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Chapter 4. From Blitzkrieg to Berlin: The Waffen-SS at War, 1939-1945

The military record of the Waffen-SS was and remains second to none; from the invasion of Poland in 1939, through the invasions of the Balkans and the Soviet Union, and right up to the last-ditch defence of Hitler's bunker in Berlin, the Waffen-SS were at the forefront as Hitler's "fire-fighters". Between 1939 and 1945, the Waffen-SS was transformed, eventually becoming to all intents and purposes a part of the Army. In the words of Colonel-General Heinz Guderian,

"...the longer the war went on, ...the less distinguishable they became from the Army".^[1]

Indeed, it could be argued that the Waffen-SS by 1945, with its varied components and multinational flavour, was "possibly the largest international army ever to fight under one flag".^[2]

September 1939 to June 1941: The Invasion of Poland, the Western Offensive and the Campaign in the Balkans

For the invasion of the Poland, the designation "Waffen-SS" had not yet become official; spearheading the attack were men of the Leibstandarte and the SS-VT Standarte "Deutschland"; the second SS-VT Standarte, "Germania", played a supporting role, while "Der Führer", at that point not fully operational, was consigned to duties on the West Wall. During the campaign, the SS Standarten suffered heavy casualties; while the Army blamed this on what they argued was poor leadership on the part of the SS, there is also the argument that the SS formations were assigned the most hazardous tasks by the Army commanders who were in charge. This encouraged Himmler to step up demands for the formation of SS divisions entirely under the command of SS officers. Hitler approved this move, but, as a result of also wishing to keep the Army hierarchy happy, decreed that they were to be divided among the larger armies, and that they were to operate under the operational command of the OKH.^[3]

On 2 March 1940, the title "Waffen-SS" became official, and, in the pause before the onset of the western offensive, the Leibstandarte was brought up to the strength of a reinforced regiment. The SS-VT was reformed into a full division, the SS-Verfüngsdivision, or SS-V, under the command of Paul Hausser. The lightning offensive in the west was to establish the fighting reputation of the Waffen-SS; they played a major role in spearheading the attack, and were especially effective in the low countries, with the Leibstandarte and the regiment "Der Führer" of the SS-V covering one hundred kilometres on the morning of 10 May in order to pave the way for the following Wehrmacht divisions. Not only this, they were faced with the fact that the retreating Dutch army had destroyed the bridges; the innovation employed by Leibstandarte Obersturmführer Hugo Kraas in overcoming these overwhelming odds was to win him the first Iron Cross First Class of the campaign.^[4] Within five days, the Dutch were overwhelmed. The next stage of the campaign saw action for the other SS-V regiments, and, for the French campaign, the Totenkopfstandarten were taken out of reserve. During the French campaign there were to be two incidents that would later stain the reputation of the Waffen-SS, the atrocities at Le Paradis and Wormhout. After driving the British into the Dunkirk pocket, the SS formations were withdrawn in readiness for assault on Paris. Once more, the Waffen-SS were at the forefront of the attack; by 10 June, Paris had become an open city.

The victorious campaign in the West had not only cemented the fighting reputation of the Waffen-SS, but had also opened new avenues with regard to recruitment. The low countries in particular were to provide potential Waffen-SS material, and a new regiment, "Westland", a formation of Dutch and Belgian volunteers, was created. There was also another similar regiment, "Nordland", which was the first non-German Waffen-SS formation, was formed from Norwegian and Danish volunteers. The period between the defeat of France and the Balkan campaign in April 1941 was to bring about a lot of change for the Waffen-SS. SS-V Standarte "Germania" was detached from the SS-V, and combined with the two foreign formations "Westland" and "Nordland", to form a new Germanic division, originally entitled "Germania" but later to be redesignated as the 5th SS Division "Wiking". To make up for the loss of Germania, the SS-V was assigned a Totenkopfstandarte and was renamed "Reich", (later "Das Reich"). There were also the divisions "Nord" and "Polizei", and two cavalry regiments which were to form the nucleus of what was to later become the 8th SS Kavallerie Division, "Florian Geyer".

The Waffen-SS divisions that featured heavily in the Balkan Campaign were "Reich" and the Leibstandarte were at the forefront in Yugoslavia and Greece respectively. Yugoslavia was subdued in a matter of days, with Belgrade falling on 13 April, a week after the beginning of the attack. While the bulk of the Panzer Army was left north of Belgrade separated by the Danube, a "Reich" assault detachment under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Klingenberg, who was to win the coveted Knight's Cross or Ritterkreuz,^[5] in the words of Paul Hausser,

"...got hold of a motor boat and, after a hazardous journey, managed to enter Belgrade and force the mayor to hand over the city".^[6]

The Greek campaign that was to follow was far tougher, however; both the terrain and the tenacious Greek Army provided more resistance to Leibstandarte than "Reich" had faced in Yugoslavia. The forcing of the Klidi and Klissura passes by troops under the command of the legendary SS-Sturmbannführer Kurt Meyer was an excellent achievement by any standards; what happened at Klissura especially was to go down in Waffen-SS folklore, and was to illustrate both the unorthodox style and fanatical bravery of the Waffen-SS:

"We glue ourselves behind rocks and dare not move. A feeling of nausea tightens my throat. I yell to [Untersturmführer] Emil Wawrzinek to get the attack moving. But the good Emil just looks at me as if he has doubts about my sanity. Machine-gun fire smacks against the rocks in front of us... How can I get Wawrzinek to take that first leap? In my distress, I feel the smooth roundness of an egg hand grenade in my hand. I shout at the group. Everybody looks thunderstruck at me as I brandish the hand grenade, pull the pin, and roll it precisely behind the last man. Never again did I witness such a concerted leap forward as at that second. As if bitten by tarantulas, we dive around the rock spur and into a fresh crater. the spell is broken. The hand grenade had cured our lameness. We grin at each other, and head forward toward the next cover".^[7]

Due to Meyer's unorthodox tactics, the pass, and 1000 prisoners, were taken at cost of only six men killed and nine wounded; the taking of the town of Kastoria and another 11,000 prisoners the next day surely completed in twenty-four hours what was one of the most magnificent fighting displays of the war, and won Meyer the coveted Ritterkreuz. It was during the Greek campaign where the Waffen-SS was to display a chivalry that stood out against the general atmosphere of the Second World War; the admiration felt by the men of the Leibstandarte toward the Greeks (the feeling was mutual, as was the contempt of the inept, even cowardly, Italians) was to result in "Sepp" Dietrich authorising a surrender which allowed the Greek soldiers to go home and the officers to carry side arms. Nevertheless, the vacillating Mussolini took offence at this, and in the end Hitler, in wishing to placate his ally, arranged for the stiffening of the terms of the surrender. The role of the Leibstandarte at the end of the Greek campaign was effectively one of protecting the retreating Greek Army from the vengeful Italians.^[8]

On 27 April 1941, a mere three weeks after the invasion of Yugoslavia had begun, the troops of the Leibstandarte marched proudly through the city of Athens. Less than two months later, the Waffen-SS was to find itself in the thick of the action again, and at the forefront of the greatest land invasion the world has ever known - Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. It was during this bitter campaign where the stories of legend were to be made, and here also where the chivalry of the kind that was shown in Greece was to be prove to be something of a rare commodity in what was to prove to be a vicious conflict of political ideologies. Operation Barbarossa was eventually to lead to not only some of Waffen-SS' most famous campaigns but also to its, and Nazi Germany's, eventual destruction.

June 1941 to May 1945: from Glory to Götterdämmerung

The start of the Soviet campaign, Operation Barbarossa, launched on 22 June 1941; the Waffen-SS divisions were to play a major role in this. "Totenkopf" were based with Army Group North, their sights set on Leningrad; both the Leibstandarte and the 5th Waffen-SS Division "Wiking" - composed of a mixture of Germans and Scandinavian volunteers - were involved in the march as part of Army Group South towards the Crimea, and "Reich" were part of Army Group Centre, assigned the task of capturing Smolensk and then Moscow. The Blitzkreig tactic, so successful in the West, brought the advancing German columns stunning success in the initial phases of the invasion; by the winter of 1941-42, Leibstandarte had worked its way down through Taganrog to Rostov-on-Don, on the Black Sea coast; by now, the Waffen-SS divisions, which had previously been scorned by the Army, were in some quarters given high praise:

"Committed at the focus of the battle for the seizure of the key enemy position at Archangelsk, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler, with incomparable dash, took the city and the heights to the south. In the spirit of the most devoted brotherhood of arms, they intervened in the arduous struggle... and routed the enemy, destroying numerous tanks".^[9]

The 5th SS Division "Wiking", which had continually proved its worth on the field of battle, had also won praise from a somewhat surprising source. Russian Major-General Artemenko, after being captured, said that Soviet forces had 'breathed a sigh of relief' when "Wiking" was withdrawn for rest and refitting, and that it had shown a 'greater fortitude' than any formation on either side.^[10] By this stage also, the 2nd Waffen-SS Division "Reich" (formed through the merger of the three initial SS-VT Standarten and by now given the name "Das Reich") were less than ten kilometres from Moscow, within sight of the glittering Kremlin domes. This was, however, going to be the furthest the Germans would get; the early months of 1942 was to see the first major Russian counter-attack; Blitzkrieg warfare had failed, despite the efforts of the highly skilled German armies; the sheer vastness of the territory that they had to cover was one of the key factors. From here on in, the men of the Waffen-SS were to distinguish themselves in the futile attempt to delay the inevitable; their skilfulness in victory had been one thing, but their tenacity and strength of will in defence, however, was to bring out their true fighting character.

The German lines somehow held during the winter of 1941-42; Hitler's next gamble was the attempted seizure of the Caucasian oilfields; the offensive began well enough; one of the deepest penetrations was made by "Wiking", which had reached the Caucasus mountains. Stalingrad was reached by September; it was here where the German war machine was to see the first stage of a cataclysmic period that was to end in the streets of Berlin less than three years later. During 1942, the premier Waffen-SS divisions, Leibstandarte, "Das Reich", "Totenkopf" and "Wiking", were all reassigned for rest and refitting as full Panzer divisions, and another division, the 7th SS Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen", was formed from Volksdeutsche,^[11] particularly from Rumania and Yugoslavia.

The beginning of 1943 was to see the creation of I SS Panzer Corps, under the command of Paul Hausser, comprising of three of the four revamped Panzer Divisions, Leibstandarte, "Totenkopf" and "Das Reich", much to the chagrin of many in the Army High Command. The counter-offensive at Khar'kov was to put the Generals in their place, however; in one of the most famous operations of the war, over six hundred Russian tanks were destroyed:^[12]

"For the first time a substantial body of Waffen SS troops had fought together and the result had been a resounding victory. To Hitler, who was increasingly disillusioned by repeated Army failures and what he saw as a defeatist attitude among his generals, it was a godsend".^[13]

1943 was to see the creation of three new all-German Panzer divisions, the 9th, "Hohenstaufen", the 10th, "Frundsberg", and the 12th, "Hitlerjugend" which had been formed from members of the Hitler Youth. Led by the dashing former Leibstandarte officer Brigadeführer Fritz Witt, the HJ was to prove to be one of the most steadfast of the German formations during the harsh struggles. New non-German division were also formed, including the 13th Mountain Division, "Handschar", formed from Bosnian Muslims, and the 14th Ukrainian division. All three of the German divisions were to distinguish themselves in the field, and "Hohenstaufen" and "Frundsberg" were to be led by two of the most chivalrous officers amongst the Waffen-SS ranks, Willi Bittrich and Heinz Harmel, whom Gerald Reitlinger described as being in appearance much like an "athletic curate".^[14] While Bittrich was of the pre-war Reichswehr clan, Harmel and Witt were epitomes of the "SS generals of legend, starry-eyed, youthful and fanatical",^[15] who were to play a leading role in the final stages of the war.

Summer that year was to see what was the biggest tank battle of the war, at Kursk; the strategic value of the town led to a massive build-up on both sides. The sheer size of the newly fitted Soviet divisions, complete with the excellent T-34s, was to overwhelm the stricken Germans, and, from that point on, the Red Army was to advance with speed towards Germany. By December, despite solid resistance, particularly from "Hohenstaufen", "Frundsberg" and "Wiking" (the latter being reduced to 4,000 men in escaping from the Kamanets-Podolsk pocket), the Soviets had reached Polish frontier.

The Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944; Leibstandarte and "Das Reich", already present in France for rest and refitting, along with "Hitlerjugend" and the 17th SS Panzergrenadierdivision "Götz von Berlichingen" under Werner Ostendorff, were hastily rejoined by "Hohenstaufen" and "Frundsberg" to face the Allied onslaught. "Totenkopf", and what was left of "Wiking", were left back in the East. The battle-hardened Waffen-SS veterans of the Ostfront war were to now prove themselves in the west; Montgomery's plan to break out near Caen, codenamed Goodwood, was to be foiled almost single-handedly by Obersturmführer Michael Wittmann of the Leibstandarte. In a display of courage, skill and a touch of maverick madness, Wittmann and his Tiger I crew knocked out four Cromwell tanks and clinically destroyed an entire British column - consisting of more than twenty-five armoured vehicles - in and around the town of Villers-Bocage. Wittmann was killed in August 1944 after taking on five Shermans; his phenomenal record of 138 tanks and 132 anti-tank guns^[16] destroyed may never be surpassed.

However, even heroics such as those exemplified by Wittmann and the harsh fanatical nihilism epitomised by the youngsters of the "Hitlerjugend" could not halt the Allied advance; soon Paris was liberated. The speed of the advance had brought problems for the Allies, however; this led to Montgomery's ill-fated operation, Market-Garden, the aim being to force an early crossing of the Rhine by capturing key bridgeheads. The airborne troops had the misfortune to land straight into the fire in the form of divisions "Hohenstaufen" and "Frundsberg", which were previously enjoying a rest period at Arnhem. Despite the crushing blow suffered by the Allies in Holland, the supplies eventually caught up with the frontline formations; the combination of Allied strength and Hitler's suicidal orders were to result in the unnecessary destruction of the Waffen-SS divisions, who, in the words of General Eisenhower, were "fighting to annihilation", while the "ordinary German infantry gave themselves up in increasing numbers".^[17] By the winter of 1944, the Waffen-SS formations had been so badly decimated that they were carried on the official OKW roster as Kampfgruppen (Battle Groups) rather than divisions".^[18]

These Kampfgruppen were to play a key role in Hitler's final gamble, the Ardennes offensive, in December 1944. After initial success of the Sixth Panzer Army, led by "Sepp" Dietrich, mainly due to the fact that the bad weather that had grounded the Allied fighter-bombers, the offensive began to grind to a halt. It was during this campaign, at Malmédy, where the most infamous atrocity took place, seventy-one US troops being shot by members of an ex-Leibstandarte Kampfgruppe under the command of Sturmbannführer Joachim "Jochen" Peiper. The failure in the Ardennes and the fact that the Red Army was rapidly closing in on Berlin was to lead to the Waffen-SS formations being transferred for the last time.

On 12 January 1945, the final Soviet advance began. Hitler, having already sacrificed what remained of "Totenkopf" and "Wiking" to relieve beleaguered IX SS Corps, consisting of "Florian Geyer" and the 22nd Division "Maria Theresa", sent in what remained of the Sixth Panzer Army. Not knowing that this plan was underway, the IX SS Corps attempted to break out of Budapest themselves, and as a result on 785 of the original 50,000 survived.^[19] By March, even the Waffen-SS were in retreat. Hitler, in one of his lasts acts of insanity, when finding out that Dietrich had openly disobeyed one of his suicidal orders, demanded that the men of the VI Panzer Army, including the Leibstandarte, remove their cuff titles; the sickened Dietrich was reported to have responded to this by displaying the order to his men, saying "There's your reward for all you've done these past five years", and then by sending all his medals, complete with a severed arm of a dead comrade, to his ungrateful Führer in a chamber pot.^[20] The eventual failure of the XI Panzer Army under Oberstgruppenführer Felix Steiner was to raise the curtain for the final battle, on the streets of Berlin. Although many of their officers, as well as Heinrich Himmler himself, had lost heart, the rank-and-file of the Waffen-SS formations fought to their last drop of blood right to the very last:

"General Vasili Chuikov, commander of the Russian Eighth Guards Army, has recalled the tenacity with which [Wilhelm] Mohnke's battle group defended the approaches to the Chancellery".^[21]

After Hitler's suicide on 30 April and the eventual surrender of the German armed forces on 7 May, the remaining Waffen-SS forces themselves surrendered. But they refused to be humiliated:

"...unlike the many cowed and dispirited Army troops who shuffled dejectedly off to the prisoner-of-war cages, the SS men retained a measure of their arrogance and defiance even in defeat".^[22]

And so ended the life of the Waffen-SS, the army of the damned; damned by their enemies, by many of their comrades-in-arms, and even by the own Führer. And damned by history.

Notes

1. Stein, p.294
2. ibid., p.287
3. ibid., p.29
4. Quarrie (1983), p.94
5. Ritterkreuz - Knight's Cross [of the Iron Cross], award instituted on 1 September 1939, necessitated when the Pour le Mérite ceased to be awarded. The Knight's Cross awards system developed as the war went on; additions to the Knight's Cross were the (i) the Oakleaves; (ii) the Swords; and (iii) the Diamonds. The highest award ever issued, and the only one, was that of the Gold Oakleaves and Swords with Diamonds, awarded to Stuka ace Hans-Ulrich Rudel.
6. Paul Hausser, Waffen SS im Einsatz, cited in Quarrie, p.98
7. Kurt Meyer, Grenadiere, cited in Stein, p.117
8. Weingartner, p.55
9. Report by Lt.-Gen. Kempf, cited in Weingartner, p.60
10. Quarrie, p.101
11. Volksdeutsche - Ethnic Germans
12. Quarrie, p.102
13. Gilbert, p.56
14. Reitlinger, p.86
15. ibid.
16. Williamson, p.89
17. Stein, p.225
18. ibid., p.226
19. Quarrie, p.106
20. Gilbert, p.178
21. Weingartner, p.138
22. Stein, pp.248-249

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