Waffen-SS

by Adrian Gilbert

  During the early hours of 7 August, Das Reich’s “Der Führer” Regiment—led by the APCs of III Battalion—drove toward American lines to the north of Mortain, but almost immediately found its route blocked by armored vehicles from Leibstandarte that were beginning to arrive on the battlefield. As Leibstandarte had priority, “Der Führer” lost vital time and began to close on the enemy defenses only after dawn had broken. The troops of the U.S. 30th Infantry Division had been forewarned of the German attack and put up sufficiently stout resistance that the SS advance ground to a halt around L’Abbaye Blanche, only a few miles beyond the start line.

  The early-morning mist provided the attackers with some cover from the air, but by midday it had cleared, giving the U.S. Air Force and RAF free rein over the battlefield. The APCs and the assault guns that had spearheaded the advance by “Der Führer” came under intense fire. Columns of black smoke from knocked-out vehicles along the road to L’Abbaye Blanche marked the collapse of the attack, the SS troops forced to dig in to hold what little ground they had gained.

  To the south of Mortain, “Deutschland” dispensed with any preliminary bombardment and at 2:30 A.M. launched a silent attack using just infantry without the noise of any motorized vehicles to alert the defenders. The Americans were caught unawares, and the SS units made good progress, capturing Mortain. Supported by the reconnaissance battalion, “Deutschland” gained the high ground to the west of the town by midmorning. But by then the U.S. 30th Infantry Division had recovered and prevented any further German advance, the halt confirmed by the arrival of Allied aircraft over the battlefield.

  The German capture of Mortain had isolated the American defenders of Hill 314, but they repeatedly fended off the attacks made on their position by the 17th SS Kampfgruppe. To the north, the advance of the two army panzer divisions and parts of Leibstandarte had also been halted, so by the end of the day the entire German operation had been brought to a standstill.

  Despite the obvious failure at Mortain, Hitler was determined to maintain the offensive, blaming his generals for a too hasty and inadequately prepared attack. He then ordered a further buildup of forces with the 10th SS Panzer Division withdrawn from its positions around Vire to support a further attack to the south of Mortain. By the time it had arrived at its new position, the Germans were battling against increasingly powerful American forces and were only just holding on to their positions. On 11 August the threat posed by Patton’s Third Army—now driving east toward Alençon—was finally accepted by Hitler. In the evening he gave orders for a (temporary) withdrawal of the divisions around Mortain to check the American advance. The whole offensive had proved a costly failure for the Germans, who now faced the real threat of both Seventh Army and Fifth Panzer Army being trapped within what would be known as the Falaise pocket.

  WHILE THE GERMANS were battering themselves against the American positions around Mortain, Dietrich and Kraemer at I SS Panzer Corps headquarters were attempting to fashion a new defensive line with army units that had replaced Leibstandarte. They were heartened by the arrival of desperately needed armored reinforcement on 7 August: seventy-two tanks with adequate supplies of fuel. But as soon as the vehicles arrived in the SS panzer corps sector, Kraemer was firmly instructed by Kluge that they were to be sent westward to support the Mortain offensive. A downcast Kraemer lamented: “The effect of this order was similar to a cold shower bath. It was evident even to a child that it would be two or three days before the tanks could arrive and that many of these would be incapacitated, even without considering enemy air attacks. It was certain the tanks would arrive there too late, whereas north of Falaise they could prevent an enemy breakthrough—a danger with which corps had reckoned from the very start.”3

  The growing shortage of armored vehicles was one of I SS Panzer Corps’ most pressing problems; the loss of tanks, assault guns, and artillery pieces was undermining its combat effectiveness. On the plus side, the Germans had an excellent record of recovering and repairing broken-down or damaged vehicles, and the SS workshops hidden in the Forest of Cinglais worked without respite to turn around otherwise unserviceable vehicles in a matter or three or four days. Dietrich was so impressed by their endeavors that he took time to visit the workshops and award Iron Crosses to the mechanics.4

  On 8 August Montgomery launched Operation Totalize, a drive due south from Caen to capture Falaise. He had assembled a powerful combination of British, Canadian, and newly arrived Polish troops, supported by two waves of heavy-bomber aircraft. The Allied advance made some early gains, especially against the second-grade German Army formations. At one point Kurt Meyer had to personally rally a group of fleeing soldiers from an infantry unit. But as had happened so often before, there was confusion on the Allied side between the separate arms and a general failure to press any advantage. The situation was made worse in the afternoon when a second bomber wave accidentally attacked Canadian and Polish forward troops. This gave Meyer and his stretched Hitlerjugend an opportunity to mount a successful counterattack that halted the Allies.

  During the German counterattack, Meyer was joined by Wünsche’s armored Kampfgruppe and the Tiger tanks of the 101st Heavy Battalion. Wittmann led five of his Tigers across open ground at full speed toward the Allied positions. It was then that the panzer ace’s luck ran out, his patrol ambushed from the flank by a squadron of Shermans of the Northamptonshire Yeomanry. One of the British tanks was a Firefly variant whose high-velocity 17-pounder main gun was capable of cutting through the Tiger’s armor. In a short, fierce engagement, the concealed Shermans destroyed three Tigers, including Wittmann’s, with the other two German tanks destroyed shortly afterward.5 After Wittmann’s tank was hit, the ammunition and fuel exploded with sufficient force to blast the turret several yards away from the burning hull. Thus ended the meteoric career of Michael Wittmann, the talisman of the Waffen-SS panzer arm who was credited with destroying 138 tanks and 132 antitank guns.

  The Allies continued the offensive on the following day but again failed to make headway, the Germans now able to draw upon the recent arrival of the Luftwaffe’s massed 8.8cm Flak batteries to good effect. On 10 August the offensive petered out, but this was only a temporary pause before a continuation on the fourteenth (Operation Tractable). The combined British-Canadian-Polish force drove the Germans back into Falaise, the scene of a fierce battle that saw the town reduced to rubble. The grenadiers of the Hitlerjugend Division held what was left of Falaise with their customary zeal, the sacrificial defense of the École Supérior earning the praise of their Canadian opponents.

  By 17 August Falaise was finally in Allied hands, but the Hitlerjugend continued its resistance along new positions to the south, its fighting spirit seemingly undiminished. During a counterattack by the division’s armored antitank battalion on 18 August, the unit’s wounded commander, Sturmbannführer Jacob Hanreich, was captured. A British officer described his new prisoner: “His extreme arrogance and offensive attitude almost led to his sudden death a few times. However, he was duly transported to a prison camp without suffering further damage.”6

  The fight put up by the Hitlerjugend Division and the two SS Tiger tank battalions, along with 21st Panzer Division, was vital in allowing the formations originally committed to the Mortain counteroffensive to withdraw from the trap being sprung by the Allies. On 15 August, U.S. troops began to close on Argentan, leaving only a few miles between them and the British pushing southward from Falaise.

  Hausser and Eberbach—only too aware of the gravity of the situation—dispatched mobile units to hold open the gap between Falaise and Argentan. Among these was a rejigged II SS Panzer Corps, now comprising 9th SS Panzer Division Hohenstaufen and 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich (with the remains of the 17th SS Panzergrenadier Kampfgruppe). The two divisions disengaged from the front on 12 August and through a series of night marches passed to the far side of the Falaise gap by the sixteenth, ready to assist the slower-moving formations in making their escape. The 10t
h SS Panzer Division Frundsberg and 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte separately made their withdrawals along the southern flank of the pocket, Leibstandarte engaging with the Americans in a series of inconclusive skirmishes.

  On 17 August Kluge was sacked by Hitler and recalled to Berlin; in the Führer’s paranoid mind was the possibility that the German field marshal was privately negotiating with the Allies. Kluge, innocent of any collusion with the enemy, had, however, been slightly involved with the resistance movement against Hitler, and, fearful of what might come next, he committed suicide while flying back to Germany. He was succeeded by Field Marshal Walter Model, who had become a Hitler favorite for his resolute refusal to give ground to the enemy. Model, however, was quick to see the hopelessness of the situation, and he confirmed Kluge’s original order for a general retreat. Guiding Model’s decision was knowledge of the successful Allied invasion of southern France on 15 August, which made the adoption of any future defensive line within France all but impossible.

  The Hitlerjugend continued its fighting withdrawal in the face of a combined Canadian-Polish advance. On this occasion, the Canadians failed to pursue the Germans with any real vigor. The Poles showed more spirit and on 18–19 August captured the tactically important Hill 262 that overlooked the German evacuation route. Attempts by the Germans—including the Hohenstaufen Division—to retake the hill were repulsed, although the Poles suffered heavy casualties in its defense. On the evening of 19 August units of U.S. and Free French troops met their Polish counterparts, but the encirclement was far from secure; determined attacks could still break through the Allied ring.

  As the Falaise pocket was squeezed on all sides, the German escape routes became increasingly congested, easy prey for the Allied fighter-bombers that attacked without mercy. They were joined by batteries of artillery, who barely needed to aim to hit a target. In the face of this unrelenting bombardment, order began to break down among some infantry units, leaving the men of the panzer and paratroop divisions to set an example. Retreating SS soldiers were disgusted to see growing numbers of soldiers throwing away their weapons and sitting down to await capture.

  Frundsberg and Leibstandarte fought their way through the Allied screen, although in the process Leibstandarte’s commander, Theodor Wisch, was badly wounded and captured by the Allies on 20 August. Another casualty was the Seventh Army commander, Paul Hausser. While marching with his troops, he was hit in the head by shell splinters; after some basic first aid, he was successfully driven out of the pocket to a field hospital. Senior Waffen-SS officers did their best to rally all troops around them, although Meyer refused to have anything to do with any soldier without his rifle. Meyer and a mixed group of soldiers slipped out of the pocket on the twentieth, but his old comrade Max Wünsche was less fortunate: wounded in the leg, he hid to avoid capture but was apprehended by an Allied patrol on 24 August.

  In the early hours of the twentieth, II SS Panzer Corps was ordered to open a gap in the Allied encircling ring. Due to fuel shortages, Hohenstaufen’s attack failed, but the two regimental Kampfgruppen of Das Reich (subsequently joined by Hohenstaufen’s reconnaissance battalion) were more effective. The two understrength battalions of “Der Führer”—each with six tanks in support—broke through the Allied line. During the assault, Hauptsturmführer Werner, leading III Battalion, observed a group of Sherman tanks from the Polish 1st Armored Division broadside on and firing into the pocket, oblivious to the arrival of the SS APCs. Werner brought up a nearby Panther tank, which then knocked out at least five of the Shermans to open an escape route for the streams of Germans still marching eastward.7

  The “Deutschland” Kampfgruppe also managed to pierce the Allied defenses to allow more Germans to break out of the Allied trap. By the afternoon of 21 August, only a few stragglers were emerging from the pocket, allowing the soldiers of Das Reich to withdraw and join the general German retreat toward the River Seine.

  The battle for Normandy—once longed for by Hitler as a chance to destroy the Allied armies on European soil—had turned out to be a disaster for the Wehrmacht. Not only had the Western Allies gained a foothold on continental Europe, but they were in the processing of liberating all of France as well.

  German casualties in Normandy were heavy—approximately 240,000 men killed and wounded and 200,000 taken prisoner—but in the confusion of the escape from Falaise, they appeared even higher. A report sent to Army Group B on 22 August listing panzer-division casualties gave the impression of especially grievous Waffen-SS losses, with, for example, Hitlerjugend down to 300 men.8 This was not the case, however. According to the meticulous records kept by the Hitlerjugend’s chief operational officer, the division suffered around 8,000 casualties from the start of the invasion to 22 August, leaving in place a force (albeit scattered) of around 12,500 men.9 Leibstandarte, according to its divisional history, sustained around 5,000 casualties in Normandy.10 Casualties figures for the Hohenstaufen and Frundsberg Divisions were not tabulated, but in the immediate aftermath of the Falaise battle they could each muster around 6,000 soldiers.11

  The SS divisions’ greatest losses came in armored fighting vehicles and artillery, most lost in the Falaise pocket. As an example, the Hohenstaufen and Frundsberg Divisions came out of the pocket with no tanks at all, each reliant on the half dozen or so panzers undergoing repair in workshops outside the pocket.

  As the Germans retreated eastward, the River Seine became a difficult obstacle, with so many of its bridges already destroyed by Allied aircraft. But a series of rearguard battles successfully held up the Allied pursuit, while combat engineers repaired damaged bridges and operated ad hoc ferries to get the German ground forces over the river. The Waffen-SS formations passed over the Seine around Rouen. Many of the few vehicles they still possessed were abandoned in the crossings that went on until the end of August.

  The Waffen-SS continued its withdrawal through northern France and Belgium, fighting occasional skirmishes to keep the Allies at bay. The 9th and 10th SS Panzer Divisions of II SS Panzer Corps were directed into the Netherlands to reform and refit, arriving at bases around Arnhem on 7 September. The other divisions retired through Belgium to safety behind the Westwall in Germany.

  During their retreat the Germans were repeatedly ambushed by groups from the French and, especially, the Belgian Resistance. The Hitlerjugend Kampfgruppe led by Erich Olboeter was attacked on 1 September. Olboeter had both legs blown off by a mine and died shortly afterward. The leader of Kampfgruppe Waldmüller, Hans Waldmüller, was killed a short while later. Kurt Meyer was captured by the Belgian Resistance on 7 September and after narrowly escaping execution was handed over to the British. It was an ignominious end to the career of one of the legendary figures of the Waffen-SS; he would subsequently be charged by the Canadians for war crimes committed in Normandy.

  The Waffen-SS panzer divisions that fought in the Normandy campaign experienced mixed fortunes. They had been designed for aggressive offensive action, but success in this role had been denied them by superior Allied firepower. This did not stop them from trying, and they suffered heavy casualties for little gain. Forced onto the defensive, the Waffen-SS qualities of tenacity against all odds came to the fore. Time and again they repulsed Allied attacks, despite being outnumbered and outgunned on most occasions. They were unable to prevent the Allied advance from the beachheads in Normandy, but they certainly impeded its progress, and, later in the campaign, helped thousands of German soldiers escape from the Falaise pocket. The ferocity of the fighting in Normandy was at times comparable to that of the Eastern Front. Of the six SS divisional commanders who entered the battle, five were either killed or incapacitated by their wounds; only Heinz Harmel of the Frundsberg Division escaped unscathed.

  BY EARLY SEPTEMBER 1944 the Allied offensive had lost momentum, as lengthening supply lines from Normandy produced logistical shortages for the matériel-hungry Allied armies. Meanwhile, the Wehrmacht had largely recovered from its disasters in the West,
establishing a new defensive position on the Westwall along the German border. The Allied drive came to a standstill, despite repeated and costly American efforts to break through in the Hürtgen Forest.

  As a means of resolving the impasse, Montgomery proposed an imaginative but risk-laden plan to outflank the German defenses with a mass airborne assault into the Netherlands. The airborne troops were to seize the many river crossings in the area, culminating in the capture of the strategically important bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem. At the same time, a ground offensive would be launched on a narrow front to drive northward into the Netherlands and link up with the airborne units.

  The U.S. 101st Airborne Division would occupy the area around Eindhoven, while, deeper into the Netherlands, the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division would secure Nijmegen and the bridge over the River Waal. Farthest north, the British 1st Airborne Division would land to the west of Arnhem and then secure the Rhine bridge. The British would be reinforced shortly afterward by the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade. Once in place, the airborne forces would await the arrival of the British XXX Corps. Montgomery’s plan was eventually accepted by Eisenhower, the launch of Operation Market Garden set for 17 September.

  The Netherlands had become a vast assembly area for German troops ejected from France and Belgium. They included units from the army, Waffen-SS, paratroops, regular Luftwaffe, and even the German Navy. As well as the two reforming divisions of Bittrich’s II SS Panzer Corps, there were other Waffen-SS units based around Arnhem: Hauptsturmführer Krafft’s Depot and Reserve Battalion, troops from an SS NCO training school under Standartenführer Lippert, and a third-rate “Watch” battalion primarily made up of Dutch National Socialists.