Charlemagne in Berlin

[sandeepmukherjee196]

[Split from "The Military Successes of the Waffen-SS"]

hi sid..apropos of your logic that in the last days the heer guy was most likely a elderly reservist in a horse drawn or foot slogging unit whereas the waffen ss lad was young, zealous and better equipped .. i would like to draw yr attention to the likes of guy sajer (grosses deutschland veteran) ref: 'forgotten soldier'..le soldat oublie-1965...they had fought with all they had got across russia, rumania, east prussia and the baltics..but at the very end..towards the closing days in april' 45, in a german roadside ditch.. they packed up like rookies when confronted by a single british patrol car...Imagine !! the victors and survivors of countless encounters against impossible odds! ..
as against this imagine the charlemagne volunteers..in the 3rd week of april'45, CHOOSING to opt for berlin as the final battleground..not budging an inch along their unter den linden sector ( finally in the zitadelle, central govt district), knowing fully well that if they got badly injured it would be curtains.. coz the Waffen SS troop doctor performing surgical procedures wasnt even a proper surgeon ( Dr schenk was an internist)..these lads were fighting an urban battle of attrition where the proper military equipment that you mention wsnt worth much against the vastly superior soviet ( numerically) ordnance....even then they held out till the moment their superiors ( kruckenberg.. indirectly mohnke) decided to bolt around midnight of 1st - 2nd may...
and lets remember that these guys werent even german .. not even volk deutsche !
ciao

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Sandeepmukherjee,

The Charlemagne men who ended up in Berlin were a very small minority of the formation.

Furthermore, how voluntary their presence was is a matter of interpretation. Where officers allowed individuals to make up their own minds, there were very few genuine volunteers. Where companies were deliberately paraded en masse, peer group pressure seems to have led to rather more "volunteers".

For a review of one book on the Charlemagne and the sorry history of French volunteers on the Eastern Front, see:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... e#p1220561

Cheers,

Sid.

P.S. I find it very difficult to follow your posts as you don't use sentences or paragraphing. I would suggest that they lose most of their possible impact because of this.

[sandeepmukherjee196]

Hi Sid.....
what references / material/ authority would you like to suggest to establish that the "small minority" of charlemagne men who landed up in berlin were actually not volunteers but were actually coerced? i continue to hold that the waffen ss men of the charlemagne formation were mostly brave and dedicated individuals.

Those who went to berlin fought with valour and exemplary self sacrifice.. fenet and his men..some of these men and many others of charlemagne.. maintained their ideological defiance and moral courage even after all was lost and they were brought up in front of the Free French brass.. to drub in their humiliation ..

On 6th may'45, near Bad Reichenhall,when general leclerc asked one charlemagne prisoner why he was wearing a german uniform .. prompt came the reply .. " why are you wearing an american one ?"!!.. imagine.. these men knew that they would be tortured and killed, at best they would be facing long stints in dungeons in france..even then they maintained their morale, espirit de corps and moral conviction ( lets not go into the propriety of their ideology here)...

Well as a footnote, the group ( of 12 men) with whom leclerc "interacted" , were promptly shot dead ( 3 days later) ..maybe coz the general didnt like their faces.. or maybe because of their "ethos"!? their bodies were left where they lay.. to rot.. till, after a few days,the americans 'rescued' the bodies and buried them..

Do you see any signs of a "phony volunteer" syndrome here sid? ...through whatever is indicated by their attitude and conduct? or are they the real thing? i would like to reemphasise here .. that carthagian disasters produce many strange after effects..its very easy to demoralise and brainwash a comprehensively defeated people into recanting..devaluing and trashing their own heritage..the germans as a nation .. and their camp followers of the WWII era have been made to undergo a complex process which in NLP ( Neuro Linguistic Programming) terminology is called " changing your personal history" ..no wonder many of the erstwhile dedicated campaigners have suddenly discovered that the past sucks and they were 'fools' ! but that doesnt change nothing! does it?

P.S. Thanks sid for your feedback on sentences and paragraphing ( lack of it).. I agree and will act accordingly

[ljadw]

The WSS division Charlemagne did not fight at Berlin:the division had already been destroyed before the battle of Berlin,only 320 men remained for the fight in Berlin .

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Sandeepmukherjee,

You ask, "what references / material/ authority would you like to suggest to establish that the "small minority" of charlemagne men who landed up in berlin were actually not volunteers but were actually coerced?"

I never said they were "coerced", so I don't have to defend that proposition. What I said was that judicious peer group pressure was used to enlist most of the volunteers. Where the officers canvassed men individually, there were few volunteers. Where they paraded the entire company there were more. It is more difficult to backslide publicly in front of one's mates. There are volunteers and "volunteers".

Nor did I say anything about "phony volunteer syndrome". Those are your words.

The performance of the few French in Berlin seems to have gone largely unrecorded by anyone except their survivors. They may have fought well. They may not. We only have their word for it. One thing is for sure, some ridiculous claims have been made for them in some post-war publications.

The Leclerc uniform anecdote, if true, does not compare like with like. The Charlemagne division was a German-raised formation. The Free French forces may have worn British- or US-supplied uniforms, but they were autonomously French-raised. Their alternatives were to wear civilian clothes (illegal) or nothing (inadvisable in the winter of 1944-45).

Cheers,

Sid

[Sid Guttridge]

Review: Hitler’s Gauls by Jonathan Trigg.

(Spellmount, London, 2006)

Judging by its text, bibliography and foreword, Hitler's Gauls is essentially a shallowly researched and incomplete plundering of a handful of French books of often questionable historical detachment, set against a background reading on the Waffen-SS that could have been found in bargain bookshops over the last decade and an exchange of letters with a couple of veterans. When derivative Rupert Butler and Osprey books are cited as authorities in a short bibliography, one knows a book has shallow roots. The author offers a nod towards research in the Bundesarchiv in his acknowledgements, but there is absolutely no trace of original documentary material in the text.

Mercifully, the author has avoided the invented dialogue that undermines much French historical writing to the point where it becomes indistinguishable from “Faction”. However, the style of writing is often more reminiscent of historical fiction than sober military history.

The book starts off on the wrong foot by picking a questionable title – Hitler’s Gauls. The claims of the French to membership of the Waffen-SS were based on the Germanic identity of the Franks – the German tribe that gave France its name by over running the Romano-Gauls, who were not Germanic by SS standards. "Hitler’s Franks" would have been a more accurate title.

The author then tries to invest his subject with an aura of eliteness and military significance but, reading between the lines, a rather different picture emerges:

Despite the smokescreen put up in Hitler’s Gauls, it is apparent the record of French service in German uniform was poor. The first battalion of volunteers of the LVF had to be withdrawn from the line in December 1941 within a week of deployment despite the German front then being in crisis. It then spent the next year reduced to rear-area anti-partisan operations.

In January 1943 control of French recruitment was handed over to the Waffen-SS. By September only 1,500 suitable volunteers had come forward. The unit finally saw action in August 1944 – a laggardly year and a half after its formation began. It went into action on 9 August and had been virtually wiped out within a fortnight.

On 10 August 1944 the Charlemagne Division was ordered formed. It consisted basically of exiled Frenchmen who had compromised themselves in various ways either by directly serving the Germans or in the more ruthless security arms of the Vichy regime. Notwithstanding the title “division”, these scrapings were only ever sufficient to form a mixed brigade of at most 8,000 men. Furthermore, this brigade never managed to get more than four infantry battalions into action. In effect, there never was a Charlemagne “division”.

Charlemagne units first entered the line on 24 February 1945. Within two days “Charlemagne was now beginning to be torn apart.” (p.111). Thereafter it was basically a tale of isolated units of Frenchmen under no central divisional control and having lost or abandoned any heavy equipment, falling back within the body of German forces.

By early April, only 1,100 men could be reassembled out of the line. Of these, over a third had had enough and were transferred to a construction battalion. The remainder were only partly recommitted when the Reich was in absolute extremis. On 24 April the unit was ordered to Berlin. Only some 400 volunteers were taken. These volunteers seem mostly to have been selected by judicious use of peer group pressure. Where company commanders genuinely canvassed for volunteers, few men apparently came forward. However, when two companies were paraded by their commanders and volunteers asked to take one pace forward, the entire companies did so!

The tale of the Charlemagne and its French predecessor units in German service is essentially one of failure – of an inability to attain or maintain significant strength or retain cohesiveness in front line action. Even if one counts the service of straggling sub-units, in nearly four years of trying, the Germans only managed to get the French into the line four times, the combined total of which came to less than two months, none of which was as an effective higher formation.

Hitler’s Gauls ends with the extraordinary sub heading: “Charlemagne: recorded atrocities nil”, as if this absence of recorded (!) atrocities is somehow to the division’s credit, rather than the minimal standard to be expected! And anyway, where, one wonders, would the Charlemagne ever have had the opportunity to commit atrocities? It only ever served in defence on Reich soil, and then only briefly! And then there is the overlooked question as to whether its predecessor units such as the LVF, which spent a year on anti-partisan operations in the USSR, and the Milice, who were the Vichy regime’s severest internal enforcers, were quite so unblemished? The book ends with the quite unnecessary whiff of whitewash.

Does this obscure subject really deserve a book in English? Yes. It is a curious tale of some fascination that deserves an airing. However, this volume, with its uncritical acceptance of the French volunteers at their own estimation, has turned a historical curiosity of military insignificance into a mock-heroic warrior epic. Apparently (p.149) it was on 28 April that “the men from Charlemagne really began to establish their reputation as an elite in the defence of the city (Berlin)”. Strange, then, that this “reputation as an elite” seems to have completely escaped every major study of the battle from Cornelius Ryan, to Anthony Beevor and beyond!

The author also unquestioningly passes on some unlikely “facts” without engaging his critical faculties. For example, on p.143 he claims of one King Tiger tank in Berlin, “His tally for the day stood at over 100 tanks and twenty-six anti-tank guns destroyed, as well as a pile of soft-skinned vehicles.” Is this likely? Just to knock out the tanks alone would require it to destroy one every seven minutes during daylight in vision-obscured, smoke-ridden, rubble-strewn streets – and this is to ignore time taken out to rest, refuel, rearm and redeploy. Such an unlikely proposition – surely by far a world record - cries out for some sourcing but, as with the rest of the book, almost no factoid is traceable due to minimal footnoting.

Make no mistake, even though they spent very little time at the front and to very little effect, the few French volunteers saw some intense fighting under very unfavourable conditions and, by their own accounts, many of them fought courageously. However, this book tries to invest them with a military significance they never had.

Hitler’s Gauls is a poor book, based on limited and sometimes questionable sources that romanticizes its subject beyond the demonstrable evidence. This reviewer hopes that a more original, detached and better sourced work supersedes it quickly.

Hitler’s Gauls also threatens to be the first in a series entitled “Hitler’s Legions” – itself already an over used title. If so, one hopes that the author will sharpen his critical faculties, broaden his reading list and engage in more primary research before embarking on the next installment. Otherwise publishers might just as well translate existing foreign language books directly into English.

Sid Guttridge

[Michael Kenny]

I have read many accounts of the heroic stands by SS men in Berlin. It always seems to be in the same format:

My Unit (insert name) fought heroically against hordes of red savages. We shot down 3 Reginment of Mongols and 5 Regiments fled in panic. Our position was marked by by 50 knocked out burning T-34 tanks. The Russians were unable to dislodge or bypass us and we fought off every attack. A supporting lone Tiger Tank wiped out 3 IS-2 Regiments with 5 rounds. Later we had to withdraw as the units on our flank were forced back due to a lack of ammunition. We were never beaten.

[Sid Guttridge]

Furthermore, as contested urban battles went, that for Berlin was over quite quickly - about ten days.

Breslau held out for months. So did Budapest. Leningrad supposedly for "1,000 days" of siege. Stalingrad for three months before the Soviet counter offensive.

While the odds against the defenders at Berlin were more insurmountable than any of the others, theirs was not a unique or exceptional epic.

That said, I wouldn't want to have been there!

Cheers,

Sid.

[sandeepmukherjee196]

hi sid..

how long did the epic "urban battle" at arnhem last? 9 days? but its still a great battle..no? so units .. big or small.. who made a mark there would still merit some discussion right ?

ciao
sandeep

[Michael Kenny]

Why has no one mentioned the Forbes book?


http://www.amazon.co.uk/For-Europe-Fren ... 187462268X

If you want an example of the completely over-the-top claims that surround this insignificant band then the final words of the (factualy incorrect) chapter 'To The Death' can not be matched:


page 465
'Without the Frenchmen The Russians would have taken Berlin eight days sooner'

[Le Page]

Forbes's book really is the last word on the subject. Now, he I think is sympathetic and therefore not unbiased, but he put a lot of effort and research into the book, and also interviewed participants. It's an impressive work. I corresponded with him while he was writing it.

That said, I wanted to point out that Krukenberg stated there were no more than 90 Frenchmen who accompanied him to Berlin.

"The French Who Fought for Hitler" by Carrard has a critical view of this subject.

[sandeepmukherjee196]

you are right Le Page...90 is the number.

those 90 had been hand picked by krukenberg and fenet from the volunteers of the latter's battalion..coz there were only 3 trucks and 2 APCs available for transport. it is another matter that even those 3 trucks had to be abandoned coz of the road and terrain conditions on the way to berlin.

those 90 were only a tiny part of the 45000 odd regular wehrmacht troops in berlin. but they left their mark while defending key positions and slowed down russian advance on the zitadelle sector.

Beevor is neither biased in favour of the nazi cause nor is he an irresponsible historian. these frenchmen find favourable mention in 7 of his pages in "berlin..the downfall, 1945". i would prefer to rely on his version over any "passionate backer of the cause".

ciao
sandeep

[Michael Kenny]

those 90 were only a tiny part of the 45000 odd regular wehrmacht troops in berlin. but they left their mark while defending key positions and slowed down russian advance on the zitadelle sector.

So which incident(s) show how the Soviets suffered at the hands of these 90 superman?
So far you have provided nothing but wooly claims. Give me a specific.

[Michael Kenny]

Beevor is neither biased in favour of the nazi cause nor is he an irresponsible historian. these frenchmen find favourable mention in 7 of his pages in "berlin..the downfall, 1945". i would prefer to rely on his version over any "passionate backer of the cause".

I am sorry to tell you Beevor is a popular 'historian' He writes for the masses and he is far from an authorative source.

[Michael Kenny]

Beevor is neither biased in favour of the nazi cause nor is he an irresponsible historian. these frenchmen find favourable mention in 7 of his pages in "berlin..the downfall, 1945". i would prefer to rely on his version over any "passionate backer of the cause".

I am not one who would buy any Beevor book unless I have a keen interest in the subject. I have his Normandy work and to be honest I did not rate it highly.
Can anyone who has his Berlin book let me know the references for the claims about the French in Berlin?
I suspect circular referencing is at work.