II
In this year terrible portents appeared over Northumbria, and miserably frightened the inhabitants: these were exceptional flashes of lightning, and fiery dragons were seen flying in the air. A great famine soon followed these signs; and a little after that in the same year in January the harrying of the heathen Northmen miserably destroyed God’s church in Lindisfarne by rapine and slaughter.
The Vikings raid on Lindisfarne in AD 793 – The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
On 18 December 1940 Adolf Hitler issued the following directive for Number 21 Case Barbarossa, named after the medieval German Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa: ‘The German Armed Forces must be prepared, even before the conclusion of the war against England, to crush Soviet Russia in a rapid campaign … Preparations will be concluded by 15 May 1941.’
With that pronouncement the wheels were set in motion for what would become the biggest ever conflict between two enemies – the Russo-German war of 1941-1945. In its scale and scope it would come to dwarf every struggle before or since, its savagery would plumb the depths of infamy, its human cost almost defy belief and its aftermath would shape the history of the world for more than half a century after it ended. It would also define the armed SS. For the remainder of its short life the vast part of its combat strength would be deployed in the East, only one of its final 38 divisions never served there. Ideologically it became a totem against Soviet Communism, and increasingly it drew its manpower from the Soviet Union as well. Come the end in 1945, no less than six Waffen-SS divisions were manned for the most part by Slavic easterners and thousands more were officially and unofficially serving in the other divisions as so-called ‘Willing Helpers’ (Hilfswillige – Hiwis for short).
A very rare photograph of the SS-Nordland grenadier Sverri Djurhuus, one of the only positively identified volunteers from the remote Scandinavian Faroe Islands. (James Macleod)
The SS-Wiking prepares for battle
From its inauguration in late December 1940, the SS-Wiking had just six months to prepare for the invasion of Soviet Russia. With Steiner’s appointment, the command structure and divisional elements began to come into being. The SS-Germania was, of course, a veteran unit and the new SS Artillery Regiment 5 was being assembled quickly (initially almost totally German-manned, the composition would change in the future as Scandinavians joined this highly technical arm). But it was the formation and training of the two new infantry regiments – SS-Nordland and SS-Westland – that was proving problematic. With Scandinavian volunteers in particular coming in their hundreds rather than the thousands, it became necessary to draft in large numbers of native Germans to bring the infantry companies up to strength. This was less than ideal but meant by early June, on the very eve of Barbarossa, the SS-Wiking stood at an impressive total of 19,377 men; however, less than 10 per cent of that complement were ‘Germanics’. Of the 1,564 foreign volunteers only 932 were Nordics; 421 Finns, 294 Norwegians, 216 Danes and 1 Swede (this was the Winter War veteran Gösta Borg who was serving in the Westland). The rest were mainly Dutchmen, with a small number of Flemings and Swiss. Overwhelmingly, the Scandinavians were pooled in the infantry companies under German NCOs and officers, very few were either in technical arms or command positions. The largest Nordic contingent was then Finnish, and – as you would expect – their story was different from everyone else’s.
Finns in the Wiking
Nazi Germany had not supported Finland in the Winter War, but as Hitler moved inexorably towards conflict with Stalin’s Soviet Union, both countries instinctively drew closer together against a common enemy. The Finns were never going to be a particularly powerful ally though, given their still-small army and lack of modern military equipment. They had also lost a large number of their best troops in the fighting in 1939–1940. Those that were left were experienced, highly skilled soldiers, but they were few. Nevertheless, the Nordland was opened up to Finnish volunteers on 13 February 1941 and the first 116, all combat veterans, arrived in Germany in the second week of May and were sent straight to the Wiking. A further three hundred or so arrived in the next couple of months, so that by June there were seven officers and 200 men in the Nordland, five officers and 76 men in the Westland, nine officers in the Germania, and the remainder of the contingent was spread around the rest of the division.
The Germans were so pleased with them that they planned to recruit as many as possible, preferably another whole battalion. The Finnish Government, informed in late January of the impending invasion of the Soviet Union, made two stipulations about Germany’s recruiting ambitions; firstly that ethnic Swedes (who comprised about 15 per cent of the total Finnish population) should not predominate in the unit, and secondly that the new intake had to be organised into a separate battalion within the division with Finnish officers and NCOs using their native language to command. German liaison was welcome but in effect this was to be a national Finnish unit, which was why Helsinki was keen for ethnic Finns to form the bulk of recruits. Berger, desperate for more Nordic recruits, agreed, and thus was born the SS-Volunteer Battalion Nordost. However the Nordost name was quickly dropped, and the battalion rechristened the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS (die Finnisches Freiwilligen Bataillon der Waffen-SS). Berger may have been happy to go along with most of the Finnish government’s conditions but he also had one of his own, which was was that the overall battalion commander be a German. The man he chose for this extremely delicate task was Hans Collani. Prior to joining the Waffen-SS, Collani had been a merchant seaman plying his trade in the Baltic, and as such, had had frequent dealings with all manner of Scandinavians before giving up the sea and joining the Leibstandarte back in 1933. He was a conciliatory character and no German supremacist, this made him an ideal choice and his Finnish troops took to him well. The men themselves arrived in two separate batches and were sent south to train near Vienna. In a matter of weeks the battalion was up to its full strength of just over 800 men, and hard at it under its SS instructors. But it would not take its place in the Nordland Regiment until early 1942 as unlike the Finns already in the division, many of these new recruits had no prior military experience. The Wiking would have to go into action in Barbarossa without them.
An SS-Leibstandarte ball in 1939. The Leibstandarte’s commander Sepp Dietrich is on the left and he is laughing with his then-Adjutant, Hans Collani. Collani would go on to command the Finnish SS for its entire lifetime before dying in action at the Narva in 1944. Badly wounded and surrounded, Collani shot himself rather than be captured by the Soviets.
Excellent news as this infusion of new blood was for the SS authorities, it did little to hide the fact that the concept of the Nordland as a mainly Scandinavian-manned regiment had failed. Even a state-wide radio broadcast in Norway on 12 January by Quisling himself, for the first time publicly supporting the Nordland and calling for thousands of volunteers, only elicited a few hundred new recruits, and they would still be in training come invasion day. Naturally, the overall number of Scandinavian volunteers in the division would fluctuate over time, but the reality was that for the whole of its brief but glorious life the Wiking would always be manned mostly by Germans rather than non-Germans.
The most powerful force the world had ever seen
The Wiking was also in a race against time to be ready for the fateful day. Barbarossa was not going to be delayed because a brand new SS division with less than two thousand foreigners in its ranks was still in training. This was planned to be nothing less than the military event of the millennium, a demonstration of sheer brute force that in Hitler’s own words would ‘make the world hold its breath’. And truly the statistics of Barbarossa were mind-boggling. The Wehrmacht invasion force totalled 3,400,000 men grouped in 11 separate Armies, of which four were hugely powerful Panzer Groups (Panzergruppe 1–4) equipped with 3,332 tanks and armoured vehicles. A further 600,000 vehicles and 600,000 horses would provide the transport. Overhead the Luftwaffe, still fighting in North Africa and across the English Channel, readied three entire Airfleets (Luftflotten) of 2,770 modern aircraft.
The plan was to invade the Soviet Union with three sharp prongs, designated C in the north, B in the centre and A in the south.
Army Group C (Heeresgruppe C) in the north was commanded by the aristocratic Field Marshal Ritter von Leeb. His forces were ordered to advance from East Prussia, take the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and capture Russia’s second city of Leningrad, while finally linking up with the Finns. This was not the primary axis of the invasion so Leeb’s forces were the weakest of the three groups, comprising the Sixteenth and Eighteenth Armies and Panzer Group 4 (under Hoeppner) totalling 26 divisions – three of them motorised, three of them panzer and the rest being infantry on foot.
To the south, set to strike out from German-occupied Poland, was Field Marshal Fedor von Bock’s Army Group B. Later renamed Army Group Centre (as C was renamed North and A changed to South), this formation was to be the fulcrum of the entire German war effort in the East throughout the war. When it succeeded Nazi Germany succeeded, and vice versa, so its utter annihilation in the summer of 1944 would herald the end of the state that created it. Von Bock’s punch was the strongest of the three, comprising the Fourth and Ninth Armies and Panzer Groups 2 and 3 (under Guderian and Hoth respectively) with 35 infantry divisions, three security divisions, one cavalry division, five motorised divisions and nine panzer divisions, plus the premier motorised regiment in the Army, the Grossdeutschland. Its objectives were the destruction of the main Red Army formations in Belarus. The capture of Moscow was not explicitly stated.
On von Bock’s right flank, and stretching down through Germany’s allies in the Balkans, Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria, lay Army Group A under the venerable Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt. His German force of the Sixth, Eleventh and Seventeenth Armies and Panzer Group 1 (under von Kleist) totalled 22 infantry divisions, six mountain divisions, three security divisions, four motorised divisions and five panzer divisions. It was augmented by a further 15 Romanian divisions (their Third and Fourth Armies), two Hungarian divisions and two Italian divisions. Von Runstedt’s objectives for Barbarossa were to cut off and destroy the Red Army west of the River Dnieper, take Kiev as the capital of the Ukraine, Kharkov (Kharkiv in Ukrainian) as Russia’s fourth largest city, occupy the Crimea (including the massive Black Sea naval base at Sevastopol) and then push east to the River Volga and the city of Stalingrad. Just in case they got bored they were then to wheel south, invade the Caucasus and take its oilfields intact.
The invasion was to be faced by 12,000,000 Red Army soldiers grouped in 230 divisions, equipped with 20,000 tanks and 8,000 aircraft. Weakened though they were by Stalin’s Purges, this was still a formidable force.
The Waffen-SS formations were spread over the three Army Groups, with the Wiking and Leibstandarte serving together as part of General Ewald von Kleist’s Panzer Group 1 down in the south in Army Group A. Opposing the Scandinavians of the Wiking were the 69 infantry, 28 armoured and 11 cavalry divisions of Colonel-General Mikhail Kirponos’s Southwest Front. At the time the overall strength of the Wiking (19,377) made it the most powerful formation in the armed SS, with the renamed Das Reich (formerly the Verfügungs) having 19,021 men, the Totenkopf 18,754, the SS-Polizei 17,347, the Leibstandarte (still in effect a very large brigade rather than a division) at 10,796 and the new Battlegroup Nord (Kampfgruppe) just 10,573, which was formed in 1941 from two Totenkopf regiments and would serve in Finland.
The Eastern Front opens
As the Wiking continued to form up back in Germany, the Wehrmacht moved its war machine to its jumping-off points in the east. The invasions of Yugoslavia and Greece in the spring forced a delay to Barbarossa, but finally the date was set and preparations completed. In the summer haze millions of men anxiously waited in the suddenly-crowded forests and meadows of Poland, east Germany and Rumania for the order to advance. At precisely a quarter past three on the morning of 22 June 1941 the massed ranks of German artillery opened fire, and it began. After a short barrage, and with armadas of aircraft flying overhead to destroy the Red air force on the ground, the armoured fists of Nazi Germany started their engines and roared towards their first objectives. Behind them, seemingly endless lines of dust-covered German infantrymen slogged along the roads and tracks trying to keep contact with their compatriots in the vanguard. Despite endless warnings, the Red Army was totally unprepared for the avalanche of steel and high explosive that engulfed its forward lines. The lack of preparedness was entirely down to Stalin personally, and his utter refusal to countenance a German invasion. The reasoning behind this has mystified historians ever since, and will probably never be completely explained, but it does seem that the Soviet dictator’s overwhelming paranoia led him to believe that the only real threat to his rule was from inside the Soviet Union and not from without – how wrong he was.
The Wiking did not go into action on invasion day, but instead was rushed forward to join in the fighting as Army Group A’s panzer troops pushed eastwards against the surprised Red Army troopers. Taking up position on the northern wing of the Army Group, the Wiking fired its first shots in anger on 29 June 1941, led by the SS-Westland Regiment, in what became known as ‘the Battle of the Frontiers’. Along with the rest of von Runstedt’s forces it was heading southeast across the Ukraine from its start point, pushing over the Dniester and Bug Rivers, through Zhitomir, Kiev and Uman, aiming to hit the mighty Dnieper River at Cherkassy. The intent was then to carry on to the Donets River at Izyum, and the Don and the Sea of Azov at Rostov. But first it crossed the former demarcation line between the German and Soviet forces in occupied Poland, and advanced into battle at the Galician border city of Lvov. Called ‘Lemberg’ in the old Austro-Hungarian days and ‘Lviv’ by the regions Ukrainians, Lvov was a metropolis with a past rich in history and dispute. The advancing Wiking barged straight into the defending Soviet 32nd Infantry Division and was held in vicious fighting until the armoured vehicles of the division’s reconnaissance battalion arrived and swung the battle. Pressing on, the Westland’s 1st Battalion, led by SS-Hauptsturmführer Hajo von Hadeln, forced a crossing by night of the steep-banked River Slucz at Husyantin, and prepared to break through the fortified Stalin Line in front of Zhitomir. The fighting was fierce and confused. A six-man reconnaissance patrol from the 17th Company, commanded by the German officer candidate SS-Oberjunker Vogel, was returning to its own lines when it found itself in the middle of a Soviet attack. Vogel did not hesitate and led his men into action to help their hard-pressed comrades. In the hand-to-hand fighting that followed the entire patrol was killed; three were Germans, two were Dutchmen and one was Danish. This man was the first ethnic Dane to be killed in action in the Wiking, his name was Gunnar Christiansen. He would be the first of many.
Fritz Ihle, a member of the Nordland’s Recce Battalion, was one of many Danish North Schleswig ethnic German volunteers in the Waffen-SS. (James Macleod)
Here also, just two days after the Westland went into combat for the very first time, its inaugural commander was killed in action. Wäckerle had stopped his staff car to look over an abandoned Soviet tank, and was promptly shot dead by a surviving crewman hiding in the wreckage. He was immediately replaced by the Rumanian ethnic German, Artur Martin Phleps, who would go on to form and lead the 7th SS-Mountain Division Prinz Eugen before being killed in action himself in late 1944.
A week later, on 8 July the Wiking was hit by a torrential downpour while driving towards the town of Kozmin, and as the roads turned to seas of mud the division’s pace reduced to a crawl. The Soviets took the opportunity to counter-attack and flung themselves at the strung-out unit. The Germania, Westland and Nordland were all pinned down in bitter fighting, while Steiner’s Divisional Headquarters at Toratscha was all but overrun. In constant combat, the division held on and counter-attacked, seeing off the Soviet assaults. The Danish Winter War veteran, Heinrich Husen, became the second ethnic Dane to die at the Front during this fighting as he led a Nordland patrol on 2 August.
Change of plan
With Galicia overrun and the Dniester River secured, much to the delight of the Wehrmacht’s Rumanian allies who had now liberated their previously lost lands, von Runstedt planned to swing north and seize Kiev as the Ukraine’s capital and probable centre of Soviet resistance.
However, it had become clear over the last month to the elderly Prussian officer that in this huge land, with such an under-developed road network, railways were the key to all military movement. Kiev was indeed a rail hub, but it was not as important as the track junction at the city of Uman to the south on the far side of the River Bug. The Soviets confirmed von Runstedt’s view when his opponent, the flamboyant Semyon Budenny, Stalin’s handlebar-moustached crony from the Civil War, concentrated a big chunk of his forces there to defend it.
So began the first of the huge encirclement battles of 1941. Panzer units streamed south and east, bypassing resistance and searching out space into which they could then drive at full speed. Budenny, a personally brave and previously dashing cavalry commander, was no tactical mastermind. He swiftly lost the initiative and was left grasping at shadows, reacting to German thrusts and unable to fully understand what was happening. But this encirclement was not an easy operation, the panzers could cut off the Red Army formations from their rear and form the ‘sack’, but a mass of infantry was then needed to secure the catch or it would simply slip out of the trap, or even worse, destroy the isolated panzers. The orders went out to von Runstedt’s foot-sore infantry – head for Uman as fast as possible. The Wiking was in the area and, being motorised, was able to react quickly to the situation. The Westland was detached and first sent to Talnoje to help close the pocket itself, while the rest of the division headed east and fought alongside the Luftwaffe’s élite Hermann Goering Regiment around Korsun and Shanderovka. In a twist of fate the Wiking’s volunteers would be fighting in exactly the same place three-and-a-half years later, but in far more dire circumstances, during the battle of the Cherkassy Pocket.
The Wiking’s regiments successfully held the line against increasingly desperate attacks from the trapped Soviets, and by 10 August it was all over. 107,000 Red Army soldiers marched wearily into captivity. Von Runstedt’s victorious troops also captured 1,000 guns and 300 tanks.
With the mass of Army Group South (all three Army Groups had now been officially re-titled) now grouped between Uman and the city of Nikolayev on the Black Sea to the south, Hitler took the momentous decision to halt Army Group Centre’s relentless drive on Moscow and instead aim it south at Kiev and Budenny’s remaining forces. After the disaster at Uman all of the Red Army’s southern forces were in disarray, and Hitler reckoned a cataclysm was imminent. The result was the gigantic encirclement battle of Kiev, the largest military victory of all time up to that point. A staggering 665,000 Soviet soldiers were captured, along with 884 tanks – to put that in context the entire population of Estonia was just 900,000 at the time, so winning at Kiev was almost like capturing an entire nation. Following this modern-day Cannae, the SS-Wiking was pushing ever-eastwards across the Ukraine, aiming to cross the great bend of the Dnieper River at the city of Dnepropetrovsk.
Dnepropetrovsk and the crossing of the Dnieper
August was slipping away as the men of the Wiking reached the mighty Dnieper. Still full of drive after two months of combat, a surprise thrust took the Nordland and its Scandinavians across the river to form a tenuous bridgehead on the eastern bank. It was a toehold the Red Army was determined to wipe out. A Nordland veteran wrote of the fighting:
Every morning the Russians rushed the bridgehead and tried to crush it. A weight of artillery fire never before experienced rained down on the defenders’ positions. They fought bitterly, refusing to yield a metre of ground. In these days, the Germans, Danes, Norwegians and Finns grew together into an exemplary combat team. Morning after morning with great bravery, they fought off repeated Russian assaults. They were recognised by their Wehrmacht comrades as the bridgehead’s strong supporting pillar in the uneven battle.
One of the reasons for the power of the Soviet resistance was that the area was a pre-war training area for the Red Army’s excellent artillery arm, and they knew every inch of it. The result was sheets of deadly accurate high explosive and razor sharp shrapnel. The defenders had even blown up the enormous hydro-electric dam on the river, a showpiece of Stalin’s peacetime central planning, and flooded surrounding low-lying land. As ever, the Soviets were not going to give up easily, but neither was the Wiking. On 6 September the Westland and Germania stormed across the river to reinforce their beleaguered Nordland comrades. Passing through them, they then seized the nearby heights at Kamenka and smashed Red Army resistance. Eight entire Russian divisions were shattered in the fighting, and more than 5,000 Russians surrendered. The bridgehead was now secure and the advance could continue. Von Scholz was awarded the German Cross in Gold for the Nordland’s achievements during the battle, and Felix Steiner wrote an Order of the Day that smacked as much of relief as of victory:
The division has become a symbol for the firm bonds uniting all the volunteers within its ranks, whether of German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian or Finnish nationality. Division Wiking is for us all an expression of our unity and common fate, and we are worthy to take our place in the history of German soldiery.
More than a little flowery, but you get the idea.
East to the Don
With the Dnieper breached, it was another leap of almost 300 miles to the Donets and its junction with the Don east of Rostov. Mobility was now all, and on 10 October the Wiking was transferred to the IV Panzer Corps to help lead its surge eastwards. Moving northeast, the weary volunteers advanced along the Melitopol to Stalino railway line towards the town of Wolnowacha to try and cut-off fleeing Red Army units. Nature again played a hand, with torrential rain slowing the advance as it did in early July. This went on for a fortnight as the SS men slogged their way forward through the sheeting rain and vast seas of glutinous mud – the infamous rasputitsa. Engines broke down, vehicles sank up to their axles in the mud and horses’ hearts gave out pulling wagons, but somehow by early November the city of Rostov-on-Don was in sight. The Danes, Norwegians and Finns now found themselves in the ancient land of the Cossacks, the rolling plains of the legendary freebooting steppe warriors. A totem for the Tsars for centuries, the strangely anarchic Cossack communities, living hundreds of miles away from Moscow, had chosen the losing side in the Civil War and been massively persecuted following the White defeat. Since then they had periodically risen in rebellion, the last one being in the spring of 1941 in the Schachty area north of Rostov. The Wehrmacht invasion would split their loyalties again with many joining the Germans, but at this time tens of thousands were also doing their duty in the Red Army. The first time the Nordland came across them the consequences were horrific, as recounted by one veteran:
I happened quite by chance to look towards the range of hills two to three kilometres north of our position. At first I couldn’t believe my eyes. In the name of heaven what is that? A closed front of horsemen burst out of the hills and stormed towards us. I nudged SS-Untersturmführer Lindner who yelled: ‘Alarm, Cossacks!’ For a few seconds everyone was paralysed. Seconds seemed like an eternity. But then the spell was broken. Untersturmführer Lindner and I each ran to a gun and finally the first shots roared out in direct fire. Meanwhile both of the anti-aircraft vehicles’ machine-guns began to hammer. The range decreased – 700, 600, 500 metres. Now all guns were firing. A terrible sight. Horses and riders plunged to the ground, yet the cavalcade continues to storm ceaselessly towards us. By the time they are 100 metres away, the attack has been so decimated that it no longer poses a serious danger. Still some 70–80 Cossacks reach our firing positions swinging their saschkas [Cossack sabres] above their heads. The majority break through and disappear beyond the next hill, the rest have fallen in battle.
We are still quite numbed when the apparition has passed. Of approximately 600 Cossacks, more than 300 lay dead on the battlefield. Interrogation of the survivors revealed that the Russian commander thought that the troops in front of him were his own. By the time he recognised them as Germans it was too late to turn round, so he decided to try and ride over us.
The Nordland pushed on, ironically heading for the centre of the last Cossack rebellion at Schachty. By now Barbarossa was coming inexorably to a halt. Every mile the advance went east, meant another mile in the Wehrmacht’s ridiculously long supply lines, while the Soviets’ grew correspondingly shorter. Every bullet, every shell, every gallon of fuel and loaf of bread was now having to travel thousands of miles to reach the Front. Tens of thousands of vehicles had either been destroyed or had broken down and were littering the steppes. Those still going had been mended a dozen times already and were held together by bits of string more often than not. The panzers were in the same condition, with tracks and guns worn thin with use. The horses, which still provided the mainstay of Wehrmacht transport, were in even worse condition with tens of thousands dead (and supplementing the soldiers’ rations) while those that lived were in a pitiable state. All the men had lost weight and their faces were gaunt, eyes sunken. Boots were paper-thin, rifles and machine-guns were worn out with use. The advance was literally exhausted. All along the Eastern Front the temperature gauge was now plummeting, and the troops were also beginning to feel the effects of what would become Russia’s worst winter in a century. While the volunteers were struggling to stay warm, at least the cold had hardened the roads so the Wiking’s vehicles could move again.
Like a drunk man staggering on and refusing to sleep, the Germans pushed forward into Russia’s never-ending space. The Wiking arrived at yet another river, this time the Mius, which it crossed to reach the road to Astoahowo – another milestone on the way to Schachty. A sudden thaw then turned the roads to mud all over again. Along with the 14th and 16th Panzer Divisions, the Wiking somehow drove on, but all the units were worn down, and the Russians threw in counter-attack after counter-attack at the dangerously overstretched SS and Army men. The volunteers were amazed, how could the Red Army still be resisting after experiencing such catastrophic defeats? Perhaps they would have been wise to read Casanova’s words regarding the Russian Army written during his first visit to Russia in 1764:
All were struck by the brutality in the Russian army. This rested on an assumption that words have no power to inspire, and that leading by example is impossible; only a beating has the perverse effect of persuading wives, girlfriends, peasants and soldiers that they were truly loved.
Stalin and his Communist Party had taken this doctrine to an altogether different level, but it was not enough to save the city of Rostov from falling to the Leibstandarte and its Army comrades, along with another 10,000 Red Army prisoners. The Scandinavians of the Nordland had simultaneously headed for Alexandrovka and reached the River Tuslow, it was their last gasp and they could not hold it, they just were not strong enough anymore. With frostbite now adding to the mounting casualty list and the men at the end of their tether, Steiner bowed to the inevitable and led his weary division in retreat back west to the Mius, at Amurosjewka, to dig in for the winter. Some indication of the severity of the fighting the division endured can be read in Artur Phelps’s citation for the German Cross in Gold, awarded for his leadership during the battles around the Mius:
The Mius River line, spring 1942; a very heavily armed Finnish SS shock troop. The section has two machine-guns, lots of extra ammo and stick grenades tucked into belts. (Olli Wikberg)
From November 17–20 1941, SS-Oberführer Phleps … conducted the defensive battle of his combat group, reinforced by III./SS-Germania, in Darjewka. He managed to repulse the massive Russian attack. Through the mobile engagement of the weak reserves at his disposal, he held for two days with his regiment against three infantry brigades, one cavalry division and one tank brigade reinforced by a large artillery unit. Under the most difficult conditions he led an orderly withdrawal to Tuslow.
Phleps was not the only Wiking commander to be commended for his men’s actions during the fighting from 17–20 November. Von Scholz’s Scandinavians had again fought well and the regiment’s conduct was recognised by the award of the coveted Knight’s Cross to the 46-year-old Nordland leader, to accompany the German Cross in Gold won on the Dnieper back in August. His citation, personally written by Felix Steiner, read:
SS-Oberführer von Scholz again has deeply influenced, through his personal ruthless action, the development of the action in the multiple assignments given to his combat group. In the battles north of Rostov from November 17–20 1941 Battlegroup von Scholz had to cover the flanks of the First Panzer Army in decisive positions and to resist heavy enemy attacks.
From midday 17 November until the evening of 20 November, five Russian divisions supported by a tank brigade, tried to overrun Battlegroup von Scholz. They had to face these systematically prepared and operatively significant assaults in focal points along a 24 km-wide front, absorbing uninterrupted massive attacks in consecutive waves. The enemy had the constant support of heavy artillery and this increased daily with rocket-firing bombers and low-level attack aircraft. This sole Battlegroup halted massive attacks by forces of the 37th Russian Army Corps, which attempted to destroy the advance towards Rostov by attacking in depth against the flank of First Panzer Army.
The feat of the Battlegroup of SS-Oberführer von Scholz to resist the attacks of such a hugely superior force for four days would have been unthinkable without the personal intervention of von Scholz. He stayed day and night in the most dangerous positions. On November 18 he led the combat in Dobropolje, with his own weapon in hand, against massive attacks while enemy tanks broke through the infantry positions to his rear.
He was standing in the front line when his III Battalion met the furious attacks of the Caucasian 99th and 235th Divisions in the village of Tuslow. The tanks could not be stopped and they drove into the village, but the Russian infantry could not overcome the men of SS-Regiment Nordland.
Through his personal intervention he cleared up every crisis during those days. Every night he could report to the division that in his front all the tank attacks had been thrown back, and all the opposing infantry attacks had been repelled, with the enemy suffering heavy casualties.
Also on the evening of November 20, in spite of the repeated actions of the rocket launchers and the uninterrupted tank and infantry attacks lasting several days, the Front was restored. The disengagement from the enemy, as per higher orders, could be carried out according to plan and without disturbance from the enemy facing them.
On November 21 the Division, in an intermediate position, could repel new enemy attacks carried out during the night. He took advantage of the assault on Balabanow, by the Army’s Panzer Regiment 2, to capture 400 prisoners in a surprise thrust that he personally led with weak elements from his Battlegroup.
Gratifying though it was to have the division’s courage and skill acknowledged, there was no getting away from the fact that this was the first time the SS-Wiking had had to retreat in the war. For the surviving Danes, Norwegians, Swedes and Finns it was a salutary lesson. The war would not be won in 1941, and come 1942 they would have to fight again. Some uncertainty about the future began to creep into the minds of the volunteers as they sat on the Mius in their snow-covered bunkers and waited for spring.
Hundreds of miles north, the Germans were making one last belated lunge at Moscow to try and end the war before the year was out, Operation Typhoon.
Roll call of the Scandinavian Waffen-SS
By the launch of Typhoon, some 11% of the total original Barbarossa invasion force had become casualties – that’s 410,000 men with only 217,000 replacements sent forward, and almost a third of the 3,332 panzers that had rolled over the border back in June had been lost. To try and keep the three Army Groups up to strength, a full 21 of the total OKW Strategic Reserve of 24 divisions had already been committed to battle. The onset of a horrendous winter, the bloody failure of Typhoon, and the Red Army’s subsequent counter-offensives, sent the casualty figures soaring towards the one million mark as 1941 ended. The Wiking had shouldered its fair share of those casualties, with hundreds of men buried along the way from Lvov to the Dnieper to the Mius. The division’s Scandinavians, concentrated as they were in the frontline infantry companies, had suffered badly. Of their invasion complement of 932, several hundred were dead, wounded or missing (including the first Swedish fatality – the 17-year-old SS-Sturmmann Hans Linden killed in action on 27 December). The Danes had lost 65 of their original contingent of 216 troopers. It was true that the attack on the Soviet Union had presaged a surge in volunteers back home as young men with anti-communist views had streamed through the doors of the recruitment centres in Oslo and Copenhagen, but most signed up for new national legions and not the Wiking, so overall numbers stayed relatively low. By the end of September there were still only 291 Norwegians, 251 Danes and eight Swedes in the division, almost exactly the same number as six months previously. There were concerns raised about the standard of the new boys and the inadequate training they had received back in Germany. Fritz von Scholz told his divisional staff in December that the 275 Danish and Norwegian replacements he had received had initially created a good impression but were ‘much too soft; and ‘cry like babies’ when compared to the earlier volunteers. He demanded far better basic training and a strict ratio of 2:1 for Germans to non-Germans in the regiment to maintain combat efficiency.
The Scandinavian SS national legions
As hundreds of Scandinavian Waffen-SS men underwent their baptism of fire with the Wiking in the opening days of Barbarossa, across Europe a wave of pent-up anti-communism swept the Continent. Among the Far-Right parties, and especially their already-radicalised youth wings, the invasion struck a real chord and from Oslo to Brussels to Paris there was a rising clamour to join in. But for Hitler the battle was still just between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the concept of a ‘European crusade against bolshevism’ had little traction at this stage. This was not the case in the SS. Both Himmler and Berger saw another opportunity to tap into fresh blood. The issue for them was how best to appeal to this cohort of potential volunteers. The European Waffen-SS, as embodied by the Wiking, was not benefiting substantially from the upsurge in enthusiasm, so it was clear another approach was needed.
The answer in every occupied country, and beyond, was the same – a national legion. It’s not clear who first came up with the ‘legion’ idea, but what does seem clear is that it was not part of a preconceived ‘master plan’, but was totally ad hoc. The evidence seems to point at different collaborationist leaders in different countries more or less simultaneously coming to the same conclusion. Many of these men were well networked anyway through pre-war umbrella organisations, such as the Italian fascist-sponsored CAUR, and these relationships would doubtless have helped ‘spread the word’. Whatever the circumstances, the net result was a rash of new units set up under SS and Army auspices (dependent on their perceived ‘Aryan’ credentials), with the intent of recruiting, training and sending into battle bodies of men representing their native countries.
The Army was made responsible for the legions from France, Walloon Belgium (Léon Degrelle and his fellows), Anté Pavelic’s Croatia and Franco’s Spain. Berger and the SS got Norway, Denmark, Flemish Belgium and Holland.
The Norwegian Legion – Den Norske Legion (DNL)
On the very day that the Norwegians in Wiking were getting their first taste of combat on the new Eastern Front, back in Oslo the Reich’s Commissar, Josef Terboven, announced the formation of Den Norske Legion (DNL – in German Legion Norwegen). Quisling, despite his antipathy for Terboven, publicly supported the new formation and urged Norwegians to join. The initial impression given by the German authorities was that this new formation was not only destined to fight the Communists, but would probably do so in conjunction with the Finns, a very popular cause indeed. Quisling went further. Bjarne Dramstad:
Quisling proclaimed that this was to be the base of the new Norwegian Army and was going to defend Finland. My brother Rolf thought this was a good idea, he did not join, he had done his share in the Winter War, now it was my turn.
A recruiting rally was held in Oslo on 4 July with an appearance from the Finnish Consul, and the reaction was immediate. Some 400 of the army’s entire pre-war professional officer corps of 1,500 expressed an interest, along with contingents from the NS’s paramilitary Hird and a new organisation, the Norwegian branch of the SS.
The Norwegian SS and Jonas Lie
As elsewhere, in what the Nazis viewed as the racially-acceptable parts of occupied-Europe, Himmler sought to establish a parallel home-grown SS structure to mirror that of Germany. It would then act as the Nazi vanguard in its own land and, come the successful conclusion of the war, would act as the basis for a New European Order – with Himmler presiding over it all of course. In Norway the Reichsführer turned to Jonas Lie, a 42 year-old professional police officer, part-time detective novelist and grandson of a famous Norwegian author, to command the new force. From a well respected Norwegian family, Lie was friendly with Terboven, having previously met him when he was Essen’s Gauleiter (Nazi-appointed local governor), and had then fought against the invading Germans before joining the Waffen-SS and serving in the Balkans with the Leibstandarte as a war correspondent. Having won the Iron Cross 2nd Class during the campaign, Lie then returned to Norway as an SS favourite and was appointed to lead the new 130-strong Norwegian SS – the Norges SS – on 21 May 1941.
The ex-Leibstandarte war correspondent and Norwegian Minister for Police Jonas Lie (left), and the head of the entire SS machine, the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. (Erik Wiborg)
The DNL recruiting office in Oslo. (Erik Wiborg)
Early recruiting poster for the Norwegian DNL; the uniform is Norwegian Army and there is no reference either to the Germans or the Waffen-SS. (Erik Wiborg)
One of the leading Norwegian volunteers, Olaf Lindvig, in his NS political uniform before he joined the DNL. (James Macleod)
Joint membership of the NS and the Norwegian SS (rechristened the next year as the Germanic SS Norway – Germanske SS Norge – GSSN) was common, but that did not mean the two organisations got on well, in fact quite the contrary. Never a member of the NS, Lie shared Terboven’s dislike of Quisling, and was determined to undermine him and usurp his authority. A famous story about the antipathy between the two men describes how Lie was called to an initial meeting with Quisling and was kept waiting for a full five hours before being ushered in to see him. On entering his office Lie said: ‘I have come to pay my respects.’ Quisling’s only response was ‘Good.’ Lie then about turned and left.
Early recruits to the DNL parade in Ulleval Stadium in Oslo in 1941; they are wearing Norwegian Army uniforms and are armed with Norwegian Army-issue rifles. (Erik Wiborg)
The SS-DNL – recruits and training
The SS hoped to recruit enough men to form a German-style infantry regiment of three full battalions, each with historic Norse names. The first was to be mainly recruited from the Oslo area and called Viken (its title was meant to be a nod of respect to the Oslo-based Hird Regiment of the same name but ended up just being a little confusing), the second would be Gula and the third Frosta. As it turned out the two latter battalions were never formed through lack of volunteers, but at least initially there was a certain amount of enthusiasm, especially among the Norwegian SS. Led by Lie himself, over a hundred of its members signed up immediately including the former Norwegian army officers Olaf Lindvig and Ragnar Berg. (The latter was also a founding member of the NS and very close to Quisling.) Leading NS luminaries, who were not in the Norwegian SS, signed up too, among them the leader of the NS Youth Front – Bjørn Østring, the Hird’s Chief of Staff – Orvar Saether, and the ex-army officers Charles Westberg and Artur Qvist (Østring was ex-army too of course). Indeed, so many men with command experience signed up that unlike other volunteer units, such as the Flemish SS-Legion Flandern, the DNL was from the start a very Norwegian unit with only a handful of Germans involved as liaison staff. According to Bjørn Østring:
One of the DNL’s few German liaison officers, Dieter Radbruch. Radbruch was hugely popular with the Norwegians and eventually became a company commander, before being killed in action towards the end of the war. (Erik Wiborg)
The DNL’s second boss and ex-NS Viken Battalion commander, Jörgen Bakke, (on the left). He lasted just two weeks before resigning in disgust at what he saw as undue German interference. (Erik Wiborg)
The Norwegian ex-Cavalry officer, Artur Qvist, who brought much-needed stability to the DNL after initial problems over its leadership. (Erik Wiborg)
Bjørn Østring, a leading member of the Norwegian Nasjonal Samling Party and close friend of its leader, Vidkun Quisling. Østring would go on to serve with distinction on the Russian Front before returning home when the DNL was disbanded. (Bjørn Østring)
Our officers and NCOs were all Norwegians, but German advisors were detailed to our units. They had no command authority, but some of them tried to acquire some. Most of them were unpopular with us, the one brilliant exception being Dieter Radbruch, who then became an instructor for the Hird in Norway. He was also a guest at my wedding in Oslo. He later served in the Baltic States and was killed in action there.
The Legion received its basic training as a unit at Fallingbostel [Lower Saxony]. Those destined to some sort of technical service received their specialist training in other military establishments. As an officer cadet I got my special training as a pioneer in Celle [now a British Army barrack].
The DNL parade through Oslo before heading off to Russia. (Erik Wiborg)
A would-be Norwegian volunteer has his particulars taken down – would he prove to be every inch an Aryan? (Erik Wiborg)
A Norwegian officer candidate from the DNL at Bad Tölz (he wears the Bad Tölz cuff title alongside his ‘Legion Norwegen’ one) shows it’s not all work and no play as he stands arm-in-arm with a Norwegian Red Cross nurse volunteer sporting typically ‘non-standard issue’ woolly mittens.
An early DNL volunteer with ‘Legion Norwegen’ cuff title and field cap.
The DNL’s rosy beginnings were soon brought up short by a series of German decisions that were to dominate its existence for the next two years. Firstly, it soon became clear to the volunteers, all enlisted on a three-month trial basis, that the Legion was to be a formal part of the Waffen-SS and not a Norwegian Army formation as hoped, and so German uniform was to be worn, albeit with a Norwegian flag shoulder shield, cuff title and lion collar tab. But far worse than this in Norwegian eyes was the OKW decision not to ship the Legion north to fight alongside their erstwhile Finnish Army brethren, but instead to place them under German command to fight on the Leningrad front. Bjarne Dramstad remembers the volunteers’ reactions on hearing the news:
We were transferred to the Front in Ju-52s, and it was just before the planes took off we were told that the destination was Leningrad and not Finland. I remember we were furious, but it was accepted. We were soldiers and soldiers followed orders, but many of us felt betrayed by the Germans.
To top it all, the Germans thought the war in the East would be over by Christmas, and therefore saw the value of the Legion more in propaganda terms than as a military asset. This meant training was not as thorough as it could have been and equipment was often second-hand from captured stocks rather than first-rate German arms. The result was inevitable; enthusiasm from the volunteers evaporated rapidly, especially among the ex-Norwegian Army officer cohort, and the grand plan for an entire regiment came to nothing. Hundreds of men left as soon as their initial three-month term was up, including their first commander, the Norwegian Army Colonel Finn Hannibal Kjelstrup (his son Sverre though remained). Kjelstrup’s place was taken by the Viken battalion commander, Jørgen Bakke, but within two weeks he too resigned in disgust. Leaderless, poorly-equipped and lacking thorough training, the DNL was in trouble. Exasperated, the SS authorities cast around for a leader able to take the job on, and settled on the ex-Norwegian Army cavalry captain, Arthur Qvist. A tall, taciturn man in early middle-age, Qvist was a pretty unlikely appointee to head the Norwegian contribution to the Waffen-SS ‘crusade in the East’. Like a good many of his conservative fellow-officers Qvist supported the traditional nationalism espoused by Quisling, and the two men were pretty close. Overall though, his politics were more of the old-fashioned patrician variety rather than anything more radical. After the brief reigns of Kjelstrup and Bakke, the Legion now enjoyed a period of stability under Qvist’s command and began to remedy some of its training deficiencies at least. But by early 1942 it was clear that the 1,218 men still in the unit were trained and equipped as second-line infantry – the vanguard of a new European élite they were not.
But they were ready to be deployed at last, so a full eight months after Terboven announced its formation, the DNL flew out from Fallingbostel in February 1942, headed northeast through the occupied Baltic States and finally took up positions at the front in the concentric trench lines snaking around most of Russia’s second city, Leningrad.
The Danish Free Corps – Frikorps Danmark
Back in Denmark a very different scenario was playing out as the Wehrmacht rolled eastwards. The apparatus of the State was still very much intact and so while the idea of Denmark becoming a ‘co-belligerent’ alongside Nazi Germany (as Finland did) was never seriously considered, the Germans were happy to work differently with the Danes than with any other country they occupied. A number of Danes, men like Erik Brörup, were already signing up to join the Waffen-SS, but as everywhere else in Europe the advent of Barbarossa acted like a shot of adrenalin to the system. Naturally enough, the members of the multitudinous Danish neo-Nazi parties were at the forefront, however the Germans were keen that support came not only from Clausen and his compatriots but from the political mainstream as well. A certain amount of diplomatic arm-twisting was employed behind closed doors and in no time at all, at the beginning of July 1941, the sitting Danish government announced the establishment of a national legion to fight in the East – the Frikorps Danmark (Danish Free Corps or Freikorps Danmark in German). The unit was entitled ‘Free’ rather than a Legion as the Germans were still projecting an image of Denmark as a sovereign state rather than an occupied country.
Danish citizens, including serving soldiers, were allowed to enlist and keep their state pension rights and Royal Danish Army seniority if applicable. The result was an initial draft of 480 men, many still in Danish Army uniforms. A few Swedes also found their way into the Frikorps having travelled south to join up. One such volunteer was Hans-Gösta Pehrsson. Like his fellow Swede, and SS-Westland volunteer Gösta Borg, the short and wiry Pehrsson was a member of Sven-Olov Lindholm’s far-Right Swedish Socialist Union. Pehrsson would, over time, effectively come to lead the Swedish Waffen-SS. Most of the Danish Nazis coming forward had no military experience, so the Germans decided to shuffle the pack and transfer over to the new unit a number of volunteers already in the system, especially those with backgrounds as officers or NCOs. This was not to everyone’s liking. Erik Brörup had already signed on the dotted line and was on his way to Bad Tölz when his orders were changed:
The Danish SS Knight’s Cross winner Obersturmführer Johannes Hellmers. He won his award while serving with the Dutch Waffen-SS De Ruyter Regiment during the Fourth Battle of Courland.
When Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, started, all the Danish Nazis wanted to join the glory trail, and they started up the Frikorps Danmark. I had already received my marching orders for Bad Tölz, but at the last minute they were changed and I found myself in the Frikorps Danmark. I didn’t mind that so much, but these Danish Nazis really pissed me off. I have never liked politicians – together with pimps and preachers I thought they were the lowest form of life. Whenever I voted, I went for the party which supported the military, otherwise I had no use for them.
Brörup’s opinion of the new entrants was shared by a number of the volunteers and led to problems for the Frikorps from the start. Influenced by the Government and the King, a number of conservative Danish Army officers joined the Frikorps; this included well-regarded professional officers and NCOs such as Tage Petersen, Thor Jörgensen, Johannes Hellmers (who would go on to win the German Cross in Gold and the coveted Knight’s Cross as an SS-Obersturmführer in March 1945), and the Frikorp’s first commander – the aristocratic artillery officer Lieutenant-Colonel Christian Peder Kryssing. The tall, moustached Kryssing was no Nazi. Rather, this reserved, reticent man was a deeply conservative Danish nationalist. He had watched the Soviet invasion of Finland with horror, ever mindful of his own country’s military weakness. Close to the Royal Family, he was keen to establish the Frikorps as an official Danish military force and not a Nazi tool. He made a public appeal for support on 5 July, a mere two days after taking up command:
Men of Denmark, with the approval of the government, I have been placed in command of the Frikorps Danmark. This corps will fight against the bolshevik world enemy who has several times endangered the security of the north and thereby the freedom and way of life of our homeland. Men of Denmark, I call upon you to join the ranks of the Frikorps Danmark so that we may make a combined contribution against bolshevism. For the honour of Denmark, for the liberty of our people and for the future of our native land, we are united in the brotherhood of arms with those nations that have already entered the fight against the enemy of Europe and consequently of our homeland.
The Frikorps Danmark’s four commanders: the aristocratic Danish artillery officer Christian Peder Kryssing, the totemic Christian von Schalburg, the exceedingly short-lived Hans Albert von Lettow-Vorbeck, and Knud Börge Martinsen, who would actually command the Frikorps twice. All were Danish bar von Lettow-Vorbeck.
The Frikorps Danmark commander and ex-Wiking officer, Count Christian Fredrik von Schalburg (left) with his son Alex; von Schalburg is shaking hands with one of his protégés, Sören Kam, who would go on to win the Knight’s Cross.
Frikorps Danmark grenadiers advance during fighting in Russia, 1942.
Von Schalburg (left) shows a united front with Clausen (right). Clausen’s heavy drinking would eventually contribute to his mental breakdown.
Extremely rare photograph of Frikorps Danmark volunteers ready to fly into the Demyansk Pocket in the ever-reliable Junkers Ju-52 transport planes, the revered ‘Auntie Ju’s’.
The Frikorps was now officially sanctioned, but this was not a rallying call designed to appeal to Clausen’s cohorts. For the several hundred Danish Nazis who had already stepped forward to enlist, Kryssing’s appointment was deeply unpopular and fuelled widespread anger. The men were moved from their initial base, at Hamburg Langenhorn, out east to Posen-Treskau in Silesia, but the move did nothing to lessen tensions and within a few months training had virtually stopped. The 1,164-man Frikorps was at war with itself. Graffiti began to appear on barrack walls reading ‘Away with the democrat Kryssing’, and the situation worsened when Kryssing had a young Danish volunteer arrested for spreading neo-Nazi propaganda. The Germans looked on with growing alarm and when it became clear that Kryssing had lost the confidence of many of his men, they acted. Along with a number of his fellow officers, Kryssing was removed from the Frikorps on 8 February 1942 and assigned elsewhere. Most of the deposed officers went to the SS-Wiking and ended up serving with distinction on the Eastern Front. As for Kryssing himself, he served in the Totenkopf, then the Wiking and ended up becoming the first non-German to attain general rank in the Wehrmacht when he was appointed to lead the 9,000 strong ‘Coastal Battlegroup’ at Oranienbaum in August 1943. Many of his former men were then in the new Scandinavian SS-Nordland Division right next door.
Christian Fredrik von Schalburg
With Kryssing’s departure a new commander was needed, and one was found from among the Danish ranks in the SS-Wiking – Count Christian Fredrik von Schalburg. Born in 1906 in Poltava, southern Russia, to a Danish father and aristocratic Russian mother, when still a boy his family fled Lenin’s new Bolshevik Soviet Union to Denmark where he was raised as a member of his class and commissioned into the social élite of the Danish Royal Life Guards Regiment. Handsome, popular and a good officer, the young Count rose to the rank of Captain and married into the German nobility (which allowed him to adopt the ‘von’ title). However his personal politics landed him in trouble. Von Schalburg was not a conservative like other members of his class such as Kryssing, he was a confirmed neo-Nazi. Not only did he join Clausen’s DNSAP, he became the head of its youth wing – the NSU. Not a man given to subtlety or quiet diplomacy, von Schalburg trumpeted his involvement in the DNSAP, leading youth marches and giving public speeches in his Life Guards uniform. This was all too much for his military superiors, who consequently demanded his resignation. Leaving the army, he signed up as one of Tretow-Loof’s company commanders in the Danish battalion being formed to fight the Russians in the Winter War, following which he came home to find the Germans ensconced in his homeland. Quickly reconciling himself to the new order, he joined the fledgling SS-Nordland as an officer and went with the Wiking as it advanced into the Soviet Union. Von Schalburg led his men from the front and earned both classes of the Iron Cross for his bravery during the summer’s fighting. Promoted to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer, he took command of the Nordland’s 1st Battalion during the heavy autumn battles, and was part of a coterie of middle-ranking Danish officers in the Wiking – which included the anglophile artilleryman Johannes Brennecke, his old Winter War comrade Paul Rantzau-Engelhardt and his fellow Sturmbannführer, Svend Wodschow. His subsequent appointment to lead the Frikorps was an inspired decision. He was well-known in Denmark and was acceptable both to the Danish Nazis and to the conservatives. At last the bickering could stop and real training begin.
The new year of 1942 had ushered in a new commander and a new spirit in the unit, in a few months time it would be confirmed as ready for combat and sent east. Unlike every other national legion, that journey would not end in the siege lines around Leningrad but in the cauldron of the Demyansk Pocket, where it would fight alongside the SS-Totenkopf Division for its very life.