5th SS Panzer Division "Wiking"

SS-Division "Wiking" SS-Panzergrenadier-Division "Wiking" 5th SS-Panzer-Division "Wiking"
Troop registration
active	November 20, 1940 to May 9, 1945
Country	German Empire
Armed forces	Armed SS
Branch of service	Armored force
Type	Panzer Division
Butcher	German-Soviet War Company blue Cherkassy kettle Lake Balaton offensive Battle for Budapest
commander
list of	Commanders
Important commanders	Felix Steiner Herbert Otto Gille

The SS-Division "Wiking" , later the SS-Panzergrenadier-Division "Wiking" and the 5th SS-Panzer-Division "Wiking" , was a Panzer Division of the Waffen-SS during the Second World War . It consisted partly of volunteers from the Netherlands , Belgium and Scandinavia .

history

The division was set up on November 20, 1940 as SS division "Wiking" of the Waffen-SS . Originally, the division formed from the standards "Nordland", "Westland" and "Germania" should bear the name of the latter standard. But already during the installation it was decided to give it the name "Wiking".

The first division commander was SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner . Steiner was a major in the Reichswehr until 1933 and one of the few soldiers with military training that the Waffen-SS could fall back on when setting up and organizing the combat divisions.

Panzerkampfwagen III of the SS-Division Wiking, Eastern Front 1942

For a long time, "Wiking" was run as an armored infantry division , although it had more tanks than an army's armored division . The formal reclassification did not take place until October 1943.

War against the Soviet Union

At the beginning of the German-Soviet War , the division advanced with Army Group South until November 1941 in the direction of Rostov . After the Battle of Rostov and the following retreat skirmishes in the winter of 1941/42, the division advanced into the Caucasus with Army Group A during Operation Blau .

During the Citadel operation in the summer of 1943, the division was in reserve, and during the retreat it got into the Cherkassy pocket . After the successful breakout from the basin (February 16), the severely decimated division withdrew to the Kowel area and later to Chelm with heavy losses .

August Dieckmann at the award of the Iron Cross, 2nd class to soldiers of the "Wiking" division

In July 1944 the division fought on the Vistula and was then transferred to Hungary to take part in the Lake Balaton Offensive and the Battle of Budapest . After the failure of the operation, the division withdrew to Austria via Czechoslovakia .

surrender

With the general surrender of the Wehrmacht on May 8, 1945, the division stopped fighting. The soldiers went into American captivity in particular in Radstadt and Kleinarl, both in the Salzburg district of St. Johann im Pongau.

composition

In the "Wiking", foreign volunteers fought from - as it was called in Nazi parlance - "Germanic or related peoples" ( Flemings , Dutch , Estonians , Walloons , Danes , Swedes , Norwegians and Finns ). This made the "Wiking" the first division of the Waffen SS with non-German personnel. To be able to set up a division with the necessary headcount, too few volunteers from the occupied territories reported, so that one had to fall back on German support staff.

Since the recruitment of volunteers was less successful than hoped, Gottlob Berger had to find new ways to cover the increasing losses of the Waffen SS. One of these measures was the lowering of the admission criteria.

War crimes

In the course of the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, members of the division murdered several hundred Jews. Among other things, the division is held responsible for the massacre in Zborow , located between Ternopil and Lviv , on July 11, 1941, in which 600 Jewish residents were murdered in retaliation for “Soviet atrocities”. During the death marches of the Jewish prisoners of the Mauthausen concentration camp and its satellite camps in the spring of 1945, members of the division murdered numerous prisoners who had fled or were no longer able to march:

• On March 29, 1945 in the organized Burgenland place German shooters two or three members of the SS-Division Wiking, including oberscharführer Adolf Storms , the massacre of German shooters , the 60 Jewish forced laborers to dig trenches in the construction of the Southeastern Wall has been used were, fell victim.
• In April 1945 a unit of the SS Wiking division recaptured Jennersdorf from the Red Army for a short time and used the opportunity to murder sick Jewish slave laborers who had stayed behind.
• On April 4, 1945, 20 inmates of the death march tried to escape from Graz and were picked up by members of the SS Wiking division and shot immediately.
• Between April 7 and 11, 1945, 18 escaped prisoners were picked up by the Volkssturm in the Prebensdorf area and transferred to the Wiking SS Division, which murdered them.

After the war

After the end of the German occupation of Norway, there were legal proceedings against Norwegian SS volunteers (and other collaborators) in Norway. There were convictions for treason and membership in the Waffen SS. After years of public discourse in Germany and other countries and the availability of research results on local Wehrmacht crimes , the Norwegian government commissioned a research in 2005; the results were published in 2012.

structure

SS-Division (motorized) "Wiking" (1941)

• SS Regiment "Germania"
• SS Regiment "Nordland"
• SS Regiment "Westland"
• SS Panzer - Artillery - Regiment 5
  • SS Panzerjäger - Division 5
  • SS assault gun division 5
    • SS assault gun battery 5
  • SS Flak Department 5
  • SS thrower department 5
  • SS Panzer News Department 5
  • SS Panzer Reconnaissance Department 5
  • SS Panzer Pioneer Battalion 5
  • SS Division Supply Leader 5
  • SS repair department 5
  • SS Economic Battalion 5
  • SS medical department 5
  • SS field hospital 5
    • • SS war reporter train 5
      • SS-Feldgendarmerie-Troop 5
  • SS Field Replacement Battalion 5

SS Panzer Grenadier Division "Wiking" (1942)

• SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment "Germania"
• SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment "Nordland"
• SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment "Westland"
• SS Panzer Division "Wiking"
• 5th Artillery Regiment
  • Panzerjäger department
  • Reconnaissance Department
  • Anti-aircraft department
  • Engineer Battalion
  • News department
  • Field Replacement Battalion
  • Supply units

5th SS Panzer Division "Wiking" (1943)

• SS Panzer Regiment 5
• SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 9 "Germania"
• SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment 10 "Westland"
• SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment "Nordland"
• SS Panzer Artillery Regiment 5
• SS Assault Brigade "Wallonia"
  • Estonian SS Volunteer Panzer Grenadier Battalion "Narwa"
  • Finnish volunteer battalion of the Waffen SS (until May 1943)
  • SS tank destroyer division 5
  • SS assault gun division 5
    • SS assault gun battery 5
  • SS Flak Department 5
  • SS thrower department 5
  • SS Panzer News Department 5
  • SS Panzer Reconnaissance Department 5
  • SS-Panzer-Pionier-Battalion 5
  • SS Division Supply Department 5
  • SS repair department 5
  • SS Economic Battalion 5
  • SS medical department 5
    • SS field hospital 5
  • SS war reporter platoon 5
  • SS-Feldgendarmerie-Troop 5
  • SS Field Replacement Battalion 5
  • I./SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Regiment 23 "Norge"
  • I./SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Regiment 24 "Danmark"

Commanders

• December 1, 1940 to May 1, 1943: SS group leader Felix Steiner
• May 1, 1943 to July 20, 1944: SS-Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the Waffen-SS Herbert Otto Gille
• July 20 to August 11, 1944: SS-Standartenführer Eduard Deisenhofer
• August 11 to October 9, 1944: SS-Standartenführer Johannes-Rudolf Mühlenkamp
• October 9, 1944 to May 5, 1945: SS-Oberführer Karl Ullrich

literature

• Rupert Butler : SS-Wiking. The History of the Fifth SS Division 1941-45. Spellmount, Staplehurst 2002, ISBN 1-86227-174-7 .
• Eleonore Lappin: The Death Marches of Hungarian Jews Through Austria in the Spring of 1945. In: Yad Vashem Studies (PDF; 160 kB).
• Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945. Volume 2. The Land Forces 1–5 . 2nd Edition. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1973, ISBN 3-7648-0871-3 .
• Chris Bishop: Divisions of the Waffen-SS 1939-1945, ISBN 978-3-86619-039-9 .

Web links

Commons : 5th SS Panzer Division “Wiking”  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Literature on the 5th SS Panzer Division "Wiking" in the catalog of the German National Library
• Online Finding Aid of the Federal Archives for the RS 3-5 5th SS Panzer Division "Wiking"

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dieter Pohl : National Socialist Persecution of Jews in East Galicia, 1941–1944. Oldenbourg, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-486-56233-9 , p. 70.
2. ↑ Gerald Reitlinger , The SS. Alibi of a Nation, 1922–1945. Arms and Armor Press, London 1985. ISBN 0-85368-187-2 , p. 157.
3. ^ Südostwall section Südburgenland: The Jennersdorf Massacre , website regiowiki.at, accessed on April 3, 2018
4. ^ Eleonore Lappin: The Death Marches of Hungarian Jews Through Austria in the Spring of 1945 ( en ) yadvashem.org. Retrieved May 31, 2017.
5. ^ Terje Emberland with Matthew Kott: Himmlers Norge. Nordmenn i the storgermanske project . Oslo, Aschehaug 2012, ISBN 978-82-03-29308-5 .
6. ↑ FAZ.net June 22, 2016: Nordic colonists for the empire in the east