12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth"
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12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth" |
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|---|---|
 Troop identification, the victory runes of the Hitler Youth and Dietrich |
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| active | July 20, 1943 to May 8, 1945 (total capitulation) |
| Country |
.svg){kind=small} German Empire
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| Armed forces |
 Armed SS
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| Type | Panzer Division |
| structure | structure |
| Installation site | Beverloo- Leopoldsburg military training area ( Belgium ) |
| Second World War | Western front |
| Commanders | |
| list of | Commanders |
The 12th SS Panzer Division Hitler Youth was a Panzer Division of the Waffen-SS set up in World War II in 1943 and used on the Western and Eastern Fronts. Most of the soldiers in the division were born in 1926 and were therefore recruited from the Hitler Youth in 1943 at the age of 17 , which is why the Allies also referred to them as the “baby division”.
history
Positioning and training
In January 1943, SS-Gruppenführer Gottlob Berger suggested to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler that they set up an SS division made up of members of the Hitler Youth and found an enthusiastic advocate in it. On February 10, 1943, the official decree followed for the use of the 1926 class for the establishment of the Hitler Youth SS Division. Himmler appointed SS Oberführer Fritz Witt from the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler , which also provided the cadre for the units to be deployed, around 1,000 men, as division commander . The division was intended as an elite force from the start . The badge for the new unit, the victory rune of the Hitler Youth crossed with the Dietrich der Leibstandarte (after their first commander, Josef Dietrich ), was determined through a competition .
By taking over the cadres from the Leibstandarte, the “Hitler Youth” division - according to the historian Peter Lieb - “symbolically became the first politico-military child of Hitler's former life guard”. Lieb calls the division the "[...] most strongly indoctrinated National Socialist association of the entire German armed forces". The recruits born in 1926 had grown up and brought up in the Nazi state , knew only this ideology and were ready to fight fanatically for it, so Lieb.
By September 1, 1943, over 16,000 members of the Hitler Youth had been drafted and received six weeks of basic training. During the training at the Beverloo military training area ( Leopoldsburg , Belgium ) it was decided to relocate the unit , originally conceived as a Panzergrenadierdivision , to a tank division and to change the name to SS-Panzer-Division Hitlerjugend . With the consecutive numbering of the units of the Waffen SS on October 22, 1943, the division received the number 12, the two Panzergrenadier regiments the numbers 25 and 26.
In March 1944 the division was ready for action and was transferred to Caen in Normandy , where it was subordinated to the Panzer Group West .
Use in Normandy
On June 6, 1944, the Western Allies invaded Normandy . The 12th SS Panzer Division, together with the 21st Panzer Division , was the armored reserve unit closest to the landing beaches. Due to the heavy bombing raids, it was only used at around 10:00 p.m. near Évrecy .
On June 7th, the SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 25 under SS-Standartenführer Kurt Meyer ("Panzermeyer") together with the II./SS-Panzer-Regiment 12 fought off an attack that had landed on Juno Beach the day before and is now about 20 km Canadian troops standing inland . In the course of this mission and in the period that followed, members of the division murdered at least 187 Canadian prisoners of war . It was the largest and most famous case of war crimes during the fighting in Normandy.
On June 8, the SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 26 under the command of SS Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Mohnke reached the position west of Meyer's troops. The regiment advanced towards Norrey-en-Bessin and occupied the strategically important village.
On June 14th, the Royal Navy bombarded the base in Venoix with ship artillery. a. Witt died. His place was taken by Kurt Meyer, who at the age of 33 became the youngest division commander of the Second World War. Meyer was later charged with war crimes; he was for the murder of Canadian prisoners of war held responsible .
In the first week of July, the division suffered great losses from the advancing Allies. Meyer thereupon ignored the order to hold the north line of Caen, and withdrew with the rest of his force southwards. At that time, the Panzer Division had 4,000 dead, 8,000 wounded and numerous missing people.
The withdrawal
In the following weeks the division withdrew to the Franco-Belgian border. By September the force had shrunk to 2000 men. Meyer himself was captured by Belgian partisans on September 6th , after which SS-Obersturmbannführer Hubert Meyer took command.
In November the division was relocated to Nienburg , where it was to be set up again after the de facto annihilation. Meyer was replaced by SS-Obersturmbannführer Hugo Kraas . Under his leadership, the division of the 6th Panzer Army under SS-Oberstgruppenführer Sepp Dietrich was subordinated to the Ardennes offensive .
The operation, which began on December 16, 1944, quickly got stuck for various reasons. Despite intensive efforts, it was not possible to break through the front of the American defenders. The division was sent to the battle of Bastogne . By January 18, 1945, the division (like the other German units) was pushed back to its original position.
Hungary and Austria
On January 20, 1945 the 6th Panzer Army was moved to western Hungary to relieve Budapest , where 45,000 men of the IX. Waffen Mountain Corps of the SS were encircled. The division reached the city in February just days before it fell. She fought on a bridgehead in the city of Esztergom on the Danube . This was smashed at the end of the month.
Next, the division was to participate in Operation Spring Awakening , an operation to reclaim the Hungarian oil fields. Hitler tried to keep the action a secret and forbade clearing up the battlefield before the attack. After some initial success, the operation was canceled after a Soviet counterattack.
By mid-March the division was pushed back to Vienna and surrendered to American troops in Austria .
War crimes
During the transfer of the division, 86 arbitrarily arrested residents were shot in Ascq on the night of April 1, 1944 in retaliation for a previous bomb attack on a train that had derailed two cars in the town. This retaliation is known as the Ascq massacre .
After the Allied invasion, the division was involved in fighting with Canadian troops. Several hundred Canadians were captured. As early as June 7, 1944, members of the division shot Canadian prisoners at various locations. In total, at least 187 of these prisoners were shot. Involved were u. a. the commander of the SS 25th Panzer Grenadier Regiment and later division commander Standartenführer Kurt Meyer, the commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 26th SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment Sturmbannführer Bernhard Siebken and his orderly officer Untersturmführer Dietrich Schnabel. Siebken and Schnabel were sentenced to death by a British military tribunal. Her sentence was carried out on January 20, 1949. Meyer stood before a Canadian military tribunal for his crimes. Sentenced to the death penalty in December 1945, this sentence was commuted to life imprisonment a short time later. In 1954 Meyer was released. Other officers involved in this war crime were never prosecuted, such as the commander of the 26th SS Panzer Regiment and later commander of the 1st SS Panzer Division "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" Obersturmbannführer Wilhelm Mohnke , the commander of the III. Battalion of the SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 25 Obersturmbannführer Karl-Heinz Milius and the commander of the SS Panzer Reconnaissance Division 12 Sturmbannführer Gerhard Bremer .
The Hitler Youth SS Panzer Division is also held responsible for the massacre in Tourouvre . On August 13, 1944, members of the SS executed 18 men in the village and then set the main street of the city on fire. At the time, SS Panzer Reconnaissance Division 12 was in the region.
The members of the division are said to have been involved in the murder of US paratroopers on German territory in the later course of the war.
The monument to the Waffen SS in Marienfels
In 1971 a memorial for the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitler Youth was erected in Marienfels . In 2001 the lease was not extended by the municipality. Since 2003, the memorial has been the target of several right-wing extremist rallies and marches. Unknown destroyed it again in 2004. At the beginning of 2006 the stored memorial hit the headlines again when a planned reconstruction on the private property of the neo-Nazi Thorsten Heise in Fretterode became known.
structure
In 1944 the division consisted of the following units:
- SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 25
- SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 26
- SS Panzer Regiment 12
- SS Panzer Artillery Regiment 12
- SS reconnaissance department 12
- SS tank destroyer division 12
- SS thrower division 12
- SS Flak Division 12
- SS Panzer Pioneer Battalion 12
- SS Panzer News Department 12
- SS repair department 12
- SS supply troops 12
- SS Economic Battalion 12
- SS war reporter train (motorized) 12
- SS-Feldgendarmerie-Company / Troop 12
- SS field post office (mot) 12
- SS medical department 12
Commanders
- June 24, 1943 to June 16, 1944: later SS-Brigadefuhrer and Major General of the Waffen-SS Fritz Witt
- June 16 to September 6, 1944: SS-Oberführer Kurt Meyer
- September 6 to October 24, 1944: SS-Sturmbannführer Hubert Meyer (interim as Ia of the division)
- October 24 to November 13, 1944: SS Brigade Leader Fritz Kraemer
- November 13, 1944 to May 8, 1945: SS-Standartenführer Hugo Kraas
Former division members
literature
- Rupert Butler : SS Hitler Youth: The History of the Twelfth SS Division 1943–45. Spellmount, Staplehurst 2003, ISBN 1-86227-193-3 .
- Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945. Volume 3: The Land Forces 6-14 . 2nd Edition. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1974, ISBN 3-7648-0942-6 . P. 257 ff.
Web links
- Literature on the 12th SS Panzer Division "Hitler Youth" in the catalog of the German National Library
Footnotes
- ↑ Gordon Williamson: Die SS. Hitler's Instrument of Power, Kaiser, 2005, p. 102.
- ↑ Peter Lieb Conventional war or ideological war? Warfare and fighting partisans in France in 1943/44 (= sources and representations on contemporary history. Vol. 69). Oldenbourg, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-57992-5 , p. 114 (also: Munich, Univ., Diss., 2005).
- ↑ a b c d Lieb, Conventional War or Weltanschauungskrieg , p. 158.
- ↑ Peter Lieb : Conventional war or Nazi ideological war? Warfare and the fight against partisans in France 1943/44. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-486-57992-5 . P. 163.
- ↑ Article on wa.de
- ↑ NPD federal board member Heise goes under the wine dealers on endstation-rechts.de