Waffen-SS
The SS-Wiking in Hungary
Waffen SS “Wiking” Kampfgruppe “Darges” with the commander of the Hungarian forces at the entrance of the Mountain Castle 8th of January 1945. Fritz Vogt and Fritz Darges in Front of Hegykastely Castle, January 1945. Officers from I.Abteilung/SS-Panzer-Regiment 5 “Wiking” and I.Bataillon/SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 23 “Norge” posed together for the camera in front of the doorway of Hegykastely Castle, Hungary. Front row,…
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Waffen-SS: Spontaneous, suggested or enforced enlistment?
Waffen-SS-Division – Wiking In theory, the Waffen-SS was forced because of its status to recruit only volunteers. In reality, an increasing number of men were pressured into joining the Waffen-SS during the conflict. The question is, therefore, when and by what means the SS overrode its own principles and broke…
Waffen-SS Alibi of the Heer
Terrorizing the troops through the draconian application of military justice may well have helped keep them fighting long after they knew the war was lost. But what the regime increasingly required was a military force that fought out of fanatical National Socialist commitment. This was in fact available, in the…
Joachim Peiper, (1915–1976)
German Waffen-Schutzstaffel (Waffen-SS) officer. Born in Berlin on 30 January 1915, Joachim Peiper came from a military family. He was well educated and was fluent in both English and French. Peiper joined first the Hitler Youth, then the SS. Commissioned in the SS in 1936, he served on Heinrich Himmler’s…
POWs – A Comparison of Treatment
The Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS took 232,000 British, Commonwealth, and American prisoners during the war, most in the course of the last year of fighting in Italy and France. The short duration in captivity of most, along with the prospect of pending Allied victory in the west, meant they enjoyed relatively…
Waffen-SS General Felix Martin Julius Steiner
Felix Martin Julius Steiner was born on 23 May 1896 in East Prussia. His military service began shortly before the Great War with his enlistment in the German Army. He was quickly promoted to NCO, and was commissioned in January 1915, less than a year after entering the service. He…
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 1943
Part of the Final Solution-the genocide of Europe’s Jews in the Holocaust-involved the establishment of ghettos in German-occupied territories in which Jews were confined until they could be dispatched to concentration and extermination camps. The Warsaw Ghetto, within the city’s old Jewish quarter, was enclosed first by barbed wire and…