Wittmann, Anna M., ed. [Fred Umbrich]. Balkan Nightmare: A Transylvanian Saxon in World War II. New York: Columbia University Press, 2000.
Woltersdorf, Hans Werner. Gods of War: A Memoir of a German Soldier. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1990.
Yerger, Mark C. Knights of Steel: The Structure, Development and Personalities of 2. SS-Panzer-Division “Das Reich.” Vol. 2. Hershey, PA: Michael J. Horetsky, n.d.
. SS-Obersturmführer Otto Weidinger: Knight’s Cross with Oakleaves and Swords, SS Panzer-Grenadier Regiment 4 “Der Führer.” Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military History, 2000.
Zetterling, Niklas, and Anders Frankson. The Korsun Pocket: The Encirclement and Breakout of a German Army in the East, 1944. Havertown, PA: Casemate, 2011.
Ziemke, Earl F. The German Northern Theater of Operations, 1940–1945. Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1959.
ARTICLES, SEPARATE CHAPTERS, THESES, AND DISSERTATIONS
Antoniou, Georgios, et al. “Western and Southern Europe: The Cases of Spain, France, Italy, and Greece.” In The Waffen-SS: A European History, edited by Böhler and Gerwarth.
Binkowski, Rafael, and Klaus Wiegrefe. “The Brown Bluff: How Waffen SS Veterans Exploited Postwar Politics.” Der Spiegel, no. 42 (2011).
Böhler, Jochen, and Robert Gerwarth. “Non-Germans in the Waffen-SS: An Introduction.” In The Waffen-SS: A European History, edited by Böhler and Gerwarth.
Bougarel, Xavier, et al. “Muslim SS Units in the Balkans and the Soviet Union.” In The Waffen-SS: A European History, edited by Böhler and Gerwarth.
Casagrande, Thomas, et al. “The Volksdeutsche: A Case Study from South-Eastern Europe.” In The Waffen-SS: A European History, edited by Böhler and Gerwarth.
Christensen, Claus Bungård, et al. “Germanic Volunteers from Northern Europe.” In The Waffen-SS: A European History, edited by Böhler and Gerwarth.
Förster, Jürgen. “Barbarossa Revisited: Strategy and Ideology in the East.” Jewish Social Studies 50, nos. 1–2 (1988–1992): 21–36.
. “The Wehrmacht and the War of Extermination Against the Soviet Union.” Yad Vashem Studies 14 (1981).
Gelwick, Robert A. “Personnel Policies and Procedures of the Waffen-SS.” PhD diss., University of Nebraska, 1971.
Gutmann, Martin. “Debunking the Myth of the Volunteers: Transnational Volunteers in the Nazi Waffen-SS Officer Corps During the Second World War.” Contemporary European History 22, no. 4 (2013): 585–608.
Hurd, Madeleine, and Steffen Werther. “Waffen-SS Veterans and Their Sites of Memory Today.” In The Waffen-SS: A European History, edited by Böhler and Gerwarth.
Kott, Mathew, et al. “The Baltic States: Auxiliaries and Waffen-SS Soldiers from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.” In The Waffen-SS: A European History, edited by Böhler and Gerwarth.
Large, David Clay. “Reckoning Without the Past: The HIAG of the Waffen-SS and the Politics of Rehabilitation in the Bonn Republic, 1950–1961.” Journal of Modern History 59, no. 1 (1987): 79–113.
Leleu, Jean-Luc. “From the Nazi Party’s Shock Troops to the ‘European’ Mass Army: The Waffen-SS Volunteers.” In War Volunteering in Modern Times: From the French Revolution to the Second World War, edited by Christine G. Krüger and Sonja Levsen. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
. “The SS Division-Totenkopf—Facing the Civilian Population in Northern France in May 1940.” Revue du Nord (Northern Journal ) 4, no. 342 (2001): 821–840. www.cairn.info/revue-du-nord-2001-4-page-821.htm.
Mackenzie, S. P. “The Waffen-SS in the Second World War, 1939–45 Europe’s Übermenschen?” In Revolutionary Armies in the Modern Era: A Revisionist Approach, edited by S. P. Mackenzie. London: Routledge, 1997.
Melson, Charles D. “German Counterinsurgency Revisited.” Journal of Military and Strategic Studies 14, no. 1 (2011): 1–33.
Młynarczyk, Jacek Andrzej, et al. “Eastern Europe: Belarussian Auxiliaries, Ukrainian Waffen-SS Soldiers and the Special Case of the Polish ‘Blue Police.’” In The Waffen-SS: A European History, edited by Böhler and Gerwarth.
Nipe, George M., Jr. “Battle of Kursk: Germany’s Lost Victory in World War II.” World War II (February 1998).
Rempel, Gerhard. “Gottlob Berger and Waffen-SS Recruitment, 1939–1945.” Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 27, no. 1 (1980).
Reynolds, Michael. “Hitler’s Last Offensive: Operation Spring Awakening.” Warfare History Network (October 2016).
Smith, Peter Scharff, Niels Bo Poulsen, and Claus Bundgård Christensen. “The Danish Volunteers in the Waffen SS and German Warfare at the Eastern Front.” Contemporary European History 8, no. 1 (1999): 73–96.
Steinacher, Gerald, et al. “Prosecution and Trajectories After 1945.” In The Waffen-SS: A European History, edited by Böhler and Gerwarth.
Svencs, Edmunds. “The Latvian Legion (1943–45) and Its Role in Latvia’s History.” Master’s thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2013.
Sydnor, Charles W. “The History of the SS Totenkopfdivision and the Postwar Mythology of the Waffen SS.” Central European History 6, no. 4 (1973): 339–362.
Thomas, M. J. “The Waffen SS 1933–45: ‘Soldiers, Just Like the Others’?” Military History Journal (South African Military History Society) 12, no. 5 (2003).
Traşcă, Ottmar. “Andreas Schmidt and the German Ethnic Group in Romania (1940–1944).” Euxeinos 19–20 (2015): 16–19.
Wegner, Bernd. “My Honour Is Loyalty.” In The German Military in the Age of Total War, edited by Wilhelm Deist. Leamington Spa: Berg, 1985.
Werther, Steffen, and Madeleine Hurd. “Go East, Old Man: The Ritual Spaces of SS Veterans’ Memory Work.” Culture Unbound 6 (2014): 327–359.
NOTES
Works listed in the Bibliography are abbreviated in the Notes.
ABBREVIATIONS
IMT: International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg)
IWM: Imperial War Museum
NA: National Archives, United Kingdom
NARA: National Archives and Records Administration, United States
INTRODUCTION
1. For Himmler’s postwar plans for Europe, see Wegner, Waffen-SS, 126–128, 332–336, 343–350; and Wegner, “My Honour Is Loyalty,” 228–231.
2. Wegner, Waffen-SS, 355.
3. For a full account of this deception, see Smelser and Davies, Myth of the Eastern Front.
4. See, for example, Bartov, Hitler’s Army; Neitzel and Welzer, Soldaten; and Wolfram Wette, The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality (Harvard UP, 2006).
5. For further discussion of the Waffen-SS and its postwar “battle for history,” see Chapter 31.
6. Pontolillo, Murderous Elite; Goldsworthy, Valhalla’s Warriors.
CHAPTER 1. FOUNDATION STONES
1. See Longerich, Heinrich Himmler; Padfield, Himmler Reichsführer-SS; and Höhne, Order of the Death’s Head, 29–50.
2. Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, 115.
3. Ibid., 743.
4. Messenger, Hitler’s Gladiator, 19.
5. Höhne, Order of the Death’s Head, 55.
6. Lumsden, Himmler’s Black Order, 142–146.
7. NA, WO 205/1021, Dietrich/1.
8. Nikolaus Wachsmann, KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps (London: Little, Brown, 2015), 54.
9. Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, 235, 236.
10. Krausnick and Broszat, Anatomy of the SS State, 178.
11. For the SS role in the Night of the Long Knives, see Höhne, Order of the Death’s Head, 93–131.
12. Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction, 17.
13. Stein, Waffen SS, 7.
CHAPTER 2. CREATING AN ELITE
1. Hausser, Soldaten wie andere auch, 45.
2. Wegner, Waffen-SS, 20.
3. See, for example, Bartmann, Für Volk and Führer, 10.
4. Wegner, Waffen-SS, 134.
5. Stein, Waffen SS, 13.
6. For details of Bad Tölz, see Hatheway, In Perfect Formation.
7. Williamson, Loyalty Is My
Honour, 34.
8. Ibid., 35–36.
9. Ibid., 36.
10. Volkner, Many Rivers I Crossed, 12.
11. Höhne, Order of the Death’s Head, 446.
12. Hausser, Soldaten wie andere auch.
13. Messenger, Hitler’s Gladiator, 66.
14. Williamson, Loyalty Is My Honour, 46.
15. Ibid., 47.
16. Walther, interview with the author.
17. M. Williams, SS Elite, 241.
18. Weingartner, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, 17–18.
19. Lucas and Cooper, Hitler’s Elite, 27.
20. Padfield, Himmler Reichsführer-SS, 388.
21. Höhne, Order of the Death’s Head, 439.
22. Messenger, Hitler’s Gladiator, 66.
CHAPTER 3. THE MARCH TO WAR
1. Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz, 236, 238.
2. See Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction, 28.
3. Ibid., 29n.
4. Blanford, Hitler’s Second Army, 19.
5. Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction, 26.
6. Wegner, Waffen-SS, Table 6.1, p. 95.
7. Hitler, Nuremberg Doc 467-PS, in Weale, The SS, 221.
8. Stein, Waffen SS, 16.
9. See Wegner, Waffen-SS, 128–129, 340–343; and Hale, Hitler’s Foreign Executioners, 20, 198, 358.
10. Weidinger, Das Reich, 1:40.
11. Ibid., 41.
12. Höhne, Order of the Death’s Head, 451.
13. Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, 249.
14. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 7.
CHAPTER 4. THE DESTRUCTION OF POLAND
1. Blanford, Hitler’s Second Army, 46.
2. Weidinger, Das Reich, 1:122–124.
3. K. Meyer, Grenadiers, 2.
4. XIII Armeekorps report, NARA T314 (roll number 509), accessed from www.axishistory.com/axis-nations/119-germany-waffen-ss/germany-waffen-ss-divisions/1243-1-ss-panzer-division-leibstandarte-ss-adolf-hitler.
5. Weidinger, Das Reich, 1:129.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid, 136.
8. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 105–107. The incident was thoroughly investigated by the German Army and (postwar) by Jewish institutions.
9. Weingartner, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, 34.
10. See Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 154–166; and Messenger, Hitler’s Gladiator, 74.
11. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 159–160 (detailed postwar investigations were unable to discover any provocation to provide justification for the atrocity).
12. Weingartner, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, 33.
13. Lehmann, Die Leibstandarte, 168.
14. K. Meyer, Grenadiers, 6.
15. Weidinger, Das Reich, 1:184–185.
16. Ibid., 217.
17. Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction, 42.
18. Rossino, Hitler Strikes Poland, 109.
19. Lehmann, Die Leibstandarte, 209.
20. Weidinger, Das Reich, 1:240.
CHAPTER 5. DEPLOYMENT IN THE WEST
1. Weidinger, Das Reich, 1:277.
2. Goldsworthy, Valhalla’s Warriors, 18.
3. Weingartner, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, 38.
4. Höhne, Order of the Death’s Head, 453.
5. Ibid., 452.
6. Ibid.
7. Wegner, Waffen-SS, 304.
8. Ibid., 124–125.
9. Blanford, Hitler’s Second Army, 52.
10. Stein, Waffen SS, 34n.
11. See Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction, 48–52.
12. Ullrich, Like a Cliff in the Ocean, 14.
CHAPTER 6. INVADING THE NETHERLANDS
1. Weidinger, Das Reich, 2:19.
2. Lehmann, Die Leibstandarte, 1:229.
3. Hausser in Lucas, Das Reich, 38.
4. Weidinger, Das Reich, 2:44.
5. For a detailed narrative of the Grebbeberg battle, see A. M. A. Goossens, www.waroverholland.com; and Weidinger, Das Reich, 2:24–35.
6. Weidinger, Comrades to the End, 33.
7. Stein, Waffen SS, 65.
8. K. Meyer, Grenadiers, 15.
9. Weidinger, Das Reich, 2:67.
CHAPTER 7. THE ASSAULT ON FRANCE
1. Ullrich, Like a Cliff in the Ocean, 15.
2. Ibid., 18.
3. Leleu, “SS Division Totenkopf.”
4. Ibid.
5. All figures (ibid.) drawn from local town registers.
6. Weidinger, Das Reich, 2:72.
7. Ibid., 79–83. See also Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction, 98–101.
8. Reitlinger, The SS, 148. See also Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction, 98–101.
9. Guderian, Panzer Leader, 117.
10. Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction, 104–105.
11. For details of the massacre, see Cyril Jolly, The Vengeance of Private Pooley (London: Heinemann, 1956). For the problematic nature of battlefield surrender, see Adrian Gilbert, POW: Allied Prisoners in Europe, 1939–1945 (London: John Murray, 2006).
12. Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction, 108.
13. Weidinger, Das Reich, 2:96.
14. Stein, Waffen SS, 78.
15. Guderian, Panzer Leader, 118. See also Messenger, Hitler’s Gladiator, 82–83.
16. Marcus Cunliffe, History of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 1919–1950 (London: William Clowes, 1956), 59–60. See also Leslie Atkin, Massacre on the Road to Dunkirk: Wormhout, 1940 (London: Kimber, 1977).
17. Sayer and Botting, Hitler’s Last General.
CHAPTER 8. FRANCE DEFEATED
1. Weingartner, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, 43.
2. Ullrich, Like a Cliff in the Ocean, 31–32.
3. Ibid., 30.
4. Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction, 112–113.
5. Ibid., 112.
6. K. Meyer, Grenadiers, 24.
7. Stein, Waffen SS, 88.
8. Weidinger, Das Reich, 2:165.
9. Ibid., 174.
10. Ullrich, Like a Cliff in the Ocean, 38.
11. Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction, 117.
12. Ullrich, Like a Cliff in the Ocean, 39.
13. See Rafael Scheck, Hitler’s African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
14. Neitzel and Welzer, Soldaten, 304.
15. Lehmann, Die Leibstandarte, 306.
16. Weidinger, Das Reich, 2:188.
17. Ibid., 201.
18. Yerger, SS-Obersturmführer Otto Weidinger, 52.
19. Wegner, Waffen-SS, 312.
20. Neitzel and Welzer, Soldaten, 283.
21. See Gordon Williamson, Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross: A History (Poole: Blanford, 1987).
22. Neitzel and Welzer, Soldaten, 283–284.
23. Leleu, “SS Division Totenkopf.”
CHAPTER 9. TRANSITION AND EXPANSION
1. Blanford, Hitler’s Second Army, 64.
2. Sydnor, Soldiers of Destruction, 127n.
3. Höhne, Order of the Death’s Head, 467.
4. Weidinger, Das Reich, 2:218.
5. See Pieper, Fegelein’s Horsemen, 2–46.
6. Ibid., 39.
7. Wegner, Waffen-SS, 342.
8. See Christensen et al., “Germanic Volunteers,” 45.
9. Wegner, Waffen-SS, 341.
10. Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, 498–499.
11. Christensen et al., “Germanic Volunteers,” 51.
12. Estes, European Anabasis, 31–35.
13. Ibid., 33.
14. Strassner, European Volunteers, 293.
15. Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries, 12. Hale, Hitler’s Foreign Executioners, 54, suggests a higher figure of 13 million.
16. Höhne, Order of the Death’s Head, 458.
17. Lumans, Himmler’s Auxiliaries, 28.
18. Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, 502.
CHAPTER 10. BALKAN DIVERSION
1. Weidinger, Das Reich, 2:234.
2. Ibid., 236.
3. Ibid., 244.
4. Lehmann, Die Leibst
andarte, 373–374.
5. Quassowski, Twelve Years with Hitler, 127.
6. Ibid.
7. Canadian Military History 11, no. 4 (2002): 3.
8. K. Meyer, Grenadiers, 51.
9. See Messenger, Hitler’s Gladiator, 93–94; and Weingartner, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, 54–55.
10. Messenger, Hitler’s Gladiator, 215.
11. Weingartner, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, 55.
12. K. Meyer, Grenadiers, 60.
13. Ibid., 62.
14. Messenger, Hitler’s Gladiator, 94.
CHAPTER 11. OPERATION BARBAROSSA
1. Blanford, Hitler’s Second Army, 74.
2. From John Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1983), 98.
3. Dear and Foot, Oxford Companion to the Second World War, 434.
4. Erickson, The Road to Stalingrad, 98.
5. For these and ensuing figures, see Koehl, Black Corps, 200; and Stein, Waffen SS, 20.
6. Quassowski, Twelve Years with Hitler, 147.
7. The circumstantial evidence provided by Soviet defector Viktor Suvorov in Icebreaker: Who Started the Second World War (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1990) to support the idea of imminent Soviet invasion can be discounted.
8. IMT 31:84.
9. Goldsworthy, Valhalla’s Warriors, 5.
10. Michael Jones, The Retreat: Hitler’s First Defeat (London: John Murray, 2009), 23.
11. See, for example, Strassner, European Volunteers, 16; and Guderian, Panzer Leader, 152.
12. Förster, “Wehrmacht and the War of Extermination.”
13. Neitzel and Welzer, Soldaten, 5.
14. Höhne, Order of the Death’s Head, 469.
15. Tuff, in the Norwegian NRK TV documentary: Swww.nrk.no/dokumentar/--nordmenn-deltok-i-drap-pa-sivile-1.11262316. See also Richard Rhodes, Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust (London: Vintage, 2003), 63–64.
16. Müller, Unknown Eastern Front, 128.
17. Estes, European Anabasis, 37.
18. Gutmann, “Debunking the Myth of the Volunteers,” 585.
19. Smith, Poulsen, and Christensen, “Danish Volunteers in the Waffen SS,” 92.
20. Estes, European Anabasis, 36–39.
21. Ibid., 44.
22. Blanford, Hitler’s Second Army, 92.
23. Ibid.
24. Felix Steiner, Die Freiwilligen der Waffen-SS: Idee und Opfergang (Oldendorf: Pruess, 1973), 373.
25. See, for instance, Stein, Waffen SS, 139.
Waffen-SS Page 49
