For the assault on Berlin, the Red Army had massed a substantial portion of the 40,000 artillery pieces assigned to the 16 April offensive; the sheer weight of the bombardment was without parallel, most of the city reduced to rubble. In addition to the barrage of shells falling on them, the defenders repelled constant tank and infantry attacks, thrown into the battle without regard to loss of life.
While the Volkssturm faded away at this onslaught, the Waffen-SS veterans were impressed at the bravery and skill of the Hitler Youth boys. Testimony came from Hans-Göta Pehrsson, a Swedish volunteer in Nordland, on the fighting of 27 April: “What made the greatest impression on me were the 12–14 year-olds, the Hitlerjugend boy volunteers who crept through house ruins looking to destroy Soviet armor with their Panzerfausts. I still can’t understand how certain commanders sat in their bunkers and drank while they sent out these small children to fight in Berlin.”15 Fellow Nordland soldier Erik Wallin also praised the boys’ “boundless contempt for death.” But they, and all the other defenders, were unable to match the power of the Red Army, as Wallin recalled while holding an abandoned house:
Then they put in the heavy artillery. It sang and thundered all around and the blast waves threw us, half conscious, to and fro between the walls. The defenders who were killed by collapsing walls, ceilings and iron girders numbered more than those who got a direct hit. It became unendurable to stay in this inferno. Whirling stone, scrap iron and bloody body parts made the air impossible to breathe, filled as it was with limestone dust and gunpowder gasses. All day we fought our way back in this way. Surrounded over and over again, we struggled on through narrow passages and back streets. We always got through but with steadily growing losses.16
As the Red Army advanced on the Reich Chancellery, just over 300 French troops from the Charlemagne Division joined with what was left of Nordland’s “Norge” and “Danmark” regiments, both at subbattalion strength. While many German troops began to surrender or discard their weapons and uniforms and slip into the civilian crowd, the foreign SS units fought on.
After Hitler’s death, negotiations with the Red Army were initiated for the surrender of Berlin. On 2 May the German garrison commander, General Weidling, accepted the Soviet demand for unconditional surrender and ordered all German troops in the city to lay down their arms. During the night of 1–2 May a breakout attempt had been attempted. Only one group managed to escape Berlin, and most of these were subsequently killed or captured by Soviet troops already encircling the city; the remainder surrendered to the Red Army.
DURING THE FIRST week of May, German theater commanders, realizing the futility of further struggle and released from their oath to Hitler (if not his successor), began to capitulate. On 2 May German forces in Italy and the western parts of Austria surrendered to the British, although fighting continued against partisans and Soviet troops as German rearguard units held open escape routes for those fleeing through Hungary and northern Yugoslavia. The 13th, 14th, 16th, 24th, and 29th SS Divisions were able to surrender to the British, but 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen was less fortunate, overrun by Tito’s partisan army as it struggled northward toward safety.17
In northern and central Germany, Waffen-SS troops trekked westward to the Anglo-American stop line on the River Elbe. At some river crossings, the western Allies refused to accept the escaping Germans, but such was their desperation that most forced their way over the river or drowned in the attempt. Those unable to reach the Elbe were rounded up by the Red Army. On 4 May German forces in northwest Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands surrendered to Montgomery. Two days later Dönitz authorized General Jodl to travel to Eisenhower’s headquarters at Reims, and at 2:41 A.M. on 7 May he signed the document for the unconditional surrender of all German forces to the Allies. General Keitel signed a further surrender document in Berlin in the presence of Marshal Zhukov. All hostilities were to end at 11:01 P.M. on 8 May.
Dietrich’s Sixth SS Panzer Army in southern Germany and Austria conducted a fighting retreat westward to surrender to the advancing Americans. The elite but much-reduced SS panzer divisions had defended Vienna between 6 and 13 April, but to avoid entrapment and further destruction to the city, Dietrich ordered them to continue the retreat.
On 30 April the U.S. and Soviet commanders in Austria decided that the demarcation line between their two armies would be the River Enns and that German units would surrender to the side they had most recently been fighting.18 The SS divisions—still engaged in delaying actions against the Red Army—were desperate to avoid capture by the Soviets. They negotiated with the Americans for permission to cross the Enns until midnight on 8–9 May for capitulation to the U.S. Army.
Stadler’s Hohenstaufen Division had the good fortune to be deployed opposite the U.S. 71st Infantry Division. The two formations had fought each other during the Battle of the Bulge, and the American division’s commanding officer had briefly been captured by troops from Hohenstaufen. He remembered the good medical treatment he had received from his SS captors and consequently welcomed Stadler and his men. Similarly, the Wiking Division had an unimpeded transfer into captivity, driving through U.S. forward lines on 8 May.
Not all units reached the Enns before the deadline, and some found the U.S. troops holding the crossings less than cooperative. One soldier from Leibstandarte described how his unit—the 1st Panzergrenadier Regiment—arrived at the river twelve hours late and was refused permission to cross. The regiment’s commander, Standartenführer Max Hansen, had to use the threat of physical force to pass over the bridge: “With the help of several combat-ready panzers in the column we crossed the Enns without a fight. During the evening, after the vehicles could go no further, we set them on fire. We continued marching to the west and into captivity.”19
The Totenkopf Division suffered most, the entire division failing to reach the demarcation line in time. On 9 May Brigadeführer Becker, Totenkopf ’s commander, was summoned to a local Soviet headquarters to be given the details of the surrender terms. Realizing that the division was about to be taken over by the Red Army, he sent covert orders for the entire division to immediately drive west and break through the thinly held American forward screen. Once across the demarcation line, most SS troops joined other Germans in a large U.S.-organized encampment some 20,000–25,000 strong. According to German accounts, they were left without food for three days before being ordered to march to a new camp, which turned out to be behind Soviet lines.20 Thus, despite their best efforts to the contrary, the men of Totenkopf were now in Soviet captivity.
In the final weeks of the war, Das Reich was divided into separate groups. Those troops sent to the Dresden area were captured by the Red Army, although the bulk of the division in Austria managed to successfully cross over to American captivity. Otto Weidinger’s “Der Führer” Regiment had been ordered to Prague to hold the city against an uprising by Czech insurgents. As Weidinger closed on the Czech capital, he changed his mission to help German civilians escape from the insurgents and soon-to-arrive Red Army. He successfully led his troops and the civilians to Pilsen (Plzen), then held by the Americans.21
THE WAR WAS over, and the Waffen-SS had paid a high price for its place at Hitler’s vanguard. Although the Waffen-SS suffered heavy losses, so too did the German Army; in overall terms their casualty rates were broadly similar, with fatalities for both standing at a little more than 30 percent. Precise casualty figures are hard to ascertain, the SS having a poor record in keeping and publishing accurate statistics. In broad terms, the Waffen-SS reached a peak strength of just under 600,000 men in midsummer 1944,22 although more than 900,000 men passed through its ranks. Of that number, 310,000 were killed or died of their wounds.23
For all survivors, unconditional surrender was a bitter pill to swallow. When still on the front line—no matter how hopeless the situation—their energies were focused on the fighting itself. Once it had stopped, they faced the stark realization that they were prisoners and not s
oldiers anymore, forced to consider a future over which they would have little or no control. The men of the Waffen-SS, for so long the victors, were now the vanquished. Totenkopf antiaircraft gunner Werner Volksdorf, captured by the Americans in Munich while training recruits in gunnery duties, spoke for many after the surrender: “It had not really sunk in yet that the war was over for us, and that we were now a defeated army, a defeated country, a country occupied by foreign forces. Over five years of fighting and the struggle in the cause we believed in. This was a demoralizing end after so much suffering and blood sacrifice, with the sad memory of comrades and friends whom we had buried in foreign soil. We just didn’t know what had hit us.”24
Chapter 31
AFTERMATH
WHEN HIMMLER HEARD that Dönitz had been made head of state, he tamely accepted Hitler’s decision, although he put himself forward as a second in command to the new leader in the belief that he would have some negotiating sway with the Allies. Dönitz, however, rejected Himmler’s offer. When Himmler persisted, Dönitz sent him a letter of dismissal on 6 May. Now that he had been formally removed from all positions of power, first by Hitler and then by Dönitz, Himmler was forced back on his own resources. He had four choices: to be killed fighting to the last (an order issued to all SS soldiers in such a position), suicide, surrender, or escape. Himmler—without much forethought—chose the last option. As part of a small group of SS men, he took the identity of a sergeant in the field-security police and marched southward, hoping to be lost within the vast streams of soldiers, civilians, and refugees crisscrossing Germany.
Himmler was stopped at a checkpoint on 21 May, and because of his security-police uniform he was detained for further questioning. While under interrogation he suddenly admitted he was Heinrich Himmler, and after this bombshell he was immediately rushed to the main British camp at Lunenburg. On 23 May, while undergoing a medical examination that included an oral inspection, he turned his head away from the examining doctor and bit on a hidden potassium cyanide pill. Although the British interrogators did their utmost to prevent the pill from taking effect, Himmler was pronounced dead within fifteen minutes.
Three days later the former Reichsführer-SS was buried by a British officer and three NCOs in an unmarked grave on Lunenburg Heath.1 Himmler’s unheroic demise at least minimized the possibility that any remaining followers might rally around his memory. In fact, almost all those who had previously been part of the SS were only too keen to distance themselves from their former chief.
While Himmler had departed the scene, the men of the Waffen-SS faced a new life as prisoners of the Allies. Those captured by the Red Army feared the worse, well aware that retribution for the excesses of Nazi Germany over the previous four years must follow. Some Red Army soldiers killed Waffen-SS prisoners without compunction; the SS blood-group tattoo on their left armpit made the veterans vulnerable to close inspection. Most, however, were marched away to camps within the Soviet Union.
During the middle part of the war on the Eastern Front—when victory or defeat seemed to hang in the balance—the Soviet authorities displayed no interest in the welfare of their German prisoners, the majority dying of disease, starvation, overwork, and the cold. Later in the war, conditions in the camps began to improve, especially when German prisoners—eventually amounting to nearly 3 million men—became a useful source of labor. In 1946 the Soviet Union began a phased release of German prisoners, initially to the newly created Soviet-controlled East Germany. By 1949 the majority of prisoners had been freed to both Germanies, although those considered war criminals—including many in the Waffen-SS—had to wait until 1956 for repatriation.
In Yugoslavia, now under Tito’s communist administration, people who had supported the Germans experienced varying degrees of retribution. According to the divisional history of the Prinz Eugen Division,2 its soldiers captured by Tito’s partisans were badly treated, and throughout the country there was the inevitable settling of scores among different ethnic groups. Tito realized, however, that if he was to unite the country under his rule, he would have to tread carefully, especially as so many of his citizens had in some way supported the Axis cause. While those accused of specific war crimes against the Yugoslav people were subject to the full rigor of the courts, a general amnesty was extended to the mass of followers who included most ordinary soldiers from the Waffen-SS divisions raised within Yugoslavia. In Tito’s view, these people had been merely “seduced” by the Axis and could be exonerated through their participation in a new communist Yugoslavia.3
The Axis troops who had surrendered to the British in Italy and Austria faced very different fates. The Cossacks raised by the German Army in the Soviet Union—which in some cases included their families—had been sent to Yugoslavia to destroy Tito’s partisans and in February 1945 had been transferred to the SS, to become the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps. In line with an agreement reached between the Allies at the 1945 Yalta Conference, all foreign nationals were to be repatriated to their country of origin. Stalin was determined to punish those who had in any way been involved with the Germans, while the British and American governments were fearful that their former POWs under Soviet control might not be released. As a result, thousands of the Cossack fighters—along with their women and children—were forcibly repatriated by British troops, sometimes at gunpoint. Once in Soviet hands, the leaders were killed and the remainder sent to slave labor camps in Siberia.
The Ukrainian troops of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS were more fortunate. Thanks to lobbying by the Vatican, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and the Polish II Army Corps (then in Italy), they were nationally reclassified and not returned to the Soviet Ukraine. Briefly kept in an internment camp in Italy, some 9,000 former SS soldiers were allowed to travel to Britain,4 where some settled, although a greater number continued on to North America to join its well-established Ukrainian communities.
The Volksdeutsche in Eastern Europe and the Balkans suffered grievously at the hands of their new masters. Stalin had decided that all able-bodied Volksdeutsche were liable to perform labor service in the Soviet Union. The Banat region in Yugoslavia was swept of its ethnic Germans, Tito handing over as many as 100,000 people to Stalin.5 Soviet-controlled Hungary and Romania also witnessed large-scale forced transfers of Volksdeutsche, often from communities that had been established since the Middle Ages. Other Volksdeutsche had, however, managed to follow the withdrawing German armies, to begin new lives in West Germany. In communist Poland there was a vast forced exodus of both Reich Germans and Volksdeutsche to Germany.
Foreign volunteers recruited from western and northern Europe were now reduced to the status of traitorous collaborators in their home countries. Popular anger was chiefly directed at the men who had worked closely with the Nazi national administrations. Death sentences were passed on the most visible—such as Quisling from Norway and Laval in France—while the remainder received substantial prison sentences. The former Waffen-SS soldiers fell into the latter category, although most were released after a few years. Some men decided not to face the music and remained in Germany.6
The millions of Wehrmacht troops captured by the Western powers in Germany were held in hastily erected POW camps. Conditions were poor at the beginning—with inadequate shelter and limited food supplies—and former Waffen-SS soldiers complained bitterly of their treatment, which included widespread theft of watches and insignia by souvenir-hungry guards.7 The conditions endured by the Waffen-SS were, however, no worse than those experienced by captive Americans in 1944 and the British in 1940.8
Late in 1945 the first German prisoners were allowed to leave the camps, with further releases continuing over the next eighteen months. Germans captured earlier in the war and imprisoned in Britain and the United States were held on to for longer, even though in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions. For the other ranks, their value as labor for the Allies was too useful to give up easily, and for officers, espec
ially the hard-liners in the Waffen-SS, U-boat arm, and paratroop formations, there was a worry that they might form a pro-Nazi resistance when back in Germany. But by the late 1940s most German prisoners, including Waffen-SS, had been released. As a result of the devastated condition of postwar Germany and the good treatment afforded them by the Western Allies, small numbers of ex-Waffen-SS soldiers joined others from the Wehrmacht to permanently settle in Britain and the United States.9
THE ALLIES WERE determined to hold the Nazi regime accountable for its actions during the war, and at the International Military Tribunal held at Nuremberg surviving Nazi leaders were put on trial. One of the judgments made at Nuremberg was the ruling that the SS—including the Waffen-SS—was a criminal organization. The ruling infuriated Waffen-SS veterans, who protested that they had been unfairly singled out by the tribunal. There was some truth in their argument, but only to the extent that the entire Nazi regime was essentially a criminal enterprise, and on that basis all of its institutions should also have been similarly condemned (although, of course, such a decision would have been quite impractical). Following on from the indictments of the leading Nazis were a series of trials of men accused of specific war crimes. These included former members of the Waffen-SS, their trials concentrating on massacres of British and American troops and of civilians in France, Belgium, and Italy.
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