24th Waffen Mountain (Karst Jäger) Division of the SS
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24th Waffen Mountain (Karst Jäger) Division |
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|---|---|
 Troop registration |
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| active | July 10, 1942 to May 10, 1945 |
| Country |
.svg){kind=small} German Empire
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| Armed forces |
 Armed SS
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| Branch of service | Mountaineer |
| Type | Mountaineering Division |
| structure | See outline |
| Second World War | Combat against:
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| commander | |
| list of | Commanders |
The 24th Waffen-Gebirgs- (Karstjäger-) Division of the SS was a large unit of the Waffen-SS , which was composed mainly of Italian volunteers . It was created on August 1, 1944 by renaming the "Karstwehr Battalion" set up in 1942 and was used against partisans in Northern Italy - especially in Friuli and Venezia Giulia - and only surrendered to US troops in Carinthia on May 10, 1945 .
Lineup
On July 10, 1942, the SS Command Main Office issued an order to set up a Karstwehr battalion , which was renamed the SS Karstwehr battalion on November 15, 1942 . SS-Standartenführer Hans Brand , a doctor of geology, was responsible for the formation and training of the battalion . For this purpose, the battalion camp for 600 recruits was built on the Bernitz plateau near Pottenstein . In Pottenstein, the Karstwehr used numerous forced laborers to speed up the work on creating the Schöngrundsee , in and outside the Teufelshöhle . For this purpose, an SS Karstwehr company was relocated from Dachau , which formed the trunk of the battalion to be newly established. The battalion was later assigned to the Supreme SS and Police Leader Italy for combating partisan units and was mainly used in northeastern Italy.
Promoted to division on August 1, 1944 , this consisted mainly of volunteers from Italy and some soldiers from Slovenia . There were also Reich Germans (including Austrians) and ethnic Germans of various ages and origins, as well as a minority of soldiers from Croatia , Serbia and the Ukraine .
Due to the lack of suitable personnel, the division was reassigned to the Waffen-Gebirgs- (Karstjäger) Brigade on December 5, 1944 , but renamed the 24th Waffen-Gebirgs- (Karstjäger) Division of the SS on February 10, 1945 .
The uniform badges of the non-Reich German members were rather atypical for the Waffen-SS, white on black, but instead of the SS runes (Sig runes) the following badges were used: A karst flower for the ethnic Germans and the other ethnic groups (with these sometimes also no badge at all), the Italians wore - if not always - a green-white-red coat of arms according to the national flag on the right arm.
Some sources also include the Panzer Department Adria or Panzer Department 202 , which was set up by order of SS-Oberstgruppenführer and Colonel General of the Waffen-SS Paul Hausser , to the Waffen-SS and thus to this division, while Hausser is in the military hospital because of a wound of Trieste was located.
commitment
The Karstjäger fought from November 1944 mainly partisans in Venezia Giulia and western Slovenia and Croatia, but fought against the war and against which this region filled by Italy British and New Zealand troops (including the famous Desert Rats during the brit. 8th Army ).
Especially in the last phase of the war, the division was involved in numerous brutal excesses of violence and senseless destruction in the search for Italian resistance fighters and communist Yugoslav partisans . The Italian members of the division in particular attracted attention in Venezia Giulia due to their particularly brutal approach, and the same was true of the Slovenes and Croats during operations in their home region further east.
The British Army reported heavy resistance from these SS units and numerous destroyed armored vehicles when they continued to defend the city of Trieste doggedly with some units of the Army of the Social Republic of Italy ( ENR ) , while the Wehrmacht had long since evacuated the city to the northeast or was already in the British and New Zealanders had surrendered.
The fighting against the Yugoslav Tito partisans in the hinterland of Trieste lasted until May 5, 1945 after British and New Zealand troops (8th Army) occupied this area and the city on May 2. Subsequently, after the official surrender of the German troops in Italy, which became officially effective on that day, the fight on the retreat to the lower Drava or in the part of Slovenia and Carinthia in Austria, which was still under German control at the end of the war , continued until May 10th.
The remainder of the division, if not previously captured by British and New Zealand troops, surrendered to US troops in Carinthia two days after the unconditional surrender of Berlin-Karlshorst on May 10, 1945.
War crimes
The Karstwehr and the resulting units are charged with numerous war crimes. Three days after the German surrender in Italy, 51 residents were murdered by partisans in a massacre on May 2, 1945 in Avasinis in revenge for an attack. The Slovenian history professor Tone Ferenc (formerly University of Ljubljana ) came to the conclusion that there has hardly been a force that has committed as many war crimes against the civilian population as the Karst Army.
According to the Atlante degli Stragi Naziste e Fasciste in Italia (Atlas of the Nazi and Fascist Massacres in Italy) project, which was financed by the German Federal Government and led by a Commission of Historians, just over 270 people were killed in Italy between April 1944 and May 1945 by members of the 24 SS Waffen Mountain (Karst Jäger) Division killed. Members of the Karstwehr battalion from which the division emerged are credited with participating in four more massacres with over 300 victims from October 1943 to April / May 1944, including the Lipa massacre with 269 victims alone.
Designations
- SS Karstwehr Battalion (1942 to August 1944)
- 24th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS "Karstjäger" (August 1944 to December 5, 1944)
- Waffen-Gebirgs- (Karstjäger) Brigade (December 6, 1944 to February 10, 1945)
- 24th Waffen Mountain (Karst Jäger) Division of the SS (February 11, 1945 to May 1945)
structure
- Waffen Mountain (Karst Jäger) Regiment of the SS 59
- Waffen Mountain (Karst Jäger) Regiment of the SS 60
- Waffen Mountain Artillery Regiment 24
- SS tank company
- SS mountain battery
- SS Mountain Medical Company 24
- SS Mountain News Company 24
- SS Mountain Pioneer Company 24
Workforce
- June 1942: 1831 men
- June 1944: 3000 men
- February 1945: 5,563 men
- April 1945: about 8,000 men
Commanders
- SS-Obersturmbannführer Karl Marx (August 1944 to December 5, 1944)
- SS-Sturmbannführer Werner Hahn (December 5, 1944 to February 10, 1945)
- SS-Oberführer Adolf Wagner (February 10, 1945 to May 8, 1945)
Quartermaster was SS-Hauptsturmführer Norbert Engel (August 1, 1944 to?)
See also
literature
- Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945. Volume 4. The Land Forces 15–30 . 2nd Edition. Biblio-Verlag, Osnabrück 1976, ISBN 3-7648-1083-1 .
- Peter Lieb : Brutal and incompetent. The SS Karstwehr Battalion 1943-1944. in: Military History - Journal for Historical Education , Issue 1/2017, published by the Center for Military History and Social Sciences of the Bundeswehr , ISSN 0940-4163 , pp. 18-21.
- Peter Engelbrecht : Tourist idyll and concentration camp horror. Dealing with the past in Pottenstein. Publishing house C. u. C. Rabenstein, 1997, ISBN 3-928683-16-0 .
Web links
- Peter Engelbrecht: Nothing was ever said about massacres. SS Karstwehr murdered 51 residents in Avasinis
- Jim G. Tobias: The Avasinis Massacre
Individual evidence
- ↑ SS Leadership Main Office, Org.Abt Ia / II, Tgb.Nr. 3890/42 from July 10, 1942
- ^ Johann Althaus: Alleged SS elite beheaded prisoners of war , Welt online, June 7, 2017
- ^ Karstwehr and Hans Brand
- ↑ 24. Waffen Gebirgs Karstjäger Division of the SS Karstwehr Battalion. In: straginazifasciste.it. Retrieved October 29, 2019 (Italian).
- ↑ SS Karstwehr Btl. In: straginazifasciste.it. Retrieved November 5, 2019 (Italian).
- ↑ Lipa (Lipa), Elsane, Bistrica (Bisterza) April 30, 1944 (Fiume - territori situati ora all'estero). In: straginazifasciste.it. Retrieved November 5, 2019 (Italian).
- ↑ Karst weir, cave research, etc.