Hitler's Vikings Page 5
The Red Army was reeling from Stalin’s Purges at the time, robbed of the majority of its experienced officer corps as they were marched to the firing squad or the gulag, and astoundingly unprepared for a war in the snowy wastes of Finland. The result was thousands of Soviet soldiers herded onto the Finnish defence lines and mowed down in heaps. As one Red Army officer wrote:
Of the more than 100 men of my company who went into the first attack, only 38 returned after the second one had failed … The rest I remember through a fog. One of the wounded, among whom we advanced, grabbed at my leg and I pushed him away. When I noticed I was ahead of my men, I lay down in the snow and waited for the line to catch up with me. There was no fear … this time the Finns let us approach to within 100 feet of their positions before opening fire.
Forced by circumstance to improvise, the Finns invented the ‘Molotov cocktail’ to take on Russian tanks, silently skiing through the wintry forests to ambush the road-bound Soviet infantry. As the world watched in amazement, the vaunted Red Army was beaten again and again with whole divisions being swallowed up in the dark, primeval Nordic landscape.
Fighting for her survival, Finland appealed for help, but no national government was prepared to come to her aid. People themselves were very sympathetic, and across Scandinavia in particular, feelings were running high at what was viewed as naked Communist aggression. Official aid might not have been forthcoming, but on an individual level an avalanche of intrepid volunteers, many of them serving soldiers in their own armies, made their way to Finland and took up arms against the invader. One thousand two hundred Danes came together to serve as a complete battalion under the command of two regular Danish Army officers, Paul Rantzau-Engelhardt and V. Tretow-Loof. From Norway came 727 volunteers, and they joined up with no less than 8,260 Swedes. All had answered the recruiting call of ‘For the honour of Sweden and the freedom of the North’, to form the Swedish Volunteer Corps as it became known (the Svenska Friviligkoren). A further 500 Swedes enlisted directly into the Finnish Army. Welcome though these reinforcements were, they were not going to be enough to change the outcome. The chastened Soviets regrouped, massively reinforced their troops, changed their tactics and commanders, and launched a second huge offensive in the New Year. The exhausted Finns and their Scandinavian allies fought them every inch of the way, but the result was a foregone conclusion. In March 1940 the Finns sued for peace having lost 25,000 men killed and many more injured. Exact Soviet casualties are unknown, but it is reasonable to assume that at least 200,000 Red Army soldiers died in the snows of Finland. The resulting peace settlement stripped Finland of 11% of its land and 30% of its economic base, but none of its population. In an amazing migration every single Finn who found themselves in newly-acquired Soviet territory abandoned his or her home and trekked over the new border to Finland proper.
The effect of the war on many in Europe, especially parts of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish populations, was to radicalise them and reinforce their existing view of the threat posed by Soviet communism. Just as the invasions of Afghanistan in 1979 by the Soviets and of Iraq in 2003 by the Coalition acted as recruiting sergeants for radical Islam, so did the Winter War act as a future recruiter for the Waffen-SS’s fight against communism. The Dutch SS-Wiking volunteer, Jan Munk, said of the attack on Finland: ‘I thought it foul, it just strengthened my anti-communist thoughts. I was also very surprised that no country went to Finland’s aid.’
Most of the Scandinavian volunteers agreed with this view, and disgust at the Soviet invasion of their close neighbour was probably the Waffen-SS’s best recruiting asset. The Norwegian Nasjonal Samling members like Bjørn Østring definitely thought so: ‘I was already an anti-communist, but the Soviet attack on Finland strengthened my existing political convictions. Without doubt I feared a Soviet takeover of Europe and I volunteered at the very start to stand side by side with the Finns.’ Bjarne Dramstad agreed:
This is the key point of why I ended up in the Waffen-SS. My elder brother Rolf served as a volunteer in a Swedish company in the Winter War, and he was awarded a medal for bravery for saving his wounded company commander. I wanted to go to, but I didn’t because of my mother who already had one son away in the war. My elder brother Rolf was my idol from my childhood. I mean we had our own problems in Norway in the 30s before the war, with the communists and the Labour Party creating ‘red guards’ at the factories, and I can’t remember if I was impressed by Germany at that point, but I was definitely afraid of the communist threat from the Soviet Union, especially after the attack on Finland, and I wanted revenge. I also wanted to participate in crushing the terrible system they had over there.
The young Dutch volunteer Jan Munk’s platoon from the Wiking’s SS-Westland Regiment just before it was sent to the Russian Front. Munk is kneeling in the front rank on the extreme right wearing glasses. All the grenadiers were foreign volunteers with only the platoon’s NCOs being Germans. Almost none survived the war. (Jan Munk)
Danes served in many Waffen-SS units. This is a gun crew from the Germania Regiment’s 13th Company in Russia during Barbarossa, on the far right with the glasses is the Danish volunteer Henry Doose Nielsen. (Jens Post)
The amateur boxer and Swedish Army soldier, Erik ‘Jerka’ Wallin. Like many of his fellow Swedish Waffen-SS volunteers Wallin was a pre-war member of Sven-Olov Lindholm’s neo-Nazi SSS Party.
The very shortness of the war meant that many of the Scandinavian volunteers were still in training when hostilities ended, but dozens were still killed in the fighting. Those that survived went back home fired with a determination to combat communism whenever they could, and spread the word to anyone who would listen. Many of them rejoined their own armies and, though few in number, would become some of the hard wood of the future Scandinavian Waffen-SS. Among them were Danes, such as the handsome and debonair Christian von Schalburg and the youthful and idealistic Johannes-Just Nielsen; and Swedes like the tall amateur boxer Erik ‘Jerka’ Wallin and the intelligent and charismatic Gösta Borg.
Invasion!
Finland was not the first European state to suffer an attack from a totalitarian dictatorship. Poland had that unfortunate honour. Back in September 1939 the Wehrmacht had swept over the border and annihilated the Polish armed forces using a new kind of warfare – blitzkrieg. Final defeat for Poland was assured when the Red Army joined in and invaded the eastern half of the country, as agreed under the secret terms of the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. That invasion had begun the Second World War, as France and Great Britain honoured their treaty with Poland and declared war on Hitler’s Germany, although not with the Soviet Union as it happened. The next seven months became known in the West as the ‘sitzkrieg’, as neither the Germans nor the French and British did anything much other than scowl at each other over the border. None of the Nordic countries had mutual assistance treaties with Poland and so none had declared war on either Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union. Denmark, of course, already had its Non-Aggression Pact with Germany. They all went about their everyday business much as before and studiously ignored the warring sides. Militarily they posed no threat to Germany, with their armies being mainly made up of poorly-equipped conscripts and reservists around cadres of professionals, with little modern airpower or equipment to speak of. In the end that would not matter.
On the morning of 9 April 1940 Denmark became the first country in history to be attacked by parachute. Operation Weser Exercise (Unternehmen Weserübung) began with a small unit of Danish-speaking Brandenburger commandos (in Danish Army uniforms) capturing the Padborg bridge in a daring attack, to allow German ground troops to flood north. Airfields and strategic locations were seized and it was all over by breakfast. It had been so quick that King Christian X and the Danish government had no time to flee to safety. The Wehrmacht had lost two planes shot down and a few armoured cars damaged. Thirteen members of the Royal Danish forces were killed and 23 wounded.
Norway, attacked on the same day, was an
altogether different scenario. The German cruiser Blücher appeared in Oslo fjord carrying most of the German command staff and called on the garrison to surrender. On hearing of the invasion, Quisling sent out an instruction to all his supporters telling them not to resist. The Norwegian Army officer in charge of Oslo’s shore batteries at Oscarsborg, Lieutenant August Bonsak, was an NS member but without a moment’s hesitation he ordered his guns to open fire and sent the Blücher and its surprised crew to the bottom of the sea. The future Waffen-SS volunteer Bjarne Dramstad recalled the invasion:
My elder brother [Rolf, the Winter War veteran] participated in the fighting and the shameful retreat of the Norwegian Army in Østfold. He had just returned from Finland and ended up manning a machine-gun at the fighting for Sørmoen bridge. When the Germans attacked the bridge he was left alone with his machine-gun firing at the Germans, as his friends had deserted, taking with them all of Rolf’s personal belongings. Somehow Rolf managed to escape German captivity.
Unable to help Denmark, the French and British were determined to go to Norway’s aid and sent a joint Expeditionary Force to land in the north at Narvik to try and throw the Germans out. What should have been a lightning campaign almost became Nazi Germany’s first ever military defeat. Edouard Dietl’s élite mountain troops (the famed Austro-German gebirgsjäger) facing the Anglo-French force were so close to destruction they were given permission by Hitler to march into internment across the Swedish border if necessary. In the end they fought it out and hung on. Fighting was still going on when the Germans launched their invasion of France and the Low Countries in May, and only then was the Allied Expeditionary Force hurriedly withdrawn on 8 June to continue the battle in France. In the meantime, King Haakon VII, a relation of the British Royal Family, had escaped to London along with his government. They joined the Poles as the second government-in-exile resident in London. When the fighting finally ceased in Norway on 10 June the campaign had lasted 62 days (the Battle of France would last only 46) and both the Wehrmacht and the defenders had suffered about 5,000 casualties each, with 527 Norwegian soldiers and about 300 civilians killed. The Kriegsmarine was badly mauled, losing the Blücher and no less than 10 destroyers to the Royal Navy.
Unlike Norway and Denmark, Sweden’s neutrality was observed and no German troops landed on her shores. As long as Swedish iron ore, so important for Germany’s industries, kept flowing south, then Berlin was happy to leave the Swedes well alone.
Occupation
Heavy-handed occupations were not the German intent following their invasions. In Denmark the existing state institutions were left in place; the police, the judiciary, the monarchy and even the armed forces. No attempt was made either to foist Danish neo-Nazi parties on the government, much to Clausen’s chagrin. There was no Reich’s Commissar or Military Governor imposed, the senior Nazi official in the country was still the Ambassador, Cecil von Renthe-Fink acting as a Plenipotentiary (a Reichsbewollmachtiger). General Kurt Lüdtke was appointed as commander of the occupying forces, but had no role in the administration of the country. The elected Prime Minister, Thorvald Stauning, was pretty much pro-German anyway, as was his Foreign Minister Erik Scavenius, who signed Denmark up to Hitler’s Anti-Comintern Pact.
While Denmark became a model occupation in many ways, Norway was a different kettle of fish all together. Quisling seized his chance and appointed himself as the head of a new government, broadcasting to the nation his assumption of power. Everyone was taken aback. The Nazis had no forewarning and neither did any of Quisling’s NS colleagues. It became clear in no time at all that there was no popular support for Quisling, and his pretensions to leadership were actually hurting Germany’s cause in the country. After just six days he was removed from office by Hitler himself, and the bespectacled Josef Terboven was appointed as Reich’s Commissar for Norway. Terboven and Quisling took an instant dislike to each other and the struggle between the two of them was to blight the German occupation for the next five years.
Away from the salons of power in Oslo, the occupation on the whole mirrored Denmark’s in its focus on establishing good relations with the local people. By a matter of months Bjarne Dramstad had missed out on doing his national service alongside Bjørn Østring in The Kings Guard Regiment, and thus facing the Germans in uniform, and instead was limited to lending his bicycle to an older friend to enable him to reach his mobilisation point on time. Dramstad was angry at the invasion, and resented the Germans, but said of their occupation: ‘The Germans were very correct in their behaviour, they treated the Norwegian POWs well, and were friendly towards us civilians. If they had behaved worse then maybe I wouldn’t have joined, but my war and motivation were for Finland in any case and not for Germany.’
Bjørn Østring served in his regiment during the invasion, had been captured during the fighting and was then quickly released. He thought the Germans behaved extremely well and that this influenced his decision to join-up: ‘My home town had about 5,000 inhabitants and the German General Engelbrecht quartered as many soldiers there. Relations between them and the population were correct and friendly. Most of my friends held the same views as I did.’
The Scandinavian Waffen-SS is born
Just 11 days after German paras spilled out over Denmark, and the Blücher was sent to the bottom of Oslo harbour, the order went out from Berlin to establish a new Scandinavian SS regiment, the SS-Nordland. No longer were foreigners to be just an adjunct to Waffen-SS expansion, this was the very first direct attempt to appeal to, recruit, train and arm a specific formation of volunteers from outside the borders of the Third Reich. Nothing like it had been done before and it set a clear precedent. The SS-Nordland was nothing less than a revolution, and the first step on a path that would lead to an armed SS in 1945 that was mostly non-native German, and where Scandinavians, Frenchmen and Latvians would be among the last and most dogged defenders of Hitler’s burning capital.
The regiment itself was to be composed of volunteers from all over Scandinavia, and it needed a lot – the best part of 2,000 men all up. Despite the optimism of the SS authorities, recruitment was frustratingly slow. By the end of June only about 200 Norwegians, 112 Danes and a handful of Swedes had come forward. One of the earliest was Dane Paul Vilhelm Hveger, a 22-year-old from Nyborg. Hveger had watched his sister Ragnild win a silver medal for swimming at the 1936 Berlin Olympics before he joined the army as a Royal Life Guard. Demobilised after the invasion, he was deeply impressed by German military power and efficiency: ‘I volunteered for the Nordland Regiment in 1940. After some initial training that spring, me and the others were sent home. Called back in the summer, I first went to Klagenfurt, then Vienna and finally Heuberg, where I joined the 7th Company as a rifleman.’
The Danish SS-Nordland Regiment volunteer, Paul Vilhelm Hveger. Hveger was an ex-Danish Army Royal Life Guard before joining the Nordland’s 7th Company as a grenadier. (Jens Post)
Denmark was still adjusting to the shock of occupation, fighting was still going on in Norway, and with no war against the Soviet Union, anti-communism wasn’t a driver for recruitment either. Little wonder that few men were willing to step forward. Politics played its part as well, with many would-be volunteers seeing the new regiment as lacking a Scandinavian character. The Norwegian Bjarne Dramstad definitely though so: ‘The Nordland Regiment didn’t appeal to me, it was too “German” in my eyes.’
In contrast farther south the Waffen-SS had more luck in the Low Countries following their invasion in May. The SS-Westland Regiment, established on 15 June as the Dutch/Flemish equivalent of the Scandinavian Nordland, attracted more than a thousand volunteers in its first two months of existence.
Undeterred, the indefatigable Gottlob Berger officially opened recruiting offices in Oslo and Copenhagen and Himmler persuaded Hitler to sanction the establishment of a new, fifth, Waffen-SS division to serve alongside the Leibstandarte (a brigade at the time), the Verfügungs, Totenkopf and SS-Polizei. The SS-Polizei Division had been
established in 1940 and was composed, as the name suggests, of ex-policemen transferred to the SS.
The new formation was to be named the SS-Division Germania. Field-Marshal Keitel, Chief of the OKW, sent the following order to establish the new formation: ‘The Führer and Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht has ordered the establishment within the framework of the Army, of a new SS division which shall utilise the manpower becoming available from those countries inhabited by people of related stock (Norway, Denmark, Holland).’
Hans Jüttner’s SS-Leadership Main Office (SS-Führungshauptamt – responsible for training, equipping and organising Waffen-SS field units) sprang into action, and on 3 December 1940 the veteran SS-Germania Regiment from the SS-VT became the cadre unit of the new division (the Verfügungs Division was given a Totenkopf unit, SS Infantry Regiment 11, as a replacement). The SS-Nordland and SS-Westland were brought in as the centrepiece, and a new German-manned artillery regiment added as the last piece of the puzzle. Confusion reigned, with the division having the same name as one of its own regiments, so by the end of the month Berlin had decided to change the divisions title to ‘Wiking,’ to reflect its intended Nordic make-up, as it began to form at the Heuberg training ground in southern Germany.