Feldgrau.net

Sid, Wiking didn't leave the front at that time, not as a division. However, at many points various battalions of the division were being reconstructed in Germany, so anything of this sort probably involved such a formation on the way back to the division. A different point, I still think that warti...

Melnyk's father was a survivor of the Ukrainian Division who settled in the UK after the war. Logusz has no family connection to the unit, but has a background in Slavic languages, which facilitated his study of the unit. Unfortunately, that background doesn't extend to the German military, so his b...

The Hitlerjugend Division certainly fought very well in Normandy, but it is worth noting that its offensive operations in the first days of the invasion weren't conducted especially well, because due to time and fuel shortages, the division had never conducted large scale unit exercises. Meanwhile, ...

Hi Timo, in regards to your first question, if a man was considered officer material, then he could be sent to the JS whatever his rank. He did not need to become an NCO first, though he would hold NCO equivalent ranks after passing various stages of his Lehrgang, becoming a Junker, a Standartenjunk...

I do think that Wiking had btter quality leadership than did Totenkopf, up to the summer of 1943. This was because it was commanded by long serving professional officers such as Steiner, Gille, Phleps, and von Scholz, while Totenkopf was commanded by by men with only enlisted ranks or non-combat exp...

Landwehr is about 52, and lives in southwestern Oregon. I talk to him on the phone once in a while, arranging for research material, and he seems like a very pleasant man who, as he shows in his writings, is outraged by what he considers the hypocrisy and injustice that surrounds the study of World ...

I didn't say it was an entire corps surrendering. It is probably "korpstruppen" such as a specialized signals or heavy artillery battalion (SS-Korpsnachrichten Abteilung 113 or schwere SS-Artillerie Abteilung 113, for example), and these sort of units were often commanded by men of approximately SS-...

I bought those books a few weeks ago, and I agree both seem exceptionally good too, especially from the point of view of expanding the definition of "what made up the Waffen-SS." The perspective of the Ukrainians has been previously shared in a few other books in English, but the ethnic-German persp...

I've noticed many factual errors in looking through the various volumes in this Ardennes set from Osprey. It seems that Quarrie is using roughly 15 year old information, which has in many cases been superceded by new findings.

Cosidering the specialized heavy vehicles, I would guess that these are korpstruppen of the XIII. SS-Armeekorps, or possibly of the far less formed XVIII. SS-AK.

The number for Wiking is almost certainly too low. It had close to 19,000 men at full strength, never mind that many passing through it during the war. For a comparison, the American 3rd Infantry Division had over 34,000 men pass through it during its considerably shorter combat career.

I had a look at the Narva-Tannenberg section of the book, and it is woefully inadequate from the German perspective. It has a highly inaccurate OOB, including "the Estonian 'Nederland' Brigade" and mentions falsehoods such as having the Estonian Waffen-SS Division flee in its first combat (the fight...

Hi Martin, nice to see you here. The Aberdeen Bookstore still has a couple of copies of Pour L'Europe remaining for sale.

Sid, I think you missed the significance of my first and main point. These men without an Abitur (Rob, it is a school-leaving certificate required to attend higher education, and in the Reichswehr and Wehrmacht was a necessity for officer training until well into the war) would have been stuck at se...

I'm addressing this specifically to Sid (and indirectly to Tom), because all of the other responses, whatever their viewpoint, fall victim to name calling and insults. I usually try to stay out of these attempts to out shout each other, but I want people to understand that there is more than one ver...