The Mission of the Reich

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The Waffen SS

Many nations maintain elite troops to supplement regular military forces. They serve as personal bodyguards for the ruler, perform ceremonial functions, and in wartime deploy where the fighting is the hardest. From the Persian Immortals and Roman Praetorians of the Ancient World throughout the ages, elite formations uphold traditions of prowess in combat and loyalty. During World War II, France’s Chasseurs Alpins, British Royal Marines, Soviet Guard divisions and the U.S. Marine Corps were among units retaining this select status.

In addition to the prestigious army divisions Brandenburg, Feldherrnhalle and Grossdeutschland, as well as the airborne, Germany fielded an entire service branch of elite ground forces: the Waffen (armed) SS. It evolved from four pre-war internal security regiments into a dauntless and respected frontline element. It challenged official German policy and dogma and helped introduce significant amendments. Considering the obedience to state authority customarily drilled into military establishments, this was an unusual wellspring for political and social reform. The maturation of the Waffen SS demonstrates how National Socialism’s emphasis on personal initiative created the opportunity for flexibility and development on an unprecedented scale.

The SS traces its origin to the early years of the NSDAP. Fewer than 100 men formed the “Adolf Hitler Shock Troop” in Munich in 1923. This was a personal bodyguard recruited from SA men displaying personal loyalty to the Führer. Its members generally possessed better comprehension of the movement’s political objectives than the rank-and-file SA. The troop received its final name, Schutzstaffel (Security Echelon), in April 1925. It maintained strict discipline and a small, selective membership. Heinrich Himmler became chief of the SS in January 1929, and proved a talented organizer and a match for political rivals in the party. Once Hitler gained power in 1933, Himmler sought to enroll affluent persons, such as successful businessmen and aristocrats, to enhance the organization’s prestige. Private contributions through a public sponsorship program helped finance the administration. The SS grew from 280 members in 1929 to 52,000 by 1933.[1]

National security issues led to the formation of an SS military branch. When Hitler became chancellor, Communists were still numerous in Germany. They hijacked 150 tons of explosives, of which just 15 tons had been recovered by the police by mid-March 1933.[2] The exiled Communist Wilhelm Pieck issued a proclamation in September, calling for a general strike and “armed insurrection by the majority of the German proletariat” to topple the “Hitler dictatorship.”[3] The police were neither equipped nor trained to suppress a possible uprising. The German army was not psychologically suited to wage urban warfare against elements of the indigenous population.

After discussions with War Minister Werner von Blomberg, Hitler decided that the task of combating potential civil unrest should fall to a party formation. Blomberg’s decree of September 24, 1934, defined its purpose as “for special, internal political missions assigned by the Führer to the SS.”[4] This was the birth of the Waffen SS, officially titled the Verfügungstruppe from 1935-1940. Abbreviated to VT, the expression translates literally as “Availability Troop,” meaning ready for immediate deployment. Hitler himself stated:

“The SS Verfügungstruppe is neither a part of the armed forces nor of the police. It is a standing armed troop available exclusively for my use.”[5]

The VT consisted of the Leibstandarte, Hitler’s Berlin-based bodyguard, which guarded public buildings, airports and performed ceremonial functions, the Deutschland regiment garrisoned in Munich, Germania in Hamburg, plus an engineer battalion in Dresden and a signals battalion in Berlin. A fourth motorized infantry regiment, Der Führer, mustered in Vienna in 1938. With army approval, the SS established a military academy to train VT officers at Bad Tölz in October 1934. General Paul Hausser, who had retired from the army in 1932, received a commission to found a second school in Brunswick. Each institution offered a ten-month curriculum to commissioned officers. The VT soldier’s pay was the same as that of the regular army. Adding an artillery regiment, as well as anti-aircraft, anti-tank, and reconnaissance battalions, the VT numbered 18,000 men by May 1939.[6] Though the army assisted in instruction, the VT’s training departed from military convention. Its senior commanders had been junior officers during World War I. They witnessed how battles of materiel had decimated the army’s long-standing cadre of well-schooled professional officers, non-commissioned officers (NCO’s) and reservists. The quality of personnel declined as hastily-trained replacements filled the void. The General Staff failed to break the deadlock of trench warfare. Frontline regiments began forming small, independent units called shock troops. They re-trained behind the lines to fight in close coordination using flame throwers, smoke canisters, machine guns, pistols, and grenades. Officers displayed boldness and initiative, directly leading their men into combat.

The commander of the Deutschland Regiment, Felix Steiner, wrote that during World War I the officers

“assembled the best, most experienced soldiers the front could spare… They applied the shock-troop concept of spontaneity, rapid assault, and the mechanics of the little troop’s trade within the framework of entire formations. They were of different spirit than the mobilized masses… In a world of standardization of soldiering, they proved that better-trained, hand-picked soldiers, mastering the military technology of the times, were not just a match for a vastly larger, collective soldierly mass, but were superior to it.”[7]

After World War I, the German General Staff reverted to the pre-war concept of a disciplined professional army without particular emphasis on improvisation. Though the army still trained officers at lower command levels to take the initiative and be decisive in battle, the program did not include forming units of shock troops. Steiner exploited the comparative independence of the VT to develop a contemporary fighting force less constrained by customary military practice. The former SS Captain Fritz Schütter wrote:

“Not the form of Prussian drill still in part practiced in the army, but training and educating men to become modern, independent fighters was the goal.”[8]

Though Steiner acknowledged that mass armies are an indispensable element of total war, he considered rapidly mobile elite formations distributed among the army decisive, in order to “disperse the enemy through lightning-fast blows and destroy his scattered units.” In the words of one historian, the training program Steiner introduced to the Deutschland Regiment “broke the preeminence of mechanical barracks drill.”[9]

Physical education also played a significant role in the VT. It promoted the “soldier-athlete” concept. Competitive sports supplanted calisthenics and forced marches as the focus of the training. Enlisted personnel competed against their officers and NCO’s in sports contests. The purpose was not just to weld leader and followers into a cohesive fighting unit. It also taught officers to rely on their ability to command and strength of character to gain the confidence and respect of the men, rather than on the customary aloofness and strict discipline of military protocol. In the same spirit, the VT dropped the practice of soldiers addressing officers as “sir” or addressing them in the third person. Through such steps, “the relationship between the leadership and men became much more personal and ultimately more binding.”[10] Officers and men dined together in the same mess hall.[11]

Pastor Karl Ossenkop, a former army captain transferred to the Waffen SS, recalled:

“contrary to the army, disparity in rank was no barrier dividing person from person. There was no pedantic structure held together by fear of punishment. This did not lead to a lack of discipline, but to a voluntary discipline such as I have seldom experienced. There was no duress and absolutely no anxiety. The well-known fighting efficiency did not spring from blind obedience to orders from a superior… In this corps one felt completely free.”[12]

A former director of the Tölz academy summarized:

“The authority of the officers, who were scarcely older than the men, rested far more on esteem for their character, performance, and care for the men’s welfare.”[13]

A soldier in the Germania Regiment in 1937 and future officer, Heinrich Springer, wrote this of his first platoon commander Hans Köller:

“He was not just a military instructor, but guided us in cultivating a decent personal bearing, inwardly and outwardly perceptible. Throughout the entire time as a recruit, I never once heard him shout at or curse the men.”[14]

The former General Staff Officer Hausser patterned the instruction at the Brunswick academy to be similar to army institutions. The two SS Junkerschulen, or Schools for Young Gentlemen, assigned top priority to preparing candidates for field operations and tactical combat command. Instructors also placed emphasis on personality development. As Lieutenant Colonel Richard Schulze wrote:

“The Junker Schools’ goal was to produce men of refined, fearless character, chivalrous with an unblemished sense of honor and obedience, displaying helpfulness, camaraderie, and willingness to accept responsibility. Impeccable deportment in public and cultivation of family values were also prerequisites.”[15]

The staff encouraged cadets to exhibit a respectful, but never subservient demeanor toward superiors. The VT educated field officers to exercise audacity as well as initiative.

The Junker Schools did not select candidates from among the general SS, but from enlisted members of the VT. Only men who had already served in the ranks could receive an appointment to Bad Tölz or to Brunswick. In the German army, a university degree was sufficient for an applicant to be accepted into a war college. Education had no influence on VT standards for enrollment. Many Junker School cadets did not possess a high school diploma.[16] The institutions nonetheless graduated capable officers. The English historian Gerald Reitlinger concluded:

“Under the influence of Hausser’s cadet schools, the Waffen SS developed the most efficient of all military training systems of the Second World War.”[17]

Georg Jestadt, who belonged to the 12th SS Panzer Division in 1944, wrote this of the men he served under:

“We had fantastic superior officers, from platoon leaders to the battalion commanders and upward, who were genuine ideals for the men. Looking back, I can objectively state that during the Normandy operation, amid all the inferno and trauma, I never saw a superior officer suffer a breakdown or lose his nerve. Again and again, when things looked so hopeless and critical, they mastered the situation calmly and with presence of mind.”[18]

When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the VT fell under armed forces command. The OKW deployed most VT formations among army divisions participating in the campaign. The SS soldiers acquitted themselves well in battle, and expansion and reorganization of the VT followed. Hausser formed Deutschland, Germania, Der Führer, and their combat-support units into a single division in October 1939. That same month, the SS transferred 15,000 law-enforcement personnel to create the SS Police Division. Yet another new division, Totenkopf (Death’s Head), filled its roster largely from concentration camp guards and incorporated the Home Guard Danzig. Together with Hitler’s bodyguard, the Leibstandarte, the military branch of the SS now numbered 100,000 men.[19] The entire force deployed in the 1940 campaign against Holland, Belgium, and France, fighting side by side with the regular army.

The SS had accomplished the expansion of the VT, renamed the Waffen SS in 1940, by shifting men from other contingents under Himmler’s command. This was necessary because the OKW, which had jurisdiction over the draft, limited the number of indigenous recruits whom the Waffen SS could induct. In order to increase its quantity of divisions, the chief of SS recruitment, Gottlob Berger, developed a fresh source of manpower. He introduced a campaign to encourage enlistment from among the extensive ethnic German colonies in Southeastern Europe. In May 1939, 1,080 members of Romania’s German community left the country to join the Waffen SS. They preferred to avoid service in the Romanian army, whose officers discriminated against ethnic-German recruits. During the war, the roster of ethnic Germans from beyond the Reich’s frontier who served in the Waffen SS would greatly increase; over 60,000 of them came from Romania alone.[20] In time, Berger’s solution for increasing manpower would significantly redefine the character of the Waffen SS.

Germanic Volunteers

A primary element determining the survival of a species is its ability to adapt to shifting environs. This natural law applies to nations as well. War forces abrupt changes that demand endurance and flexibility of disposition in order to rapidly face new conditions. In Hitler’s time, nationalism was a compelling influence. It roused people to give for their country, but simultaneously maintained barriers between nations. On the threshold of World War II, Europe stood in the shadow of peripheral superpowers prepared to contest her leadership in world affairs. To assert her economic and political independence and preserve her cultural identity, her populations needed to evolve toward mutual cooperation and fellowship. Italy’s former treasurer Alberto de Stefani observed:

“We’re all persuaded that continuation of this intransigent nationalism, which has no understanding for the requirements of a continental policy, is finally turning Europe against herself.”[21]

Europe settled into an uneasy peace in the summer of 1940, following a series of rapid campaigns Germany had conducted against neighboring states. German army garrisons held Western Poland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium, and Northern France. Allied with Italy and favored by Spain, the Reich also enjoyed economic influence over the Balkans. Cooperation with Germany was necessary for a strong, unified continent.

The continuing war against Britain required the German armed forces to occupy the North Atlantic coast to guard against potential British landings. The German military presence was not popular with the populations affected. The English also supported Communist “resistance” movements in the occupied countries, encouraging sabotage. They trained and smuggled in agents, plus weapons and explosives, while the BBC broadcast anti-German wireless propaganda designed for Western Europe.

At the same time, many Europeans regarded the Reich’s victories as a demonstration of the authoritarian state form’s superiority. Democracy had not only failed to alleviate unemployment and depression for the past 20 years, but bungled national defense. Germany’s spirited, martial society aroused awe and to some extent, admiration among her neighbors. The parliamentary debates, scandals, lack of progress and uninspired leadership associated with democracy seemed vapid by comparison. Marxism had an equally unimpressive track record. Leon Degrelle, a Belgian who eventually served in the Waffen SS, wrote that Marxism

“nowhere reached its promised goal of welfare for all, not even in the Soviet Union… The broad masses considered it a complete failure during the 1930s. They sought the remedy in other mass movements, those that tried to realize the desired social objectives within the framework of order, authority, firm leadership, and devotion to fatherland.”[22]

One blight on the track record of Western European governments, as far as the people in their charge were concerned, was the dismal military performance against Germany in 1940. In Norway, for example, the state had periodically slashed defense spending between the World Wars. The army could no longer afford to conduct field exercises, officers and men received inadequate training,[23] and there were no anti-tank weapons for the infantry.

The Germans invaded Norway on April 9. The German navy had urged Hitler to take this step in order to thwart a planned British amphibious operation to sever the Reich’s transit route importing strategic minerals from Sweden and Finland via Norway. The German armed forces landed 100,000 men from ships and planes. The indecisive reaction of the Norwegian government and conflicting military orders plunged Norway’s mobilization into chaos.

Retreating Norwegian army units failed to uniformly destroy tunnels, bridges, or lines of communication to delay the enemy’s advance. German motorized units refueled their vehicles at gas stations the defenders had abandoned intact. Some Norwegian troops surrendered at first sight of the invaders.[24] The capital fell without a shot fired. The German 324th Infantry Regiment landed at a nearby airfield and entered Oslo in marching order led by its brass band.

The German armed forces simultaneously occupied Denmark. This was to secure lines of communication and supply to the strategic Norwegian theater of operations. The previous January, Thorvald Stauning, head of the country’s social-liberal government, had more or less admitted publicly that Denmark would be unable to defend her neutrality.[25] He did nothing to improve defense capabilities.

In the early morning of April 9, the German icebreaker Stettin and the troop transporter Hansestadt Danzig, carrying 1,000 riflemen of the 198th Infantry Division, steamed into Copenhagen harbor. Danish searchlights illuminated the ships’ German war flag and the soldiers on deck. The coastal batteries however, never fired. As one Danish lieutenant told a parliamentary commission after the war:

“The men on watch fumbled with the cannon but had no idea of what actually to do. The mechanism was out of order, so that the breach didn’t work. While all this was going on, the ships had already passed the fort, slowly steaming toward the Copenhagen harbor.”[26]

A crewman of another shore battery testified:

“We didn’t have a single man who would have been able to operate the cannon.”

The German troops landed unmolested and occupied the capital. The day before, the government had received a report that German forces were massing at Flensburg, a city near the Danish frontier. When the invasion began, the Stauning administration stated in a proclamation:

“The German troops who are landing here have reached an agreement with the Danish armed forces. It is the people’s duty to offer no resistance against these troops.”[27]

It ordered the Danish army to stand down. This evoked bitterness among soldiers and civilians alike. The public suspected that the government had sabotaged national defense in collusion with the Germans. One Dane recalled:

“Many young people had already been disappointed over political developments in Denmark for a long time… The political system the government represented finally lost our confidence.”[28]

Holland, another constitutional monarchy, Germany invaded the following month. The Dutch parliament had underfunded the military; shortages of uniforms and small arms compelled recruits to wear a motley combination of army tunics and civilian caps and often to substitute wooden staffs for rifles when standing post. One Dutchman wrote:

“Because of the general disinterest in the army, also manifest among politicians, not a single cadet enrolled in the Imperial Military Academy during 1935 and 1936.”[29]

Dutch pacifists lobbied to have the army disbanded. The German armed forces required just five days to break its resistance.

France, a pioneer of democracy, displayed weaknesses that one might attribute to the influence of liberalism’s emphasis on the individual. Lieutenant Pierre Mendès-France observed this upon returning home from Syria only days before the Germans invaded his country on May 10, 1940:

“Everyone, civilians as well as those in the military, had but one thing on their minds; to arrange their personal affairs as well as possible, to get through this seemingly endless period with little or no risk, loss or discomfort.”

On May 18, with the French army already reeling before the German offensive, General Gamelin wrote this to France’s prime minister:

“The German success is most of all the result of physical training and of the lofty moral attitude of the people. The French soldier, the private citizen of yesterday, never believed there would be war. Often his interests did not reach beyond his work bench, his office or his farm. Inclined to habitually criticize anyone in authority, and demanding on the pretext of civilization the right to live a comfortable existence from day to day, those capable of bearing arms never received the moral or patriotic upbringing between the two wars that would have prepared them for the drama that would decide the fate of their country.”[30]

Inadequate defense preparations, craven leadership and moral deficiency were not the only factors causing Western Europeans to lose confidence in the parliamentary system or in democracy. English conduct during the fighting left a bad impression. Retreating across Belgium and Northern France toward Dunkirk, demolition parties of the British Expeditionary Force destroyed bridges, warehouses, refineries, fuel dumps, harbor installations, and anything else presumed potentially useful to the advancing German army. A Belgian sergeant described, for example, how on May 27 his men saw British troops destroying food stores:

“Worst of all was that refugees were there also, who had not eaten for days. They watched English soldiers throw eggs against the walls of houses, stomp on biscuits, and split tinned preserves with axes and toss them into a fire.”[31]

Germany and France concluded an armistice on June 22, 1940. The agreement stated that the

“German government formally declares to the French government that it does not intend to use the French battle fleet, that is interned in French ports under German supervision, in wartime for its own purposes.”

The Germans acknowledged that the French need the warships “to safeguard their interests in their colonial sphere.”[32] On July 3, a British Royal Navy squadron steamed from Gibraltar to the French Algerian anchorage at Mers-el-Kebir. The English demanded that the French battle fleet moored there join them, to continue fighting Germany, or scuttle the ships. When French Admiral Marcel Gensoul refused the ultimatum, the British bombarded his fleet.

The battleship Bretagne sank, the Provence and the Dunkerque suffered serious damage, and the barrage cost 1,147 French sailors their lives.[33] Royal Navy torpedo planes raided the harbor again on July 6, killing another 150 seamen. Two days later, British naval forces attacked Dakar, damaging the French battleship Richelieu. All this evoked strong anti-English sentiment throughout France.

Britain extended her naval blockade of foodstuffs to include European countries occupied by Germany, creating hardships for the populations. London established sham “governments in exile” for these states. They consisted of democratic politicians, officers, and aristocrats who had deserted their country and fled to Britain, in most cases when the fighting was still going on. Entirely dependent on England for their existence, these administrations supposedly represented the true interests of Europe.

The United States also sought to indirectly influence European affairs. On February 9, 1940, the U.S. State Department announced an economic plan for post-war Europe. According to Secretary of State Hull, America would support the principal European currencies through loans backed by gold. This would supposedly regenerate commerce once peace returned. It was apparent that Washington was intent on eradicating Germany’s burgeoning international barter system and restoring trade based on gold as the medium of exchange.

The State Department relied on the counsel of American bankers when preparing the plan, not consulting representatives of the continent it was intended for. Other resolutions and proposals for post-war reconstruction followed, such as the Atlantic Charter, the Keynes Plan, the Morgenthau Plan, and economic conferences in Hot Springs in 1943 and in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in July 1944. The Bretton Woods session established the International Monetary Fund in order to influence and if possible regulate foreign economies after the war, bringing the world one step closer to Roosevelt’s vision of a global government. In a speech in Königsberg on July 7, Walter Funk, the Reich’s minister of economics, told European economists:

“Today the Americans are propagating a return to the gold standard. What this means, especially considering that country’s dominant hoard of gold, is nothing but an elevation of the dollar to the basis for currencies worldwide and a claim to absolute control of the world’s economy.”[34]

A German diplomat pointed out:

“Discussions in neutral countries and even in those that are allied with or friends with us are taking place on a false premise. Mostly overlooked is the fact that the prerequisite for practical implementation of such plans is the conquest of Europe by the other side.”[35]

German propaganda capitalized on the subjective character of these programs. Germanisches Leitheft, a periodical targeting a broad-based European readership, asked in its January 1941 issue:

“Will foreign powers and racially alien forces determine Europe’s fate for all time to come, or will Europe form her own future, through her own vitality and on her own responsibility?”[36]

Another German publication stated:

“One of the main deficiencies in the mentality of the American is that he has no clear comprehension of other peoples. For this reason, he shrugs off their rights and natural requirements for life with a wave of the hand. He claims the prerogative to dictate his boundless wishes to the rest of the world, thanks to an unrivaled sense of superiority, which in reality is nothing more than a downright grotesque inferiority complex.”[37]

German leaders realized that to win European support, they would have to offer a viable alternative to the Anglo-American agenda. The most immediate requirement was to regulate the continental economy to become as self-sufficient and cooperative as possible. The British endeavored to starve or make destitute the populations of states under German occupation, in order to lend impetus to resistance cells. Werner Daitz, economic advisor in the NSDAP Foreign Policy Branch, submitted a memorandum in May 1940 urging establishment of a trade commission to explore Germany’s options:

“The present blockade has unavoidably made necessary the formation of a continental European economy under German leadership, as an economic self-help measure of the European mainland. The new order of the European continent, this eternal mainstay of the white race, will in this way find expression in a needed economic revival and independence. … If we expect to direct Europe’s commerce, which is an absolutely essential basis for economically strengthening the European continent as the anchor of the white race, we must naturally not publicly declare this to be a German economic sphere. We must always speak only of Europe.”[38]

As the ranking industrial power, only Germany could organize a prosperous and independent continental economy. The September 1940 edition of Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte (National-Socialist Monthly) stated:

“A European community of nations will never be established without the Reich… The Reich is the great political mission of the German people. It represents the concept of a European order. It eliminates foreign influences and guards against powers hostile to Europe. It strives for European cooperation on the principle of ethnic kinship, and of productive labor as the substance and foundation of all life.”[39]

One of Germany’s more astute propagandists was Major Walther Gehl, who had served in the infantry in both world wars. He recognized that securing his country’s influence depended not on military conquest, but on gaining the popular support of neighboring peoples. In Die Sendung des Reiches (The Mission of the Reich), he wrote that in order for Germany to succeed, she would have to devote herself to the welfare of the continent and not vice versa:

“With a sacred sense of responsibility for the future of Europe, Germany will incorporate the natural rights of the other peoples into her own political ambitions, and hold a protective, not ruling, hand over them. And her formidable military protection is a better guarantee for perpetuating their sovereign cultures than are anti-German alliances that the central European peoples had concluded, out of concern for their ‘liberty’, with nations beyond our continent.”[40]

Germanisches Leitheft maintained:

“Reich does not mean domination, but responsibility and a sense of mission; not hegemony, but a unifying inspiration of our clans, particular nations and ethnically-related families. It does not mean lust for power, but discipline, orderliness, leadership and responsibility.”[41]

Thus far-sighted Germans advocated the need for the transition from the German Reich into a European Reich. Franz Six, director of ideological research in the SS, wrote:

“Common racial ancestry, despite political and ideological differences, is the binding element of the European nations.”[42]

One Dane recalled:

“Young people receptive to this biologically-based perception correspondingly adjusted their attitude toward other peoples and nations. This promoted a genuine, national sense of belonging together. It was the starting point for renewing the 1,100-year-old idea of a unified Europe, which so far had come to naught time after time. It was no surprise that idealistic and motivated young men joined with enthusiasm and in a spirit of self-sacrifice, committing themselves personally to help build what they thought would be a better, stronger and more prosperous Europe, and free their own people from the national shame of a defeatist policy.”[43]

With Hitler’s approval, the SS established recruiting offices in Oslo, The Hague and Copenhagen in April and May 1940. Several hundred Norwegian, Danish, and Dutch volunteers signed on for a pre-military training course. Lasting months, the course included weapons handling, sports, German language instruction, and ideological lectures. Conducted in Carinthia, Germany, it also acquainted participants with the indigenous populace. Upon conclusion of the course, officers invited the young Europeans to enlist in the SS as Germanic volunteers.

Beyond the allure of a unified continent and disenchantment with previous democratic administrations, economic factors contributed to a gradual rapprochement with Germany. Many unemployed Scandinavians and Western Europeans sought work in the Reich. The Germans registered 100,000 Hollanders who migrated and found jobs in Germany.[44] Denmark recorded 147,000 men out of work in the summer of 1940.[45] The unemployment rate was 18 percent.

Germany helped revive industry in Belgium and in the Netherlands by awarding armaments contracts to manufacturing companies there. The cooperative attitude of the workers, many of whose plant managers had fled to Britain, led the Germans to implement measures to improve labor’s social conditions.[46] Unemployment in France, the largest foreign producer for the German war industry, dropped to practically nil by 1943. Having grappled with Communist trade unions before the war, French industrialists favored collaboration with the Germans. They also recognized that France and her colonies were too small a market for the country’s modern, expansive industry, and sought to cultivate European clientele.[47]

The NSDAP’s foreign policy chief, Alfred Rosenberg, argued in a speech that Europeans should acquiesce to German leadership in continental affairs:

“A smaller nation does not relinquish its honor by subordinating itself to a more numerous people and a larger realm. We must acknowledge the laws of life to survive. The facts of life show that there are numerically, geographically and politically powerful nations and there are smaller ones. To accept the influence of a realm like that of the Germans, once again demonstrating before all its age-old strength after a thousand years of the most challenging trials, is not a sign of weak character or questionable honor, but a recognition of the laws of life.”[48]

The German army instructed its soldiers garrisoning conquered countries to assume a firm but cordial posture. Guidelines for soldiers stationed in Denmark stated:

“Every German in Denmark must always be conscious that he represents the German Reich, and that Germany will be judged by his conduct. When meeting Danes, avoid anything that could insult the Danish national honor. The Danish woman is to be treated respectfully. Avoid political arguments.”[49]

These circumstances reaped benefits for the Germans. According to a 1947 Gallup poll, 40 percent of Danes canvassed had been outspokenly sympathetic toward Germany. Just 32 percent had felt hostile.[50]

Late in 1940, the Waffen SS established its first division incorporating Germanic volunteers. Flemish and Dutch enrolled in the Westland Regiment, while Nordland recruited Norwegians and Danes. Joined by the seasoned VT regiment Germania, these formations merged into the 5th Waffen SS division Wiking (Viking). The roster included 400 Finns, plus smaller contingents from Switzerland and Sweden.[51] Hausser later observed:

“They thought beyond the boundaries of their national states toward something greater, a common purpose.”[52]

A post-war poll of surviving Dutch SS men summarized:

“After the period of decline in moral values of the 1930’s, many were attracted to the military, with its ideals of discipline and order, command and obedience… The better educated among them were fascinated by the Reich concept with its prospect of consolidating all Germanic peoples… In the fight against capitalism and later against Bolshevism, many even saw founding a socialist coalition of racially-related states as a duty in itself.”[53]

The Israeli historian Zeev Sternhell saw their commitment as proof that

“there could be a civilization based not on birth or on the privilege of wealth, but on community spirit… This quest for new values which could guarantee the state’s cohesion, this disavowal of materialism excited, fulfilled and influenced the spirit of many Europeans—and not just the least prominent among them.”[54]

The German cause, groping for acceptance among European populations, gained favor when war broke out with the Soviet Union in June 1941. Hitler authorized a Waffen SS proposal to establish national legions of volunteers from neighboring states to fight in the East. Opening on June 27, recruiting offices counted 40,000 applicants the first day. The German security police, the SD, circulated a confidential analysis to leading representatives of the Reich’s government and the NSDAP on the reaction in the occupied countries. In Denmark, for example, it reported

“a direct reversal in attitudes in Germany’s favor. More and more, remarks by prominent people in Danish business life and in the clergy, who had up till now been reserved or even hostile toward Germany, indicate that they are changing their position on Germany now that she has begun the battle for European civilization against Soviet Russia… After the entire Danish press published a proclamation that encourages enlistment in the Waffen SS to take part in the war, applications to join the Waffen SS have markedly increased.”[55]

One recruit, among the 6,000 Danes to serve in the Waffen SS, recalled how many of his countrymen feared that were Germany defeated:

“Denmark could suffer the same fate as the small Baltic states; degraded to a Russian military district, politically neutralized, forcible implementation of the Communist bureaucratic economic system, gradual Russianization, and deportation of the political and cultural elite, with ruinous consequences for the biological substance of the Danish people.”[56]

The Danish government founded the Freikorps Danmark on July 3, 1941, which granted authorized absence, without forfeiture of seniority or pension, to members of the Danish army who transferred to the new formation.[57] Its first commanding officer, Christian Kryssing, stated in a national radio speech in July:

“Regardless of our political views, we all want Bolshevism and its threat to the northern states to be destroyed.…The war against Bolshevism is a crusade, Europe’s crusade against the land of the godless, against the modern Asiatic threat… I call upon all Danish men capable of bearing arms to take part in this crusade… to secure a rightful place for our fatherland in the reformation of Europe.”[58]

In Amsterdam, 50,000 people attended an anti-Communist rally in support of the German war effort. Regarding Scandinavia, the SD reported:

“The German-Russian conflict has turned attitudes in Norway more favorably toward Germany… From among members of the Nasjonal Samling (National Unity, the country’s fascist party) there are countless volunteers for the SS Nordland Regiment. In addition to the Nordland Regiment, a special legion of Norwegian volunteers under Norwegian command and in Norwegian uniform is being formed to fight on the German-Finnish front.”

In Belgium, the SD added:

“Flemish nationalist circles are unconditionally on Germany’s side in the struggle against Bolshevism.”[59]

Eventually over 20,000 Flemish served in the Waffen SS, many joining to combat “the arch-enemy of Christian Europe” in the East.[60] The Swiss journalist Armin Mohler wrote:

“They came because they hoped for the German Reich to forge a unified Europe of free nations. They wanted neither a commissar state nor a society of everyone competing against one another. There was much idealism then, such as is really only possible among the young.”[61]

In Paris, French politicians met on July 7 to discuss formation of the Legion des Volontaires Francais (Legion of French Volunteers), or LVF. The resulting fighting force left to deploy against the Soviets in August 1941. Within months a sponsorship program, “Friends of the Legion,” gained 1.5 million supporters.[62] The rector of the Catholic University of Paris, Alfred Cardinal Baudrillart, called the volunteers “among the best sons of France.” They defended not only the honor of their country, he stated, but

“fight also for the Christian civilization of the continent that has long been threatened by Communist barbarism… This legion is in fact in its own way a new knighthood. These legionnaires are the crusaders of the 20th Century.”[63]

Jacques Benoist-Méchin, a cabinet minister in the government of unoccupied France, saw a pan-European war effort against the USSR as a vehicle to unify Europe:

“This was the platform upon which provincial patriotisms could bond together, free from antagonism and traditional rivalries. It was the vehicle to break nationalism’s inner conflicts, to develop into a European super-nationalism.”[64]

The threat of Soviet expansion was a genuine concern to Europeans, who were more familiar with the consequences of earlier Communist revolutions in Russia, Germany, Hungary, and Spain than were the people of Britain and the United States. German correspondents covering the advance of the fighting forces into Russian territory filled the news media with reports about destitute living conditions among populations under the hammer and sickle as well as the merciless treatment of political dissidents there.

An article published in the Völkischer Beobachter in August 1941 expressed more or less popular views about the Soviet menace:

“Today all Europe knows that the war against Bolshevism is Europe’s struggle for her own fate, the consolidated war of European civilized nations against the powers of destruction and formless chaos. A new, revitalized Europe has learned to grasp what an enormous danger the specter of Bolshevism represents. It is of symbolic significance that the unity of Europe has begun to take place and prove itself in this struggle.

We know only too well what this war is about. But only when one sees the reality of the Bolshevik regime face to face, the influence of this system on the individual person and on his life, only then can one comprehend the cruelty, the overall horror of this system. It is a system that combines every element of devastation and absolute ruin of human values and ruin of humanity itself. Bolshevism is not even a political system one can intellectually debate with, but the organized murder of all life, the degradation of the earth and its people, destruction for the sake of destroying!”[65]

Regardless of their personal attitude toward Germany, the war against the Soviet Union was in part a unifying factor out of necessity for Europeans.

French, Walloon, and Spanish volunteers served in the German army, in ethnic regiments commanded by officers of their own nationality. French and Walloon troops eventually transferred to the Waffen SS. Berger arranged for German drill instructors conducting recruit training to attend special courses to acquaint themselves with the national and religious customs of the inductees in their charge. SS Colonel Richard Schulze recalled:

“The instructors needed to summon sympathy and understanding, and a well-balanced acceptance of the mentality of the various nations.”[66]

In a September 1941 article, an SS combat correspondent described the Odyssey of foreign volunteers serving in the Wiking division:

“They came to us unconditionally, as soldiers of the German Führer to fight for the new, greater Germania… They came to us then, misunderstood by their countrymen, not in proud columns but individually, resolute and clear-minded, often against father, mother, and family. They are not strangers here, but through their blood and their deeds have found in their regiments honor, a rightful place, and a home.”[67]

Negative Nationalism

Germanic volunteers often experienced isolation from their countrymen, thanks to lingering ambivalence among the populations of the occupied lands toward Germany. Traditional international rivalries, a saturation of anti-German publicity in the pre-war democratic press, suspicion of Hitler’s motives and the German invasion of 1940 all retarded appeals for European unity. Another obstacle to cooperation and good will, ironically, sprang from the Reich itself. Powerful and numerous, it was unavoidable that the Germans would exercise great influence over European affairs. Prominent nationalists in the country believed that this entitled them to subordinate the interests of neighboring states to those of Germany.

In June 1940, the German government introduced proposals to restructure European commerce. Addressing members of the planning committee, Funk offered this guideline:

“Germany now possesses the power in Europe to implement a reorganization of the economy according to her requirements. The political will to use this power is to hand. It therefore follows that the countries must fall in line behind us. The economies of other European lands must suit our needs.”

Foreign observers heard Funk state in a speech in July:

“Future peacetime commerce must guarantee the Greater German realm a maximum of economic security, and the German people a maximum of consumer goods to elevate the national economy. European trade is to be aligned with this goal.”[68]

Based on a 1939 study by the Prussian jurist Carl Schmitt, National-Socialist officials proposed granting sovereignty only to countries populated by “ethnically worthwhile peoples.” The German commissioner for occupied Holland, Seyss-Inquart, championed similar views. Party zealots considered him a better choice for foreign minister than the pragmatic, more constructive Ribbentrop. In his essay, “The European Order,” Seyss-Inquart wrote of

“a natural ranking, in which every nation has a place in the community according to its economic capabilities, its biological vitality, its martial strength, and cultural value.”

He called upon Europeans to “acknowledge the Reich as the principal power, through which their own strength can best be realized.” He added that Germany, “through superior achievement is accorded higher responsibility for all” who comprise European civilization, “which was formed by the industriousness of the Nordic race.”[69]

Such one-sided proposals regarding post-war Europe dismayed Ribbentrop. He warned in a memo that Germany’s allies fear that after the war, Berlin will place a German governor in every country. Neutrals, he wrote, are concerned that Germany plans to annex them.[70] The notion of ranking European peoples according to their value, racial or ethnic heritage among the criteria, threatened to create the divisions Hitler had previously sought to avoid in Germany proper when combating the party’s race theorists.

In the occupied countries, attitudes of German superiority were often apparent at lower administrative levels. Lvov, for example, was a Polish-Ukrainian city the German army wrested from the Soviets in June 1941. It subsequently came under the Reich’s civil jurisdiction. An ethnic German resident there recalled:

“Soon an offensive measure was introduced that was considered an embarrassment. The passenger compartments of the streetcars were divided in the middle by a wide leather strap. A sign in the front section read, ‘Only for Germans and their allies – Italians, Hungarians, Slovaks, and Romanians.’ It was shameful to see how people were crowded together in the rear section, while up front sat perhaps two people, and one or two policemen stood on the platform or beside the engineer.”[71]

Though Hitler had decided to gradually release all Polish prisoners of war, German authorities discouraged fraternization. In a 1939 assessment, the SD faulted members of the armed forces for their “great broad mindedness and sympathy” toward the Poles, especially formerly Austrian officers for their “respectful attitude” toward them. The German military command then ordered that Poles clear the sidewalk for German soldiers and remove their hats when passing officers; however, few occupational troops enforced this tactless regulation.[72] In the west, Hitler detained 65,000 Walloon prisoners of war, while sending all Flemish captives home. Germany continued to hold one-and-a-half-million French soldiers prisoner.

The war demanded that the Germans abandon such counterproductive policies. The Reich’s disorganized armaments industry experienced a decline in weapons manufacture during 1941. Production of howitzers, artillery rounds and small arms ammunition substantially dropped between February and December. The factories could not keep pace with the quantity of ordnance being expended in the Russian campaign. As the Red Army retreated in the east, the Soviets dismantled and evacuated 1,360 industrial plants. Their demolition squads destroyed remaining facilities, including 95 percent of the Ukraine’s power works, plus granaries, warehouses, refineries, bridges and machinery. The Germans were able to partially restore the economy at considerable cost, investing far more in reconstruction than they were able to reap in raw materials and surplus grain. These circumstances placed an enormous burden on German resources.[73]

There were seven-and-a-half million foreign workers in the Reich by September 1944. These included prisoners of war, the voluntarily recruited, and eventually those impressed into the workforce. Northern and Western Europeans received the same pay, vacation time and health care benefits as German labor. Eastern Europeans suffered poor treatment. Fritz Sauckel, in charge of mobilizing labor, stated in December 1942 that “whipped, undernourished and cowed eastern workers will more burden the German economy than be of use to it.” A decree enacted by Himmler that month made abuse of foreign laborers by Germans a punishable offense. Only as the military situation worsened, did conditions for Russian and Ukrainian workers improve.[74]

Poles fared better, largely due to the value of Polish industry for the war economy. Decent treatment of foreign labor, plus the re-organization of the entire armaments industry by civilian officials, led to a dramatic improvement in output. Between December 1941 and June 1944, armaments manufacture increased 230 percent, though the workforce was augmented by just 28 percent. In 1944 alone, German industry produced enough ordnance to fully equip 225 infantry and 45 panzer divisions. German factories accounted for 88 percent of arms production, foreign contracts for the balance.[75] A unified Europe, based on good will and equal status for all countries, was now a necessity.

Hitler harbored reservations about restructuring Europe with all nations on an equal footing. He mistrusted his allies. German intelligence reported that after German defeats in 1943, Romania, Hungary, Finland and Bulgaria discreetly contacted London and Washington about concluding a separate peace. The Allies informed them that the USSR must be involved in the negotiations, leading Germany’s satellites to drop the initiative. The Führer was no less wary of Philippe Pétain, president of unoccupied “Vichy” France, who proved unsympathetic to the German cause.

Hitler limited the roster of the Legion of French Volunteers to 15,000 men, even though there was available manpower to quadruple the number. The contemporary historian Franz W. Seidler pointed out:

“Hitler feared losing his freedom to make decisions about regulating post-war Europe if he accepted foreign help.”[76]

When the Walloon Legion officer Degrelle addressed Belgian workers in the Berlin Sportsalast in January 1943, he received acclaim from his audience … and a total press blackout in the German media. Recognizing German policy as an obstruction to the rapprochement supported by many of his countrymen, the French politician Laval told Hitler:

“You want to win the war to create Europe. You must create Europe to win the war.”[77]

At the time of Degrelle’s Berlin speech, the German armed forces and their allies were already losing ground in a war of attrition against Russia, Britain, and the United States. More Germans saw the need for foreign assistance. This required rethinking the Reich’s continental attitude. In February 1943, the foreign policy advisor Dr. Kolb introduced proposals for multilateral cooperation. He recommended that treaties be concluded upon the basis of absolute equality of the signatories. A nation should enjoy parity in the European community regardless of its form of government. Kolb’s plan required Germany to relinquish hegemony over the continent.[78]

In September 1943, Arnold Köster, head of the planning commission of the armaments ministry, bluntly stated in a memorandum that the Reich conducts an improvised exploitation of the occupied territories. The result was “resentment among society’s elements of good will, mounting hatred among hostile strata of the populations, passive resistance, and sabotage.”[79] The German diplomat Cecil von Renthe-Fink reported to Ribbentrop on September 9:

“It is obvious that the mood in Europe has been worse for some time and that resistance movements are growing rapidly. This development can have dire consequences for the willingness of the European nations to commit their resources for our victory, and must be countered. A change in policy is necessary.”

Renthe-Fink identified what he considered to be one of the worst shortcomings of current practice:

“Germany stands in the struggle for Europe as trailblazer for a new, better order in which all European peoples will find a just and worthy place. Apart from what is occasionally stated about the economic field, however, we have so far avoided saying anything concrete about our intentions. This gives the impression that we want to keep our hands free to implement our own political plans after the war. As reports from our embassies reveal again and again, the governments and populations of nations that are friendly toward us or allied with us have great interest in learning what role they will play in the new Europe.”[80]

Attending a wartime lecture on the danger of Communism, Degrelle voiced pan-European concerns when he told the speaker that the volunteers understand what they are fighting against, but not what they are fighting for.

German occupational policy in former Soviet territory was counterproductive. Aware of the threat that eastern populations such as the Mongols had historically posed, Hitler preferred to keep them politically impotent. He stated during a military conference in June 1943:

“I cannot set any future objective that would establish independent states here, autonomous states.”[81]

He privately remarked in April 1942:

“To master the peoples east of the Reich whom we have conquered, the guiding principle must be to accommodate the wishes for individual freedom as far as possible, avoid any organized state form, and in this way hold the members of these nationalities to as limited a standard of civilization as possible.”[82]

The Völkischer Beobachter mirrored this contempt for the Russians, as in the following description of a group of Soviet prisoners, published in the July 15, 1942 edition:

“We all know him from the newsreels and from the frontline photos of our combat correspondents; this earth-colored, leathery face with the apathetic, furtive animal gaze and the wearied, mechanical motions; this grey, monotonous, nameless mass, this herd in the truest sense of the word, that plods along the road of defeat in tiresome uniformity. From our sons, husbands, brothers and friends on leave from the east who have seen it in person, we’ve heard that the images depict them exactly as they are.”[83]

Thousands of Russians deserted to the invaders, often giving the reason that Stalin had executed someone in their family.[84] In July 1941, out of 12,000 members of the Soviet 229th Rifle Division, 8,000 defected. In September, 11,000 men belonging to the 255th, 270th, and 275th Rifle Divisions went over the hill as well.[85] Desertions continued to plague the Red Army. In May 1942 alone, 10,962 Soviet soldiers crossed over to the Germans. Another 9,136 followed in June, then 5,453 in July. The Germans counted 15,011 Red Army deserters in August.[86]

In May 1943, 90 Russian battalions, 140 independent rifle companies, 90 battalions consisting of non-Russian troops such as Georgians and Tartars, plus over 400,000 unarmed auxiliaries served in the German armed forces.[87] A Cossack division and several regiments supplemented this military force. At least 500,000 former Soviets fought on the German side that year,[88] and Cossacks were especially effective in combating Communist partisans. Hitler was initially shocked by the number of Russian units in German army service, and in February 1942, forbade more to be established. He soon gave up his resistance to the practice, thanks to the achievements of these formations.

Since the beginning of the Soviet-German war, captured Russian officers repeatedly advised the invaders that the establishment and formal recognition of a Russian national state with its own army of liberation was essential to overthrow the Stalin regime. Officers testifying included former commanders of the 3rd Guards Army, the 5th, 12th, 19th and 22nd Armies and more than a dozen other generals. The German diplomat Hilger interviewed three prominent Russian prisoners in August 1942: General Andrei Vlassov, Colonel Vladimir Soyersky, and Regimental Commissar Joseph Kerness. Vlassov, according to Hilger’s report, said this:

“Soviet government propaganda has managed to persuade every Russian that Germany wants to destroy Russia’s existence as an independent state and degrade her to colonial status. The Russian people’s will to resist, in his opinion, can only be broken if the Russians are shown that Germany pursues no such objective, but is moreover willing to guarantee Russia and the Ukraine, in the form of a protectorate perhaps, an independent existence. On this foundation, many Russian prisoners of war would place themselves under German command and enter the struggle against the hated Stalin regime.”[89]

Hilger also summarized Soyersky’s remarks in his report:

“He too holds the opinion that the Red Army and the Russian population can only be persuaded of the pointlessness of continuing the war if relieved of the fear that Germany wants to transform Russia into a colony. Because of the continuous defeats that everybody blames him for, Stalin has lost all his popularity in the army. The Soviet regime has always been hated by the majority of the population. The will to resist of the Red Army and the Russian people would therefore undoubtedly collapse if the publication of German war aims and the deployment of Russian units on the front would demonstrate that their fears are unfounded.”

At this stage, Hitler, his influential chancery director Martin Bormann, and Reich’s Commissioner for the Ukraine Erich Koch opposed post-war Russian autonomy. Italian Marshal Giovanni Messe observed:

“Germany is not striving to replace the Bolshevik regime with another form of government, but wants to secure all of Eastern Europe as an economic sphere of influence… The treatment of the population and of the prisoners, as well as taking full advantage of local natural resources, often betray a lack of foresight, contradictions in guidelines, lack of cohesion and instability among senior military, political and economic organs tasked with administration of the occupied territories… Germany has not understood how to awaken the sympathy and willingness to cooperate among the populations of these territories.”[90]

Hitler’s mistrust of Germany’s treaty partners and of the eastern peoples obstructed a rational European policy.

Throughout most of the war, German propaganda vilified the governments of enemy countries while describing their civilian populations and military personnel as decent but duped by unscrupulous leaders. The Reich’s media revised this prudential practice with respect to the war in the East. When the Germans invaded, the Soviet secret police, the GPU, liquidated political prisoners in eastern Poland and in the Baltic States. The Germans discovered over 4,000 victims in Lvov, in Luck 1,500, in Dubno 500. Summarizing the German official inquiry, Dr. Philipp Schneider wrote:

“I have come to the conclusion that the atrocities committed by the GPU against Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians and unfortunately also captured members of our armed forces in Russia before the retreat from the cities surpasses anything in cruelty and brutality that has previously come to light… My assistant, who was in Lvov two days ago, told me that what happened there defies description. Without doubt, the murder victims were tortured before their death in a sadistic way. Torture chambers built especially for the purpose were used.”[91]

Along retreat routes, the GPU and the Red Army strew mutilated bodies of German prisoners shot or tortured to death. The purpose was to provoke reprisals against surrendering Russians by the invaders, thereby deterring desertion. In the Tarnopol jail, German troops found one of their missing bomber crews with eyes gouged out, tongues, ears and noses cut off, and the skin on the hands and feet peeled away. This was a favorite GPU torment accomplished by first immersing the appendages in boiling water.

During January 1942, the Soviet Black Sea fleet landed Russian marines along the German-occupied section of the Crimean coast near Odessa. An engineer with a German infantry division there recalled this:

“Many houses along the beach had served as hospitals or as collection areas for the wounded. The Russians entered, killed the orderlies and the physicians, and raped the nurses and female assistants. Then they threw the women into the ice-cold waters of the harbor basin. They shot the wounded and sick soldiers, or dragged them into the street and poured cold water over them, so that they would freeze to death in the outdoors.”[92]

The German press described GPU agents and Soviet soldiers committing atrocities as Untermenschen. The expression closely translates to “lowlifes,” but historians sometimes interpret it as meaning subhuman or racially inferior. It in fact refers to the depravity of the individual mind and spirit, the triumph of corruption over the refined qualities of civilized man. Beyond the Soviet troops, Stalin’s enforcers, and rank-and-file Russian Communists, the word more or less became associated with the eastern peoples in general.

Melitta Wiedemann, former editor of the pre-war, international anti-Communist monthly Contra Comintern and editor-in-chief of the wartime diplomatic journal Die Aktion, expressed the frustration over German propaganda and foreign policy felt among many prominent citizens. In 1943, she wrote to several SS leaders, advocating the pan-European idea and a revision of German practices in the East. She directed a letter to Himmler via advisor Dr. Richard Korherr on October 5, in which she maintained:

“Our silence over the future form of the new Europe is considered in the occupied territories and among those who are officially our friends to be absolute proof of our bad intentions. People are saying that if Germany really intends to respect the independence of the European nations, she would be keenly interested in announcing this; because this, so people say, would check hostile attitudes toward the Reich which are presently spreading like an avalanche. If Germany remains silent, though, then how wicked her intentions must be! Allied propaganda is right when it claims that Germany wants to dissolve the European nations and establish one large prison for populations under the German lash.”

Wiedemann added:

“First the Jews were declared Untermenschen and robbed of their rights. Then the Poles joined them, then the Russians, and very nearly the Norwegians as well. Who’s protecting any nationality from being relegated to the realm of Untermenschen by Germany and then destroyed?”

She continued:

“Our Untermensch slogan has helped Stalin proclaim a national war. The hatred toward us is frightening… The entire Russian farming community, most of the intelligentsia, and the entire middle and senior leadership of the Red Army are enemies of Bolshevism and especially of Stalin. Our policy confronts these people with a tragic dilemma; either fight for Stalin or abandon their people, surely among the most talented of the white race, to the fate of a destitute, looted colonial territory, to be declared Untermenschen, condemned to generations of slave labor and a given a third-rate education. It’s easy to understand why under such circumstances, even Stalin’s mortal enemies fight against us with all their resolve.”[93]

The German army suffered a catastrophic defeat at the six-month battle of Stalingrad, which ended in February 1943. This forced many Germans to the conclusion that without active foreign help, the war would be lost, which required a fundamentally new approach to the Reich’s administration in Europe. To implement such a revision, resisted by the highest state leadership, advocates needed a vehicle, an organized bloc. They found it in the Waffen SS.

The European Mission

Early in the war against Russia, Hitler spoke of the need for Europeans to overcome nationalist proclivities:

“The threat from the east alone, with the danger of reducing everyone to the Bolshevik-Asiatic plane, which would mean the destruction of all basis of European civilization, compels us to unify. But so far, every nation is only thinking of itself and not in a European context. To overcome Marxism, our objective must be the Germanic social revolution.”[94]

A prominent journalist and former Waffen SS lieutenant, Hans Schwarz van Berk, wrote later:

“Only as the foreign formations with their explicitly European will, anchored in the SS as the concept of a European fighting elite, gained acceptance did things change. The German SS had to correspondingly adjust its perception. This experience made it clear that the old points of departure of German policy were too provincial to realize the European revival in a voluntary spirit of freedom, so passionately striven for by activist, optimistic younger elements from among the European peoples… This war’s fury demanded more than hired mercenaries. It demanded constructive, common goals and binding, idealistic motives of the fighters.”[95]

Germanic volunteers in the Reich’s service did not consider themselves to be in a subordinate role. “We fought neither for Germany nor for Hitler, but for a much greater idea; the creation of a united states of Europe,” wrote Degrelle,[96] and:

“We were all unified by the same will: Honorably represent our nation among the 30 that came to fight. Do our duty, since we fought for Europe. Gain an honorable place for our fatherland in the continental community that would evolve from the war, and finally, create combat units whose value guaranteed achieving social justice, when we ultimately returned home after the end of hostilities.”[97]

The Swiss SS man Heinrich Büeler recalled:

“Regarding the restructuring of Europe after the war, there was no program. This question was nevertheless often discussed in the Waffen SS… We were certain that the camaraderie that joined Germanics and Europeans fighting together in the Waffen SS against Asiatic Bolshevism would lead to reforming Europe in the same spirit.”

The Swiss journalist François Lobsiger considered the men “political soldiers in the loftiest sense,” fighting to achieve a “strong, unified, and brotherly Europe.”[98] The historian Lothar Greil summarized:

“With the beginning of the Russian campaign, a decisive mental awareness developed within the Waffen SS: The fight for freedom for the realm of all Germans became a struggle for the freedom of the European family of nations. The common cause of volunteers from throughout Europe reinforced this ideal as one which was worth making sacrifices for.”[99]

The French historian Henri Landemer observed:

“During the winter of 1943/44, the Waffen SS completed its great transformation. Its soldiers came from over 30 nations, and the old national pride was about to vanish from the earth in favor of the new Reich. The Reich is no longer Germany but Europe.”[100]

Himmler, primarily involved in law enforcement, intelligence gathering and counter-espionage, initially envisioned a post-war Europe with Germany dominant. He harbored a colonial attitude toward the East. Influenced not only by the deteriorating military situation but by many letters he received from soldiers of the Waffen SS, he gradually abandoned this imperialistic viewpoint. In a 1943 speech to NSDAP officials in Posen, he described the brotherhood in arms of the Wiking Division, in which Germans and non-Germans served together, as the basis for the greater Germanic Reich to come.

When a local party functionary refused to approve the application for marriage of a Germanic volunteer to a German woman, Himmler reacted sharply. On October 4, 1943, he sent a letter to Bormann arguing:

“If on one hand the Reichsführer SS (Himmler’s title) is supposed to recruit Flemish, Dutch, and other Germanics to fight and die for the greater Germanic Reich and in return declare that they have equal rights, then marriage to the sisters and daughters of these Germanics, or of a German maiden to a member of these Germanic peoples, cannot be forbidden.”

Demanding that the NSDAP’s Racial Policy Office be deprived of the authority to license marriages, Himmler added:

“It makes no sense for me to try for years, under difficult circumstances, to animate a Germanic idea and win people for it, while other offices in Germany thoughtlessly and categorically make it all for nothing.”[101]

Despite the authority of his office, Himmler was navigating precarious waters. He advocated a European commonwealth, challenging official “Germany first” programs and NSDAP dogma. “He became the most demonstrative critic of this policy and tacitly the most significant enemy of all supporters and defenders of this policy,” stated Schwarz van Berk.[102] Himmler began gaining the upper hand early in 1943. In February, the Reich’s Chancery granted him supervision over all “mutual ethnic-Germanic affairs” in the occupied countries. German officials could no longer act on related issues unless “in agreement with the Reichsführer SS.” The historian Seidler observed:

“To shape the new order in Europe after the war, the SS had an optimal starting position in competition with organs of the NSDAP.”[103]

The SS planned to establish a European union with close economic cooperation and a universal currency system, without German domination. “The loyalty of the foreign SS men gave Himmler more weight … in opposing official German policy. These men were not in the slightest degree of a subservient nature,” wrote Schwarz van Berk.[104] Eventually non-Germans became the majority in half of the SS combat divisions in active service.[105]

The Waffen SS took control of all foreign legions serving in the German army in 1944 except for Cossacks. This was an important step in supplanting the concept of national armies with that of a multi-national fighting force defending common interests, a force whose veterans could maintain a camaraderie transcending customary European rivalries after the war. The Waffen SS actively promoted establishment of a Russian army of liberation. After meeting with Vlassov, Himmler approved not only the formation of this army but the founding of an “exile” Russian government. Vlassov stated that he found greater understanding for his proposals during negotiations with the SS than with the German army.[106] He ultimately received the green light to establish the Russian Army of Liberation, which deployed toward the end of the war.

Estonians and Latvians became the vanguard of eastern peoples donning the uniform of the Waffen SS. Not without reservations, Himmler eventually acquiesced to Berger’s appeal to enroll Ukrainians. Formation of the 14th SS Grenadier Division, together with Yugoslavian contingents, ultimately broke down the “Slav skepticism” that had infected the Reichsführer SS no less than NSDAP doctrinaires. The diplomat Renthe-Fink wrote:

“The Estonian SS has proven itself in action against the Bolsheviks, and these developments appear to be taking place with the Führer’s approval.”[107]

The former director of the Bad Tölz Officers’ Academy noted:

“Certain dogma began appearing in a dubious light. Among these was the perception of race. The N.S. racial concept became increasingly less plausible after the forming of Slavic divisions. It gave way to the unifying element of anti-Communism, especially welding together the eastern and western SS.”[108]

The example of the Waffen SS encouraged others in Germany opposed to national policies detrimental to a community of nations. In February 1944, the German commissioner in the Crimea, Alfred Frauenfeld, sent Berlin a 37-page memorandum describing National-Socialist eastern policy as a “masterpiece of poor management.”[109] That June, the economist Walter Labs submitted proposals for administrative reform in occupied Russia. He asked:

“Are the eastern territories and the populations residing in them to be accepted as members of the European realm, or are they simply colonies and colonial peoples to be exploited?”

Labs demanded they be accorded the right to private property, advanced education and opportunities to realize prosperity. He bluntly pointed out:

“Nations which achieve as much in wartime as what the Red Army has demonstrated, are too advanced to accept being reduced to the standard of a colonial people.”[110]

For its part, the German army issued lengthy guidelines to its troops in Russia in 1943, ordering them:

“Be just. Every subordinate may be treated with firmness, but must be treated fairly as well. Within Russia, the Germans have always had a reputation for fairness. The Russian hates nothing more than injustice. The Russian is an especially good worker; if he is treated decently he works hard. He is intelligent and learns easily.”[111]

Nearly two years earlier, the Waffen SS had already instructed its members to “sincerely try to gain a fundamental understanding of the contemporary Russian psyche,” every SS man being “not just a soldier but a bit of a politician.” The purpose, stated in a directive for soldiers of the Leibstandarte, was

“one of the most important tasks for the German people, namely to win these populations for the European family of nations.”[112]

The Leibstandarte defended the Mius River position on the eastern front until April 1942, when it received transfer orders. A grenadier recalled:

“During our withdrawal from Taganrog, thousands of residents stood along the road and waved to the units as they drove away; an example of how good the relationship between an SS division and the Russian civilian population could become.”[113]

Though better known for its reputation as an elite fighting corps, the Waffen SS was no less resolute in advancing social and political reforms necessary for Europe to recover supremacy and renown in world affairs. In combating both the lingering 19th Century nationalism dividing the continent and the unproductive dogma of the Racial Policy Office within Germany, the Waffen SS trod a solitary path; few among the Reich’s hierarchy risked contradicting the NSDAP’s legislated programs. Albert Frey, a regimental commander in the Leibstandarte, recalled that “during the war, in no other realm of the NS state were the flawed political and military decisions of the senior leadership so openly discussed and criticized as they were within the Waffen SS.”[114] Induction into the Waffen SS of non-German volunteers forced the Reich’s Government to recognize the contribution of foreign peoples to the war effort. Germanic recruits demanded a post-war European federation in place of German hegemony. They found political expression through the SS, steadily leading the German government toward a balanced perspective. This augmented the influence of the under-represented strata that did the fighting, much in the sense that the wars of liberation in 1813 began shifting power from the imperial dynasty to the Prussian peasant militia.

Thousands of Ukrainians volunteered to serve in the Waffen SS.[115] The Ukrainian 14th SS Grenadier Division, which the Germans decided to establish in April 1943, went into action the following year. When Hitler learned of its existence he questioned its dependability, suggesting it would be better to give its weapons to a new German division. Hearing of General Vlassov’s wish to lead an army of liberation, Hitler retorted:

“I’ll never form a Russian army. That’s a specter of the first order.”[116]

When SS Colonel Gunter d’Alquen criticized the official attitude degrading the Russians, Himmler expressly warned him against the SS taking any course of action contrary to the Führer’s wishes. Yet the Waffen SS prevailed. Again citing Schwarz van Berk:

“In Himmler, those demanding that the narrowly defined racial policy be abolished in favor of a broader, more rational interpretation found their strongest voice. And this same Himmler, who in his own domain once established the most stringent racial criteria, now became the advocate of a liberal understanding of the rights of nationalities and races.”[117]

Hitler disapproved of the revisions doggedly promoted by the Waffen SS, yet ironically, he had created the system that enabled them to progress. In a 1937 speech at Vogelsang he had once stated:

“From our ranks the most capable can reach the loftiest positions without respect to origin and birth. They just have to have the ability. We’re seeking the most talented people. What they’ve been, what their parents do, who their mother was, mean nothing. If they’re capable, the way stands clear. They just have to accept responsibility; that is, have it in them to lead.”[118]

Hitler’s policy resembled the spirit of 18th Century liberalism in France, in which talented individuals realized their potential and rose to positions of leadership.

Since its establishment in 1934, the VT, the future Waffen SS, attracted men from the untapped wellspring of superior human resources once identified by Gneisenau. Frey, among the first to join the armed SS, wrote that regarding fellow recruits in training at the Ellwangen barracks, “Most were farm lads and came from villages.”[119] In the German army, 49 percent of the officer corps hailed from military families. In the VT, the figure was five percent. Just two percent of army officers had rural backgrounds, but a substantial percentage of VT officers grew up on farms.[120] Despite their comparatively limited education, SS officers enrolled in army General Staff courses consistently scored in the upper ten percent of graduates.[121] In some German provinces, nearly a third of the farm lads applied to enlist in the VT.

Like the German army, this novel fighting force encouraged battlefield initiative at junior command levels. However, it also relaxed social barriers between officers and subordinates, based authority on winning the men’s respect rather than on rank and instilled a liberal attitude that enabled Germans and other Europeans to stand together as brethren. In a few short years, the Waffen SS contributed to political and military evolutions that might otherwise have taken decades, and without the patronage of the men’s respective governments or populations.

In its final form, the Waffen SS bore little resemblance to the party’s showpiece guard troop, personifying the flower of German manhood that Hitler originally intended for domestic missions at his discretion. Himmler ultimately acknowledged that “the Waffen SS is beginning to lead a life of its own.”[122] Not constrained by established military convention, the men of the Waffen SS approached their craft with a spirit of independence and innovation. Through their voluntary commitment and wartime sacrifices they lobbied for political reform; customarily forbidden waters for the armed forces. And yet its members hailed largely from a stratum historically lacking public influence. Despite the dynamics, boldness and aplomb of the Waffen SS, it never would have gained leverage without a state system in place that fostered discovery of latent ability. The Führer approved expansion of the Waffen SS despite its defiance. Hitler was a man who sought not to control his people but to enable them, to help them explore, discover, and harness their potential, even when the changes they introduced contradicted his personal beliefs.

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Notes

[1] “Der Aufbau der Waffen SS”, Völkischer Beobachter, März 14/15, 1942
[2] Reinhardt, Fritz, Die Beseitigung der Arbeitslosigkeit im Dritten Reich, p. 213.
[3] Ochsenreiter, Manuel, Deutsche Militärzeitschrift: Sonderausgabe Waffen SS, p. 45
[4] Höhne, Heinz, Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf, p. 408
[5] Ochsenreiter, Manuel, Deutsche Militärzeitschrift: Sonderausgabe Waffen SS, p. 47
[6] Mathias, Karl Heinz, Ich diene, p. 56
[7] Männer der Waffen-SS, p. 40
[8] Schütter, Fritz, Wir woll’n das Wort nicht brechen, p. 40
[9] Höhne, Heinz, Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf, p. 412
[10] Schütter, Fritz, Wir woll’n das Wort nicht brechen, p. 164
[11] Buchner, Peter, Die Kriegserinnerungen des Werner Schmieder, p. 12
[12] Mathias, Karl Heinz, Ich diene, p. 65
[13] Schulze-Kossens, Militärischer Führernachwuchs der Waffen-SS, p. 45
[14] Springer, Heinrich, Stationen eines Lebens in Krieg und Frieden, p. 53
[15] Schulze-Kossens, Militärischer Führernachwuchs der Waffen-SS, p.70
[16] Höhne, Heinz, Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf, p. 412
[17] Schulze-Kossens, Militärischer Führernachwuchs der Waffen-SS, p.33
[18] Jestadt, Georg, Ohne Siege und Hurra, p. 168
[19] Höhne, Heinz, Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf, p. 423
[20] Milata, Paul, Zwischen Hitler, Stalin und Antonescu, pp. 48, 175, 214
[21] Neulen, Hans Werner, Europa und das 3. Reich, p. 186
[22] Degrelle, Leon, Erinnerungen eines europäischen Kriegsfreiwilliger, p. 182
[23] Levsen, Dirk, Krieg im Norden, p. 11
[24] Ibid., pp. 148-150
[25] Pedersen, Henry, Germanische Freiwillige, p. 18
[26] Meissner , Gustav, Dänemark unterm Hakenkreuz, pp. 56-57
[27] Ibid., p. 54
[28] Pedersen, Henry, Germanische Freiwillige, p. 23
[29] Verton, Hendrik, Im Feuer der Ostfront, pp. 47, 39
[30] Uhle-Wettler, Franz, Höhe und Wendepunkte deutscher Militärgeschichte, pp. 267, 290
[31] Dokumente britisch-französischer Grausamkeit, p. 140
[32] Kern, Erich, Adolf Hitler und der Krieg, p. 120
[33] Meiser, Hans, Das Ringen um Frankreich, p. 297
[34] Post, Walter, Hitlers Europa, p. 387
[35] Neulen, Hans Werner, Europa und das 3. Reich, p. 121
[36] Germanisches Leitheft, 1/1941, p. 8
[37] Halfeld, August, USA im Krieg, p. 7
[38] Neulen, Hans Werner, Europa und das 3. Reich, pp. 72, 74
[39] NS Monatshefte, Nr. 126, p. 546
[40] Gehl, Walther, Die Sendung des Reiches, pp. 97-98
[41] Germanisches Leitheft 8/9, 1942, p. 346
[42] Neulen, Hans Werner, Europa und das 3. Reich, p. 50
[43] Pedersen, Henry, Germanische Freiwillige, p. 25
[44] DuPrel, Max Freiherr, Die Niederlande im Umbruch der Zeiten, p. 58
[45] Seidler, Franz, Avantgarde für Europa, p. 57
[46] Post, Walter, Hitlers Europa, pp. 85-87
[47] Ibid., pp. 89, 338, 336
[48] Horn, Martin, Norwegen zwischen Krieg und Frieden, p. 17
[49] Meissner, Gustav, Dänemark unterm Hakenkreuz, p. 47
[50] Pedersen, Henry, Germanische Freiwillige, p. 192
[51] Ochsenreiter, Manuel, Deutsche Militärzeitschrift: Sonderausgabe Waffen SS, p. 66
[52] Degrelle, Leon, Erinnerungen eines europäischen Kriegsfreiwilliger, p. 83
[53] Seidler, Franz, Avantgarde für Europa, p. 84
[54] Post, Walter, Hitlers Europa, p. 21
[55] Boberach, Heinz, Dänische Freiwillige in der Waffen-SS, p. 2483-2484
[56] Pedersen, Henry, Germanische Freiwillige, p. 37
[57] Seidler, Franz, Avantgarde für Europa, p. 48
[58] Werther, Steffen, Dänische Freiwillige in der Waffen SS, p. 72
[59] Boberach, Heinz, Dänische Freiwillige in der Waffen-SS, pp. 2484-2485
[60] Ochsenreiter, Manuel, Deutsche Militärzeitschrift: Sonderausgabe Waffen SS, p. 64
[61] Neulen, Hans Werner, Europa und das 3. Reich, p. 62
[62] Seidler, Franz, Avantgarde für Europa, p. 132
[63] Schweiger, Herbert, Mythos Waffen-SS, p. 70
[64] Neulen, Hans Werner, Europa und das 3. Reich, p. 245
[65] Massmann, Kurt, “Man muss es gesehen haben!”, Völkischer Beobachter, August 12, 1941
[66] Schulze-Kossens, Militärischer Führernachwuchs der Waffen-SS, p. 23
[67] d’Alquen, Gunter, “Die germanischen Kameraden”, Völkischer Beobachter, September 2, 1941
[68] Neulen, Hans Werner, Europa und das 3. Reich, p. 26
[69] Ibid., pp. 117-118
[70] Ibid., p. 106
[71] Jestadt, Georg, Ohne Siege und Hurra, p. 52
[72] Umbreit, Hans, Deutsche Militärverwaltungen 1938/39, pp. 199, 198
[73] Post, Walter, Hitlers Europa pp. 182-183, 235, 241
[74] Ibid., pp. 364, 363, 368, 366
[75] Ibid., pp. 360, 355
[76] Seidler, Franz, Avantgarde für Europa, p. 133
[77] Ribbentrop, Rudolf von, Mein Vater Joachim von Ribbentrop, p. 378
[78] Neulen, Hans Werner, Europa und das 3. Reich, p. 43
[79] Ibid., p. 45
[80] Ibid., p. 128, 129
[81] Ibid., p. 39
[82] Picker, Henry, Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier, p. 214
[83] Seibert, Theodor, “Warum kämpft der Sowjetsoldat?”, Völkischer Beobachter, July 15, 1942
[84] Seidler, Franz, Die Wehrmacht im Partisanenkrieg, p. 84
[85] Hoffmann, Joachim, Stalins Vernichtungskrieg, p. 97
[86] Buchbender, Ortwin, and Horst Schuh, Die Waffe, die auf die Seele zielt, p. 120
[87] Post, Walter, Die verleumdete Armee, p. 193
[88] Seidler, Franz, Die Wehrmacht im Partisanenkrieg, pp. 117-118
[89] Becker, Fritz, Kampf um Europa, pp. 293-294
[90] Post, Walter, Die verleumdete Armee, p. 185
[91] Hoffmann, Joachim, Stalins Vernichtungskrieg, p. 245
[92] Wimmer, Josef, Ich war dabei, p. 115
[93] Neulen, Hans Werner, Europa und das 3. Reich, p. 138-139
[94] Giesler, Hermann, Ein anderer Hitler, p. 399
[95] Schwarz, Hanns, Brennpunkt FHQ, p. 65
[96] Degrelle, Leon, Erinnerungen eines europäischen Kriegsfreiwilliger, p. 122
[97] Ochsenreiter, Manuel, Deutsche Militärzeitschrift: Sonderausgabe Waffen SS, p. 70
[98] Neulen, Hans Werner, Europa und das 3. Reich, p. 62
[99] Schweiger, Herbert, Mythos Waffen-SS, p. 67
[100] Ochsenreiter, Manuel, Deutsche Militärzeitschrift: Sonderausgabe Waffen SS, p. 71
[101] Seidler, Franz, Avantgarde für Europa, p. 21
[102] Schwarz, Hanns, Brennpunkt FHQ, p. 65
[103] Seidler, Franz, Avantgarde für Europa, p. 16
[104] Schwarz, Hanns, Brennpunkt FHQ, p. 66
[105] Ochsenreiter, Manuel, Deutsche Militärzeitschrift: Sonderausgabe Waffen SS, p. 65
[106] Ibid., p. 72
[107] Post, Walter, Hitlers Europa, p. 322
[108] Schulze-Kossens, Militärischer Führernachwuchs der Waffen-SS, p. 23
[109] Neulen, Hans Werner, Europa und das 3. Reich, p. 56
[110] Ibid., p. 160, 161
[111] Post, Walter, Hitlers Europa, p. 258
[112] Schweiger, Herbert, Mythos Waffen-SS, pp. 55-56
[113] Ibid., p. 61
[114] Frey, Albert, Ich wollte die Freiheit, p. 247
[115] Höhne, Heinz, Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf, p. 467
[116] Seidler, Franz, Avantgarde für Europa, p. 27
[117] Schwarz, Hanns, Brennpunkt FHQ, p. 67
[118] Gordon, Helmut, Es spricht: Der Führer, p. 27
[119] Frey, Albert, Ich wollte die Freiheit, p. 90
[120] Höhne, Heinz, Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf, p. 413
[121] Schulze-Kossens, Militärischer Führernachwuchs der Waffen-SS, p. 231
[122] Höhne, Heinz, Der Orden unter dem Totenkopf, p. 444