The Himmler's SS (39 page)

By 1939, the SS-Totenkopfverbände had grown to include SS-Totenkopfstandarte 5 ‘Dietrich Eckart'; a medical battalion; an anti-tank demonstration company; a motorised signals platoon; and a semimotorised engineer unit. Whatever Eicke may have intended, his SS-TV had developed into a truly military organisation, and on 17 August Hitler recognised that fact by ordering that in the event of war the Totenkopfstandarten should be used as police reinforcements (Totenkopf-Polizeiverstärkung) within the framework of the Wehrmacht. In other words, they were to be deployed as occupation troops. Their task of guarding the concentration camps would be taken over by older Allgemeine-SS reservists formed into new SS-Totenkopf-Wachsturmbanne. The third battalion of SS-Totenkopfstandarte 4 had already taken up a defensive position as a Home Guard unit in Danzig, the so-called SS-Heimwehr Danzig, and it was bolstered by a reserve battalion, SS-Wachsturmbann Eimann. At the same time, 10,000 younger officers and men of the Allgemeine-SS were called up for service with the Death's Head units. Himmler estimated that 50,000 Allgemeine-SS men would eventually be made available for call-up as Totenkopf-Polizeiverstärkung. The link between the SS-Totenkopfverbände and concentration camp guard duties was all but being dissolved.

SS-Gruppenführer Albert Forster, Gauleiter of Danzig-West Prussia, reviewing the SS-Heimwehr Danzig in August 1939. The officer on the left is SS-Obersturmbannführer Friedmann Götze, commander of the Heimwehr, who was killed by a British sniper at Le Paradis on 28 May 1940 while serving with the SS-Totenkopf-Division. Götze's death came the day after 100 unarmed British prisoners of the 2nd Royal Norfolks were murdered by Totenkopf troops under Fritz Knöchlein.

When the Second World War broke out the following month, the plan to use Eicke's men as occupation troops was quickly modified. Dachau was cleared of inmates and the Totenkopfstandarten, augmented by the young Allgemeine-SS conscripts and some police personnel, were mustered there and formed into the SS-Totenkopf-Division for combat service alongside the Leibstandarte and SS-VT. The guarding of concentration camps now fell to the older men, unfit for front-line duty, and to ‘green' SS recruits and non-German auxiliaries. Death's Head troops, on the other hand, entered a new phase in their unit's story and were soon to gain a reputation as some of the hardest and most ruthless soldiers of the war.

Conditions of service in the armed SS were distinct from those applicable to other SS formations. Volunteers to join the prewar SS-VT and SS-TV had to be between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two, at least 5 ft 11 in tall and of the highest physical fitness. Entry requirements for the Leibstandarte were even more stringent, with a minimum height of 6 ft 1 in, and it was no idle boast of Himmler's that until 1936 even a filled tooth was adjudged a sufficient deformity to disqualify a young man from entry into the Führer's Guard. Needless to say, as with ordinary members of the Allgemeine-SS, Aryan pedigree had to be spotless. From 1935, membership of the Leibstandarte and SS-Verfügungstruppe counted as military service, and rates of pay corresponded to those of the Wehrmacht. However, terms were hard. Enlisted men had to sign up for a minimum of four years, NCOs for twelve years and officers for twenty-five years. Moreover, they were all subject to the SS legal system and discipline code, and were obliged to secure the Reichsführer's permission before they could marry. Membership of the Totenkopfverbände, while similarly demanding in terms of service conditions, did not count as fulfilment of military duty until the spring of 1939. Before that time, SS-TV volunteers had to complete their statutory term of military conscription either in the Wehrmacht or in the SS-Verfügungstruppe. Eicke preferred his men to do their service in the army, navy or air force, as he was concerned that if they were to join the SS-VT they might want to remain in that branch of the SS rather than return to what he called the ‘onerous and demanding task of guarding concentration camps'.

Once in the armed SS, recruits were moulded into very adaptable soldier-athletes capable of much better than average endurance on the march and in combat. Great emphasis was placed upon ideological indoctrination, physical exercise and sports, which were made integral parts of the training programme and daily life. More time was spent in the field, on the ranges and in the classroom learning the theory of tactics than was the practice in the army, while considerably less attention was given to drill, even in the Leibstandarte after 1938. This resulted in a standard of battlefield movement and shooting that was appreciably higher than that of the Wehrmacht. Manoeuvres were made as realistic as possible, with the use of live ammunition and heavy artillery barrages, so that every SS-VT man became fully accustomed to handling a variety of weapons and also to being within 100 yards of explosions from his own artillery fire. The end product was a higher standard of soldier, a man who was a storm trooper in the best traditions of the term.

Unlike their counterparts in the army, SS rank-and-file were taught to think for themselves and not rely too heavily on the issuance of orders from above. Consequently, they became very self-reliant. Every SS man was looked upon as a potential NCO, and every NCO as a potential officer. Officer cadets, irrespective of background or social standing, had to serve eighteen months in the ranks before being commissioned. A very tough training programme was run by the military academies, or Junkerschulen, at Bad Tölz and Braunschweig, and by 1938–9 around 500 officers were being produced annually. The average SS-VT officer was considerably more aggressive in combat than his Wehrmacht colleagues, which is highlighted by the fact that nearly all of the first fifty-four cadets who passed out of Bad Tölz in 1934 were killed in battle between 1939 and 1942. A significant factor which contributed to the unique nature of the armed SS was the atmosphere of camaraderie and ‘heroic realism' which permeated its ranks. Soldiers of the SS were taught to be fighters for fighting's sake, and to abandon themselves to the struggle if so required for the greater good. The traditional soldierly concept was turned into one of pure belligerence, with the cultivation of a fatalistic enthusiasm for combat which far exceeded the normal selfsacrifice that might be expected of a soldier. That ethos went a long way to explaining the particularly heavy casualties later suffered by the Waffen-SS during the war, and the determination of its survivors.

Soldiers of the Leibstandarte, SS-VT and SS-TV were eligible for the whole range of military orders, medals and awards created by the Nazi régime. In addition to these national honours, a series of decorations was instituted specifically for the militarised formations of the SS. The SS Dienstauszeichnungen, or SS Long Service Awards, first announced on 30 January 1938 and modelled on their Wehrmacht equivalents, comprised medals for four and eight years' service and large swastika-shaped ‘crosses' for twelve and twenty-five years'. The latter two grades bore SS runes embroidered into their cornflower-blue ribbons. The Dienstauszeichnungen were produced in some quantity during 1939 by Deschler of Munich and Petz & Lorenz of Unterreichenbach, but they were not widely distributed since the Waffen-SS became eligible to receive the Wehrmacht long service awards instead from early 1940. Most Waffen-SS officers and men during the 1940–5 period sported army eagles, not SS runes, on their service ribbon bars. Indeed, photographic evidence reveals only one prominent Waffen-SS officer, Otto Kumm, consistently wearing the runic ribbon of the twelve-year decoration during the war. Runic ribbons were never seen on the tunics of any other Waffen-SS generals, Dietrich, Hausser and Steiner included, although they must have been entitled to wear them, particularly as service before 1933 and after 1939 counted as double for the purposes of presentation. No photographs at all are known to exist showing the four-or eight-year SS medals being worn, and no-one ever qualified for a twenty-five-year decoration. It is interesting to note that Himmler wore the twelve-year award, to which he was not strictly speaking entitled as he was not an active member of the Leibstandarte, SS-VT or SS-TV!

An SS-VT Marksmanship Badge, for proficiency in rifle and machine-gun shooting, was approved by Himmler prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. However, the decoration was never put into production.

So why had there been such a rapid militarisation of large sections of the SS? The reason was a simple one. The SS was primarily a civil police force which Hitler hoped would eventually maintain order not only in Germany but throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. To do so, however, it would first have to win its spurs on the battlefield. Only then could the SS possess the moral authority necessary for its future role in the New Order. As early as 1934, Hitler told Himmler:

In our Reich of the future, the SS and police will need a soldierly character if they are to have the desired effect on ordinary citizens. The German people, through their past experience of glorious military events and their present education by the NSDAP, have acquired such a warrior mentality that a fat, jovial, friendly police such as we had during the Weimar era can no longer exert authority. For this reason, it will be necessary in future wars for our SS and police, in their own closed units, to prove themselves at the front in the same way as the army and to make blood sacrifices to the same degree as any other branch of the armed forces.

In this way, it could be said that the whole relationship between the Allgemeine-SS, the Waffen-SS and the police, as integral parts of the projected Staatsschutzkorps, epitomised the earliest concepts of policing, as voiced by the British philosopher Herbert Spencer in 1851: ‘Policemen are soldiers who act alone; soldiers are policemen who act in unison'.

All members of the Allgemeine-SS were subject to the normal term of military conscription into the Wehrmacht, which swallowed up the majority of SS men after the outbreak of war. However, it was the actions of the Leibstandarte-SS ‘Adolf Hitler', the SS-Verfügungstruppe and the SS-Totenkopfverbände which personified the early battlefield accomplishments of the SS in the eyes of the German public.

At the end of the eighteen-day Polish campaign, Hitler visited German troops at the battlefront, accompanied by his hand-picked SS bodyguard detachment, the so-called Führerbegleitkommando. Here one of the high-speed escort vehicles is passing a Wehrmacht convoy, forcing a local farmer into the side of the road. The car registration plate is covered for security reasons, and the machine-gunner is a Leibstandarte Untersturmführer.

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When German troops marched into Poland on 1 September 1939, the armed SS units were split up among regular army formations dispersed along the invasion front. The SS-Heimwehr Danzig immediately secured that city, while other Totenkopf personnel cut through the ‘Polish Corridor'. The Leibstandarte, supported by the SS-VT pioneer battalion, was attached to General von Reichenau's 10th Army. The SS-VT Standarte ‘Deutschland', together with the SS artillery regiment and the SS reconnaissance battalion, joined Generalmajor Kempf's 4th Panzer Brigade, while ‘Germania' became part of the 14th Army under General List. The ‘Der Führer' Standarte was not yet fully trained and consequently did not participate in the fighting. Although ‘Germania' remained in reserve for most of the four-week campaign, ‘Deutschland' was heavily engaged in the Battle of Brest Litovsk. The Leibstandarte also had a particularly hectic time, taking part in the drive on Warsaw and the encirclement of Bzura with the 4th Panzer Division.

Despite the obvious fighting commitment of the SS, their disproportionately heavy casualties were criticised by the army which claimed that the losses resulted from poor leadership. Hausser countered these accusations by indicating that, in order to operate efficiently, the armed SS would need to be organised into full divisions. The army bitterly opposed such a development, but Hitler was persuaded to allow it in time for the western campaign. At the end of 1939, the term ‘Waffen-SS' began to be used in official correspondence when referring to the armed SS, and in February 1940 it became a recognised title. About the same time, army designations such as ‘Bataillon' and ‘Regiment', which had been used by the Leibstandarte since 1934, generally replaced ‘Sturmbann', ‘Standarte' and the other SS formation titles throughout the Waffen-SS. In some units of the SS-VT, army rank terms, for example Oberleutnant instead of SS-Obersturmführer, were even utilised for a short period, but that was quickly forbidden by Himmler. The purpose of all this was to assimilate the new force and make it easier for the army to accept the Waffen-SS as a legitimate fourth branch of the Wehrmacht, and one completely separate from the Allgemeine-SS.