h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi Peter
I've been looking with much interest at your thread about SS Divs in Italy.

To remind you of my own involvement in the war's end in Italy I quote from my 'The War ends in Italy' (A2039113)

Wednesday 2nd. May 1945
Jerry threw his hand in Italy and Austria. Fired all our 2" mortars, phosphorous bombs and verey lights and had bonfires all over the shop.
Cease fire about 11 pm.
( At noon today the Germans signed an unconditional surrender at Caserta)

Within days the whole regiment was summoned on parade by the CO who addressed us as follows:
"As you know the war in Europe is now over, and I suppose most of you are looking forward to seeing your loved ones again after years spent overseas. I must tell you, however, that there is an SS Cavalry Division in Austria at the moment who refuse to cease fighting and our regiment has been given the honour of going up there and persuading them that it would be a good idea on their part to surrender to us."

That's what I saw, I wonder if you would now be able to put a name to the Div that we put into our POW cage?

I do remember that they were largely a cavalry div and that they also surrendered large quantities of horses that the officers in the 4th QOH put to their own personal use.

Regards

Ron

Ron

The only SS Division that surrendered to the British army in that area that I know of is the 24th, these were mountain troops. They surrendered in early May in Istria, a website says at 'Isonzo', but the Isonzo is a river. The Isonzo was on Italian territory in 1945, then handed over to Jugoslavia, but it is now in Slovenia and only the mouth of the Isonzo remains on Italian territory (see here http://www.parks.it/riserva.foce.isonzo/Eindex.html for the location).

An SS Division would have had between 10,000 and 20,000 men within two or three regiments (sometimes called 'standharte', the SS term for regiment) and supporting troops - which could include cavalry. Even the most mechanised divisions included a large number of draught horses, but I do not know if any cavalry units were in the 24th SS Division. However, things were chaotic in May 45 and the 15th Cossak Cavalry Corps (sometimes even now wrongly referred to as the 15th SS Cossack Cavalry Corps) consisting of some 42,000 horsed Cossacks was in the area. Theirs were fine horses and were left behind both in Lombardy and in Austria. Tom Canning, who witnessed things first hand, may be able to tell you more; in fact I met him discussing this very thing.

Regards,

Peter

Peter & Ron,
I read Ron's saga of the 4th Hussars being sent to "look after" an SS div in Austria, and thought it was odd at the time as our corps of 78th Div - 46th Div and our own 6th Armed Div were already - nearly in place once the Gerries and Yugo's moved out and we settled in Knittelfeld/Judenberg area.... the only SS div around at that time was "looked after" by 46th Div and they turned out to be Cossacks. We never saw any trace of German fighting units. The 46th Div were around the south-east end of Austria whereas the 78th were more to the North around the Semmering Pass with a detachment in Vienna itself - for BS guard duties ! Two of our squadrons went on to Ulm to set up transit camps for the leave men who were off via the land route to the U.K.- as did the 4QOH - I went back by train - the long way - via Udine - Padua - Milan - Geneva - Dijon -
Paris and Boulogne!

Thanks Peter and Tom

In hindsight it looks as though our C.O may very well have been a bit fanciful, or un-informed when he spoke to us about an SS Div, but, hand on my heart, I certainly made no mistake in quoting what he said to us on that day . I even remember that at the time he sounded as though he was about to bestow gifts upon us!

Whilst writing, you've both reminded me of an incident when, in the early hours of one morning, we had a visit to the camp from what must have been the local British Army intelligence unit.
We had to get all the prisoners lined up and they were then given an order to raise their arms aloft. The visitors then examined each one in turn looking for the un-mistakeable blood group tattoo that the genuine SS combattants had in place.
Quite a few were then taken away for further questioning.

Ciaou for now

Ron

That should have caused no bother, they were all quite used to raising their right arm aloft

Peter and Ron -
the SIB might have had trouble with the British who only raised two fingers !

Less waffling you two and let's have some pictures please!
Ron

But getting back to the SS, there is still a very widespread belief, and surprisingly amongst a few otherwise sound historians, that some-how the Waffen-SS were quite different from the camp guard SS. The pure, ulta Nazi, die-hard youth of the Waffen-SS tempred in battle and unsullied by crime.

Thus we have Paul Hasser, the commander of the "Das Reich" SS Division, and one of the most highly decorated officers in the Reich, testifying at Nuremburg, of the Waffen-SS "We did not have anything to do with the men of the concentration camps and the guard personnel". - and he was quite right regarding Waffen-SS units. What he conveniently forgot was that whilst none of the Waffen-SS units served in the camps, many SS officers did. French L. MacLean, the leading authority on the SS, states that "Not only did hundreds serve in front-line Waffen-SS divisions, but six former concentration camp officers also rose to become division commanders in the Waffen-SS."

Many are well known, others not so well known. Take for example SS-Untersturmfürer Franz Kurt, the commandant of Treblinka. In 1944 he was in Italy fighting partisans in the 1st SS Division "Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler", where he was wounded in action near Trieste in 1944. Later sentenced to life, he was released in 1993 after 34 years in prison.

In fact sixteen SS concentration camp officers have been identified who served with this division and one who served with the 24th SS Division in Italy. These are not isolated cases, over 43% of all concentration camp officers are known to have served in the Waffen-SS, and these are just the ones known about, no one knows how many rank and file SS served spells in the camps. There was constant change, with some 50,000 needed for the extermination camps.

Source:

"The Camp Men - The SS Officers Who Ran the Nazi Concentration Camp System" by French L. MacLean (Schiffler Military History, 1999). This is a huge tome giving service details of over 900 camp officers, it has the stench of death on every page.

Peter & Ron-
we were very fortunate not to have any SS divs around us as we found that the Para and the 26th PzDiv plus the 90 PZ grens were quite tough enough !

Strangely enough you can thank Himmler for that. Hitler wanted all the SS to have battle experience, but Himmler saw the danger of any ex-camp SS falling in Allied hands and perhaps revealing the ghastly truth about the camps. The solution was to have Waffen-SS divisions fighting partisans - in Russia, Jugoslavia, and Italy. Here neither side took prisoners, the SS only took partisan prisoners for interrogation and public execution, but Himmler knew that no SS would survive capture by partisans. The battles were quite horrendous and no mercy was given nor asked for, seriously wounded partisans had to be dispatched by their own side.

MacLean is of the opinion that this accounts for the very high number of ex-camp SS fatalities in combat. Later in the war, of course, Waffen-SS were used in France for front line service, but this may have been Hitler's rather than Himmler's decision. When 'Operation Reinhard' (the plan to kill all Jews in the 'Generalgouvernement' area of captured Poland) was finished, the 'Reinhard' extermination camps (namely Belzec, Sobidór, and Treblinka) were closed down and many of the SS officers were sent to the Waffen-SS divisions, but not to front line areas. A computer study made by MacLean found that they were six times more likely to be killed in action than the rest. All were sent to fight partisans by Himmler.

Danke Schoen Herr Himmler !