Based on Waffen-SS are often hailed as an elite fighting force. However, while it is true that this force fought exceptionally well in military terms, in social and humanitarian terms the reputation of the Waffen-SS, the armed political wing which grew out of the Schutzstaffel or Nazi party protection squads, will always be tainted by the war crimes they committed in the East and West. Their litany of crimes in the Soviet Union included the killing of those the Nazis designated as untermenschen or sub humans – Slavs, Jews and Marxists.
The Waffen-SS was one of the weapons in the Nazi arsenal which was used to wage the unlooked for war which was to lead its architects to the courtroom at Nuremberg. These men you see here were the Nazi idealists who had bought into the Nazi creed of expansion to the east in search of Lebensraum.
The Lebensraum ideology proposed an aggressive expansion of Germany and the German people. The Nazis supported territorial expansionism to gain Lebensraum as being a law of nature. The Nazi creed espoused the idea that it was necessary for all healthy and vigorous peoples of superior races to displace people of inferior races; especially if the people of a superior race were facing overpopulation in their given territories. The hierarchy of the Nazi Party believed that Germany inevitably needed to territorially expand because it was indeed facing an overpopulation crisis which Adolf Hitler described as follows: “We are overpopulated and cannot feed ourselves from our own resources.” It was on this basis that expansion eastwards was justified as an inevitable necessity for Germany. From 1939 to 1941, the Nazi regime gave the outward appearance of having discarded plans to annex Soviet territories, this deceptive stance was strengthened by the improved relations with the Soviet Union via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the public claims that central Africa was where Germany sought to achieve Lebensraum. Hitler publicly claimed that Germany wanted to settle the Lebensraum issue peacefully through diplomatic negotiations that would require other powers to make concessions to Germany; at the same time however Germany prepared for war in the cause of Lebensraum, and the potential clash between the peoples of Germany and the Soviet Union.
In 1941, it was the stated policy of the Nazis to kill, deport, or enslave the Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, and other Slavic populations, whom they considered inferior, and to repopulate the land with Germanic people drawn primarily from the ranks of the Waffen-SS. The urban population was considered disposable and could potentially be exterminated by starvation, thus creating an agricultural surplus to feed Germany and allowing their replacement by the population of warrior farmers who were to be rewarded with grants of land in recognition for their service in the ranks of the Waffen-SS. The policy of Lebensraum implicitly assumed the superiority of Germans as members of an Aryan master race who by virtue of their superiority had the right to displace people deemed to be part of inferior races. The Nazis insisted that Lebensraum needed to be developed as racially homogeneous to avoid intermixing with peoples deemed to be part of inferior races, with its strict entry requirements the Waffen-SS was the prime instrument in Hitler’s vision The man who was to give concrete form was Heinrich Himmler and it was he who was the real driving force behind the Waffen-SS in practical terms. The vague rhetoric spouted by Hitler had to be translated into practicality by Himmler. Hitler, as always had no concrete plan, as a result, those peoples deemed to be inferior races living within territory selected for Lebensraum were subject to arbitrary expulsion, enslavement or destruction.
Hitler gave a speech to his Waffen-SS troops just three weeks before the start of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi code name for the attack on the Soviet Union. He said, “This is an ideological battle and a struggle of races. Here stands a world as we conceived it – beautiful, decent, socially equal and full of culture; this is what our Germany is like. On the other side stands a population of 180,000,000, a mixture of races, whose very names are unpronounceable and whose physique is such that one can only shoot them down without mercy or compassion. When you fight over there in the east, you are carrying on the same struggle against the same sub-humanity, the same inferior races, that at one time appeared under the name of Huns, another time of Magyars, another time of Tartars, and still another time under the name of Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Today they appear as Russians under the political banner of Bolshevism.”
When he launched operation Barbarossa Hitler expected the Wehrmacht (the German armed forces) to conquer the Soviet Union and the Waffen-SS to carry out the goals of the party. To the Wehrmacht Hitler ordered the job of “kicking in the front door so the whole rotten Russian edifice will come tumbling down”. To the Waffen-SS therefore fell not just the job of combat but also waging a race war to create Hitler’s long cherished dream of Lebensraum, the much-anticipated living space for the German people in the East. However, as events spiralled out of control, the war in the east became the most titanic struggle in the history of human conflict. From the opening moves the scale of the struggle was truly colossal. On one side were over three million well trained, equipped and battle hardened German troops including the Waffen-SS and half a million of their Axis allies. In total the Germans deployed 153 divisions including 21 Panzer and 14 motorised divisions containing over 3,400 tanks and 3000 aircraft. On the other side was a Soviet army of over five million men in 180 divisions with over 10,000 tanks and 20,000 aircraft.
This was a genuine life or death struggle, during operations in the East the Waffen-SS grew from just six divisions comprising 160,000 men at the start of Barbarossa until, by the end of the war, it represented a huge force of 38 combat divisions comprising over 950,000 men. Under the command of Heinrich Himmler, the Waffen-SS received privileged treatment in terms of weapons and supplies. As a consequence they attracted only the most committed recruits who were willing to fight and die for the cause. Not surprisingly with their advantages which sprang from highly motivated recruits, excellent equipment, cohesive background requirements and an all-embracing ideological indoctrination, the Waffen-SS soon earned a fearsome reputation in combat.
In the East Waffen-SS divisions were placed under the operational control of the Oberkommando des Heeres or the Supreme High Command of the Army although in practice they often acted independently. Initially the Waffen-SS was numerically insignificant when compared to regular Germany Army, however the Waffen-SS brought to Barbarossa an ideological fanaticism out of all proportion to their numbers. This sense of racial and military superiority, which was encouraged by Himmler and maintained through better pay, food and equipment, was central to the Waffen-SS philosophy. It was combined with a fanatical loyalty to Hitler, and encapsulated in the motto “Meine Ehre heißt Treue” or “My honour is loyalty”. It meant that at the start of Barbarossa five of the six divisions which comprised the Waffen-SS in the field (the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, Das Reich, Totenkopf, Polizei and Nord) were all recruited from the toughest and most ideological ethnic Germans. The exception was the Wiking division, which was recruited from ideologically motivated Scandinavian, Finish, Estonian, Dutch and Belgian volunteers, but served under German officers.
Heinrich Himmler
German society had been indoctrinated with a sense of obedience and orders were to be followed without question. The men of the regular army had no qualms when it came to following orders; however distasteful. However, for the over-stretched regular German Army activities like racial cleansing, which did not progress their war aims, was regarded with disdain but characterised as a waste of resources rather than as a crime. From the Waffen-SS viewpoint this attitude was incomprehensible; to the men of the Waffen-SS the regular army lacked the ideology necessary to secure the final victory. The result was a severely strained relationship between the two who often disagreed on all aspects of how the campaign should be fought from the tactical to the strategic level.
The Wehrmacht launched its surprise attack on Russia at 3.15am on 22 June 1941, bombing positions in Soviet occupied Poland. Attached to the three huge army groups were the six Waffen-SS divisions. Army Group North advanced through the Baltic States and on to Leningrad, included in its ranks were Totenkopf, Polizei and Nord. Army Group Centre headed towards Moscow with Das Reich in the vanguard. Leibstandarte and Wiking were with Army Group South and marched towards the Ukraine and Kiev.
During the first six months of Barbarossa the sheer scale of the Soviet rout in the East surprised even the German generals. On the opening day alone the Luftwaffe destroyed over 2000 Soviet aircraft, many on the ground and Army Group North penetrated over 50 miles into Russian territory. By the end of the first week Army Group Centre had captured Minsk and by the end of June they had advanced over 200 miles towards Moscow. By the end of September Army Group South had captured nearly half a million Soviet troops during the Battle of Kiev and Army Group North had lay siege to Leningrad. At the spearhead of all these successful advances in the East were the men of the Waffen-SS.
Yet just three months later the offensive ground to a shuddering halt. On 1 December 1941, in temperatures of minus 40 Fahrenheit, the offensive stalled at the tram terminus on the very outskirts of Moscow. Five days later the Red Army counterattacked driving the Germans back 40 miles. During Operation Typhoon or the attack on Moscow Das Reich suffered catastrophic losses and of the 2000 men who had started out with the regiment in June 1941, only 35 were left alive by the end of December. While the defeat was a crushing defeat for Germany it was to prove, in some respects at least, the making of the Waffen-SS.
By the end of 1941 the Waffen-SS had suffered over 43,000 casualties across the length of the Eastern Front. One in four Waffen-SS troops had either been killed or wounded. However, it was widely recognised, even by the Wehrmacht, that they had fought with great tenacity and without them the German army would not have got to the gates of Moscow. Eberhard von Macksensen, commander of III Army Corps in Army Group South, writing to Himmler said the Leibstandarte had demonstrated “inner discipline, cool daredevilry, cheerful enterprise, unshakeable firmness in a crisis, exemplary toughness and camaraderie”. The legend of the fanatical fighting spirit of the Waffen-SS had been born.
By the beginning of 1942, the Soviet Union was bloodied but unbowed. The changing fortunes of the campaign were reflected by the encirclement of 100,000 Germans troops from Army Group North who, in February 1942, were trapped in the Demyansk pocket south of Leningrad. The pocket included the SS Division Totenkopf who again were at the forefront of the fighting and who eventually led the breakout in April 1942. However, they paid a high price with 15,000 troops either killed or wounded. After this the Waffen-SS were never again to regain the initiative in the East but they were to fight with distinction at Kharkov and Kursk.
From 1943 to 1945, the Waffen-SS, 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, all too often their fate became death or ignominious defeat at the hands of the Red Army. But the Waffen-SS, true to their character, fought a fanatical rearguard action to the end. In the process they demonstrated, what were, by objective standards, heroic, if increasingly futile, acts of bravery against overwhelming odds.
The tipping 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. In order to counter the threat of the formidable Soviet T-34 the Germans had developed new tanks such as the Panther and the Tiger, but 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 T-34 tanks each month.
The devastating defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943 epitomised the changing fortunes of the Wehrmacht in the East. To counter what he interpreted 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 and had resorted to conscripting over 900,000 men. As the situation in the East deteriorated they were drawn from an ever more diverse ethnic mix typified by the 13th Waffen-SS Handschar Division which was composed of Bosnian Muslims. This unit conducted anti-partisan activities in Yugoslavia and Croatia during 1944. The result was that by the finish of the Second World War nearly half of the Waffen-SS were non-ethnic Germans 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. Furthermore the ranks were all too often filled by conscripts who lacked the experience, élan and esprit de corps of the original formations. As losses mounted the cadres from the original elite SS divisions were amalgamated to form mechanised Panzer Corps, these formations 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 dash 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 Hitler’s wrath Hausser ignored his direct orders 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 the city 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, a reconnaissance commander 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, 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 combat 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 into the carefully laid trap.
Paul “Papa” Hausser
On 5 July 1943, the northern offensive was launched and spearheaded by the SS Panzer Corps. With characteristic determination they took the attack to the enemy, and 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, innumerable field guns and supporting armour. The German offensive soon stalled and the 1st Soviet Army counterattacked inflicting large casualties on the SS Panzer Corps, forcing them into headlong retreat. The issue was decided when, a week later, six US and British divisions landed in Sicily. Fearing an imminent invasion of Italy Hitler diverted the remaining two SS Panzer Corps two thousand kilometres to the west.
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 the total to be twice the number of German losses. Nonetheless, for 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 but they were no longer on their own. The Allies had successfully invaded Italy and, six months late, 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 of this trend was Herbert Gille, commander of the 5th SS-Panzer Division Wiking. 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 worthy of note is Obertsturmbannführer or Lieutenant 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 most successful 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.
Joachim Peiper
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. Hitler finally committed suicide on 30 April 1945, and 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-combatant units were most obviously culpable for much of the ethnic cleansing operations, no member of the civil population could consider themselves safe from these armed ideologists. Praise for the Waffen-SS as an elite fighting force in the annals of the Second World War therefore needs to be balanced against their sinister motive and the utter ruthlessness they showed, particularly towards the Jews, Soviets and later the Poles in the suppression of the Warsaw uprising in 1944. It was here that Dr. Oskar Paul Dirlewanger commanded the infamous Waffen-SS penal unit Dirlewanger. Dirlewanger was not alone and although his name is most closely linked to some of the worst crimes of the war, we can be certain that a host of similar crimes have gone unreported. Accordingly history has judged the Waffen-SS not as they would have wished – by their combat record – but instead far more ignominiously by the atrocities they carried out. When historians review the campaign in the East the fighting record of the Waffen-SS is rightly seen in the context of Hitler’s ideological war against the Soviet Union. As a result there is an indelible stain on their combat record and after the war many Waffen-SS veterans were deprived of pension rights. While it is an indisputable fact that the Waffen-SS were involved in atrocities and war crimes, at the individual level there were those who fought honourably amidst the fog of war which afflicted both sides.
Dr. Oskar Paul Dirlewanger
War crimes aside, as these pictures demonstrate, many Waffen-SS troops distinguished themselves in combat and showed incredible bravery, often against overwhelming odds. The military esteem with which the Waffen-SS were regarded 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 was reserved for the banner of first Waffen-SS division, the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler.