III. (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps
The III. (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps was a major unit of the Waffen SS at corps level during World War II . The term "Germanic" brought the political claim to express the quotas of foreign volunteer movement within the meaning of the SS Main Office propagated Pangermanism to unite in an army corps. In fact, neither the size of the troop formation nor its personnel structure justify the designation as a “Germanic” “corps”. The majority of the teams consisted of Romanian Germans , while three quarters of the command corps were so-called " Reichsdeutsche ". The Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler saw it as a Pan-Germanic corps, which in the long term was supposed to use Germanic troops to support the Waffen-SS.
history
By order of March 30, 1943, the Panzer Corps was set up on the Grafenwoehr training area from July 1943, mainly from parts of the "Wiking" division . At the same time, the structures of the 11th SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Division "Nordland" (mainly formed from the " Volunteer Legion Norway " and the " Freikorps Danmark ") and the 23rd SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Division " Nederland ” (changed into a Panzer Grenadier Brigade in October 1943 due to a lack of personnel), which were intended to form the new Panzer Corps together. After three months, the corps was considered operational. More than half of it consisted of Romanian ethnic Germans , and at the management level three-quarters of imperial Germans .
During the formation, the corps was transferred to the Balkans in August 1943 under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner and subordinated to the 2nd Panzer Army . There it was supposed to take part in the fighting against the Yugoslav partisans . After Italy's surrender in September 1943, however, the corps' units were mainly occupied with disarming the remaining Italian units. In the months that followed, the corps fought heavily against partisan units. During the fight against partisans in Croatia, the SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment Danmark, deployed as part of the corps, took part in the burning of villages and shooting operations.
In November / December 1943 the entire corps was transferred to the northern eastern front , where it came under the command of the 18th Army . Now under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Georg Keppler , the corps was involved in defensive battles against offensives of the Red Army in January and February 1944 (→ Leningrad-Novgorod Operation ). In the course of the fighting, the corps was forced to retreat into the Narva area . From March 1944, it was the core of the new Narva army group in this room and held the front line until summer (→ Battle of the Narva bridgehead ). In the course of the Soviet Operation Bagration in June / July 1944 and due to increasing pressure from the Red Army , however, the corps had to withdraw further as part of Army Group North , whereby it was in constant fighting with the advancing Soviet units until January 1945 (→ Baltic Operation ) . Shortly after its formation, the corps was involved in “an uninterrupted series of defensive and retreat battles”.
In February 1945 the Panzer Corps was transferred to Pomerania by ship to form the newly established 11th Army there with other troops, which was to be deployed on the northern sections of the Oder front and during the offensive " Operation Solstice ". After that, the now almost completely worn out Panzer Corps was used as a reserve of the 3rd Panzer Army . At the beginning of March 1945, the "Army Group Steiner" with the last remnants of the 11th SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Division, the 28th SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division, the 27th SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division, the 23rd SS- Grenadier Division and the former III. (Germ.) units subordinate to Panzer Corps were formed, which were to relieve Berlin from the north. The corps finally collapsed in the final battle for Berlin.
meaning
The III. (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps contributed with its military achievements during the last skirmishes of the Second World War to the short-term stabilization of the German front and the delay of the collapse of the Third Reich together with the remaining large units. These achievements, however, make the corps stand out less from the crowd of the other large associations, but rather its political and ideological significance, which is already evident in the name "Germanic corps". Its ideological-propagandistic character consisted in the amalgamation of European volunteers in their own large military units, which gave the denationalization propagated by the SS towards the occupied countries their organizational framework. According to the historian Bernd Wegner , the propaganda thesis of the defensive battle of the pan-European ("Germanic") forces against Bolshevism of an Eastern European / East Asian nature appeared to be in Pan- Germanic III. SS Panzer Corps to show more clearly than anywhere else. In addition, the formation of the corps was a first indication of how Heinrich Himmler imagined the post-war order in the event of a victorious German Empire. He also saw the corps as a test for an all-Germanic conscription or an "all-Germanic army", an idea that he submitted to Hitler from 1942 onwards. However, this was not intended as part of the Waffen-SS , but should be subordinate to it.
Commanding generals
- May 1, 1943 to October 30, 1944: SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS Felix Steiner
- October 30, 1944 to February 4, 1945: SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS Georg Keppler
- February 4, 1945 to February 11, 1945: SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS Matthias Kleinheisterkamp
- February 11, 1945 to March 5, 1945: Lieutenant General Martin Unrein
- March 5, 1945 to May 8, 1945: SS-Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen-SS Felix Steiner
structure
| Corps troops | |
|---|---|
|
|
| time | Associations |
|---|---|
| December 26, 1943 | 9th Air Force Field Division, 10th Air Force Field Division, 11th SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Division , Kampfgruppe SS Police Division |
| September 16, 1944 | Division z. b. V. 300, 20th Waffen Grenadier Division , 11th SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Division, 4th SS Brigade, 5th SS Brigade, 6th SS Brigade |
| March 1, 1945 | 11th SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Division, 28th SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division , 27th SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division , 23rd SS-Panzergrenadier-Division |
Web links
- III. (Germanic) SS Panzer Corps in the Federal Archives ; see the introduction to tasks / organization . The organizational history data there comes from the volume: Georg Tessin : Associations and Troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS 1939–1945 . Osnabrück 1973, Vol. 2, pp. 16/17.
literature
- Bernd Wegner : On the way to the Pan-German Army. Documents on the genesis of the III. ("Germanic") SS Panzer Corps. In: Military history messages . 2/80 (1980), pp. 101-136.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Bernd Wegner: On the way to the Pan-German army. Documents on the genesis of the III. ("Germanic") SS Panzer Corps. (1980), p. 102.
- ↑ a b c Bernd Wegner: On the way to the Pan-German army. Documents on the genesis of the III. ("Germanic") SS Panzer Corps. (1980), p. 111.
- ↑ Bruno De Wever: "Rebels" on the Eastern Front. The Flemish volunteers of the “Flanders” Legion and the Waffen SS. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . Issue 4/1991, October 1991, p. 603, p. 99. (PDF).
- ↑ Florian Wolf-Roskosch: Ideologie der Waffen-SS: Ideologische Mobilmachung der Waffen-SS 1942–45, disserta Verlag, 2014, p. 64 books.google.de
- ↑ a b c d Bernd Wegner: On the way to the Pan-German army. Documents on the genesis of the III. ("Germanic") SS Panzer Corps. (1980), p. 110.
- ^ Rolf-Dieter Müller : On the side of the Wehrmacht. Hitler's foreign helpers in the “Crusade against Bolshevism” 1941–1945 . Ch.links, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-86153-448-8 , p. 147.