Tiger Tank General

[Sayeret]

Those who have even a cursory knowledge of the use of armor in World War II immediately recognize the name of Michael Wittmann. He, with his daring solo attack on units of the British 7th Armored Division at Villers Bocage on June 12th, 1944, would go down in history as one of the best "tank aces" of the war. There were, however, numerous other tank commanders that, though largely unknown, performed almost miraculous service in the Panzerwaffe. Such a man was Generalleutnant Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz von Gross-Zauche und Comminetz. His service to Germany was mostly on the East Front against the Russians. That in itself could account for the fact that so many westerners have not heard the name. He would eventually become known as simply "der Panzergraf". This name came primarily as a result of his aristocratic and military heritage.

Born on 30 July 1893 to a wealthy family in Upper Silesia, Graf (Count) Strachwitz (whose Christian name, by tradition in his family, was given to first born sons for over 700 years in homage to Saint Hyazinth) attended military school in Berlin and in 1912 joined the Regiment Garde du Corps as a commissioned officer. The unit was a very socially exclusive one, being the most senior regiment of the Prussian Army. Graf Strachwitz distinguished himself in sports before the First World War, and saw action as a junior officer, being captured during a patrol early in the war and spending long years in captivity after a death sentence (for wearing civilian clothes on the patrol) was commuted. Nonetheless, he had time enough to win both the Iron Cross II Class and I Class.

Another of the Panzer Graf's character traits was an almost inordinate boldness. He had no hesitation in doing the most unconventional if the situation demanded it. When the First World War did break out, Strachwitz was one of the first to offer himself for service. He specifically requested long-range patrol work behind French lines. His performance, though brief, was spectacular. It read like a novel. He was able to secure and pass on valuable intelligence on the enemy and also performed various acts of sabotage against the French. He had a number of close calls, barely escaping capture. On one occasion he and his men found themselves soaked to the skin in one of their operations. They stripped to dry themselves and their uniforms when they came under attack by French colonial forces searching for them.

The Count was able to procure civilian clothes for himself and his men (he spoke fluent French), but was captured shortly after. Having been taken prisoner in civilian attire, Strachwitz was put on trial as a spy, but was acquitted. He was, nevertheless sent to a penal colony instead of a prisoner of war facility. His health deteriorated rapidly. When moved to a POW camp, he attempted to escape but suffered serious injuries. Finally he feigned madness in such a way as to be committed to an asylum where he spent the remainder of the war.

Between the wars, Graf Strachwitz helped in the defense of Silesia against Polish incursions, in the turmoil that was post-war Germany, and after a time he left the military to run the family estate (Grossstein). As a reserve officer, he attended exercises of Reiter (Cavalry) Regiment 7 and Panzer Regiment 2 during the 1930s. He served with the latter regiment in Poland, France and the Balkans.

During this time Strachwitz had retained his commission as a reserve officer in the Reichsheer's Cavalry Regiment. In 1934 he attended some Army maneuvers of the newly forming German Army. He was captured with the idea of armored forces, their mobility and potential. This type of action fit the Count's personality well. It only took a moment for him to decide that this would be the branch of the military in which he would serve.

His application was accepted and he joined a large number of young Germans who would form the beginnings of Germany's first "Panzer" division. He became a lower ranking officer in the 2nd Panzer Regiment. The Count served with that unit in battles in Poland, France and the Balkans.

He performed well as a tank commander and his boldness knew no bounds. Early on he established a premise that he maintained throughout the war. "Tanks must not be allowed to stand still. They must be permanently on the move and always led from the front". This dictum ruled his life as a tank commander throughout his career.

Though always courteous and respectful, Strachwitz was a fighter. He showed the enemy no mercy. He never let fear or adverse circumstances control his efforts. During the campaign in France, Strachwitz, in his command tank, found himself cut off from their own forces and in a well-garrisoned French town. Knowing if he turned to flee, he would be cut down by a hundred French guns now trained on him.

So he dismounted from his tank, strode forward with confidence toward the sentries posted at the entrance to the town and demanded to speak to the French commander. Again in faultless French he announced to the French officer that unless he surrendered the garrison to him at once, his panzer regiment, hidden nearby would open fire. After a moment's hesitation, the officer capitulated and had his men lay down their arms.

By the beginning of Barbarossa, the invasion of Russia, Strachwitz had been promoted to Colonel and was leading a battalion of tanks across the Bug River. His divisional commander, Gen. Walthar Nehring, had hitched a ride with him. Once on the opposite shore, the Count took his commander to a rendezvous point with the rest of the divisional command and was off immediately. He and a number of his tanks quickly shattered some initial Soviet defenses and entered the rear area of the enemy's lines, creating havoc. It was estimated that with a platoon of MarkIII tanks Strachwitz would account for over 300 trucks and other pieces of Russian equipment. With German tanks running amok in their rear, the soldiers panicked and headed east at top speed.

After six days of fast advances, the leading German tank columns of the 1st Panzer Group came under attack from a sporadic and poorly executed counterattack by four Russian Mechanized Corps, orchestrated by General Mikhail Kirponos, commander of the Southwest Front. It would be the largest single battle of tanks in history until the battle of Kursk two years later.

The Germans were hit hard repeatedly from both the north and the south in the Dubno area as the Soviets sought to cut off the leading German columns and annihilate them. The Russian tanks, though more numerous and at times more powerful than the German ones, were poorly led and fed piece-meal into the fight.

By the afternoon of the 29th, it was apparent that the major effort by the Russians had failed. The Germans had been stopped, that was true, but it turned out to be only a temporary delay. It seemed that the Russians had gotten their fill of battle and were ready to back off, but not so, the "Panzer Graf". As the enemy tanks and infantry began withdrawing under the cover of night, they were followed closely by tanks of Strachwitz's battalion.

Even though the last two days had been filled with fighting, burning tanks and fiery explosions, the Count, seemingly impervious to weariness and fatigue, led his men to hiding places near the Russian bivouac. At first light, when the Russian's forces began stirring, Strachwitz launched yet another attack, crushing the enemy and penetrating to the enemy artillery positions. It had been the Soviet artillery that had been one of the more serious problems in the earlier fighting and the Count was going to make sure that these guns would not be used against his brothers in arms again. Again the enemy suffered heavy casualties from the iron hand of Strachwitz.

Graf Strachwitz (holding the rank of Major) commanded the first battalion of Panzer Regiment 2, being awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on 25 August 1941. Before the end of the year, Strachwitz would be the recipient of another rarely given German medal, the German Cross in Gold. It had been instituted in September 1941. It had a two-fold purpose. It was to be awarded in cases of bravery that went above the reach of the Iron Cross 1st Class but not quite to the level of the Knight's Cross. Strachwitz and a few others were awarded this medal after having already received the Knight's Cross in recognition of their continued valor and service to their country. By 1942, the Count was known to all as "der Panzergraf". He seemed to lead a charmed life and was always in the van of the advance. His tank would be the first piece of German armor to enter the city of Stalingrad in the fall of 1942. On that occasion his tank and those of his men made a deep penetration to the Russian airfield. There he wrought more havoc with estimates as high as 150 aircraft destroyed during the battle. The Count was also present when the German Sixth Army found itself suddenly cut off and in danger of extermination. As the winter slammed into the fearful, half-frozen Germans within the Russian trap, Strachwitz and his panzers became a big part of the defenses. His tanks and men seemed to be always supplied. That was because the Count made one and another foray into and beyond Russian front lines to get the supplies he needed. During this period he would be given the Oakleaves to add to his Iron Cross when he set up the perfect ambush for encroaching Soviet tanks. As was his custom, he had his men hide and make their tanks blend in with the countryside. As one after another of the enemy's armor appeared and approached, Strachwitz held his tanks in check, not allowing them to fire until the right moment. When it came, it was a disaster for the Russians. In a series of brilliant maneuvers the tanks of the Count accounted for over 100 enemy tanks without losing a single one of their own. It was a phenomenal exhibition of courage and cunning in the most adverse of circumstances. In the long run, however, the enemy would overpower the German Sixth Army. Even the skills of the Count could not keep his crews invulnerable. Sheer weight of numbers began depleting Strachwitz's tanks and men. There seemed to be no end to them. A few days later Strachwitz was seriously wounded and evacuated by air. He would not be at Stalingrad when the rest of the German forces surrendered to the Soviets.

After fighting in the Stalingrad area, von Strachwitz commanded as an Oberst the Panzer Regiment of the elite Panzer Grenadier Division Großdutschland. Having only a handful of tanks, the Großdutschland division needed capable men like von Strachwitz to lead their tanks against a numerically superior Russian Army. On one occasion, he laid an ambush with four of his panzers deep inside Soviet lines. The Russian tanks never expected the enemy so deep in their own rear, and the German group destroyed 105 Russian tanks in less than an hour, without the loss of a single panzer.

Once Strachwitz had been nursed back to health, he was given the command of one of the newly forming schwere Panzer Abteilungen (heavy tank battalions), equipped with the new monster, the Panzerkampfwagen VI E, "Tiger" tank. He was soon back in the thick of battle, this time with the top-notch Gross Deutschland Division, this time in the boiling "kessel" known as Kharkov. Being the key to movement to the east or west, Kharkov became one of the most contested cities in military history. It would swap hands four times during the German-Russian conflict. It was early 1943 and General von Manstein, against the Fuhrer's directive, skillfully evacuated Kharkov and let the enemy overextend himself. He would then take the city back for himself. Late one evening Strachwitz was visiting one of his advanced observation posts and saw for himself the sudden appearance of dozens of Russian tanks as they crested the hill and descended into the valley. They were headed right toward him and his forces. The Count ordered his tanks to hold their positions. When the Soviet armor finally stopped, waiting for the dawn, Strachwitz got his forces in order. When the first rays of daylight began to change and pierced the blackness, the Russian tanks cranked their engines and began to move. The Tigers of the Großdeutshland Heavy Battalion still had not been detected. Once more the audacious master of deception had fooled the enemy. Waiting can be perhaps the most trying element of war, but the Count's men were well disciplined and waited for the order to fire. When it came, the gates of hell seemed to open up before the Russian tank crews. As the German 88's cracked sharply in the early morning, they cut a path of death through the Soviet tanks. Within minutes over 18 enemy tanks were destroyed. The tank crews still alive immediately began to withdraw their vehicles. As was his custom, however, the Count would not allow this. He continued to pursue the Russians as they sought to leave the battlefield and before the day had ended, the entire Soviet tank force had been destroyed. Only one of the Tigers suffered any significant damage, but it was repaired by German mechanics brought forward by Strachwitz before darkness came.

On 13 November 1942, he became the 144th soldier to be awarded the Oak Leaves to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. By January 1943, "der Panzergraf" (The Armored Count, as he was by then known) was an Oberst and given command of Panzer Regiment Großdeutschland. Not long after followed the award of the Swords to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, on 28 March 1943, for his part in the counterattack at Kharkov.

In 1943, the Generals Hubert Lanz and Hans Speidel and colonel Hyazinth Graf von Strachwitz decided with the headquarters of the group of armies B in Walki in Russia, to stop Hitler at the aerodrome of Poltawa with a quota carefully selected of the division armoured under the command of von Strachwitz, and to cut down it in the event of resistance, which it was obviously necessary to take into account. The Field-marshal Rommel was also informed of these plans, but he was then in Africa. But Hitler landed against any waiting in Saporoshe and not with Poltawa. In November 1943, Strachwitz left the Großdeutschland on what were termed grounds of ill health in the official record. Off the record, tension existed between Graf Strachwitz and GD's divisional commander, Generalleutnant "Papa" Hoernlein. Some veterans feel that the true reason for his leaving lied there. Graf Strachwitz has been described as a good tactician at the battalion and regimental level, but also as being inflexible, not open to compromise.

Being recalled to active duty after extended sick leave in January 1944, and with promotion to Generalmajor d.R. (der Reserve), Graf Strachwitz went on to become the 11th soldier of the German Armed Forces to be awarded the Diamonds to the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross, on 15 April 1944. He briefly commanded the 1st Panzer Division during this time.Once again his tactical brilliance came to the fore. Scraping together whatever he could to form "Fire Brigades", Strachwitz continued to shore up the crumbling German defenses. Again and again he was able to accomplish the impossible. In Army Group North a new saying arose, "Strachwitz is here - he'll sort it out!" This was the cry of more than one battlefield commander when the Panzer Graf came to the rescue. In late 1944 the Count, still conducting himself as a warrior instead of a military paper-pusher, executed victories far out of proportion to his resource. George Forty details a series of actions with Strachwitz in his Tiger for which he would receive the rarely awarded "Diamonds" addition to his Iron Cross. Only a handful of German soldiers and tankers would be awarded this highly distinguished medal during the war. In an effort to recapture the Latvian port near Riga, Strachwitz took a small force of ten Tiger tanks and fifteen half-tracks full of Panzergrenadiers in a large loop around Tuccum. Surprising an entire battalion of T-34s in the town, all lined up neatly, he availed himself of the gunnery officer of the battleship Lutzow and had the big 11" guns destroy many of the Russian tanks. Strachwitz and his men finished off the rest, used the captured enemy fuel and supplies from a Russian supply area.

From there he took a small force, headed north surprised a Soviet armored Corps by getting behind it. He positioned his four Tiger tanks well and watched as the Russian tanks rolled onward. This was a favorite tactic of the Tiger tank commanders. When the time was right, the Panzer Graf had his tanks open fire. It created havoc among the Russian tanks. They thought they were being fired on from the front and did not realize the shells were coming from their flanks. Soon dozens of Russian tanks were left twisted smoking hulks. The Russian commander, with more Germans at the front of his column, thought he was surrounded by a much larger force and surrendered his entire corps. Leaving some infantry and halftracks to control the situation, Strachwitz continued on his war odyssey, reaching Riga, entering the town and capturing it. A group of high ranking German officers later entered the city, noticed the Panzer Graf sitting atop the turret of his Tiger and shouted, "Nice going, Lieutenant!" Strachwitz wore no rank badges in combat. Laughing, Strachwitz answered them, "You're not talking to a lieutenant. I'm only a general".

Colonel Count Strachwitz von Gross Zauche und Camminetz was the most decorated regimental officer of the German panzer army in WWII. He was awarded all the grades of the Iron Cross, including the Knight's Cross on August 1941 and Oakleaves on 13 November 1942, the Swords on 28 March 1943, and Diamonds on 15 April 1944 when commanding a battle group in the sector of Army Group North. Originally a cavalryman, Strachwitz belonged to an old military family with estates in Silesia. He served during WWI and with the Freikorps, and fought during the campaigns in Poland and France. He gained however reputation on the Eastern Front, exploiting with small battle groups to fight Russian armor. When isolated from friendly units he also showed courage outside his vehicle, fighting hand-to-hand against Russian infantry until his crew had repaired the tank. He became famous for his rapid advances, breaking through enemy lines and disrupting enemy headquarters and supply units. On one occasion he was the first to cross a river bridge, attacking a column of hundreds of Russian trucks and guns. As a result of this action, Strachwitz and his small Kampfgruppe would take 18,000 Soviet prisoners, 28 batteries of artillery and dozens of vehicles, including tanks, SP guns and many trucks. Such actions seem impossible to many westerners who fail to grasp the enormity of the war in the east.

After forming one of the first Tiger battalions, his disciplined crews were able to destroy many Russian tanks during the fighting for Kharkov. Von Strachwitz commanded the 1st Panzer Division and later as armor commander he was sent to Army Group North. Here he took part in the first offensive to restablish contact with Army Group North which had just been encircled for the first time. From September 1944 the various elements of Gruppe Strachwitz were used to cover the retreat of Army Group North into the Courland Sector. Very late in the war, while being driven to the headquarters of one of the divisions under his command, he was badly hurt in an automobile accident. In spite of the severity of his injuries, including many broken bones and a fractured skull, the good count was not about to succumb to an untimely death outside of combat. His determination brought him back into the action just before the end of the war. Still on crutches, he formed a new command of anti-tank fighters at Bad Kudova. He eventually surrendered to the western Allies by traveling to Bavaria.

Although von Strachwitz was a wonderful tactician at the battalion and regimental level, he was inflexible at times and unwilling to compromise. These qualities limited his success with larger units, and he was never used as a real divison commander. But in a situation where a battlegroup could operate independently, and when Strachwitz did not have to deal with equal or superior ranked officers, he was a great armor commander. Wounded no fewer than fourteen times during the war, he survived the front. Having lost two sons during the war, he would go on to lose his wife while in captivity. His Silesian estate was taken by the Russians, and Strachwitz remained in West Germany upon his release from US custody. After a brief journey to Syria to help organize the military there (and his subsequent flight from Syria after the ruling power was overthrown), he settled on an estate in Bavaria in 1951, where he lived until 1968, and officers of the Bundeswehr held a watch at his coffin as a sign of recognition for his outstanding military career. He lies today in Grabenstätt, Germany.

[Kitsune]

In Strachwitz military brilliance met incredible luck. With a name like "Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz von Gross-Zauche und Comminetz" one simply has to be a hero (and gets into trouble everytime a police-officer asks you after it).
:|

[Roktiken]

Wittman reminds me Rommel almost although I am sure there were many others like Rommel Wittman stands out most, mainly because of his accomplishments. Wittman though in the SS managed to stay away from the Nazi parties internal plans and soldierd his way through the war to the best of his abilities.

A great warrior, a great commander, and an honourable man.

[CRAZY MERC]

^^^ Fighting for the wrong cause does not make man honourable . But I agree with the rest of your statement.

[Marmot1]

^^^ Fighting for the wrong cause does not make man honourable . But I agree with the rest of your statement.

As long as you stick to military honour code there is no wrong side in combat... remeber politicans make war , soldiers usualy resolve it....

[fantassin]

^^^

Don't forget the Waffen-SS took pride in being political soldiers, not just ordinary soldiers. They had classes in political and racial indoctrination that put them aside from other soldiers, even from the Wehrmacht.

[CRAZY MERC]

"Military honour code" Could you elaborate on it? Like not killing opposing soldiers?

[the_spec]

"Military honour code" Could you elaborate on it? Like not killing opposing soldiers?
Like not killing civilians.... :roll:

[OB Kenobi]

Here comes ol' Hyazinth now:

http://www.achtungpanzer.com/images/str_1.jpg

[Roktiken]

"Military honour code" Could you elaborate on it? Like not killing opposing soldiers?
Like not killing civilians.... :roll:

I think it's been proven enough that the very large majority of Waffen SS soldiers did not even know about the extermination of the jews. To say otherwise would be bullsh*t

[GrimReaper]

"Military honour code" Could you elaborate on it? Like not killing opposing soldiers?
Like not killing civilians.... :roll:

I think it's been proven enough that the very large majority of Waffen SS soldiers did not even know about the extermination of the jews. To say otherwise would be bullsh*t
It has been proven now, was it? care to point us to source of those claims?
Waffen SS units and soldiers took actual active parts it the extermination and logistical parts of it and also commited large amount of war crimes against soldiers and civilians in combat areas.
If you change your claim to "very large majority of the whermacht" it would be more acceptable.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Rob - WSSOB re the Waffen-SS "Florian Geyer" Division:

Here's some excerpts re: SS-Kav Regt./8th SS Division war crimes:

January 1940: Unit subordinated to HSSPF "Ost" Krüger, the former inspector of the Equestrian SS. The unit suffers from a lack of mounts, so in the early part of 1940 replacement horses are requisitioned from Polish breeders and even circuses.

Squardon 5 under W. Weichenwallner inspects a cattle car of tranported Jews & sees the car is filthy with excrement. Fearing dysentry, he orders all the Jews shot. His troops don't have enough ammunition and the Heer refuses to provide any, so Weichenwallner coerces members of the Gendarmerie to kill them, although 11 SS soldiers participate as well.
Fegelein reports how pleased he is that troops commanded by his younger brother Waldemar (who served as an unit officer) fufill their "special tasks" without hesitation.

March 1940: Gestapo investigate allegations that Fegelein has been sending looted goods and cash back to the SS cavalry school at Riem. RFSS Himmler discourages the investigation, not wanting to one of his favored, charismatic officers exposed by scandal.

March 30: Squadron 10, along with Police Battalion 51, battle partisans at Kamienna. SS troops employ "atonement actions" (burning villages, executing males and evacuating women & children)

May 1940: Unit contains 12 cavalry squardons reorganized into 2 regiments - 1st & 2nd Totenkopf Reiterstandarte; training in Poland; unit strength 1,908 officers & men

SS cavalrymen turn over Polish farmers of "questionable" race to the SD who sieze the Polish farmer's property and resettle it with a volksdeutsche family, often in the same day. Problems arise when the SS and volksdeutsche resettlers find Polish women and children who had evaded the evictions still on their farmsteads. Unit detatchments used to keep the peace between Ukrainian & Polish populations

September 1940:
Sept 19-20: The First and Fifth Squadrons from the 1st SS Reiterstandarte participate in the mass arrest of 1,600 Poles in Warsaw after the assassination of one SD man; 2nd Squadron detains 700 Jews for the SD at Otwock. Elements of the 1st SS Reiterstandarte execute 20 Jews per SD orders.

June 1941:
June 22: Operation Barbarossa - Germany invades the Soviet Union; unit assigned to Kommandostab RFSS.

June 24: Unit begins mopping-up operations; SS-Sturmbannführer Fassbender appointed liason to Heer units.
June 26: SS-Obersturmführer Maeker cited for bravery in defendign the 87th ID's flank at Narev.

June 27: Himmler, angry that his units are being used on the front lines, informs XLII Armee Korps that it does not tactically control the Kommandostab-RFSS.

June 28: Himmler expressly orders HSSPF Bach-Zelewski to kill all male Jews and drives the women & children into the swamps. Fegelein comments that "only villages that are free of Jews do not become partisan bases."

June 29: SS Kav Regt 2 stationed Sonnav until July 1

July 1941: SS-Kavallerie Regiment particpates in antipartisan sweeps in Pripet marshes; kills 259 Soviet soldiers and 6,500 civilians, mopping up after Einsatzgruppe B.

July 30: Voraus-Abt. combat against Soviet Cossak cavalry, Novo Andreyevka. Back at HQ, RFSS Himmler, Fegelein & Von dem Bach meet; Himmler conveys the "All Jews must be shot. Drive the females into the swamps" order. Fegelein relays order to SS-Sturmbannführer Herthes. Herthes on Aug 2nd (or 3rd?) informs Franz Magill of Fegelein's order with the additional comment "The Jews are the reservoir of the partisans." Magill, shocked by the order to drive women and children into the swamps to drown, radios Brigade HQ to confirm the order. Brigade HQ confirms the order.

August 1941: Unit becomes SS-Kavallerie Brigade (combining 1st & 2nd SS-Totenkopf-Reiterstandarte) under Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS; used for anti-partisan security duties behind the front lines in Russia at the 300x200 square km Pripet Marshes area. Unit operates under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Unit strengh 3,500 men, 2,900 horses, 375 vehicles

Aug 2-12: 2 mounted detatchments under Franz Magill, along with Police & SD troops, kill 14,178 Jews, 1001 partisans and 699 Soviet soldiers at a cost of 2 dead. Many Ukrainian, Byelorussian and Polish residents assist in the capture of Jews to be killed. Magill, who may have complained to Fegelein about the unjustness of the orders, also commented "The Ukrainian clergy was very cooperative" in these actions, and that driving the women and children into the swamps "did not have the desired effect" as the water wasn't deep enough to drown them. An expanded quote from his report:

"...Jewish marauders were shot. Only a few manual laborers employed by the Wehrmacht repair shops were spared. Driving women & children towards the the marshes did not have the desired effect as the marshes were not deep enough to ensure drowning...The total number of marauders and others shot by the Reiter Abt. stands at 6,526 men. About 10 prisoners were taken away. Overall, the operation may be described as a success."*
* See page 29-31, "Division Florian Geyer", by Charles Trang


Aug 7: SS Brigade reports 7,819 Jews killed, Minsk Area.

Aug 8: Squadron 1, SS cavalry Regt. 2 kills 1,950-6,526? Jews at Pinsk. SS lower execution age limit to age 6. Himmler regards the number of executions as "too insignificant." Fegelein, aware of the emotional toll these grisly actions take on his troops, makes a concerted effort to ensure that the men are given awards and decorations for these "special assignments."

Aug 11: Magill reports "impressions of combat: none." In a post-war interrogation, one of Magill's men commented

"...the Jews behaved themselves in an exemplary fashion. No one tried to flee for his life. I could only marvel at them."

The SS soldier and his comrades thought what they were doing was, in his words, a "horrible madness*" (* "The Third Reich: A New History" by Michael Burleigh, see p. 566 & footnote 191)

Aug 13: Brigade receives intelligence "Partisan bands operate with the support of the Jewish population."

Aug 15-21: SS-Kavallerie Regt. 2 participates in antipartisan sweep "Operation Turov" at Turov, Pripet marshes

Aug 23: The mayor and members of the Hilfspolizei are killed by partisans at Starobin; 3rd squadron dispatched to appoint a new mayor and reorganize the Hilfspolizei detatchment. The SS suspect the assassins to be Jewish, so CO Waldemar Fegelein (younger brother of Hermann) orders all male Jews in the town to be shot. 21 J





THE NORMANDY MASSACRES (June, 1944) by HJ
A sensation was caused in Allied Headquarters when reports came through that a considerable number of Canadian soldiers were shot after being taken prisoner by the 12th. SS Panzer Division ‘Hitler Jugend’. On the morning of June 8th. thirty seven Canadians were taken prisoner by the 2nd. Battalion of the 26th. Panzer Grenadier Regiment. The prisoners were marched across country to the H/Q of the 2nd. Battalion. In the village of Le Mesnil-Patty they were then ordered to sit down in a field with their wounded in the center. In a short while a half track arrived with eight or nine SS soldiers brandishing their machine pistols. Advancing in line towards the prisoners they opened fire killing thirty five men. Two of the Canadians ran for their lives and escaped the slaughter but were rounded up by a different German unit to spend the rest of the war in a POW camp. First to make contact with the Canadians was a combat group led by Obersturmbannfuhrer Karl-Heinz Milius and supported by the Prinz Battalion. Near the villages of Authie and Buron , a number of Canadians of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, were taken prisoner. Numbering around forty, they were individually killed on the march back to the rear. Eight were ordered to remove their helmets and then shot with automatic rifles. Their bodies were dragged out on to the road and left to be run over by trucks and tanks. French civilians pulled the bodies back on to the pavement but were ordered to stop and to drag the bodies back onto the road again.
On the 7th and 8th of June, in the grounds of the Abbaye Ardenne, the headquarters of SS Brigadefuhrer Kurt Meyer’s 25th Panzer Grenadiers, twenty of the Canadians were shot. After being taken prisoner they were locked up in a stable and being called out by name they emerged from the doorway only to be shot in the back of the head. During the afternoon of 8th June, twenty six Canadians were shot at the Chateau d’Audrieu after being taken prisoner by a Reconnaissance Battalion of the SS Hitler Jugend. Other units of the German forces in France called the Hitler Jugend Division the ‘Murder Division’. After the war, investigations established that separate atrocities were committed in 31 different incidents involving 134 Canadians, 3 British and 1 American. Brought to trial before a Canadian military court at Aurich in Germany on 28 December, 1945, Kurt Meyer was sentenced to death but later reprieved and spent six years in Canadian jails before being transferred to Germany where he was released on September 7, 1954. He died of a heart attack on December 23, 1961, at age 51.

LE PARADIS (Pas-de-Calais, May 26,1940) By Totenkopf
A company of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, trapped in a cowshed, surrendered to the 2nd Infantry Regiment, SS 'Totenkopf' (Death's Head) Division under the command of 28 year old SS Obersturmfuhrer Fritz Knoechlein. Marched to a group of farm buildings, they were lined up in the meadow along side the barn wall. When the 99 prisoners were in position, two machine guns opened fire killing 97 of them. The bodies were then buried in a mass grave on the farm property. Two managed to escape, Privates Albert Pooley and William O'Callaghan of the Royal Norfolk Regiment emerged from the slaughter wounded but alive. When the SS troops moved on, the two wounded soldiers were discovered, after having hid in a pig-sty for three days and nights, by Madame Castel of Le Paradis who then cared for them till captured again by another Wehrmacht unit to spend the rest of the war as POWs. In 1942, the bodies of those executed were exhumed by the French authorities and reburied in the local churchyard now part of the Le Paradis War Cemetery. After the war, the massacre was investigated and Knoechlein was traced and arrested. During the war he had been awarded three Knight's Crosses. Tried before a War Crimes Court in Hamburg, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging, and on January 28, 1949, the sentence was carried out. Married with four children, his wife attended the trial every day.

WORMHOUDT (Pas-de-Calais, 27/28 May, 1940) By LSSAH
The day after the Le Paradis massacre, some 80 men of the 2nd Royal Warwickshire Regiment, the Cheshire Regiment and the Royal Artillery, were taken prisoner by the No7 Company, 2nd Battalion of the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. At Esquelbecq, near the town of Wormhoudt, the prisoners were marched into a large barn, and there the massacre began. Stick grenades were lobbed in amongst the defenceless prisoners who died in agony as shrapnel tore into their flesh. When the last grenade had been thrown, the survivors were then ordered outside, there to be mown down under a hail of bullets from automatic weapons. The SS then entered the barn again to finish off the wounded. Fifteen men survived the atrocity, only to give themselves up to other German units to serve out the war as POWs. Unlike the Le Paradis massacre, the victims of Wormhoudt were never avenged, as after the war no survivor could positively identify any of the SS soldiers involved.

ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE (Central France, June 10, 1944) By Das Reich
On their 450 mile drive from the south of France to the Normandy invasion area, the 2nd SS Panzer Division 'Das Reich' (15,000 men aboard 1,400 vehicles, including 209 tanks) under the command of SS General Lammerding, arrived at Limoges, a town famous for its porcelain. In the small town of St. Junien (30 kilometres from Limoges) the 'Der Führer Regiment' was regrouping. Following many encounters with the local maquis in which two German soldiers were killed, a unit of the regiment arrived at ORADOUR (believed to be a hotbed of maquis activity) in a convoy of trucks and half-tracks. At about 2 PM on this Saturday afternoon the 120 man SS unit surrounded the village ordering all inhabitants to parade in the market square for an identity check. Women and children were separated from the menfolk and herded into the local church. The men were herded in groups into six carefully chosen local garages and barns and shot. Their bodies were then covered with straw and set on fire. The 452 women and children in the church were then suffocated by smoke grenades lobbed in through the windows and sharpnel grenades that were thrown down the nave while machine-guns raked the interior. The church was then set on fire.
Incredibly, one woman, Mme Marguerite Rouffanche, escaped by jumping through a window, she was the only witness to the carnage in the church. (Mme Rouffanche died, aged 91, in March, 1988). Unspeakable atrocities were committed throughout the village, but some men managed to escape. The commanding officer of the 1st Battalion of the SS Regiment at ORADOUR was thirty-two year old SS Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, a survivor of the Russian Front. He was later killed in the Normandy battle area on 30th of June when hit in the head by shrapnel. Many members of the "Das Reich" reacted with surprising venom against the officer who ordered the massacre and a court martial was established but Diekmann died before the trial took place. The world heard of this massacre eight years later when some of those responsible were brought to trial. In 1953, a French Military Court at Bordeaux, established that 642 people (245 women, 207 children and 190 men) had perished. Twenty-one other members of his company (including fourteen Frenchmen from Alsace-Lorraine who had been conscripted into the SS) were sentenced to death but later their sentences were commuted to terms of imprisonment. All were released by 1959. SS General Lammerding died peacefully at his home at Bad Toltz in Germany on the 13th of January 1971, of cancer. A close friend of Diekmann was Major Helmut Kampfe, commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion of the Der Führer Regiment. He was kidnapped and executed by the FTP (Communists) the day before the massacre. His kidnapping was not the only reason for the events at Oradour. Gold, looted by the Nazis, and then stolen by the Maquis, was rumoured to be hidden in the village, why else the indiscriminate destruction?.
Today, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane stands in ruins, just as the SS left it.

THE TULLE MURDERS (Near Limoges, Central France, June 9, 1944)
By Das Reich
The day before the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane , the SS murdered 99 men in the town of Tulle in central France. This was in response to activities by the local FTP resistance groups who had attacked and taken over the town. When the 2nd SS Panzer Division 'Das Reich' took over the town they found 40 dead bodies of the German 3rd Battalion/95th Security Regiment garrison troops near the school, their bodies badly mutilated. Other bodies were found around the town, bringing the total German dead in Tulle to sixty-four. Next day, the reprisals began. All males in the town were gathered together and 130 suspects were selected for execution. A number were released because of their youth and the remaining 99 were executed by the Pioneer platoon of SS-Panzer Aufklarungs Abteilung 2. Their bodies were hung up on lamp-posts and from balconies along the main streets of the town in the hope that the hanging bodies would deter future attacks by the Maquis and the FTP. More would have been hanged had not the SS ran out of rope. Instead, they rounded up 149 civilians and deported them to Germany for slave labour. Of these, 101 did not return.

ASCQ (Near Lille, April 2, 1944) BY HJ
At the end of March, 1944, the 12th SS Panzer Division 'Hitler Jugend' set out on 24 rail trucks for Normandy to cover the coast in anticipation of an Allied landing. The convoy, under the command of SS Obersturmführer Walter Hauck, was approaching the small railway station of Ascq when a violent explosion blew the line apart. Stopping the train, it was found that two flat trucks had been derailed, holding up the whole convoy. Hauck, in a foul mood, ordered his men to search and arrest all male members of the houses on both sides of the track. They were assembled together and marched down the track about 300 yards where each man was shot in the back of the head. Altogether 70 men were shot beside the railway line and another 16 killed in the village itself. After an investigation by the Gestapo, six more men were arrested and charged with planting the bomb. They were all executed by firing squad. When the war ended, a search for the perpetrators was set in motion. Most of the SS men were found in Allied POW camps in Europe and in England. In all, nine SS men stood trial in a French Military Court at Lille. All were sentenced to death, including Hauck. The sentences were later commuted to a period of imprisonment and Walter Hauck was released in July, 1957.

SANT' ANNA MASSACRE (August 12, 1944) BY RFSS
Just north of Pisa, between the towns of Lucca and Currara, lay the small village of S.Anna di Stazzema. On August 4, British troops had freed the city of Florence (Firenze) and the German armies were now retreating northwards through the mountainous region of Tuscany, ideal terrain for partisan activity. Many of the German troops were killed in ambushes and skirmishes with the Italian underground movement. On August 12, the 6th Panzergrenadieren 'Reichsführer-SS' Division reached the outskirts of Sant' Anna, their orders to shoot on sight all partisans found in the area. Believing that the inhabitants of the Sant'Anna were all partisans or partisan sympathizers, the SS started knocking on doors and shouting 'Heraus! Heraus!' ('out of here!'). Gathered together on the village square, the men, women and children, were then shot in cold blood. In all, 560 people were massacred including 110 children. The houses in the village were then burned to the ground, the church organ was riddled with machine-gun bullets and the christening font completely destroyed by a grenade. Many of the corpses were doused with petrol and then set alight before the SS unit departed.

ATROCITY AT BARDINE SAN TERENZO (August 20, 1944) By RFSS
In the area around the village of Bardine San Terenzo, the SS 16 Reichsführer Division was deployed to counteract partisan activity against German troops. Seventeen German soldiers had been ambushed and their truck set on fire. All seventeen were killed. A search of various villages was undertaken where the SS looted and burned a number of houses. Fifty-three villagers were taken to the burned out truck and tied to the chassis of the vehicle and to field posts nearby. Next day a local priest, Padre Lino Piane, discovered the fifty-three bodies. All had been shot. Most of the victims were from the village of Mezzana Castello, those from Bardine were taken to Valla and there, shot. There were 107 persons in all. Only five were men, the rest, women and children. In the four days that the search continued, a total of 369 hostages were brutally massacred and 454 houses destroyed by fire. In overall charge of the SS troops in this incident was Major Walter Reder, the one-armed SS officer responsible for the massacres on the Monte Sole.

THE BOVES ATROCITY (September 17th, 1944) BY LSSAH
A few kilometres north of Cuneo in Italy, lies the town of Boves. After September 8th, 1943, it became an active center of the Italian underground because of the stationing of many stragglers from the now disbanded Regio Esercito (Royal Italian Army). These partisans were led by Bartolomeo Giuliano, Ezio Aceto and Ignazio Vian. After repeated requests to surrender, the partisans refused in spite of leaflets being dropped by the SS. On the 17th of September the German commander, SS Major Joachim Peiper, ordered two gun crews to shell the town. The partisans again refused to surrender. Two German soldiers were then sent forward (as decoys) to be captured by the partisans. Hoping they would be killed, it would give Peiper the pretext for a slaughter. The parish priest, Father Giuseppe Bernardi and the industrialist, Alessandro Vassallo, were ordered to meet with the partisans and to persuade them to release the two soldiers. The priest asked Peiper 'Will you spare the town?'. Peiper gave his word and the two prisoners were released. But the blood-thirsty SS then proceeded to burn all the houses in the town after which Father Bernardi and Vassallo were put into a car to do an inspection of the devastated town. 'They must admire the spectacle' said Peiper. After the inspection, Father Bernardi and his companion, Vassallo, were sprinkled with petrol and set alight. Both were burned to death. Forty-three other inhabitants of Boves were killed that day and 350 houses destroyed. Next day, a column of armoured vehicles went up the road that led to the partisan base. A lucky shot from their only 75 mm gun destroyed the leading armoured car. After an intense fire-fight the SS retreated with heavy losses. One of the partisan leaders, Ignazio Vian, was later captured by the SS and hanged in Turin. On the wall of his cell he had written in his own blood the words "Better Die Rather Than Betray".

THE MALMEDY MASSACRE (December 17, 1944) By LSSAH
During the Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge) the Combat Group of the 1st SS Panzer Division, led by SS Major Joachim Peiper, was approaching the crossroads at Baugnes near the town of Malmedy . There they encountered a company of US troops (Battery B of the 285th. Field Artillery Observation Battalion) from the US 7th Armoured Division. Realizing that the odds were hopeless, the company's commander, Lt.Virgil Lary, decided to surrender. After being searched by the SS, the prisoners were marched into a field by the crossroads. The SS troops moved on except for two Mark IV tanks Nos.731 and 732, left behind to guard the GIs. An order was given to fire and SS Private Georg Fleps of tank 731 drew his pistol and fired at Lary's driver who fell dead in the snow. The machine guns of both tanks then opened fire on the prisoners. Many of the GIs took to their heels and fled to the nearest woods. Incredibly, 43 GIs survived, but 86 of their comrades lay dead in the field, being slowly covered with a blanket of snow. The US troops in the area were issued with an order that for the next week no SS prisoners were to be taken.
At the end of the war, Peiper, and 73 other suspects (arrested for other atrocities committed during the offensive) were brought to trial. When the trial ended on July 16, 1946, forty three of the defendants were sentenced to death, twenty two to life imprisonment, two to twenty years, one for fifteen years and five to ten years. Peiper and Fleps were among those sentenced to death, but after a series of reviews the sentences were reduced to terms in prison. On December 22, 1956, SS Sturmbannführer Peiper was released. He settled in the small village of Traves in northern France in 1972 and four years later, on the eve of Bastille Day, he was murdered and his house burned down by a French communist group. His charred body was recovered from the ruins and transferred to the family grave in Schondorf , near Landsberg in Bavaria. Most of the remains of the murdered GIs were eventually shipped back to the US for private burial but twenty one still lie buried in the American Military Cemetery at Henri-Chappelle, about forty kilometers north of Malmedy.
Today, the American flag flies over the Memorial built at the Baugnes crossroads, about 50 metres from where the actual killings took place.

MASSACRE AT DISTOMO (June 10, 1944) By Polizei
Four days after the Allied invasion of Normandy a most despicable atrocity took place in the village of Distomo, in the province of Boeotia in Central Greece. A unit of the SS Police Panzergrenadier Regiment No 7, on an antipartisan sweep, massacred 218 Greek civilians in the village. Packed into seven trucks, the unit drove through the village without incident but a short distance beyond the village the convoy was ambushed by a guerrilla band that resulted in the killing of seven SS soldiers. The SS unit doubled back into the village and in a last ditch effort to crush partisan activities, the reprisals, including looting, burning and rape, began. When a Red Cross delegation visited the village some days later they found bodies hanging from trees along the main street. One survivor, Yannes Basdekis, recalled, "I walked into a house and saw a woman, stripped naked and covered in blood. Her breasts had been sliced off. Her baby lay dead nearby, the cut off nipple still in its mouth". The unit commander, SS Hauptstrumführer Lautenbach was later charged with falsifying a military report on the massacre but the charges were dropped as the massacre was judged a 'military necessity'. Today, the skulls and bones of the victims are displayed in the Mausoleum of Distomo. In 1960, Germany paid the Greek government 115 million marks as compensation for the suffering of its citizens during the German occupation but as yet no payment is forthcoming for the victims of Distomo. It was not until 1990 that members of the German embassy first took part in the wreath laying ceremony on the annual anniversary of the massacre. (It is somewhat ironic that other massacres took place on a same date, the 10th of June, Lidice in 1943, Oradour-zur-Glane and Distomo, in 1944.

VILLAGE MASSACRES By Prinz Eugen
On March 27, 1944, troops of the 7th SS Prinz Eugen Division massacred 834 Serbian civilians and set fire to around 500 houses in the villages of Ruda, Cornji, Dorfer Otok and Dalnji in Dalmatia. The troops were engaged in fighting the Yugoslavian communist guerrilla forces and the massacre was a collective punishment for those supporting the partisans. Earlier, in May 1943, the Prinz Eugen Division marched into Monternegro and occupied the Niksic district. In one village, 121 persons, mostly women, were brutally murdered. They included 29 children under 14 and 30 persons between the ages of 60 and 92. In 1943, the Prinz Eugen Division was made up mostly of ethnic Germans from Serbia and Croatia. On July 28, 1944, the Division, supported by the Albanian 21st SS Skanderberg Division, made up mostly of Muslims from Kosovo and engaged in a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing against the Kosovo Serbian and Jewish populations, surrounded the village of Velika and in an orgy of looting and killing massacred 428 Serbs, looted and burned down 300 houses. On October 9, 1941, some 2,000 communists and Jews were shot on the basis of Hitler's 100 to 1 order. This happened in a village near Topola after the killing of 22 men of the 2nd Battalion of the 421st Army Signal Communication Regiment. The shooting was carried out on the orders of General Franz Boehme, Commanding General in Serbia. (Boehme committed suicide while awaiting trial)


ATROCITY AT THE MARIE CURIE INSTITUTE By Kaminski and Dirlewanger men
At 10.30am on August 5, 1944, one hundred armed troops in German uniform barged into the Maria Curie-Sklodowska Radium Institute on Wawelska Street in Warsaw. Shouting in loud voices they began searching and looting the entire building. The majority of the soldiers were drunk and were shooting at anyone who barred their way. In the Institute were 80 staff members and about 90 patients. All were robbed of their jewellery, money and personal items. The staff members were taken to a camp at Zieleniak a few kilometres away and for four days and nights were kept in the open without food or water. During this time many of the nurses were dragged out and raped by the drunken mob. At the end of the four days they were transported to Germany for slave labour. Back at the Institute the hospital patients remained in bed while the plundering and destruction of the hospital buildings proceeded. Stores and cupboards were broken open and everything thrown about while some of the female patients were dragged from their beds, assaulted and raped. Around 15 of the seriously sick patients were shot in their beds and their mattresses set on fire. Petrol was poured over the floors of the wards and set alight. Patients still alive (about 70) were then shot, their bodies piled in a heap and doused with petrol and ignited. This atrocity at the Radium Institute took the lives of all patients being treated there. The perpetrators of this horrible crime were mostly Russian soldiers, members of the Vlassov Army. General Vlassov was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1942 and later commanded an army of Russian prisoners of war who volunteered to fight on the German side rather than starve to death in German prison camps.

[Operation Ivy]

MW was the an awsome commander woot too bad he was on the wrong side ;)

and incase u didnt know the Tiger 1 is my fav tank of all time :D

[aartamen]

I like the B model myself. But the Tiger was awesome.

[foxtrot023]

"Military honour code" Could you elaborate on it? Like not killing opposing soldiers?
Like not killing civilians.... :roll:

I think it's been proven enough that the very large majority of Waffen SS soldiers did not even know about the extermination of the jews. To say otherwise would be bullsh*t
It has been proven now, was it? care to point us to source of those claims?
Waffen SS units and soldiers took actual active parts it the extermination and logistical parts of it and also commited large amount of war crimes against soldiers and civilians in combat areas.
If you change your claim to "very large majority of the whermacht" it would be more acceptable.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From Rob - WSSOB re the Waffen-SS "Florian Geyer" Division:

Here's some excerpts re: SS-Kav Regt./8th SS Division war crimes:

January 1940: Unit subordinated to HSSPF "Ost" Krüger, the former inspector of the Equestrian SS. The unit suffers from a lack of mounts, so in the early part of 1940 replacement horses are requisitioned from Polish breeders and even circuses.

Squardon 5 under W. Weichenwallner inspects a cattle car of tranported Jews & sees the car is filthy with excrement. Fearing dysentry, he orders all the Jews shot. His troops don't have enough ammunition and the Heer refuses to provide any, so Weichenwallner coerces members of the Gendarmerie to kill them, although 11 SS soldiers participate as well.
Fegelein reports how pleased he is that troops commanded by his younger brother Waldemar (who served as an unit officer) fufill their "special tasks" without hesitation.

March 1940: Gestapo investigate allegations that Fegelein has been sending looted goods and cash back to the SS cavalry school at Riem. RFSS Himmler discourages the investigation, not wanting to one of his favored, charismatic officers exposed by scandal.

March 30: Squadron 10, along with Police Battalion 51, battle partisans at Kamienna. SS troops employ "atonement actions" (burning villages, executing males and evacuating women & children)

May 1940: Unit contains 12 cavalry squardons reorganized into 2 regiments - 1st & 2nd Totenkopf Reiterstandarte; training in Poland; unit strength 1,908 officers & men

SS cavalrymen turn over Polish farmers of "questionable" race to the SD who sieze the Polish farmer's property and resettle it with a volksdeutsche family, often in the same day. Problems arise when the SS and volksdeutsche resettlers find Polish women and children who had evaded the evictions still on their farmsteads. Unit detatchments used to keep the peace between Ukrainian & Polish populations

September 1940:
Sept 19-20: The First and Fifth Squadrons from the 1st SS Reiterstandarte participate in the mass arrest of 1,600 Poles in Warsaw after the assassination of one SD man; 2nd Squadron detains 700 Jews for the SD at Otwock. Elements of the 1st SS Reiterstandarte execute 20 Jews per SD orders.

June 1941:
June 22: Operation Barbarossa - Germany invades the Soviet Union; unit assigned to Kommandostab RFSS.

June 24: Unit begins mopping-up operations; SS-Sturmbannführer Fassbender appointed liason to Heer units.
June 26: SS-Obersturmführer Maeker cited for bravery in defendign the 87th ID's flank at Narev.

June 27: Himmler, angry that his units are being used on the front lines, informs XLII Armee Korps that it does not tactically control the Kommandostab-RFSS.

June 28: Himmler expressly orders HSSPF Bach-Zelewski to kill all male Jews and drives the women & children into the swamps. Fegelein comments that "only villages that are free of Jews do not become partisan bases."

June 29: SS Kav Regt 2 stationed Sonnav until July 1

July 1941: SS-Kavallerie Regiment particpates in antipartisan sweeps in Pripet marshes; kills 259 Soviet soldiers and 6,500 civilians, mopping up after Einsatzgruppe B.

July 30: Voraus-Abt. combat against Soviet Cossak cavalry, Novo Andreyevka. Back at HQ, RFSS Himmler, Fegelein & Von dem Bach meet; Himmler conveys the "All Jews must be shot. Drive the females into the swamps" order. Fegelein relays order to SS-Sturmbannführer Herthes. Herthes on Aug 2nd (or 3rd?) informs Franz Magill of Fegelein's order with the additional comment "The Jews are the reservoir of the partisans." Magill, shocked by the order to drive women and children into the swamps to drown, radios Brigade HQ to confirm the order. Brigade HQ confirms the order.

August 1941: Unit becomes SS-Kavallerie Brigade (combining 1st & 2nd SS-Totenkopf-Reiterstandarte) under Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS; used for anti-partisan security duties behind the front lines in Russia at the 300x200 square km Pripet Marshes area. Unit operates under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. Unit strengh 3,500 men, 2,900 horses, 375 vehicles

Aug 2-12: 2 mounted detatchments under Franz Magill, along with Police & SD troops, kill 14,178 Jews, 1001 partisans and 699 Soviet soldiers at a cost of 2 dead. Many Ukrainian, Byelorussian and Polish residents assist in the capture of Jews to be killed. Magill, who may have complained to Fegelein about the unjustness of the orders, also commented "The Ukrainian clergy was very cooperative" in these actions, and that driving the women and children into the swamps "did not have the desired effect" as the water wasn't deep enough to drown them. An expanded quote from his report:

"...Jewish marauders were shot. Only a few manual laborers employed by the Wehrmacht repair shops were spared. Driving women & children towards the the marshes did not have the desired effect as the marshes were not deep enough to ensure drowning...The total number of marauders and others shot by the Reiter Abt. stands at 6,526 men. About 10 prisoners were taken away. Overall, the operation may be described as a success."*
* See page 29-31, "Division Florian Geyer", by Charles Trang


Aug 7: SS Brigade reports 7,819 Jews killed, Minsk Area.

Aug 8: Squadron 1, SS cavalry Regt. 2 kills 1,950-6,526? Jews at Pinsk. SS lower execution age limit to age 6. Himmler regards the number of executions as "too insignificant." Fegelein, aware of the emotional toll these grisly actions take on his troops, makes a concerted effort to ensure that the men are given awards and decorations for these "special assignments."

Aug 11: Magill reports "impressions of combat: none." In a post-war interrogation, one of Magill's men commented

"...the Jews behaved themselves in an exemplary fashion. No one tried to flee for his life. I could only marvel at them."

The SS soldier and his comrades thought what they were doing was, in his words, a "horrible madness*" (* "The Third Reich: A New History" by Michael Burleigh, see p. 566 & footnote 191)

Aug 13: Brigade receives intelligence "Partisan bands operate with the support of the Jewish population."

Aug 15-21: SS-Kavallerie Regt. 2 participates in antipartisan sweep "Operation Turov" at Turov, Pripet marshes

Aug 23: The mayor and members of the Hilfspolizei are killed by partisans at Starobin; 3rd squadron dispatched to appoint a new mayor and reorganize the Hilfspolizei detatchment. The SS suspect the assassins to be Jewish, so CO Waldemar Fegelein (younger brother of Hermann) orders all male Jews in the town to be shot. 21 J





THE NORMANDY MASSACRES (June, 1944) by HJ
A sensation was caused in Allied Headquarters when reports came through that a considerable number of Canadian soldiers were shot after being taken prisoner by the 12th. SS Panzer Division ‘Hitler Jugend’. On the morning of June 8th. thirty seven Canadians were taken prisoner by the 2nd. Battalion of the 26th. Panzer Grenadier Regiment. The prisoners were marched across country to the H/Q of the 2nd. Battalion. In the village of Le Mesnil-Patty they were then ordered to sit down in a field with their wounded in the center. In a short while a half track arrived with eight or nine SS soldiers brandishing their machine pistols. Advancing in line towards the prisoners they opened fire killing thirty five men. Two of the Canadians ran for their lives and escaped the slaughter but were rounded up by a different German unit to spend the rest of the war in a POW camp. First to make contact with the Canadians was a combat group led by Obersturmbannfuhrer Karl-Heinz Milius and supported by the Prinz Battalion. Near the villages of Authie and Buron , a number of Canadians of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, were taken prisoner. Numbering around forty, they were individually killed on the march back to the rear. Eight were ordered to remove their helmets and then shot with automatic rifles. Their bodies were dragged out on to the road and left to be run over by trucks and tanks. French civilians pulled the bodies back on to the pavement but were ordered to stop and to drag the bodies back onto the road again.
On the 7th and 8th of June, in the grounds of the Abbaye Ardenne, the headquarters of SS Brigadefuhrer Kurt Meyer’s 25th Panzer Grenadiers, twenty of the Canadians were shot. After being taken prisoner they were locked up in a stable and being called out by name they emerged from the doorway only to be shot in the back of the head. During the afternoon of 8th June, twenty six Canadians were shot at the Chateau d’Audrieu after being taken prisoner by a Reconnaissance Battalion of the SS Hitler Jugend. Other units of the German forces in France called the Hitler Jugend Division the ‘Murder Division’. After the war, investigations established that separate atrocities were committed in 31 different incidents involving 134 Canadians, 3 British and 1 American. Brought to trial before a Canadian military court at Aurich in Germany on 28 December, 1945, Kurt Meyer was sentenced to death but later reprieved and spent six years in Canadian jails before being transferred to Germany where he was released on September 7, 1954. He died of a heart attack on December 23, 1961, at age 51.

LE PARADIS (Pas-de-Calais, May 26,1940) By Totenkopf
A company of the Royal Norfolk Regiment, trapped in a cowshed, surrendered to the 2nd Infantry Regiment, SS 'Totenkopf' (Death's Head) Division under the command of 28 year old SS Obersturmfuhrer Fritz Knoechlein. Marched to a group of farm buildings, they were lined up in the meadow along side the barn wall. When the 99 prisoners were in position, two machine guns opened fire killing 97 of them. The bodies were then buried in a mass grave on the farm property. Two managed to escape, Privates Albert Pooley and William O'Callaghan of the Royal Norfolk Regiment emerged from the slaughter wounded but alive. When the SS troops moved on, the two wounded soldiers were discovered, after having hid in a pig-sty for three days and nights, by Madame Castel of Le Paradis who then cared for them till captured again by another Wehrmacht unit to spend the rest of the war as POWs. In 1942, the bodies of those executed were exhumed by the French authorities and reburied in the local churchyard now part of the Le Paradis War Cemetery. After the war, the massacre was investigated and Knoechlein was traced and arrested. During the war he had been awarded three Knight's Crosses. Tried before a War Crimes Court in Hamburg, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging, and on January 28, 1949, the sentence was carried out. Married with four children, his wife attended the trial every day.

WORMHOUDT (Pas-de-Calais, 27/28 May, 1940) By LSSAH
The day after the Le Paradis massacre, some 80 men of the 2nd Royal Warwickshire Regiment, the Cheshire Regiment and the Royal Artillery, were taken prisoner by the No7 Company, 2nd Battalion of the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. At Esquelbecq, near the town of Wormhoudt, the prisoners were marched into a large barn, and there the massacre began. Stick grenades were lobbed in amongst the defenceless prisoners who died in agony as shrapnel tore into their flesh. When the last grenade had been thrown, the survivors were then ordered outside, there to be mown down under a hail of bullets from automatic weapons. The SS then entered the barn again to finish off the wounded. Fifteen men survived the atrocity, only to give themselves up to other German units to serve out the war as POWs. Unlike the Le Paradis massacre, the victims of Wormhoudt were never avenged, as after the war no survivor could positively identify any of the SS soldiers involved.

ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE (Central France, June 10, 1944) By Das Reich
On their 450 mile drive from the south of France to the Normandy invasion area, the 2nd SS Panzer Division 'Das Reich' (15,000 men aboard 1,400 vehicles, including 209 tanks) under the command of SS General Lammerding, arrived at Limoges, a town famous for its porcelain. In the small town of St. Junien (30 kilometres from Limoges) the 'Der Führer Regiment' was regrouping. Following many encounters with the local maquis in which two German soldiers were killed, a unit of the regiment arrived at ORADOUR (believed to be a hotbed of maquis activity) in a convoy of trucks and half-tracks. At about 2 PM on this Saturday afternoon the 120 man SS unit surrounded the village ordering all inhabitants to parade in the market square for an identity check. Women and children were separated from the menfolk and herded into the local church. The men were herded in groups into six carefully chosen local garages and barns and shot. Their bodies were then covered with straw and set on fire. The 452 women and children in the church were then suffocated by smoke grenades lobbed in through the windows and sharpnel grenades that were thrown down the nave while machine-guns raked the interior. The church was then set on fire.
Incredibly, one woman, Mme Marguerite Rouffanche, escaped by jumping through a window, she was the only witness to the carnage in the church. (Mme Rouffanche died, aged 91, in March, 1988). Unspeakable atrocities were committed throughout the village, but some men managed to escape. The commanding officer of the 1st Battalion of the SS Regiment at ORADOUR was thirty-two year old SS Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann, a survivor of the Russian Front. He was later killed in the Normandy battle area on 30th of June when hit in the head by shrapnel. Many members of the "Das Reich" reacted with surprising venom against the officer who ordered the massacre and a court martial was established but Diekmann died before the trial took place. The world heard of this massacre eight years later when some of those responsible were brought to trial. In 1953, a French Military Court at Bordeaux, established that 642 people (245 women, 207 children and 190 men) had perished. Twenty-one other members of his company (including fourteen Frenchmen from Alsace-Lorraine who had been conscripted into the SS) were sentenced to death but later their sentences were commuted to terms of imprisonment. All were released by 1959. SS General Lammerding died peacefully at his home at Bad Toltz in Germany on the 13th of January 1971, of cancer. A close friend of Diekmann was Major Helmut Kampfe, commanding officer of the 3rd Battalion of the Der Führer Regiment. He was kidnapped and executed by the FTP (Communists) the day before the massacre. His kidnapping was not the only reason for the events at Oradour. Gold, looted by the Nazis, and then stolen by the Maquis, was rumoured to be hidden in the village, why else the indiscriminate destruction?.
Today, the village of Oradour-sur-Glane stands in ruins, just as the SS left it.

THE TULLE MURDERS (Near Limoges, Central France, June 9, 1944)
By Das Reich
The day before the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane , the SS murdered 99 men in the town of Tulle in central France. This was in response to activities by the local FTP resistance groups who had attacked and taken over the town. When the 2nd SS Panzer Division 'Das Reich' took over the town they found 40 dead bodies of the German 3rd Battalion/95th Security Regiment garrison troops near the school, their bodies badly mutilated. Other bodies were found around the town, bringing the total German dead in Tulle to sixty-four. Next day, the reprisals began. All males in the town were gathered together and 130 suspects were selected for execution. A number were released because of their youth and the remaining 99 were executed by the Pioneer platoon of SS-Panzer Aufklarungs Abteilung 2. Their bodies were hung up on lamp-posts and from balconies along the main streets of the town in the hope that the hanging bodies would deter future attacks by the Maquis and the FTP. More would have been hanged had not the SS ran out of rope. Instead, they rounded up 149 civilians and deported them to Germany for slave labour. Of these, 101 did not return.

ASCQ (Near Lille, April 2, 1944) BY HJ
At the end of March, 1944, the 12th SS Panzer Division 'Hitler Jugend' set out on 24 rail trucks for Normandy to cover the coast in anticipation of an Allied landing. The convoy, under the command of SS Obersturmführer Walter Hauck, was approaching the small railway station of Ascq when a violent explosion blew the line apart. Stopping the train, it was found that two flat trucks had been derailed, holding up the whole convoy. Hauck, in a foul mood, ordered his men to search and arrest all male members of the houses on both sides of the track. They were assembled together and marched down the track about 300 yards where each man was shot in the back of the head. Altogether 70 men were shot beside the railway line and another 16 killed in the village itself. After an investigation by the Gestapo, six more men were arrested and charged with planting the bomb. They were all executed by firing squad. When the war ended, a search for the perpetrators was set in motion. Most of the SS men were found in Allied POW camps in Europe and in England. In all, nine SS men stood trial in a French Military Court at Lille. All were sentenced to death, including Hauck. The sentences were later commuted to a period of imprisonment and Walter Hauck was released in July, 1957.

SANT' ANNA MASSACRE (August 12, 1944) BY RFSS
Just north of Pisa, between the towns of Lucca and Currara, lay the small village of S.Anna di Stazzema. On August 4, British troops had freed the city of Florence (Firenze) and the German armies were now retreating northwards through the mountainous region of Tuscany, ideal terrain for partisan activity. Many of the German troops were killed in ambushes and skirmishes with the Italian underground movement. On August 12, the 6th Panzergrenadieren 'Reichsführer-SS' Division reached the outskirts of Sant' Anna, their orders to shoot on sight all partisans found in the area. Believing that the inhabitants of the Sant'Anna were all partisans or partisan sympathizers, the SS started knocking on doors and shouting 'Heraus! Heraus!' ('out of here!'). Gathered together on the village square, the men, women and children, were then shot in cold blood. In all, 560 people were massacred including 110 children. The houses in the village were then burned to the ground, the church organ was riddled with machine-gun bullets and the christening font completely destroyed by a grenade. Many of the corpses were doused with petrol and then set alight before the SS unit departed.

ATROCITY AT BARDINE SAN TERENZO (August 20, 1944) By RFSS
In the area around the village of Bardine San Terenzo, the SS 16 Reichsführer Division was deployed to counteract partisan activity against German troops. Seventeen German soldiers had been ambushed and their truck set on fire. All seventeen were killed. A search of various villages was undertaken where the SS looted and burned a number of houses. Fifty-three villagers were taken to the burned out truck and tied to the chassis of the vehicle and to field posts nearby. Next day a local priest, Padre Lino Piane, discovered the fifty-three bodies. All had been shot. Most of the victims were from the village of Mezzana Castello, those from Bardine were taken to Valla and there, shot. There were 107 persons in all. Only five were men, the rest, women and children. In the four days that the search continued, a total of 369 hostages were brutally massacred and 454 houses destroyed by fire. In overall charge of the SS troops in this incident was Major Walter Reder, the one-armed SS officer responsible for the massacres on the Monte Sole.

THE BOVES ATROCITY (September 17th, 1944) BY LSSAH
A few kilometres north of Cuneo in Italy, lies the town of Boves. After September 8th, 1943, it became an active center of the Italian underground because of the stationing of many stragglers from the now disbanded Regio Esercito (Royal Italian Army). These partisans were led by Bartolomeo Giuliano, Ezio Aceto and Ignazio Vian. After repeated requests to surrender, the partisans refused in spite of leaflets being dropped by the SS. On the 17th of September the German commander, SS Major Joachim Peiper, ordered two gun crews to shell the town. The partisans again refused to surrender. Two German soldiers were then sent forward (as decoys) to be captured by the partisans. Hoping they would be killed, it would give Peiper the pretext for a slaughter. The parish priest, Father Giuseppe Bernardi and the industrialist, Alessandro Vassallo, were ordered to meet with the partisans and to persuade them to release the two soldiers. The priest asked Peiper 'Will you spare the town?'. Peiper gave his word and the two prisoners were released. But the blood-thirsty SS then proceeded to burn all the houses in the town after which Father Bernardi and Vassallo were put into a car to do an inspection of the devastated town. 'They must admire the spectacle' said Peiper. After the inspection, Father Bernardi and his companion, Vassallo, were sprinkled with petrol and set alight. Both were burned to death. Forty-three other inhabitants of Boves were killed that day and 350 houses destroyed. Next day, a column of armoured vehicles went up the road that led to the partisan base. A lucky shot from their only 75 mm gun destroyed the leading armoured car. After an intense fire-fight the SS retreated with heavy losses. One of the partisan leaders, Ignazio Vian, was later captured by the SS and hanged in Turin. On the wall of his cell he had written in his own blood the words "Better Die Rather Than Betray".

THE MALMEDY MASSACRE (December 17, 1944) By LSSAH
During the Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge) the Combat Group of the 1st SS Panzer Division, led by SS Major Joachim Peiper, was approaching the crossroads at Baugnes near the town of Malmedy . There they encountered a company of US troops (Battery B of the 285th. Field Artillery Observation Battalion) from the US 7th Armoured Division. Realizing that the odds were hopeless, the company's commander, Lt.Virgil Lary, decided to surrender. After being searched by the SS, the prisoners were marched into a field by the crossroads. The SS troops moved on except for two Mark IV tanks Nos.731 and 732, left behind to guard the GIs. An order was given to fire and SS Private Georg Fleps of tank 731 drew his pistol and fired at Lary's driver who fell dead in the snow. The machine guns of both tanks then opened fire on the prisoners. Many of the GIs took to their heels and fled to the nearest woods. Incredibly, 43 GIs survived, but 86 of their comrades lay dead in the field, being slowly covered with a blanket of snow. The US troops in the area were issued with an order that for the next week no SS prisoners were to be taken.
At the end of the war, Peiper, and 73 other suspects (arrested for other atrocities committed during the offensive) were brought to trial. When the trial ended on July 16, 1946, forty three of the defendants were sentenced to death, twenty two to life imprisonment, two to twenty years, one for fifteen years and five to ten years. Peiper and Fleps were among those sentenced to death, but after a series of reviews the sentences were reduced to terms in prison. On December 22, 1956, SS Sturmbannführer Peiper was released. He settled in the small village of Traves in northern France in 1972 and four years later, on the eve of Bastille Day, he was murdered and his house burned down by a French communist group. His charred body was recovered from the ruins and transferred to the family grave in Schondorf , near Landsberg in Bavaria. Most of the remains of the murdered GIs were eventually shipped back to the US for private burial but twenty one still lie buried in the American Military Cemetery at Henri-Chappelle, about forty kilometers north of Malmedy.
Today, the American flag flies over the Memorial built at the Baugnes crossroads, about 50 metres from where the actual killings took place.

MASSACRE AT DISTOMO (June 10, 1944) By Polizei
Four days after the Allied invasion of Normandy a most despicable atrocity took place in the village of Distomo, in the province of Boeotia in Central Greece. A unit of the SS Police Panzergrenadier Regiment No 7, on an antipartisan sweep, massacred 218 Greek civilians in the village. Packed into seven trucks, the unit drove through the village without incident but a short distance beyond the village the convoy was ambushed by a guerrilla band that resulted in the killing of seven SS soldiers. The SS unit doubled back into the village and in a last ditch effort to crush partisan activities, the reprisals, including looting, burning and rape, began. When a Red Cross delegation visited the village some days later they found bodies hanging from trees along the main street. One survivor, Yannes Basdekis, recalled, "I walked into a house and saw a woman, stripped naked and covered in blood. Her breasts had been sliced off. Her baby lay dead nearby, the cut off nipple still in its mouth". The unit commander, SS Hauptstrumführer Lautenbach was later charged with falsifying a military report on the massacre but the charges were dropped as the massacre was judged a 'military necessity'. Today, the skulls and bones of the victims are displayed in the Mausoleum of Distomo. In 1960, Germany paid the Greek government 115 million marks as compensation for the suffering of its citizens during the German occupation but as yet no payment is forthcoming for the victims of Distomo. It was not until 1990 that members of the German embassy first took part in the wreath laying ceremony on the annual anniversary of the massacre. (It is somewhat ironic that other massacres took place on a same date, the 10th of June, Lidice in 1943, Oradour-zur-Glane and Distomo, in 1944.

VILLAGE MASSACRES By Prinz Eugen
On March 27, 1944, troops of the 7th SS Prinz Eugen Division massacred 834 Serbian civilians and set fire to around 500 houses in the villages of Ruda, Cornji, Dorfer Otok and Dalnji in Dalmatia. The troops were engaged in fighting the Yugoslavian communist guerrilla forces and the massacre was a collective punishment for those supporting the partisans. Earlier, in May 1943, the Prinz Eugen Division marched into Monternegro and occupied the Niksic district. In one village, 121 persons, mostly women, were brutally murdered. They included 29 children under 14 and 30 persons between the ages of 60 and 92. In 1943, the Prinz Eugen Division was made up mostly of ethnic Germans from Serbia and Croatia. On July 28, 1944, the Division, supported by the Albanian 21st SS Skanderberg Division, made up mostly of Muslims from Kosovo and engaged in a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing against the Kosovo Serbian and Jewish populations, surrounded the village of Velika and in an orgy of looting and killing massacred 428 Serbs, looted and burned down 300 houses. On October 9, 1941, some 2,000 communists and Jews were shot on the basis of Hitler's 100 to 1 order. This happened in a village near Topola after the killing of 22 men of the 2nd Battalion of the 421st Army Signal Communication Regiment. The shooting was carried out on the orders of General Franz Boehme, Commanding General in Serbia. (Boehme committed suicide while awaiting trial)


ATROCITY AT THE MARIE CURIE INSTITUTE By Kaminski and Dirlewanger men
At 10.30am on August 5, 1944, one hundred armed troops in German uniform barged into the Maria Curie-Sklodowska Radium Institute on Wawelska Street in Warsaw. Shouting in loud voices they began searching and looting the entire building. The majority of the soldiers were drunk and were shooting at anyone who barred their way. In the Institute were 80 staff members and about 90 patients. All were robbed of their jewellery, money and personal items. The staff members were taken to a camp at Zieleniak a few kilometres away and for four days and nights were kept in the open without food or water. During this time many of the nurses were dragged out and raped by the drunken mob. At the end of the four days they were transported to Germany for slave labour. Back at the Institute the hospital patients remained in bed while the plundering and destruction of the hospital buildings proceeded. Stores and cupboards were broken open and everything thrown about while some of the female patients were dragged from their beds, assaulted and raped. Around 15 of the seriously sick patients were shot in their beds and their mattresses set on fire. Petrol was poured over the floors of the wards and set alight. Patients still alive (about 70) were then shot, their bodies piled in a heap and doused with petrol and ignited. This atrocity at the Radium Institute took the lives of all patients being treated there. The perpetrators of this horrible crime were mostly Russian soldiers, members of the Vlassov Army. General Vlassov was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1942 and later commanded an army of Russian prisoners of war who volunteered to fight on the German side rather than starve to death in German prison camps.

Actually, the majority of the Waffen SS, did not participated on executions. On the topic of war crimes committed by the LSSAH and the 12 HJ in Normandy, only 2 soldiers were found guilty and hanged. Ref. Steel Inferno book