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A Chronological
Survey of the Waffen SS
By Will Rinaman
[Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this piece was
published originally on the Associates of Military History’s official
website,
http://amh.freehosting.net.]
The Waffen SS has joined the ranks of the finest combat
formations in history. In the company of legendary troops such as the Sacred
Band of Thebes, Mameluke warriors and Napoleon's Imperial Guard, the Waffen SS
has earned a reputation for ferocity and sheer fighting ability that is probably
unmatched in the 20th Century for formations of comparable size. I was asked to
contribute a paper on the Waffen SS, so I decided to create a chronology of the
birth, brief life, and sanguinary death of this force. A chronological timeline
best covers the large amount of information in a survey form. My hope is that
some of the episodes related here will spark the interest of the reader to seek
out the subject matter for more detailed revelations. I have attempted to weave
a timeline with threads consisting of basic SS history and the exploits of two
SS soldiers: Colonel-General Josef “Sepp” Dietrich and Captain Peter
Neumann.
1928 Josef “Sepp” Dietrich joins the Nazi Party
and becomes Sturmbannfuhrer (Battalion Leader) of the SS.
1929 Dietrich is promoted to Standartenfuhrer
(Regiment Leader) and becomes commander of the SS Bavarian Brigade.
1930 Dietrich is promoted to Oberfuhrer and
commander of SS Group South. He also is elected to the Reichstag.
1931 Dietrich is promoted to Gruppenfuhrer (Army
Corps Leader).
1932 Dietrich becomes commander of SS Group North.
1933 The first armed SS units (run on military
lines) are formed for security duties within the Reich: the Sonderkommandos
(Special Detachments) and, when they reached battalion strength, SS Politische
Bereitschaften (Political Readiness Squads). This included the Leibstandarte
Adolf Hitler (LAH - Hitler's personal guard) formed by Dietrich. The LAH was
initially called SS-Watch-Battalion Berlin, with 120 volunteers. After reaching
800 volunteers it was renamed LAH. Dietrich was responsible for Hitler's
personal safety and lived in his suite.
June 29 – July 2, 1934 “Night of the Long
Knives” - SS troops, with weapons and transportation provided by the Army,
kill over 100 SA (Brownshirt) leaders. Dietrich was promoted to SS
Obergruppenfuhrer (General). Though Dietrich was not personally present, he was
sentenced to 18 months in prison by a post-war German court for “being an
accomplice to manslaughter.”
September 1934 Hitler tells the Armed Forces that
the SS is under the command of the Reichsfuhrer-SS (Himmler) but in time of war
would be under Army command.
March 16, 1935 Hitler announces the reintroduction
of conscription, and also forms the SS-VT from the Politische Bereitschaften
(three regiments). VT stands for Verfugungstruppen (Special Purpose Troops).
May 1935 Service in the SS-VT is considered as
active duty military service.
October 1936 SS-VT Inspectorate (General Staff) is
formed under Paul Hausser (Hausser is considered the creator of the Waffen SS).
In 1940, this became the SS Fuhrungsamt (Operational Office).
November 1937 Himmler declares, “the
Verfugungstruppen are, according to the present standards of the Wehrmacht,
prepared for war.”
1938 Army General von Fritsch writes, “...it is
the Verfugungstruppen which, expanded further and further, must create an
opposition to the Army, simply through its existence.” Army troops considered
the SS-VT as political upstarts, while the SS men resented the Army attitude and
were arrogant of their elite status.
March 13, 1938 Peter Neumann is sworn into the
Hitler Youth. In the euphoria of the moment he envisions “a dream which has
carried us on a blare of trumpets and a clangor of brass to the supreme heights
of those glorious deeds performed by our fathers and grandfathers on the Marne
and at Sedan: a dream in which we saw before our eyes the heroic charge of the
‘Uhlans of Death,’ lances leveled as they hurled themselves upon the foe.
With my teeth clenched, my hand clutching my dagger, I repeat the oath: ‘Treue
bis auf dem Tod!’”
October 1938 Neumann becomes a student at the
Holstein Napola (National Political Training School). Napolas are utilized to
train promising young men to become high leaders in the Nazi Party, the SA or
SS.
March 1939 Neumann is selected to attend
Blutordensburg (Citadel of the Order of Blood) to be trained as a future elite
of the Reich, with extensive combat training.
Summer 1939 SS-VT is up to division strength, with
18,000 men and its own artillery and armored car units.
September 1939 SS-VT units are distributed
throughout the Army, subject to regular Army rules and regulations. The
Leibstandarte regiment slaughters hundreds of Jews in Radom, Poland, while under
the command of the 17th Infantry Division. General Walther von Reichenau,
commander of 10th Army (as well as other Army generals), demands a military
inquiry into this and other attacks on Jews by SS units. Himmler persuades
Hitler to release the SS-VT from Army jurisdiction.
October 17, 1939 SS-VT troops are freed from Army
jurisdiction. They are still subject to the military penal code, but they will
be tried by special SS courts, not regular courts-martial. These SS courts are
comprised of men suggested by Hitler and appointed by Himmler. OKW still
controls recruitment levels, still refuses to consider the Totenkopferbande
troops (concentration camp guards) as military service, and opposes a peacetime
SS reserve. The Waffen SS will be under the operational control of the Army for
the whole war, and Josef “Sepp” Dietrich will reach the highest rank (SS
Oberstgruppenfuhrer or SS Colonel-General), commanding 5th and 6th Panzer Armies
in 1944/45. The Totenkopf Division is formed from the concentration camp guards
and incorporated into the SS-VT.
January 1940 SS-VT renamed Waffen SS.
February 1940 LAH is incorporated into the 227th
Infantry Division.
March 1940 Neumann is judged “racially pure” and
sent to a Lebensborne (Fountains of Life - a state controlled breeding
establishment) to impregnate young German females.
May 1940 Waffen SS is comprised of Verfugungs
Division and Totenkopf Division (21,000 men each), a smaller Polizei Division,
the Leibstandarte motorized infantry regiment, 13 other Totenkopf infantry
regiments, two Totenkopf cavalry regiments and HQ personnel, for a total of
125,000 men. From May 24, the LAH is incorporated into the 1st Panzer Division
for the advance on Dunkirk.
June 1940 LAH is incorporated into the 3rd Panzer
Division, advancing into the area of Villers-Coteret where Dietrich had fought
during WWI as an NCO.
July 5, 1940 Hitler personally awards Dietrich the
Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.
August 1940 Hitler envisions the Waffen SS to be a
“militarized state police” for the future Reich. He knows that the Reich
will have people in its borders not friendly to Germany, so he wants loyal,
pure-blooded Germans, battle-tested, to be the state police. Hitler kept this
idea to the end, so the Waffen SS was never expected to replace the regular Army
as some have claimed.
September 1940 Neumann arrives at the SS
Junkerschule at Bad Tolz for SS officer training.
October 1940 Neumann gets his blood type tattooed in
the left armpit, which is standard SS procedure.
November 4, 1940 Heinrich Himmler arrives at the SS
Junkerschule for inspection.
April 1941 150,000 Waffen SS troops in the Field
Army (out of 3.8 million total) in 5 divisions (1 infantry, 4 motorized
infantry). This was 3% of the whole Army. The LAH is upgraded to a brigade for
the attack on Yugoslavia.
May 1941 Neumann is commissioned a Fahnrich
(Ensign). He is immediately sent to the 5th SS Division (Viking).
June 1941 Neumann's division, the Viking, is
incorporated into Army Group South under von Rundstedt. The division is sent
into the Ukraine on June 29. Neumann is assigned to the Nordland Regiment,
fighting near Lvov.
July 3, 1941 Neumann's unit enters Lvov. He is
repulsed at what the retreating Soviet troops have left behind: they have burned
and pillaged the town and massacred all their prisoners.
July 10, 1941 Viking Division attacks the Russian
6th Army near Zhitomir. Zhitomir falls on July 25.
August 6, 1941 Viking Division occupies Belaya
Tserkov, a strongpoint on the Stalin Line.
August 8, 1941 Viking Division, along with LAH, link
up with Hungarian allies, encircling the Russian 6th, 12th, and part of the 18th
Army. Neumann relates the constant danger from mines and boobytraps: “The
magnificent pistol lying on the floor conceals a wire connected to an explosive
charge. In the harmless interior of a samovar, pounds of cordite are hidden,
waiting to blow up. Jam jars, vodka bottles, even a well the rope of which one
is tempted to pull in order to get a drop of fresh water - they are all death
traps to be steered clear of.”
August 22, 1941 Viking Division reaches the Dnieper
River.
August 27, 1941 Viking Division marches into
Dnepropetrovsk.
September 23, 1941 Neumann's unit massacres the
village of Karasnaya, suspected of harboring partisans. In Neumann's words,
“We of the SS can be ruthless. But the partisans also wage an inhuman war and
show no mercy. Perhaps we cannot blame them for wishing to defend their own
land; but all the same, it's clearly our duty to destroy them.”
November 1941 LAH Division captures Rostov, USSR, on
November 21. They would be driven out by November 29, the first real German
retreat of the war.
December 1941 Dietrich becomes the 41st German
awarded the Oakleaf for the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross for his conduct of
the battle along the Sea of Azov.
January 19, 1942 Neumann is promoted to
Untersturmfuhrer (2nd Lieutenant) and receives the Iron Cross, First Class.
May 1942 First SS corps formed, complete with tank
battalions. Before, they had only been divisions scattered throughout the Army
but Hitler was impressed with their abilities during the Soviet counteroffensive
of late 1941. LAH is transferred to Paris for reorganization into the 1st SS
Panzer Division LAH, comprised of 20,000 men.
July – August 1942 Viking Division fights at
Rostov, resulting in its capture. The Viking Division is fighting alongside
Russian volunteers: “Most of the prisoners we take are Mongols, Oirats or
Khirgiz. Really savage-looking brutes. The extraordinary thing is that now one
sees exactly the same types in German uniforms, thousands of them, all captured
last year. They wear on their left sleeve a sort of crest marked 'R.O.A.' (Ruskaja
Oswoboditelnaja Armija – Russian Army of Liberation) with an X above, blue on
a white background. I have a pretty good idea that if any of them should fall
into the hands of their old comrades on the other side, they'll have a hard time
of it.”
August 1942 Viking Division advances into the
Caucasus.
September 1942 Viking Division enters Grozny, where
all the oil wells are burning.
December 1942 Viking Division is attached to 4th
Panzer Army, under Hoth. The unit is sent north from the Caucasus towards the
relief of Stalingrad. By December 30, the relief effort is abandoned after
fierce fighting against two Soviet Army Groups. Neumann witnesses Soviet troops
attacking the German armor: “Clinging to the armor like flies, there were
about twenty Russians on each tank, waiting for the moment to jump down and hurl
themselves on the German tanks. Men against steel, they throw themselves at the
Marks and Panthers, shouting like lunatics, heedless of their hundreds of dead
comrades, over whose bodies they must trample in order to reach our tanks.”
February 1943 Fifteen divisions in Waffen SS (three
divisions were composed of Latvian, Galician and Bosnian volunteers), comprised
of 280,000 active troops and 70,000 in training or in reserve. They are now 5%
of the whole Army. Seven of the 32 armored divisions are SS. By the end of 1943,
there will be six SS corps, and there will be seven more by 1945.
March 1943 Heinz Guderian becomes Inspector-General
of Armored Troops. He will be in charge of the equipping, manning, training and
organization of all armored units, including SS Panzer units. Guderian is not
subordinate to OKH; he will answer to Hitler alone. Hitler wants Guderian to
forge a war-winning weapon out of the armored units. LAH recaptures Kharkov, and
Dietrich becomes the 26th German to receive the Swords to the Knight's Cross
with Oakleaf.
April 1943 Neumann receives his first leave pass,
for 18 days.
July 1943 For the Kursk Offensive, SS Panzer
divisions are better off than regular armored divisions. The average Army tank
division has 73 tanks while the average SS Panzer division has 131 tanks (a
full-strength German armored division should have 328 tanks). LAH is in the
thick of the fighting at Kursk, and is later sent to Italy for regrouping.
Dietrich forms the 1st SS Panzer Corps.
December 1943 Viking Division, attached to the 8th
Army, is surrounded in the Cherkassy pocket. Three companies of the Viking
escape, Neumann among them.
March 1944 The Viking Division is reorganized in
Poland with German, Belgian, Dutch and Norwegian volunteers. The division is
sent to defend Kovel from General Zhukov, who is advancing. The division
retreats from Kovel by the end of the month.
April 1944 Dietrich is promoted to
Oberstgruppenfuhrer.
June 1944 1st SS Panzer Corps, together with 12th SS
Panzer Division Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth), halt the greatly superior British
forces at Caen. Dietrich becomes commander of Panzer Group West and 5th Panzer
Army. Viking Division is sent to help hold Vitebsk, a stronghold of the
Fatherland Line in White Russia. Vitebsk falls on June 27. On June 29, Neumann
and his men summarily execute three German officers leaving the Minsk front
without papers.
July 1944 Rommel approaches Dietrich to probe him
for possible cooperation in the upcoming 20 July attempt on Hitler's life.
Rommel tells his adjutant that “Dietrich is now on our side”; Rommel is
later that day gravely injured in an air attack on his vehicle. After the
assassination attempt on Hitler, Dietrich declares he is disgusted by the
“cowardly act of the plotters.”
November 1944 Dietrich becomes commander of 6th
Panzer Army, composed of the 1st and 2nd SS Panzer Corps, and the 67th Army
Corps, to lead the upcoming Ardennes Offensive.
December 1944 120,000 German soldiers (40,000 Waffen
SS) launch the Ardennes offensive. The 6th Panzer Army will lose 24,000 men.
Dietrich is faulted for not sending reinforcements to von Manteuffel (commanding
5th Panzer Army). Von Manteuffel was making good progress and the reinforcements
may have tipped the balance to the Germans, but Dietrich refused as it was
against Hitler's original orders.
January 1945 6th Panzer Army is renamed 6th SS
Panzer Army and sent to Hungary to destroy the Russian bridgeheads over the
River Gran.
February – April 1945 The attacks in Hungary fail
and the 6th SS Panzer Army is redeployed southeast of Vienna. Neumann sees
Dietrich's staff car pass his convoy in March on the way to Austria. Dietrich
was forced to retreat into Vienna. This was his last battle. The Viking Division
retreats into Austria on March 29.
April 12, 1945 Neumann is promoted to
Hauptsturmfuhrer (Captain) while engaged in the losing defense of Vienna. That
night he and a handful of other men slip out of the siege lines around the city.
April 22, 1945 Hitler accuses the 6th SS Panzer Army
of lack of fighting spirit and orders the force to remove its distinctive
sleeve-bands and freezes all promotions. Dietrich does not pass these orders on
to his men. Guderian is ordered to deliver the instructions from Hitler
personally, but he refuses. Neumann describes how the LAH reacted to Hitler's
order: “The insult was violently resented by the whole of the LAH. They were
thunderstruck at first by this totally undeserved reproach. Then astonishment
gave way to indignation. Some of them tore off their decorations as well as
their stripes and sent the lot addressed to the Chancellery in Berlin, in a
latrine bucket. In it, too, they put an arm taken from a corpse. All this is
worrying, and terribly indicative of the attitude which prevails in the SS at
the time.”
May 8, 1945 6th SS Panzer Army surrenders to General
George Patton.
1945 By the end of the war, a total of 40 SS divisions were raised, 27 of these composed of foreign troops. The Waffen SS would eventually include over 700,000 men, more than 10% of the whole Army. Neumann is taken prisoner by the Soviets soon after escaping from Vienna and is shipped East. “In the ruins of Warsaw the burying of rotting flesh, the methodical clearing of the streets. The sneering brutality of the Soviet guards. Sometimes a sharp report. For fun, this time. I have been out of luck. In spite of the rumors that the SS were to be ruthlessly exterminated. But they need men. Millions and millions of slaves. I look at my hands, my body, my clothes. Why couldn't they have killed me?”