Army of Evil: A History of the SS (40 page)

Nevertheless, the recruitment of foreign nationals into the Waffen-SS was
about to shift into a higher gear. This came about because of the conquest of Western Europe, which began with the invasion and occupation of Denmark and Norway. The two Scandinavian countries were attacked simultaneously on 9 April 1940. In addition to straightforward empire-building, this was a strategic move to pre-empt British disruption of the transport of iron ore from Sweden to Germany. Denmark, which possessed an army of just fourteen thousand men (eight thousand of whom had been serving for under two months), fell within a few hours. The campaign in Norway was more protracted, lasting two months and costing the lives of around twelve thousand men (German, British and Norwegian), but eventually it fell, too. The occupation of these two countries gave the SS direct access to potential recruits who, while not ethnically German, fell within the organisation’s definition of “Nordic” or “Germanic.” As such, they were eligible to join as part of the wider Germanic family. As early as 20 April, Hitler ordered that the SS-
Nordland
Regiment “was to be established from Danish and Norwegian volunteers’
¹⁵
and would undertake “police duties.”
¹⁶
In fact, the unit was an infantry regiment. Hitler probably represented it as a police formation in a bid to avoid antagonism between the SS and the
Wehrmacht
.

In the 1930s, neither Norway nor Denmark had a particularly large fascist movement. The Danish National Socialist Workers’ Party (DNSAP), founded in 1930, managed to attract just over 31,000 votes in the Danish parliamentary elections of 1939, winning three seats. In Norway, the
Nasjonal Samling
(NS—National Union Party), founded by Vidkun Quisling in 1933, was even less effective—it had not managed to gain even a single seat on a local council prior to the German occupation. Unsurprisingly, then, the SS’s hopes of persuading thousands of Scandinavian racial idealists to join the organisation soon proved unfounded. When recruiting started in the autumn of 1940, no more than a few hundred signed up in either country.

Back in the spring, as the western campaign progressed, the
Westland
Regiment—designed to accommodate Dutch and Belgian-Flemish
volunteers—was founded on 25 May 1940.
¹⁷
This was fast work: while the Netherlands had fallen within four days of the German invasion on 10 May, Belgium was still resisting (and would continue to do so until 28 May). The rush probably reflected Himmler’s expectation that the SS would be inundated with volunteers from both Holland and Flanders. In the Netherlands, Anton Adriaan Mussert’s
Nationaale-Socialistische Beweging
(National Socialist Movement) had imitated Germany’s NSDAP while also stressing its Dutch character. This tactic had helped it to secure 294,284 votes in the municipal elections of 1935, and 4 per cent of the vote in the 1937 national elections.
*
In Flanders, Flemish nationalists seeking independence from Belgium had traditionally accepted patronage from Germany, and in the 1930s they had been strongly influenced by fascism. Therefore, the Germans had genuine grounds for optimism as far as recruitment was concerned; and, indeed, the Dutch subsequently provided the largest single contingent of Western European volunteers in the German armed forces.

Some post-war apologists and revisionists have argued that these volunteers and the few to sign up in Scandinavia were motivated by anti-communism or perhaps even a sense of pan-Europeanism. But that seems highly unlikely in the spring and summer of 1940, when relations between the Third Reich and the Soviet Union were officially cordial. It is much more credible to suggest that the new recruits to the
Nordland
and
Westland
regiments were either pro–National Socialist cranks or simple opportunists.

In order to process their applications, recruiting offices were established in Oslo, the Hague, Antwerp and Copenhagen. Furthermore, a former French Army barracks at Sennheim, Alsace, was commandeered by the SS-Main Office to be used as a premilitary training depot for the assessment and indoctrination of volunteers before suitable
applicants were formally inducted into the Waffen-SS. This new infrastructure was hardly overworked. In July 1940, the organisation inducted 908 recruits from Denmark and the Netherlands; then 310 in August; and 330 in September.
¹⁸

Nevertheless, Himmler remained an enthusiastic supporter of the recruitment campaign. He wanted the SS to gather the best “Germanic” blood from all over the world, not just from Germany, and he viewed the work in Scandinavia and the Low Countries as the start of that project. More prosaically, it was now abundantly clear that the SS had to look outside of Germany for its manpower. In July 1940, Berger estimated that the
Wehrmacht
would permit the Waffen-SS to recruit no more than 2 per cent of all eligible German youths from each year group. At most, that would amount to twelve thousand men per year,
¹⁹
which was simply not enough to maintain existing Waffen-SS units, let alone raise new ones.

T
HE MOOD IN
Germany in the late summer of 1940 was understandably triumphant. By then, plans were well under way for the future conquest of the Soviet Union; and some thought was also being given to the post-war administration of Europe after what seemed the inevitable German victory. Hitler decreed that the future strength of the German Army should amount to some sixty-four divisions.
*
Meanwhile, the Waffen-SS should comprise the
Leibstandarte
(at brigade strength), the Special Purpose Division, the Death’s Head Division, the Police Division, and a future division that would be “recruited, for the most part, from foreign nationals.”
²⁰

The
Nordland
and
Westland
regiments would provide the basis of this “foreign” division, and preparations for its formation continued throughout the autumn. Finally, on 3 December 1940, the SS-Command
Staff decreed that
Nordland
and
Westland
, together with the
Germania
Regiment from the Special Purpose Division, the newly formed SS-5th Artillery Regiment and other minor units would form the fully motorised
Germania
Division: the fourth combat division of the Waffen-SS. Eighteen days later, though, amid concerns that this name would cause confusion, it was changed to
Wiking
.

In reality, the claim that this division was formed “largely from foreign nationals” was a fraud that was designed to pull the wool over the eyes of the
Wehrmacht
. The
Germania
Regiment had been recruited primarily in north-west Germany; and while the
Nordland
and
Westland
regiments contained several hundred foreign volunteers from Scandinavia and the Low Countries, the great majority of their personnel comprised either native German citizens or ethnic German recruits from Romania and Slovakia. Himmler and Berger were not remotely concerned about exceeding their recruitment quotas of eligible German manpower, as long as they could get away with it. All that really mattered to them was to build up the Waffen-SS to such a size that the organisation could demand a place alongside the
Wehrmacht
in the councils of war. Moreover, the command cadre of the “foreign” division at this stage was almost entirely German. The divisional commander was Felix Steiner, the former chief of the
Deutschland
Regiment, who now held the rank of SS-brigadier.

However, Steiner proved to be a powerful champion of the Germanic volunteers within the
Wiking
Division. Of course, this was an uphill struggle, given the profoundly racist philosophy of the SS. No matter how much Himmler preached that the Nordic and Germanic peoples were from the same racial family as the Germans themselves, the average Waffen-SS officer or NCO was almost certain to view them as second-class soldiers from conquered nations. Yet, ultimately, Steiner managed to persuade the German elements to accept the Germanic volunteers as full members of the SS order purely through the force of his stubborn, mulish personality. By the end of the war, they were fully integrated into the
Wiking
Division—and the
Nordland
Division, which was formed from it—and were treated in much the same way as their German national and ethnic German counterparts.

B
ERGER CONTINUED TO
be on the lookout for recruits who were not eligible for the
Wehrmacht
draft, and he found some to form one of the most notorious units within the Waffen-SS: the
Sonderkommando
(Special Unit) Dirlewanger. This formation could be viewed as a link between the regular combat units of the Waffen-SS and the special task groups that began the extermination of the Jews. Initially, though, it was not even under the formal control of the SS-Command Main Office, although its commanders were members of the Waffen-SS or the police. In its early stages, most of its German personnel were convicted criminals (often poachers), assigned to the formation to redeem themselves through combat. Once there, they were subjected to a brutal disciplinary regime that involved beatings, formal floggings and, frequently, summary execution. They were treated like kicked dogs and reacted in much the same way—lashing out whenever they were let off the leash.

The idea of using convicted criminals in such units might have originated with Hitler himself. Certainly, SS-Major General Karl Wolff portrayed it in that way. On 23 March 1940, Himmler’s personal adjutant phoned the Ministry of Justice to say: “The Führer proposes to postpone punishment of the so-called ‘decent’ poachers and, provided they acquit themselves well at the front, to guarantee them amnesty.”
²¹
He then went on to ask for details of any poachers currently being held within the criminal justice system. Later, at the post-war Nuremberg trials, Berger said that Hitler held all hunters in “scorn and ridicule”
*
and seized any opportunity to rile them.
²²
However, he also mentioned a petition sent to the Führer Chancellery by the wife of an
“old fighter” who was serving a two-year jail term for poaching deer, which suggested that he might be able to redeem himself at the front.
²³
This letter could well have led Hitler to the idea of the poachers’ unit. Equally, though, the concept might have come from Berger. As we have seen, he was a keen hunter himself, so perhaps he saw the potential of utilising poachers’ expert field-craft on the front line.

A week after Wolff’s phone call, Himmler himself wrote to the Justice Ministry: “The Führer has directed that all poachers—particularly of Bavarian and Austrian origin—who have broken the law by hunting with guns rather than snares may, through service in the SS, particularly in sharpshooter companies, for the duration of the war, be freed of the consequences of their punishment, and through good service may be considered for amnesty.”
²⁴

In May and June 1940, eighty-eight convicted poachers were assembled in Block 36 of Sachsenhausen concentration camp; and on 1 July, fifty-five of them were deemed usable and transferred to the 5th Death’s Head Regiment in nearby Oranienburg to begin military training. It seems that Berger himself made the final selection,
²⁵
and he had a large role to play in choosing the unit’s leader, too. Appropriately, he picked a man with a criminal record to lead this band of convicts.

Oskar Dirlewanger was born into a middle-class family in Würzburg on 26 September 1895. He seems to have had a relatively conventional, if nationalistically inclined, upbringing.
²⁶
In October 1913, he joined the Machine-Gun Company of the 123rd Regiment of Grenadiers as a “one-year volunteer.”
²⁷
This should have allowed Dirlewanger to train as a reserve officer before he embarked on a business or professional career; but, of course, Europe descended into war before his year was up, and in August 1914 he found himself leading a platoon into Belgium and France. Thereafter, he had a distinguished First World War.
*
He received his commission as a
Leutnant der Reserve
on
14 April 1915 and continued to command his platoon. However, he was injured in action five months later and was excused further front-line service.
*
In November 1916, he was assigned to run machine-gun training courses, but the following year he volunteered to return to the front and was placed in command of the Assault Company of the 7th Infantry Division. Later, he was given command of his old Machine-Gun Company in the 123rd Grenadiers. His final—temporary—appointment was command of the 2nd Battalion of the 121st Regiment of Grenadiers in the German occupation force in the Ukraine. When hostilities ended in November 1918, he led his battalion home across Romania, Hungary and Austria in order to prevent their internment.

Unsurprisingly, Dirlewanger joined various Free Corps units after his demobilisation from the regular army. Between 1919 and 1921, he took part in actions in a number of towns and cities as a member of the
Epp
,
Haas
,
Sprösser
and
Holz
groups, and he commanded an armoured train that was instrumental in liberating the town of Sangerhausen from the control of socialist revolutionaries. He was also jailed on two occasions in 1920–21, apparently for firearms offences. However, it would be incorrect to infer that he was a full-time counter-revolutionary at this time. He enrolled at a business college in Mannheim in 1919 and graduated two years later. Then he entered the University of Frankfurt to read for a doctorate in political science.
†

Alongside his studies and his paramilitary activities, Dirlewanger was active in right-wing politics. He joined the NSDAP in October 1922, receiving the membership number 12517, and it seems that he tried and failed to hijack some police armoured cars for use in the Munich
Putsch
. Thereafter, he let his party membership lapse, rejoined in 1926, then left again two years later, when he became an executive for the Jewish-owned Kornicker textiles company in Erfurt. Nevertheless, he continued to make financial contributions to the SA.
²⁸