Waffen-SS
German Infantry – Eastern Front
In the spring of 1943, German forces were no longer the undisputed masters of the battlefield. In North Africa they were being pushed back into an enclave in Tunisia, facing defeat by the combined Allied forces, and in Russia they were on the back foot after Stalingrad. The battle of Stalingrad had been a resounding defeat for both the German…
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13th SS Volunteer Mountain Division
The mountain infantry company of the ‘Handschar’ division on the parade ground. Apart from the recruitment of ethnic Germans and ‘Germanic’ volunteers, from 1942 onwards Himmler began increasingly to recruit men who, in Nazi jargon, were termed ‘ethnic aliens’. As early as 1940 he had formed ‘legions’ in north-west Europe—with…
BLUE DIVISION “División Española de Voluntarios (DEV).”
A full infantry division sent by General Francisco Franco to fight alongside the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, ostensibly in belated response to Soviet intervention in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). It was not a division of the Spanish Army, though all its officers were regular Army at Franco’s insistence.…
Sixth Panzer Armee at Ardennes 1944
For purposes of this offensive, Hitler created the Sixth SS Panzer Army, consisting of four Panzer divisions under the command of Josef A. “Sepp” Dietrich, an SS officer both fierce and trusted. From the northern Ardennes in the vicinity of Monschau, Dietrich would lead the Schwerpunkt (principal thrust) of a…
The Liberation of Prague and Czechoslovakia
Soviet and Czech Armour 1945 The Nazi puppet state in Slovakia sent small ground and air units to fight against the Soviet Union. Formerly a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, after World War I Slovakia shared the twists and turns of the history of the Czech state. But during World…
German Infantry – Eastern Front
In the spring of 1943, German forces were no longer the undisputed masters of the battlefield. In North Africa they were being pushed back into an enclave in Tunisia, facing defeat by the combined Allied forces, and in Russia they were on the back foot after Stalingrad. The battle of…
Waffen-SS 1944-45
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 shape of the Military SS (Waffen-SS). Its history went back to the early days of the Third Reich, when Hitler had formed an armed…