be transferred to Leibstandarte when it began refitting in Flanders after its ordeal in the Ukraine. The only Hitlerjugend manpower shortages were evidenced in a demand for specialist and technical officers. They were supplied by the transfer of fifty Wehrmacht officers, who kept their uniforms and ranks but otherwise were an integral part of the SS division. The most serious problem facing the division was a shortage of vehicles, fuel, and ammunition, although by the spring of 1944 these material shortcomings were slowly being rectified.

  The senior officers of the new division were hardened Leibstandarte veterans. The 25th Panzergrenadier Regiment was commanded by the inspirational Standartenführer Kurt Meyer. Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Mohnke was assigned to lead the 26th Regiment. He had been severely wounded during the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, effectively losing the use of a foot, and the continuing pain he suffered seemed to have exacerbated his already difficult, tempestuous personality. The Hitlerjugend’s 12th SS Panzer Regiment—comprising a battalion of Mark IVs and a battalion of Panther Mark Vs—was commanded by Obersturmbannführer Max Wünsche. Fair-haired, blue-eyed, and a former leader of the Führer’s personal bodyguard, Wünsche was a pinup boy for Goebbels’s propagandists. An enthusiastic Nazi, he was also a first-rate tank commander.

  As the Allied invasion got under way on 6 June, Leibstandarte was still in the process of completing its refitting and was not available for immediate commitment to action. As a result, Dietrich was summoned from his Brussels HQ by Field Marshal Rundstedt to lead a new, if temporary, corps command, comprising Hitlerjugend, 21st Panzer Division, and the powerful Panzer Lehr Division.

  IN THE DAYS preceding the invasion, Witt had prepared the best routes for his troops to get to potential landing sites close by Caen, but his plans were stymied by orders to travel through the notorious bottleneck at Lisieux. The division’s advance almost immediately slowed to a crawl. In an attempt to remedy the situation, Witt dispatched a Kampfgruppe commanded by Meyer to race ahead of the division. In addition to the three motorized battalions of his panzergrenadier regiment, Meyer’s force included tank and artillery units, plus the heavily armed reconnaissance battalion, commanded by the tough, thuggish Sturmbannführer Gerd Bremer.

  Witt ordered Kampfgruppe Meyer to take up position alongside the 21st Panzer Division, now battling Anglo-Canadian troops marching inland from the beaches. The poorly routed advance through Lisieux and attacks by Allied fighter-bombers delayed Meyer, who arrived in Caen only at nightfall, with the remainder of his Kampfgruppe rolling in during the early hours of 7 June. Meyer tracked down the commander of the 21st Panzer Division, Lieutenant General Feuchtinger, who recalled the SS officer’s belief in a swift victory: “I explained the situation to Meyer and warned him of the strength of the enemy. Meyer studied the map, turned to me with a confidant air and said, ‘Little fish! We’ll throw them back into the sea in the morning.’”4

  As he was leaving his meeting with Feuchtinger, Meyer received a telephone call from Witt, ordering him to secure Caen and the nearby airfield at Carpiquet. He was
also instructed to liaise closely with the 21st Panzer Division to ensure a coordinated attack by both formations at midday on the seventh. By this time, it was believed, the remainder of the Hitlerjugend Division would be close at hand.

  In the event, the various units of the Hitlerjugend were slow in arriving, forcing Meyer to maintain a defensive posture with the troops under his direct command, the attack postponed to the late afternoon. He established his headquarters in the Ardenne Abbey, a couple of miles northwest of Caen, its towers providing a clear northward view of the open landscape to the coast. Meyer was joined by his old comrade Max Wünsche.

  Meyer surveyed the battlefield through his binoculars, and at around 2:00 P.M. on the seventh he spotted Canadian tanks advancing between the villages of Buron and Authie—directly across the front of his carefully hidden troops. He telephoned his frontline officers to hold their fire. At the last moment, as the tanks were virtually over his men, he gave the order to attack: “There was a report of guns and muzzle flashes. The lead enemy tank was ablaze, and I watched the crew bailing out. More tanks were torn to pieces with loud explosions. Canadian infantry tried to reach Authie and continue the battle there, but it was in vain. The enemy had been struck deep in his flank at that point. We took Franqueville and Authie through energetic offensive action. St Contest and Buron had to follow. The enemy forces seemed to be totally surprised.”5 Meyer raced out of the abbey and leaped on his motorcycle to personally direct the operation at close quarters. The Hitlerjugend had sprung an almost perfect ambush, yet as the SS troops advanced, they came under heavy fire from concealed antitank guns. German panzers were repeatedly hit, and casualties mounted.