Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

Discussions on all (non-biographical) aspects of the Freikorps, Reichswehr, Austrian Bundesheer, Heer, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and Fallschirmjäger and the other Luftwaffe ground forces. Hosted by Christoph Awender.
Post Reply
Sid Guttridge
Member
Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#106

Post by Sid Guttridge » 24 Nov 2014, 11:59

Hi Ivan Z.,

I tend to agree. The subject is Klingenberg, but the wider context is those for and against exaggerating the importance of Waffen-SS actions.

I am definitely of the school that would like to see the Waffen-SS back in its true historical perspective and the German Army given its due credit.

User avatar
Ivan Ž.
Host - Music section
Posts: 8467
Joined: 05 Apr 2005, 13:28
Location: Serbia

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#107

Post by Ivan Ž. » 24 Nov 2014, 12:52

Dear Sid, exaggerating of one side can't be stopped or corrected by exaggerating by the opposite side.


User avatar
Ivan Ž.
Host - Music section
Posts: 8467
Joined: 05 Apr 2005, 13:28
Location: Serbia

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#108

Post by Ivan Ž. » 24 Nov 2014, 14:04

While German reporter, who clearly had little sympathy for his Serbian enemies, wrote this:
van Bevern wrote:We must admit that they exploited the terrain remarkably and defended themselves bravely
...these brave people - who by the way defended themselves without the supreme commander (!) - were described by Sid like this, in order to "objectively" describe Klingenberg's actions:
Sid Guttridge wrote:The primary reason why Belgrade was taken without a fight was that the Yugoslavs had declared it an open city and decided not to defend it.
Sid Guttridge wrote:Yes, the Yugoslavs did initially defend Belgrade from the air.
Sid Guttridge wrote:The Yugoslavs had already decided not to defend Belgrade
Sid Guttridge wrote:as the Yugoslavs had already decided not to defend the city
Sid Guttridge wrote:The reason for the Yugoslav decision not to defend Belgrade
Sid Guttridge wrote:The Yugoslav's had already decided not to defend the city.

dshaday
Member
Posts: 628
Joined: 29 Dec 2013, 19:57

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#109

Post by dshaday » 24 Nov 2014, 17:44

Hi Sid
Sid Guttridge wrote: Absolutely correct. I am not claiming equivalency for the Maribor action.

If you reread my post you will see I wrote:

"What happened at Maribor met more resistance and suffered more casualties than Klingenberg. He apparently faced no resistance and suffered no casualties in Belgrade. Furthermore. Maribor occurred earlier in the campaign in an area the Yugoslavs were still contending, unlike Klingenberg in Belgrade. Maribor was arguably the more difficult operation. Yet Klingenberg is on the Ritterkreuz list and Palten apparently isn't."
By your own source quote we have:
* Palten’s raid employed multiple parties. Meaning that there were much more than 10 men (compared with Belgrade).
* Palten planned for his operation in advance. It was not an opportunity seized on the moment (compared with Belgrade)
* Palten’s raid was comparatively well supplied & organised.
* Therefore Palten’s raid did not show as much initiative or daring.
* The Belgrade operation showed far more daring, initiative and bluff. It was far more dangerous.
* Palten’s raid was of no military significance. He was later ordered to give up Maribor.
* 100 prisoners were taken by Palten (over 1000 were taken in Belgrade).
* 1 KIA with Palten’s raid. Zero KIA in Belgrade.
* Palten entered Maribor unopposed (as per your source!).
* The Belgrade operation may or may not have been opposed (depending on source).
* Belgrade is a capital city. Maribor is smaller, and not comparable.

These are just some of the reasons why Palten did not receive the Knights Cross, yet Klingenberg did. It is also a good indication of why Klingenberg’s operation is of a higher standard than Palten’s raid.

The “difficulty” of an operation (whatever that can mean) is not the only issue here. Nor is it necessarily critical. Other factors of more significant were present, as far as the KC decoration was concerned.
Sid Guttridge wrote: But, however one looks at it, Klingenberg's action was neither unique nor primarily earned by his own or wider Waffen-SS actions.
Who said Klingenberg’s action has to be unique? It was certainly uncommon in its combination of daring, bluff and initiative. As amply described already.

Klingenberg earned his success. He was not invited into Belgrade by the Mayor, you know.

Why play these word games? Answer: your argument has run out of plain facts. (I still chuckle at your attempts to hang war crimes on Klingenberg’s actions).

Sid Guttridge wrote: Klingenberg was moving into a virtual vacuum caused by German Army actions south of Belgrade that had obliged the Yugoslav's not to defend the city.
This vacuum you refer to has been acknowledged already. This is the confusion in Belgrade that Klingenberg recognised and exploited.
Also, the Yugoslavs were not obliged to abandon the capital – they chose to quietly do so.

The initial German invasion plan expected Belgrade to be heavily defended by the Yugoslavs and that it would require a siege of several divisions.

Sid Guttridge wrote: The problem lies ... in the compound exaggeration of others over succeeding decades. They appear to have been so focused on the Waffen-SS aspect that they lost sight of the wider context.
Where are the compound exaggerations of Klingenberg’s actions by posters on this thread ? When asked for examples of this, you said “The puffing of the Waffen-SS role in the fall of Belgrade I am referring to is the complete indifference in your account or the article concerned to wider events. The sin is not so much one of factual error, as complete indifference to the wider context “.

Well, that is different to what you now say. Especially as the wider context has been mentioned by posters, myself included.
You simply place way too much importance on it and assume that everything was therefore easy for Klingenberg and of no military significance.
As per your post on page 1, “ Just to say that you got one thing right - the Waffen-SS "took the surrender of the city". And that is about all they did.”. Perhaps it is you who have a vision problem with the Waffen SS in general?

Regards

Dennis

Blanusa
Member
Posts: 301
Joined: 18 Sep 2003, 17:44
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#110

Post by Blanusa » 24 Nov 2014, 20:40

Hello,

Just to set one thing straight.
Also, the Yugoslavs were not obliged to abandon the capital – they chose to quietly do so.
On the contrary, the Royal Yugoslav troops were obliged to leave the city of Belgrade as per order. Due to the German advance through Banat and Srem, the Yugoslav Supreme Command issued order nr. 128 (naređenje O. br. 128), which ordered the destruction of all the bridges to Belgrade over the rivers Donau and Sava. This order was carried out during the night between 11 and 12 April.
At the same time the Yugoslav Supreme Command issued order nr. 138 (naređenje O. br. 138), which ordered the troops of the Royal Yugoslav army present at Belgrade (49th Srem Infantry Division and troops defending Belgrade) to fall back to positions over on the left side of the Topčider river. This order was carried out during 12 April.

Source: Slom Kraljevine Jugoslavije; uzroci i posledice poraza - knjiga 1, page 404.


Best regards
Blanusa

dshaday
Member
Posts: 628
Joined: 29 Dec 2013, 19:57

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#111

Post by dshaday » 25 Nov 2014, 07:51

Hi nmy

We are saying the same thing. I am solely referring to the role of the German forces converging on Belgrade.

The Yugoslav commanders ordered their troops to leave Belgrade. They could also have ordered them to stay and fight for each city block.
It was a decision the Yugoslavs commanders chose to made for their own reasons. They did not announce their evacuation to the Germans.

I am not trying to say (in any way) that individual Yugoslav units decided on their own initiative to leave Belgrade.

Regards

Dennis

Sid Guttridge
Member
Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#112

Post by Sid Guttridge » 25 Nov 2014, 13:27

Hi Ivan Z.

Absolutely, "exaggerating of one side can't be stopped or corrected by exaggerating by the opposite side."

As regards your second post, I would suggest you reread what both the reporter and I wrote, as I think you are mistaken about both.

The reporter was referring to the advance by German Army pincers from east and west to meet south of Belgrade and some determined Yugoslav opposition to them. If you read back on this thread you will see that I was the first and only person to raise this fighting and I specifically mentioned that 11th Panzer Division suffered 42% of German casualties in the whole campaign during it. (See my post of 28 Oct 2014 11:19)

However, the Yugoslav's were unable to stop these pincers closing and so, on the night of 11/12 April, their high command decided not to defend Belgrade city but rather to withdraw Yugoslav forces in the vicinity of the capital southwards into the interior to avoid them being surrounded. (Please see nmy's post above). As a result, Klingenberg was able to enter Belgrade unopposed from the north.

You should, perhaps, be addressing your post to those who are so focused on the Waffen-SS's virtually unopposed advance on Belgrade from the north that they have completely overlooked the harder and more decisive fighting between the Yugoslavs and German Army elsewhere.

Klingenberg's entire corps met virtually no opposition and was engaged in little more than mopping up in the Banat and Belgrade

Cheers,

Sid.

Sid Guttridge
Member
Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#113

Post by Sid Guttridge » 25 Nov 2014, 13:40

Hi nmy,

Thank you for confirming what I have been posting since the start of this thread and for providing a source for it.

Cheers,

Sid

User avatar
Ivan Ž.
Host - Music section
Posts: 8467
Joined: 05 Apr 2005, 13:28
Location: Serbia

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#114

Post by Ivan Ž. » 25 Nov 2014, 15:02

Dear Sid, please. I've read yours and other posts carefully and understood them well. I also very much understood the text I was translating for hours, thank you for the polite invitation to reread it again. Did you or did you not write 5-6 times that the Yugoslavs decided not to defend Belgrade? You did. Although they defended it and were defeated. It is simply a bad taste to phrase it "decided not to defend" after people defended it and gave their lives, and to do so 5-6 times - just because of some guy named Klingenberg. After a battle is lost do we say that the other side was defeated or that it suddenly decided not to defend? Withdrawal after a defeat is called a withdrawal after a defeat. Please be careful with the choice of words. You started this by claiming there was no resistance. Read your first post. You could have phrased it properly, but you didn't. Then you wrote that there was only some resistance in the air. And then, finally, that there was a resistance, but not on the north. Read what you wrote, it's all there, you can paraphrase it now on 8 more pages if you wish.

Cheers,
Ivan

sandeepmukherjee196
Member
Posts: 1524
Joined: 07 Aug 2014, 06:34

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#115

Post by sandeepmukherjee196 » 25 Nov 2014, 15:13

Sid Guttridge wrote:Hi sandeepmukherjee,

I am afraid you very much do have "to elaborate on "so what of it?"

Hi Sid...

As amply stated earlier and agreed by all of us here in its broad details, the Waffen SS action at Belgrade involved more of risk taking, cut & dash and exploitation of a strategic opportunity...rather than the sheer weight of ordnance and casualties.
Since you want me to elaborate on why the significance of Belgrade is different from Maribor..here goes:

[*] The fall of Belgrade had a far greater impact on morale and symbolism of defeat than that of Maribor.

[*] The occupation of the capital cities of the enemy has been found to be decisive in WWII in most cases. Whereas, wherever the capital city had remained free, even major blows and casualties elsewhere, were not decisive strategically.

[*] The lightning occupation of Belgrade by The small Waffen SS squad had a major strategic impact on Yugoslav morale and the will to resist. This impact cant be measured by the actual ordnance expended or casualties ( rather the lack of it) at Belgrade.

[*] The quick Waffen SS occupation of Belgrade has even more significance than the above stated "occupy the enemy's capital" phenomenon. Belgrade was a prime German target due to the turbulent political events in Yugoslavia leading up to the attack. The Regent Prince Paul, favoured a compromise with the Axis and reluctantly followed the footsteps of Bulgaria and Romania. Yugoslavia teamed up with the Axis by signing the Tripartite Pact on 25th March'41. Military circles particularly, air force officers mutinied and staged a coup removing Prince Paul and replacing him with King Peter II ( a minor at that time).

[*] The new regime was inherently unstable and tottering from Day 1. The Germans wanted to target Belgrade to precipitate the collapse of the regime as well as teach the population as lesson for their defiant chants : "Bolje grob nego rob, Bolje rat nego pakt" ...So Hitler gave a personal instruction to the Luftwaffe to bring home the reality of " .. better war than this pact" to the anti pact populace. Hence the name : Unternehmen Strafgericht or Operation Punishment given to the Belgrade raids.

[*] Luftwaffe GeneralOberst Lohr quietly shifted the emphasis from punishing the general populace to paralysing military command and control. It is an established fact that the rapid demoralisation and loss of military control of the yugoslav forces resulted from the quick neutralisation of Belgrade ( Pl ref : Boog, Horst; Krebs, Gerhard; Vogel, Detlef; Germany and the Second World War: Volume VII: The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia, 1943–1944; Oxford University Press).

[*] Klingenberg's squad played their role admirably in delivering the coup de grace at Belgrade without flinching, without hesitating at the wrong side of the swollen Danube and without losing their head when in Belgrade. If it was indeed a mere cakewalk and formality then the mayor of Belgrade perhaps would not have committed suicide when he discovered the ruse the next day? He did realise that he had in effect been duped into ordering the surrender of 1300 soldiers and a population of 2 00 000 to 7-10 enemy soldiers with little ammo !

[*] I see this as a smooth execution of a larger plan, where individual services and units played their role well. The Waffen SS people were not supermen, other German forces played their part well; at the same time lets not say that Klingenberg's role was of no consequence. That wont be fair or historically accurate .. would it?

( I have drawn heavily on - http://www.historynet.com/invasion-of-y ... WycRO.dpuf)

Sid Guttridge
Member
Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#116

Post by Sid Guttridge » 25 Nov 2014, 16:45

Hi Sandeep.

The fall of Belgrade had a far greater impact on morale and symbolism of defeat than that of Maribor. True, but the fall had nothing to do with Klingenberg. He was just first in.

The occupation of the capital cities of the enemy has been found to be decisive in WWII in most cases. Whereas, wherever the capital city had remained free, even major blows and casualties elsewhere, were not decisive strategically. Really? But the Yugoslavs had already decided not to defend the city before Klingenberg even reached it. He was just first in.

The lightning occupation of Belgrade by The small Waffen SS squad had a major strategic impact on Yugoslav morale and the will to resist. This impact cant be measured by the actual ordnance expended or casualties ( rather the lack of it) at Belgrade. Really? Again, the Yugoslavs had already decided to abandon their capital. It had nothing to do with Klingenberg. He was just first in.

The quick Waffen SS occupation of Belgrade has even more significance than the above stated "occupy the enemy's capital" phenomenon. Belgrade was a prime German target due to the turbulent political events in Yugoslavia leading up to the attack. The Regent Prince Paul, favoured a compromise with the Axis and reluctantly followed the footsteps of Bulgaria and Romania. Yugoslavia teamed up with the Axis by signing the Tripartite Pact on 25th March'41. Military circles particularly, air force officers mutinied and staged a coup removing Prince Paul and replacing him with King Peter II ( a minor at that time) That was in March, this is April and Klingenberg had absolutely no hand in these events whatsoever.

The new regime was inherently unstable and tottering from Day 1. The Germans wanted to target Belgrade to precipitate the collapse of the regime as well as teach the population as lesson for their defiant chants : "Bolje grob nego rob, Bolje rat nego pakt" ...So Hitler gave a personal instruction to the Luftwaffe to bring home the reality of " .. better war than this pact" to the anti pact populace. Hence the name : Unternehmen Strafgericht or Operation Punishment given to the Belgrade raids. Again totally irrelevant

Luftwaffe GeneralOberst Lohr quietly shifted the emphasis from punishing the general populace to paralysing military command and control. It is an established fact that the rapid demoralisation and loss of military control of the yugoslav forces resulted from the quick neutralisation of Belgrade ( Pl ref : Boog, Horst; Krebs, Gerhard; Vogel, Detlef; Germany and the Second World War: Volume VII: The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia, 1943–1944; Oxford University Press). Again, totally irrelevant to Klingenberg.

(Your last three points are covered by saying Belgrade was the capital and Maribor wasn't. That is a point I have made myself.)

Klingenberg's squad played their role admirably in delivering the coup de grace at Belgrade without flinching, without hesitating at the wrong side of the swollen Danube and without losing their head when in Belgrade. If it was indeed a mere cakewalk and formality then the mayor of Belgrade perhaps would not have committed suicide when he discovered the ruse the next day? He did realise that he had in effect been duped into ordering the surrender of 1300 soldiers and a population of 2 00 000 to 7-10 enemy soldiers with little ammo ! The mayor certainly commited suicide, but there is no evidence it was anything to do with the size of Klingenberg's force (which was in any case backed by the entire German Army). The sorrow of being a patriotic man who had to surrender his national capital could have been quite enough. Who it was to (and it wasn't actually Klingenberg) was perhaps irrelevant.

I see this as a smooth execution of a larger plan, where individual services and units played their role well. The Waffen SS people were not supermen, other German forces played their part well; at the same time lets not say that Klingenberg's role was of no consequence. That wont be fair or historically accurate .. would it? Klingenberg was a very, very, very minor and late arriving cog in a brilliant campaign by the German Army, which had been so effectively won before he even entered Yugoslavia that his men apparently were never even shot at! Nobody is claiming that Klingenberg's role was of no consequence, but it was of very little consequence.

Once the Yugoslavs had decided not to defend their capital, it was pretty irrelevant who was first in. Klingenberg had the great advantage that his was the point unit advancing on Belgrade from the only direction the Yugoslavs never contested. He used his initiative, held his nerve and was first in. Good luck to him, but let's not exaggerate his importance.

Cheers,

Sid.

Cheers,

Sid.

Blanusa
Member
Posts: 301
Joined: 18 Sep 2003, 17:44
Location: Stockholm, Sweden

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#117

Post by Blanusa » 25 Nov 2014, 17:38

Are there no real researchers in this forum?

To set another thing straight. There was no one in the Military HQ in Belgrade, because the staff of the Yugoslav Supreme Command was in Bosnia at least during 11 and 12 April. During 12 April they relocated to the town of Pale, just east of Sarajevo. The closest higher command in the vicinity of Belgrade was the Yugoslav 6th Army and they were not inside Belgrade.
The orders that I referenced made clear that no attempts were to be made to defend the city in any way, shape or form. The only actions taken were in order to slow the advance of the German forces, which failed miserably.

Ivan, I must say that I am disappointed with you. The text that you translated is not an official report, as you claimed. In the very translation you make clear that it was written by a Kriegsberichter Arndt on 18 April 1941. This man was a propaganda soldier that served in a Propaganda-Kompanie. It is not quite clear where exactly this propaganda soldier was, but it is certain that he was not with Klingenberg on 12 April. The text that Kriegsberichter Arndt wrote is a pure propaganda piece/newspaper article and as such cannot be relied on as fact.
I can provide newspaper articles that speak of seven drunk German soldiers that entered Belgrade and since we can’t disprove it we would have to take it as fact. Or do we?
This particular propaganda piece/newspaper article has to be examined and withstand the scrutiny of actual military documentation in order to be considered fact. I see no one providing actual documentation, so we can only corroborate parts of it to the documentation I already provided.
Please see the documents that I posted. They are not second or third hand information. They are the source. This is what official reports look like. The one official report was used as a basis for a high award and the other official report was a military message from a German official with the German embassy to a German military unit. The third official report that I posted was a proclamation of the surrender (which was to Toussaint and not to Klingenberg). Due to there being a lack of interest in actual documents on this forum, I lost interest in searching for original documents, so I was satisfied with only referencing the orders of the Yugoslav Supreme Command. Anyone with actual historical interest may go look for them at their own expense of time and money.

As for Professor Colin D. Heaton. There are enough errors in his article to cast serious doubt as to the validity of his text. A closer inspection of his sources would be in place before making any statements as factual with his text as base.
Looking at it, it seems as if the professor may have used the propaganda piece/newspaper article of Kriegsberichter Arndt for some of the details.

The mayor of Belgrade, Jevrem Tomić (mayor from 20 June 1940 until 12 April 1941), did not commit suicide. He was still remembered from the spring and summer of 1941 by inhabitants of Belgrade, in large part as having some influence with the occupational authorities.
The acting mayor of Belgrade, Ivan Milićević (mayor of occupied Belgrade from 12 April 1941 until 19 June 1941), did not commit suicide.
As far as I can trace it, Professor Colin D. Heaton is the only one claiming the suicide.

This thread has stopped being about historical research and more about historical opinion. Most of the participants here already have their mind made up as to the events and there can be no valid discussion on this subject. This discussion has derailed to a point where I am no longer comfortable to contribute.

You are all free to believe what you want.

Good luck to you all.


Best regards
Blanusa
Last edited by Blanusa on 25 Nov 2014, 18:41, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Ivan Ž.
Host - Music section
Posts: 8467
Joined: 05 Apr 2005, 13:28
Location: Serbia

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#118

Post by Ivan Ž. » 25 Nov 2014, 18:10

Dear Blanusa, I've cleared that the report I translated was made for the occupied Serbia, by propaganda men, which also means it was a propaganda report. I've posted both reports to show that the official German propaganda was fair enough to recognize enemy's resistance and also to show the amount of the importance/credits they gave to Kleist (most) and Klingenberg (little), Wehrmacht in general (most) and Waffen-SS (almost none). Report on Klingenberg's part was named "Nine Germans" and not "Nine Waffen-SS men" and the abbreviation SS was mentioned only once. They simplified (I foolishly thought they will) this entire discussion, clearly showing the role of Panzergruppe Kleist, and Klingenberg's, which should have been quite enough for the point of this particular topic.
Sid Guttridge wrote:He was just first in.
Sid Guttridge wrote:He was just first in.
Sid Guttridge wrote:He was just first in.
Without getting into the reasons for which Sid has the need to repeat himself over and over to infinity, desperately trying to force his private unobjective opinion on everyone, one simple question: how many people here would have the guts to enter an unknown capital with nine men? Even if you had the best possible high tech weapons and were assured there will be no resistance - would you do it? 10 against 300000? "Just first in"? Do you still don't get it why he was awarded with the knight's cross? But it was all already well known, Klingenberg's role was known, Kleist's, Löhr's too, the only exaggeration about these events is this very topic, pointless from the start, and one of its main creators is you, Sid, who keep accusing anyone else but yourself of exaggeration. Did anyone here learn something new? There were three interesting documents, but only with some minor new informations, the rest was already known. This so called discussion is just an endless off-topic circling around a well known point, in order to share some of your feelings, no one interested in the actual history cares about. As I already objected, this is an irrelevant private discussion, which is for some reason still public.

Cheers,
Ivan

PS
And, yes, it is true that the mayor didn't commit suicide (he was a relative).

PPS
Reports were written by participants, I cannot claim about Arndt, but I do know that van Bevern was indeed in Panzergruppe Kleist, and for additional example the report on Crete was written by boxer Max Schmeling himself, who was indeed a participant in that battle.
Last edited by Ivan Ž. on 25 Nov 2014, 18:27, edited 2 times in total.

dshaday
Member
Posts: 628
Joined: 29 Dec 2013, 19:57

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#119

Post by dshaday » 25 Nov 2014, 18:14

Hi Blanusa
nmy wrote:
As for Professor Colin D. Heaton. There are enough errors in his article to cast serious doubt as to the validity of his text. A closer inspection of his sources would be in place before making any statements as factual with his text as base.
Looking at it, it seems as if the professor may have used the propaganda piece/newspaper article of Kriegsberichter Arndt for some of the details.
As already mentioned in a link by another poster, C Heaton seems to work by interviewing an actual participant of a WW2 event, and then writing a short article about the event using that interview. Presumably, he does the research for the introduction and conclusion of his article.

Heaton has interviewed the following people:

Gregory “Pappy Boyington, Hermann Boschet, Leon Degrelle, Wolfgang Falk, Adolf Galland, Erich Hartmann,
Hans-Dietrich Hossfelder, Dietrich Hrabak, Johannes Steinhoff, Albert Kerscher, Gregor Koronov, Otto Kumm,
Anna Nikolina, Lothar Pankosk, Saburo Sakai, Milo Stavic, Karl Wolff, Mario Antonucci,
Pieter Krueler, Jimmy Doolittle, William Cameron, Ivan Kozhedub, Leo Maximciuc, Gunther Rall,

Some are already on line (as per the names coloured in blue): http://www.lufkincy.com/Interviews.htm
(including the famous Leo Maximciuc).

Hans-Dietrich Hossfelder is mentioned in Heaton's article on Belgrade. It is safe to say that that interview was used in the article. Hossfelder's interviews appear to be telephone interviews from the 1980s and 1990s. I found a link to a web site that once had Hossfelder's raw interview, but it is no longer valid.

Since I do not have the original copy of Heaton's article from the magazine, I have no idea if he mentions the sources he used.

I fully agree that more resourced material is necessary to further any discussion. I am having trouble finding it.

Yes, we are dancing around with word games, red-herrings and (sadly) our own prejudices.

Regards

Dennis

Sid Guttridge
Member
Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

Re: Waffen-SS Military Success - Belgrade 1941

#120

Post by Sid Guttridge » 25 Nov 2014, 20:56

Hi Ivan Z,

You are not reading what I wrote properly.

The Yugoslav Army pre-emptively evacuated Banat and there was virtually no fighting there. German fatalities were one dead, apparently from a sniper.

Similarly, if you read nmy's post above, or my earlier posts, you will see that on the night of 11/12 April the Yugoslav high command decided not to defend the city of Belgrade itself. As a result, Klingenberg's Ritterkreuz nomination mentions no fighting at all and he suffered no casualties when he entered next day.

Almost all the fighting for the approaches to Belgrade took place east, west and south of the city, as I, nmy and the war reporter mentioned before. The only Waffen-SS presence approached from the north, through the evacuated Banat.

If you know of any other fighting in the Banat or Belgrade city, please tell us about it.

Cheers,

Sid.

Post Reply

Return to “Heer, Waffen-SS & Fallschirmjäger”