8th SS Cavalry Division "Florian Geyer"

SS Cavalry Division 8th SS Cavalry Division "Florian Geyer"
Troop registration
active	September 9, 1942 to February 12, 1945
Country	German Empire
Armed forces	Armed SS
Branch of service	cavalry
Type	division
structure	See outline
Butcher	German-Soviet War Occupation of Hungary
commander
list of	Commanders

The 8th SS Cavalry Division "Florian Geyer" was a cavalry - Division of the Waffen-SS , which largely of ethnic Germans were prepared.

history

SS Cavalry Brigade in Russia, 1941

As early as November 1939, an SS cavalry unit, the so-called SS-Totenkopf-Reiter-Standarte , was formed from members of the Reiter-SS under Hermann Fegelein . This was subordinate to the head of the Ordnungspolizei Kurt Daluege and was used to "secure" the Polish hinterland after the attack on Poland . De facto this meant the terrorization of the Polish population and the murder of Jewish residents. In May 1940, the standard was divided into SS-Totenkopf-Reiter-Standarten 1 and 2, which were renamed SS Cavalry Regiments in February 1941. A little later they were placed under the command staff RFSS , which had been formed in the run-up to the attack on the Soviet Union .

As such, after the start of the fighting, they were tasked with "cleaning up" the rear area of Army Group Center . These “purges” were nothing more than the targeted murder of the Jewish residents and other “suspicious elements”, in particular dispersed Red Army soldiers, communist functionaries and so-called “bandits”. In September of the same year, both regiments were combined in the SS Cavalry Brigade , which was supplemented by support units. From December 1941, the brigade was used in the Battle of Moscow in the Rzhev area, where it suffered serious losses for the first time. By spring 1942 the brigade had shrunk to a combat group of around 700 men, which was relocated to Poland to refresh.

With the addition of a third regiment, for which numerous Romanian ethnic Germans were recruited, the SS cavalry division was set up between June and September 1942 at the Debica military training area near Krakow . She was initially assigned to Army Group Center and was used at Rzhev and Oryol until April 1943 , before being assigned to refresh. The division was used to fight partisans between June and August, after which it was transferred to the Dnepr . On October 22, 1943, the name was changed to the 8th SS Cavalry Division . During the further fighting in the context of the Battle of the Dnieper , the division was badly affected and was taken from the front in December. It was moved to the Osijek area in Croatia, where the division was refreshed and prepared for a new use. The newly established SS Cavalry Regiment 18 was subordinated to her, while the SS Cavalry Regiment 17 was handed over to the 22nd SS Volunteer Cavalry Division in early 1944 .

In March 1944 the division took part in the occupation of Hungary and on March 17, 1944 was given the honorary name " Florian Geyer ", after the military leader from the peasant wars . In September she was relocated to the front that was now in Transylvania , where she was subordinated to the 6th Army of Army Group South Ukraine . From October she had to withdraw with this to Hungary and reached Budapest in November , where she was trapped in December together with other German and Hungarian units in the course of the Battle of Budapest .

After the destruction of most of the division in the fall of Budapest on February 12, 1945, the division parts located outside the pocket were used to set up the 37th SS Volunteer Cavalry Division "Lützow".

commitment

• before September 1942: used as an SS cavalry brigade to "fight gangs"
• October 1942 to March 1943: with Army Group Center
• March to June 1943: Refreshment and fighting partisans
• June to December 1943: with Army Group South
• December 1943 to March 1944: reorganization in Croatia
• March 1944: Participation in the occupation of Hungary
• September 1944: with Army Group South Ukraine
• October 1944 to January 1945: with Army Group South
• January 1945: the division was destroyed in the Battle of Budapest .

War crimes

The units of the SS Cavalry Division committed numerous war crimes, particularly during their “fight against gangs” in occupied Eastern Europe . For example, a division of the (then) SS Cavalry Brigade murdered over 14,000 Jews between August 1 and 12, 1941 while working in the Prypiat marshes . On August 7, 1941, the brigade reported 7,819 Jews murdered in the Minsk area .

composition

The division consisted of 40 percent ethnic Germans , which was reflected in the assessment of their reliability negatively.

structure

SS Cavalry Division (1942)	8th SS Cavalry Division (October 22, 1943)
SS Cavalry Regiment 1 SS Cavalry Regiment 2 SS Cavalry Regiment 3	SS Cavalry Regiment 15th SS Cavalry Regiment 16 SS Cavalry Regiment 17th SS Cavalry Regiment 18th
SS Artillery Regiment (Cavalry Division)	SS Artillery Regiment 8
SS cycling department (cavalry division)	SS cycling education department 8
SS Panzerjäger Department (Cavalry Division)	SS tank destroyer division 8
SS Flak Department (Cavalry Division)	SS Flak Department 8
SS News Department (Cavalry Division)	SS News Department 8
SS Pioneer Battalion (Cavalry Division)	SS Pioneer Battalion 8
SS assault gun battery (cavalry division)	SS assault gun battery 8
SS Field Replacement Battalion (Cavalry Division)	SS Field Replacement Battalion 8

Commanders

• September 1, 1941 to May 1942: SS-Standartenführer Hermann Fegelein
• May 1942 to February 15, 1943: SS brigade leader and major general of the Waffen SS Wilhelm Bittrich
• February 15 to April 19, 1943: SS-Standartenführer Fritz Freitag
• April 19 to May 14, 1943: SS Brigade Leader and Major General of the Waffen SS Hermann Fegelein
• September 13th to October 22nd, 1943: SS-Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the Waffen-SS and Police Bruno Linienbach
• October 22, 1943 to December 1, 1944: SS group leader and lieutenant general of the Waffen SS Hermann Fegelein
• January 10 to April 1, 1944: SS-Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the Waffen-SS and Police Bruno Linienbach
• April 1, 1944 to February 11, 1945: SS Brigade Leader and Major General of the Waffen SS Joachim Rumohr

literature

• Rolf Michaelis : The cavalry divisions of the Waffen SS. 2nd Edition. Michaelis-Verlag, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-930849-17-8 .
• 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 .
• Gordon Williamson: The Waffen-SS. Volume 2: 6th to 10th Divisions. Osprey, Oxford 2004, ISBN 1-84176-590-2 ( Men-at-arms 404).
• LG Braunschweig, April 20, 1964 . In: Justice and Nazi crimes . Collection of German convictions for Nazi homicidal crimes 1945–1966, Vol. XX, edited by Irene Sagel-Grande, HH Fuchs, CF Rüter . Amsterdam: University Press, 1979, No. 570, pp. 23–105 Subject matter of the proceedings: mass shooting of thousands of Jews in the Pripet region, including at least 4,500 Jews from the Pinsk ghetto
• Henning Pieper: "But before history, truth must win." The legend of the Waffen-SS using the example of the SS cavalry , in: Jens Westemeier (ed.): "So was the German soldier ...". The popular picture of the Wehrmacht , pp. 287–307, Paderborn (Ferdinand Schöningh) 2019. ISBN 3-506-78770-5
• Henning Pieper: Fegelein's horsemen and genocidal warfare. The SS Cavalry Brigade in the Soviet Union , Basingstoke (Palgrave Macmillan) 2015. ISBN 978-1-137-45631-1

Web links

• Online finding aid from the Federal Archives for the holdings RS 3-8 8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Gordon Williamson: The Waffen-SS. Volume 2: 6th to 10th Divisions. Osprey, Oxford 2004, ISBN 1-84176-590-2 , pp. 17-20: 8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer .
2. ^ Elfriede Frischmuth: 8th SS Cavalry Division Florian Geyer, RS 3-8, 1941-1943. (No longer available online.) Federal Archives Koblenz, May 2008, archived from the original on April 12, 2011 ; Retrieved August 1, 2011 . 
3. ↑ George H. Stein: The Waffen-SS. Hitler's Elite Guard at War 1939-1945. Cornell University Press, Ithaka NY et al. 1966, ISBN 0-8014-9275-0 .