Hitler's Vikings Page 23

  More than 340 years earlier a young and bullish Tsar Peter the Great faced a Swedish army and its Estonian and German allies on the Narva, as the Russians sought to invade Livonia (as the country was then known) and destroy the powerful Swedish empire in The Great Northern War. The result was bloody humiliation, as the heavily outnumbered Swedes thrashed their Russian foes and captured their entire artillery park. Livonia was saved from Russian occupation for another decade. This time round the forces involved were of an altogether different magnitude, the Swedes numbered in their dozens and not thousands, but the parallels were still there. Would history repeat itself, could the Russians be held?

  A Norge Regiment anti-tank gun crew during the Narva fighting, 1944. (Erik Wiborg)

  Nordland officers at the Narva 1944, from left; unknown, the Norwegian Olaf Wahlmann, the German Hans Hoff, and the Norwegian Frode Halle. (Erik Wiborg)

  In the meantime the Nordland’s achievements during the early spring battles were recognised firstly by the award on 12 March to Fritz von Scholz of the Oakleaves (the Eichenlauben) to his Knight’s Cross, and then by his promotion to SS-Gruppenführer on the occasion of Hitler’s birthday on 20 April.

  The Tannenberg Line

  On 22 June the main Red Army summer offensive hit Army Group Centre like a tidal wave and swept it away. Over the next six weeks Operation Bagration liberated all of Belorussia and swathes of Poland inflicting the largest ever defeat on German arms in recorded history. Some 35 divisions, more than 350,000 men all told, would be wiped off the Wehrmacht’s order of battle. The losses even dwarfed Stalingrad, and the Germans would never recover. As the Wiking and other formations from Army Group North Ukraine were sent north, so OKW also pillaged Army Group North units to send south to try and stem the Russian advance. Again as with AGNU, this left the North severely weakened. Grasser, Steiner and von Scholz looked across the Narva with trepidation as they saw the Soviets remorselessly build up their strength in the first days of July. The failed bomb attempt on Hitler’s life on the 20th exacerbated the situation as command and control across the Wehrmacht seemed paralysed in a welter of recriminations.

  An order from the Corps to withdraw the Nordland to the Tannenberg Line was cancelled by Steiner’s Chief-of-Staff, Joachim Ziegler, as the Danmark was caught up in beating off battalion-sized Soviet incursions into its lines. Having done that, and taken 71 casualties into the bargain, Ziegler finally gave the withdrawal order and at 2330hrs on the night of 24 July the Germans, Scandinavians and Dutchmen of the Nordland and Nederland began to move back from the city and its river to the pre-prepared defences of the Tannenberg. The Russians guessed what was happening immediately and threw themselves forward. The result was a disaster. A withdrawal in contact, as an operation of war, is recognised among professional soldiers as the hardest thing to successfully carry out, with calamity never more than a heartbeat away. That night the Germanic Corps was unlucky. The Scandinavians managed to find their way through the woods in the dark and reach their allotted trenches but the Dutch SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 48 General Seyffardt was not so fortunate. Caught in the open by the Soviet advance guard it was butchered along with its commander, Richard Benner. Only around 20 per cent of its members escaped. Just days later the Finnish SS Battalion’s old boss, Hans Collani, would be wounded and take his own life, leading General Seyffardt’s sister regiment, the De Ruyter. At the Line itself, all was confusion as men and equipment arrived pell-mell. With the Russians hot on their heels, troops were hastily marshalled into the defences and became hopelessly mixed-up.

  The climax of Narva

  Up until then the fighting at Narva had resembled more a campaign that had gone on for several months rather than a ‘conventional’ battle that was won or lost in days. That was about to change over the next four days as the fate of Army Group North was effectively in the hands of the Nordland and its Dutch, Flemish and Estonian allies. The Scandinavian Waffen-SS was now at the very fulcrum of Hitler’s war with the Soviet Union.

  As the General Seyffardt was being wiped out on the 25th, the Nordland was preparing itself for battle. The summer nights that far north are short and it had been light since 4am on the 26th, but the Russians did not begin their assault on Orphanage Hill until gone midday. When they did, the fighting was savage. The Flemings’ German commander, Wilhelm Rehmann, took himself to the rear with a ‘wound’ that Steiner himself dismissed as trivial. The young Flemish nationalist, Georg D’Haese, took over in time to see almost every other Flemish officer killed including his two fellow company commanders, Frans Swinnen and Henri Van Mol. Despite this the defenders held on, but the next day the Soviets launched a massive assault on the heights that threw the Flemings off Orphanage Hill. Steiner ordered an immediate counter-attack, and the Norwegian company commander Thomas Hvistendahl led his Norge men forward to try and retake the hill, reinforced by D’Haese. Some sixty Flemings were stranded in the abandoned orphanage itself, and they willed their rescuers on as they twice tried to reach them in the teeth of Soviet fire. It was no use. The grenadiers were not strong enough and during the night the beleaguered SS men were wiped out to the last man.

  As dawn broke on the morning of the 28th, everyone sensed this was to be the decisive day. The Soviet Front Commander, Govorov, concentrated troops from no less than six tank brigades and 11 rifle divisions in the lee of Orphanage Hill ready to sweep west and take Grenadier, then 69.9 and finally break III SS-Germanic Panzer Corps’s resistance. The Russians carried out their usual huge artillery barrage to soften up the defenders and then poured forward. In front of them stood a lone, five-foot-four-inch railway worker’s son from Kemptich in Flanders, Remy Schrijnen, and his 75mm PAK gun. In the next hour Schrijnen single-handedly destroyed seven Soviet tanks, including three mighty Joseph Stalin JS-2s (Joseph Stalin tanks had very thick armour and a truly enormous 122mm main gun, the shells of which weighed 25 pounds) and successfully stalled the whole attack. Schrijnen was badly wounded and knocked unconscious when his gun was finally wrecked by a tank round, but he had saved Grenadier Hill and was awarded the Knight’s Cross for his bravery. During the same morning’s fighting, Fritz von Scholz was hit in the head by a shell splinter. Rushed off to a field hospital, there was nothing the doctors could do and he died the next day from his injuries. He was posthumously given the Swords to his Knight’s Cross.

  Govorov would not give up and on 29 July he once more sent his tankers into battle to break the Nordland’s line. By now the trenches were filled with dead Scandinavians, Estonians and Dutchmen, and the survivors were exhausted. Just as all seemed lost, the ex-Wiking artillery officer, SS-Obersturmbannführer Paul-Albert Kausch, led every last one of the Hermann von Salza’s panzers in a desperate counter-attack. Supported by Norge’s grenadiers in particular, the von Salza’s Panthers, Mark IVs and Sturmgeschütze (turretless self-propelled assault guns) charged forward. At the end of the day 113 Russian tanks were left blazing around the three hills; and a badly wounded and barely-conscious Remy Schrijnen was rescued from his wrecked gun-pit.

  Knight’s Cross winners from the Narva at the award ceremony on 23 August 1944. From left, the Estonian SS officer Harald Riipalu, the commander of the Nordland’s Hermann von Salza panzer battalion Obersturmbannführer Paul-Albert Kausch, Schluetter and Hans Collani’s Adjutant from the Dutch SS De Ruyter Regiment, Karl-Heinz Ertel. Ertel also served alongside Collani in the Finnish SS Battalion. (James Macleod)

  Narva was held and the Red Army frustrated. The Ostheer might have been in the process of losing Belorussia, the remainder of the Ukraine and swathes of Poland, but in the far north the Front was safe, at least for a while. In recognition of the magnificent performance of all of his men, Felix Steiner was awarded the Swords to his Knight’s Cross. Ferdinand Schörner, who had left Army Group A in the south to take over Army Group North, wrote the recommendation:

  SS-Obergruppenführer Steiner has achieved with his III Germanic SS-Panzer Corps a defensive success for the entire Eastern
Front. With his two weak divisions and one brigade he held the front in Narva unbreakable against the storming 2nd Russian Shock Army and 8th Army with 11 divisions and six tank brigades. More than 1,020 tanks were destroyed. The enemy suffered heavy losses. His personal decisiveness, and his brave and versatile battle leadership, deserve special recognition.

  Old Fritz’s successor

  With von Scholz dead, his place was taken by the Corps Chief-of-Staff, the impressively tall 40 year old Spanish Civil War veteran, Joachim Ziegler. Ziegler was a career Army officer, and had only officially been transferred to the Waffen-SS a few days before he was appointed to lead the Nordland. Promoted to SS-Brigadeführer, this experienced and courageous officer would command the division almost to the very end of the war.

  Scandinavian recruitment dries up

  Having been through two of the most savage battles the Russian Front had witnessed, both the Nordland and Wiking were desperate for fresh blood. The grenadier companies in particular were threadbare, and although men returning from leave and injury would do a little to fill the gaps, it was more of a sticking plaster. What was really needed was a new wave of volunteers from Scandinavia. No such wave was forthcoming. No amount of propaganda could hide the fact that the Third Reich was losing the war, and after almost five years of occupation, unrest was growing in Denmark and Norway.

  Denmark’s so-called ‘model occupation’ was falling apart. The King made no secret of his loathing for the Nazis and led a dignified, passive opposition to the Germans. Many of his subjects took matters further and industrial sabotage in particular became commonplace. Civil disturbance reached its height in June of 1944 with the Copenhagen General Strike called after the Germans imposed a curfew. In a hitherto unheard of gesture, the working population of Denmark’s capital downed tools and went onto the streets to protest. The authorities were helpless to stop it and chaos reigned for days. The result was more severe repression, and needless to say this did not encourage recruits to come forward. Pro-Nazis were now openly vilified, support for the DNSAP had collapsed, and recruiting pools such as the party’s youth wing had been mined out. Frits Clausen, frustrated in his ambition to lead his country, had increasingly turned to drink. He enlisted in the Waffen-SS, was admitted to hospital for alcoholism and subsequently stepped down as Party leader in May. His fall from grace would be complete that November when he was expelled from the Party. The Danish armed forces had already been disbanded earlier in the year, and they were followed by the police in September. From now onwards public order would be kept by the Hipo Corps (Hilfspolizei Korpset – a new uniformed force based on the intelligence sections of Knud Martinsen’s Schalburg Corps). The Corps would wage an increasingly bitter war against the Resistance in the dying days of the conflict, with arson attacks and vicious tit-for-tat murders.

  Up in Norway the situation was similar, with the Resistance growing in strength and the Germans becoming more and more heavy-handed to keep order. Quisling had taken over government, as Minister President, only to fail spectacularly, with clumsy attempts to radicalise the population falling flat, especially when he clashed with the unions and the teachers. Again, this adversely affected recruitment among the general population, while the barrel of the Far Right had just about been scraped. The SS recruiting office in Oslo reported that the GSSN, for example, had 1,247 registered members at the end of September, but 330 were already at the Front, 245 were in the police and 511 were in emergency units at home. That left just 161 men uncommitted. It also stated that of the 4,133 Norwegians it had recruited already, only 1,434 remained in service, 606 had been killed and 2,043 discharged at the end of their contract term. The recruiters went on to say that 1944 had been a very slow year with only a handful of men coming forward. The well, never deep, had just about dried up.

  The Wiking on the Vistula

  Ulf-Ola Olin and his men had bloodied the Red Army’s nose on the Bug, but the Red Army’s massive 1st Ukrainian Front pressed on regardless and succeeded in crossing the Vistula (Weichsel in German) at Baranow and Sandomierz about 100 miles south of Warsaw, and Magnuszew just 20 miles southeast of the city. The Reich’s response to this deadly threat was to create the IV SS-Panzer Corps, comprising the 3rd SS-Panzer Division Totenkopf and the Wiking, under Gille’s command. His place with the Wiking was meant to be taken by the 35 year-old Bavarian Knight’s Cross winner, Dr Eduard Deisenhofer, but the ex-Totenkopf man went instead to the 17th SS-Panzergrenadier Division Götz von Berlichingen, before being killed in action in Arnswalde in 1945 whilst on his way to take command of the 15th Latvian SS Division. In his absence, leadership of the Wiking went to one of its most distinguished old boys, Hans Mühlenkamp. The Luftwaffe’s Hermann Goering Panzer Division and the Army’s 19th Panzer Division were then combined with the new Corps to establish a formidable armoured force. Together, they pinned the Soviets back into their bridgehead at Sandomierz, although they could not destroy it, and then switched north to savage the Soviet 2nd Tank Army in front of Warsaw itself in the so-called ‘Wet Triangle’. The battle saw the Russians lose more than 170 tanks, 3,000 men killed and 6,000 taken prisoner.

  Wounded during the fighting was the young Norwegian SS-Untersturmführer, Fredrik Jensen. Commanding the Germania’s 7th Company, the tall, blond Jensen had already earned the Iron Cross 1st Class in the Ukraine the previous summer. His bravery in front of Warsaw won him the German Cross in Gold, confirmed in December, and although his injuries prevented him from returning to the Front again, the award would be enough to make him the highest-decorated Norwegian Waffen-SS volunteer of the war. His place with the 7th Company would be taken by yet another Norwegian Bad Tölz graduate and old Nordland Regiment veteran, Arne Gunnar Smith, who would be killed himself five days later.

  The Warsaw Uprising

  Behind the Corps, Warsaw rose in revolt on 1 August. After years of brutal occupation, the Polish Home Army (the Armija Krajowa or AK for short) under the leadership of General Duke Tadeusz Komorowski, codenamed Bor, attacked key points across the capital. For the next 63 days some of the most horrific fighting of the war would rage in one of Europe’s most beautiful cities. Under the leadership of the head of Nazi Germany’s anti-partisan forces, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, a mixed force of Army and Waffen-SS (which included Azeris, Cossacks, Ukrainians and Oskar Dirlewanger’s convicts) forsook every accepted rule of war and butchered, raped and burnt their way to victory and infamy.

  A portrait of the most highly decorated Norwegian Waffen-SS volunteer of the war, the Germania Regiment’s Fredrik Jensen. (James Macleod)

  The Norwegian Wiking volunteer Fredrik Jensen relaxes in the sun. He won the German Cross in Gold as well as the Iron Cross. Today he lives in Spain. (James Macleod)

  Controversy has raged ever since as to whether Stalin left the Polish patriots to their fate so as to prepare the ground for a post-war communist takeover, or if he had no such intent. On the balance of evidence it is absolutely clear, and Norman Davies’s work on this is extremely powerful, that although the Red Army was exhausted, the Soviet dictator did indeed abandon Warsaw and watched with glee as thousands of potential Polish foes died manning the barricades.

  The Wiking, the ‘Wet Triangle’ and Sören Kam

  As for the Wiking, and its new stable mate the Totenkopf, the two SS panzer divisions continued to defy two entire Soviet armies in front of the city throughout the autumn and into the winter. In early October, Mühlenkamp left the Wiking to become the Inspector of the Waffen-SS Panzer Troops, and was succeeded by the Knight’s Cross winner and ex-Das Reich and Totenkopf officer, Karl Ullrich. Ullrich would lead the Wiking for the remainder of the war. At the same time, to help keep the division up to strength, the reformed 1st Battalions of both the Norge and Danmark Regiments, now almost entirely made up of teenage German conscripts and unemployed Luftwaffe ground crew, were shipped from their Hammerstein training ground to the Polish front. Incorporated into the Wiking they would never serve with the Nordland. About 80
Danes and Norwegians were in the two battalions, evenly split between them, many of them by now being NCOs or officers.

  An earlier photograph of the Danish Waffen-SS volunteer Sören Kam, in the uniform of the paramilitary Schalburg Corps back in Denmark. Following the end of the war he settled in Germany, like many other foreign veterans, to escape persecution at home. (James Macleod)

  Untersturmführer Wolfgang Eldh, Swedish Adjutant of a German Battlegroup during the Latvia battles in July 1944. Eldh was badly wounded in the fighting at Dünaburg later the same month. (Lennart Westberg)

  Two such volunteers were the 19-year-old Norwegian Karl-Aagard Østvig, an officer in the Norge’s 3rd Company, and the Danish platoon leader and ex-Frikorps veteran Sören Kam. Both were heavily involved in the vicious struggle in front of Warsaw, with Kam briefly having to take over command of his entire battalion when every other officer was either killed or wounded. He would become the second Dane to be awarded the Knight’s Cross for his actions. Østvig too distinguished himself, but was not so lucky and died in the fighting.