Best division in the Waffen SS??

[pak40]

Hi all,
It has been a while since I posted here. This looks like a great thread.

I have 2 favorite Waffen-SS Panzer Divisions, Das Reich and Wiking.
With what these 2 division did, their legend had been sealed.

My favorite tomes(books for you mere mortals) on the Waffen-SS are:
1. Waffen-SS Battles on the Eastern Front by Velimir Vuksic
2. SS Division, Corps and Army Commanders of the Waffen-SS Vols 1+2 by Mark Yerger (yes Mark, I give you a plug, fantastic books)
3. Soldiers of the Waffen-SS, Many Nations, One Motto- by Marc Rikmenspoel

The 2 most fascinating people that I have read about in the SS were Herbert-Otto Gille and Otto Weidinger.

Chris- Waffen-SS figure painter- I've done Hans Dorr

[sid guttridge]

Hi Pak40,

Yup. In my opinion "legend" is probably the right word!

Cheers,

Sid.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Commissar,

I was checking out the motivation of Wiking volunteers.

According to Stein, at the opening of the Russian Campaign two-thirds of the division's manpower was German, because recruiting of non-Germans had not been up to expectations. It seems to have picked up after the campaign began and the Waffen-SS quickly formed four additional Western European Legions in addition to the Wiking. The Army also had the Spanish and German volunteer formations. However, as I mentioned earlier, none seem to have served on any other front. It really does seem as though they were unusable on any other front.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Reb]

Sid

There was the anti-bolshevik motivation - remember that scandanavia got a real wake up call when Stalin invaded Finland.

But I think in places like Netherlands, Norway, Denmark there may have been the additional motivation of plain old boredom. Life in an occupied country is at best, tedious.

Plus - here are these sharp looking German troops out there kicking butt and here I am standing around hoping for a dead end job. Factor in the W-SS racial theory - well, we all like to hear how wonderful we are. And young fellows like the scent of adventure.

At any rate -Viking stayed up strength pretty well and several other formations (such as Nordland) were cloned from it.

cheers
Reb

[phylo_roadking]

Only sounds "limiting" in the sense that the German had only ONE other active front that didnt leave them too close to their homelands. The priciple of "native auxiliaries" serving on the opposite end of an empire is quite well established LOL not just by the Romans, but also the Chinese for the garrisons along the Silk Road.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Reb & Phylo,

Yup. Stein mentions that the initial motivation of many Western European volunteers was not ideological, but more for adventure.

Yup. The principle of posting auxiliaries far from their homeland is, indeed, well established - if they were not considered reliable. Logistically it would have been far easier to feed Western European volunteers into the Atlantic defences, but this did not happen. One suspects that the Germans doubted the reliability of many of them in the face the Western Allies and their own exiled governments and played it safe by keeping them in the East, where they could be insulated from the pro-Allied sentiments of most of their compatriots.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Reb]

Sid

There were however, a fair amount of Dutch SS in the Netherlands - was there some difference with those guys that I'm unaware? I don't recall the Germans being very popular there.

And after the winter of '44 I doubt anyone like them.

cheers
Reb

[phylo_roadking]

Sid, any sign that this policy hardened after the Vichy French came over to the Allies after Torch?

[sid guttridge]

Hi Phylo,

I don't know, but given that 100% of Western European volunteer units and formations on an active battlefront served in the East both before and after the defection of most of Vichy France, I doubt it.

Cheers,

Sid.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Reb,

I had two contacts with Dutch in this position.

The first was the nephew of the Dutch Nazi "Foreign Minister", who was the training officer on a mine I was on in Zimbabwe. He was a a minor at the time of the war, but because of his surname (Colijn, I think) found it easier to get work in Southern Africa after the war.

The other was a Dutch girlfriend of mine. Her mother's entire family had been Dutch Nazis. After the war all her older brothers and sisters (she was the youngest) were arrested and served time in prison. In later life she went a bit senile and used to mistake my girlfriend's best friend, Ann-Marie, who looked like freckled version of Anne Frank, as Jewish and would curse her in a manner that was never translated for me.

However, although the Dutch Nazis were the most numerous Western Europeans to serve in German ranks, even they were not sufficient to maintain a full strength division in the field and were only a relatively small segment of the population.

Some Dutch Nazis also fell out with the Germans. Hitler sent mostly Austrian senior officials to administer the Netherlands with the intention of using their Austrian Anschluss experience to produce a Netherlands Anschluss. However, union with Germany was not what Dutch Nazis necessarily wanted.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Reb]

Sid

Interesting that AH would send Austrians - with his sense of history he might also have been thinking back to Pre Napoloeonic Austro-Hungarians Empire days.

cheers
Reb

[fons]

The first was the nephew of the Dutch Nazi "Foreign Minister"...his surname (Colijn, I think)...

If you are right on the surname...Colijn was never a nazi or "foreign minister". Simply false.

Hitler sent mostly Austrian senior officials to administer the Netherlands with the intention of using their Austrian Anschluss experience to produce a Netherlands Anschluss.

Do you have any documented proof of them being chosen based on their nationality?

cheerios,
fons

[TimoWr]

Hendrikus Colijn was the Dutch prime Minister until the Germans invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. He certainly wasn't a minister during the occupation of the Netherlands. He was arrested in 1941 for involvement in the resistance and died in German captivity...

After the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, [Hendrikus Colijn] published an essay entitled “On the Border of Two Worlds” (Op de grens van twee werelden) in which he called for accepting German leadership in Europe. This was immediately after the Royal House had fled to England leaving him behind. In the face of the tremendous show of the German blitzkrieg and the relative weakness of the British, his view of the situation was understandable. Soon thereafter, he tried to organize political resistance but was arrested in June 1941 and brought to Berlin for interrogation. The Germans tried to have him confess that he had conspired with the British to invade the Netherlands to serve as an excuse for the Germans invasion [1]. Late in the war after the tide had turned against the Germans, Himmler wanted to keep Colijn available as a possible intermediary with the British as he had done earlier for the Kaiser [1]. In March 1943 he was put under house arrest in a remote mountain hotel in Ilmenau (Thuringen), Germany, where he died on September 18, 1944.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hendrikus_Colijn

[sid guttridge]

Hi Guys,

It looks as though I was 100% wrong on Colijn! Sorry.

Sadly it is a continent away and 25 years too late to ask him what his proper details were. The nephew was an excellent, if very hard nosed, miner who suffered from some crippling illness, which meant he had to become a training officer on surface.

My apologies to all concerned.

Cheers,

Sid.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Fons,

Details are in Volume II of "Hitler's War Aims" by Norman Rich. It is fully footnoted. Unfortunately I am on the move at the moment and haven't got my copy with me.

I recommend Volume II very strongly as giving the best overview I have seen of the various German administrations in occupied territories.

Cheers,

Sid.