From 1943 to 1945 the Waffen SS, the armed political wing of the Schutzstaffel or Nazi party, in the East were engaged in a long and bloody retreat against a numerically far superior enemy. As they fell back across the vast plains of the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary and ultimately Germany itself, death or ignominious defeat at the hands of the Red Army became their fate. But the Waffen SS, true to their character, fought a fanatical rearguard action to the end. In the process they showed utterly heroic if increasingly futile acts of bravery against overwhelming odds.
The turning point in the East was the Soviet Union’s vastly superior forces in terms of men, planes and crucially armour which after 1942 began to decisively alter the outcome of the war. While the Germans had developed new tanks such as the Panther and the Tiger to counter the threat of the formidable Soviet T34, they simply could not produce them in sufficient quantities to make a difference. By the end of the war the Germans had produced nearly 6,000 Panthers and just over 1,300 Tiger tanks. In comparison the Russians were building over 1,200 T34 tanks a month.
The devastating defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943 epitomised the changing fortunes of the Germany army or Wehrmacht in the East. To counter what he saw as the defeatist attitude of the army, Hitler increasingly turned to the Waffen SS whose loyalty and fighting spirit were never in question. The Wehrmacht’s loss became the Waffen SS’s gain as the Führer’s ‘fire brigade’ were used to plug the gaps and hold the line against the marauding Red Army.
By 1945 under the operational command of Heinrich Himmler, Hitler had created 38 Waffen SS divisions who had recruited over 900,000 men. As the situation in the East deteriorated they were drawn from an ever more diverse ethnic mix such as the 13th Waffen SS Handschar Division which was composed of Bosnian Muslims and conducted anti partisan activities in Yugoslavia and Croatia in 1944. The result was that by the finish of the Second World War nearly half of the Waffen SS were non German nationals despite the original strict racial requirements laid down by Himmler.
To the end Hitler possessed an almost blind faith in the fighting ability of the Waffen SS. This was despite the fact that many of the later divisions were only regiment or brigade sized units who lacked the experience, élan and cadre of the earlier ones. As losses mounted the original elite existing SS divisions were also amalgamated to form mechanised Panzer Corps which soon became the backbone of the German Army.
In March 1943 Hitler’s faith in the SS Panzer Corps was rewarded. Under the charismatic leadership of Paul “Papa” Hausser, nicknamed the father of the Waffen SS, they pulled off a spectacular victory at Kharkov, the second largest city in the Ukraine, temporarily halting the Soviet advance. The pictures in this book bear witness to the bravery they showed in the face of an overwhelming enemy.
Hausser’s Panzer Corps had found themselves trapped in the city and with the defeat at Stalingrad still a fresh memory Hitler ordered them to “stand fast and fight to the death”. Risking Hitlers wrath Hausser ignored him and instead sanctioned a strategic withdraw to prevent his tanks being decimated in the besieged city. In response Hitler flew into a blind rage and tried to sack his wayward commander. However, Hausser regrouped and without Luftwaffe support made a direct attack on Kharkov, eventually recapturing it after four days of intensive, house to house fighting. For his bravery Hausser was awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knights Cross and officially pardoned.
Others honoured with the Knights Cross, the highest award for bravery given by Nazi Germany, included Joachim Peiper who developed a tactic of attacking enemy-held villages by night from all sides while advancing in his armoured half-tracks at full speed, firing at every building. This tactic often set the building’s straw roofs on fire and contributed to panic among enemy troops. As a result Peiper’s unit gained the nickname the “Blowtorch Battalion”.
The battle of Kharkov was the third time the city had changed sides since the start of Operation Barbarossa or the attack on the Soviet Union began in June 1941. It was also to be the last victory for the Waffen SS in the East. The offensive resulted in the Red Army suffering over 70,000 casualties but in an ominous sign of the battles to come the SS Panzer Corps lost nearly half its strength.
Ironically the success of the Third Battle of Kharkov was to prove a turning point in the East not for Hitler but for Stalin because it lulled the Germans back into a false sense of their own superiority. Reinvigorated by the victory, in July 1943 Hitler sought to eliminate the Kursk salient, a bulge where the Soviet advance jutted westwards for about 80 miles into the German line. The result was Operation Citadel, the largest tank battle in history. It pitched 900,000 Germans with 2,700 tanks and 2,000 aircraft against some 1.3 million Russians with 3,600 tanks and 2,400 aircraft. Once again the Waffen SS were in the forefront of the fighting.
The German plan was to cut off the Kursk salient by making two pincer attacks at its neck. However, unknown to the Germans the Soviets had received prior intelligence about the attack from the so called ‘Lucy’ spy ring based in Switzerland, acting on information provided by special operations at Bletchley Park in Oxfordshire. Stalin’s commanders had therefore persuaded him to allow the Germans to attack and instead fall back to well prepared defensive positions before counterattacking. The Waffen SS fell right into the trap.
On 5 July 1943 the northern offensive was launched and spearheaded by the SS Panzer Corps. Characteristically taking the attack to the enemy, they penetrated deep into the Soviet territory. When the advance eventually slowed after 22 miles of savage fighting, the Germans had destroyed over 1,149 tanks, 459 anti tank guns, 85 aircraft and 47 artillery pieces. However, the Russians fell back on impenetrable defensive positions composed of vast minefields, guns and armour. The Germans offensive stalled and the 1st Soviet Army then counterattacked inflicting large casualties on the SS Panzer Corps, forcing them to retreat. Their fate was sealed a week later when two thousand miles away six US and British divisions landed in Sicily. Fearing an imminent invasion of Italy Hitler diverted the remaining two SS Panzer Corps to the country.
The remains of the Waffen SS in the East now found themselves constantly on the retreat. On 25 August Kharkov once again fell to the Soviets, this time for good. By the beginning of September the Germans had suffered over half a million casualties in fifty days and 1,600 tanks and assault guns had been destroyed or knocked out. Soviet casualties are not known but historians estimate them at twice the number of German ones. But for the Hitler the losses were unsustainable and the battle of Kursk proved to be the last German offensive in the East. Alexander Kovalenko, a Soviet pilot, flying over a battlefield littered with German armour declared triumphantly “The enemy’s front is broken. We are advancing”.
After Kursk morale in the army began to disintegrate but in the Waffen SS a fanatical, if increasingly futile, fighting spirit lived on. Panzer officer Tassilo von Bogenhardt was typical and said after the battle “Each German soldier considered himself superior to any single Russian, even though their numbers were so overpowering. The slow, orderly retreat did not depress us too much. We felt we were holding our own”. His illusion was rudely shattered shortly afterwards when he was badly wounded and then captured by the Soviets, the worst fate that could befall a Waffen SS soldier.
By the end of 1943 half the territory taken by the Germans since 1941 was back under Soviet control. Russia had lost over twenty million men or nearly eighty per cent of its total war casualties. But they were no longer on their own. The Allies had successfully invaded Italy and six months later on 6 June 1944 came the D-Day landings. For the Waffen SS this meant fighting on two fronts and more divisions being diverted from the East to the West, further weakening their ability to defend the ‘Fatherland against Bolshevism’.
Even in retreat, however, the Waffen SS proved themselves to be a formidable fighting unit. Typical was Herbert Gille, commander of the 5th SS-Panzer Division “Wiking” and pictured in this book. In an almost suicidal move he broke out of the Korsun-Cherkassy Pocket in Northern Ukraine in 1944 against overwhelming Russian odds. For his bravery he received the Diamonds to add to his Knight Cross. Also pictured is Obertsturmbannführer or Lietenant Colonel Leon Degrelle, commander of the 28th Waffen SS Division “Walloon” from Belgium. During the retreat of his division to the border of Germany in 1944 he was severely wounded but carried on fighting. As a result he was one of only three foreigners to win the Oak Leaves to the Knights Cross. He received it from Hitler’s hands and later claimed Hitler told him “if I had a son, I wish he’d resemble you”.
On May day 1944 Stalin declared “If we are to deliver our country and those of our allies from the danger of enslavement, we must pursue the wounded German beast and deliver the final blow to him in his own lair”. The Soviets started their pursuit on 22 June 1944 when they launched Operation Bagration, the largest and last offensive to be launched from Russian soil. This left the remaining Waffen SS divisions defending a 1,000 mile front with few reserves. It was the beginning of the end.
As the war in the East moved to Poland and eventually Germany, Waffen SS troops were among the final soldiers defending the ruins of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin as Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945. When news of his death reached them, many of the remaining Waffen SS troops shot themselves rather than surrender to the Soviets.
After hostilities had finally ceased on 8 May 1945 nearly one in three Waffen SS troops were dead or missing in action. For an elite fighting force which never made up more than 10% of the total German Army and had numbered just 120 men in 1933, they had fought with almost reckless courage and paid a very high price. Their mortality rate was the equivalent of all the casualties suffered by the United States military during the entire war.
The Waffen SS had been overwhelmed by an enemy simply too strong in men and material. However, as their military situation had worsened so had their atrocities while some non combat units were directly culpable when it came to the Holocaust. Praise for them as an elite fighting force in the annals of the Second World War therefore needs to be balanced against the utter ruthlessness they showed, particularly towards the Jews, Soviets and later the Poles in the putting down of the Warsaw uprising in 1944. Accordingly history has judged them not as they would have wished by their combat record but instead far more ignominiously by the atrocities they carried out.
War crimes aside, the military esteem the Waffen SS were held in can perhaps best be judged not by their rivals in the Wehrmacht but by their hated adversaries in the Red Army. At the victory parade in Red Square in Moscow on 24 June 1945, pride of place among the captured Nazi standards went to the First Waffen SS Division, the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler.