Charlemagne in Berlin

[Michael Kenny]

The embryonic NATO myth needs some Frenchmen to give it a smidgen of credibility. Those who believe in this fiction will never let go of their dream.

[sandeepmukherjee196]

Well I don't know about that. Never been a fan of NATO myself. I am rather sympathetic to Gen Remer's and Donald Trump's views on NATO !

[MagnusStultus]

Antony Beevor, Berlin, pg 116. ..
"....Among those cut off to the East of Zhukov's thrust was the SS Charlemagne Division, already greatly reduced from its strength of 12000 men. Along with three German divisions, they had been positioned near Belgard. General von Tettau ordered them to try to break out north-westwards towards the Baltic coast at the mouth of the Oder. The Charlemagne commander, SS Brigadefuehrer Gustav Krukenberg, accompanied 1000 of his Frenchmen on silent compass marches through snow laden pine forests. As things turned out, part of this ill assorted group of right wing intellectuals, workers and reactionary aristocrats, united only by their ferocious anti Communism, was to form the last defence of Hitler's Chancellery in Berlin. .."

Amen. .

Appeal to authority doesn't change the fact that the only sources for Charlemagne available to Beevor himself is unsubstantiated claims by Charlemagne veterans.

There are neither German nor Russian (or any other ethnic group int he Soviet Army) testimonies to confirm they showed up.

As I just demonstrated decades later Japanese Entertainers easily found American Combat Pilots who faced the Shiden Kai and very easily got them to discuss their experiences against them and got very strong testimony from Americans about the effectiveness of Japanese Air Power.

The fact is with all of the Russians present at Berlin not a single one new Charlemagne was there. Neither did German Civilians. Neither did Wehrmacht Veterans, even other SS units had no idea they were there.

Yet we do have the testimony of Charlemagne survivors.

The fact that the SS as an organization actively promoted a culture that encouraged lying to get the results they wanted really does make it necessary to cross reference SS claims.

There are French Units that put in a good performance, they just didn't fight on the Axis side.

This hypothesis is not based on logic at all..but rather born out of rigid prejudice against the Waffen SS, its foreign volunteer units and the Wehrmacht..in that order.

The Foreign volunteers in the Waffen SS were not distinguishable from their German colleagues, to the Russian frontoviki who fought them. Colour, race, uniform, ethos ..it was all homogenous. The Nordland troopers in Berlin were present in far greater numbers and hence more easily identifiable as a group. How does it matter to a Russian soldier what are the linguistic differences among a group of enemy soldiers hell bent on killing him !

Here we are not talking of the Indian legion for instance. they would have stood out in the eyes of the enemy if they were present.

Krukenberg, their commander, vouches for their presence in Berlin. He handed out the RKs too. Certainly not for nothing. And talking of the culture of lying and exaggerating among the SS, the same logic would discount all Russian heroic claims since they have been caught out red handed (pun intended) on the Dubosekovo Halt hoax !

1. There is no better after action report besides the one written when you have captured all of the enemy officers and taken all of their documents; Charlemagne is mentioned by no Russian Officer in the endless documents written up for superiors in their chain of command.

2. The Russian Soldiers spent a great deal of time wondering why the Germans would fight when the war was clearly and obviously over. For that reason we have many very detailed descriptions of what they saw and their actions during the battle. We know that boys of ten and sometimes younger gut put into a uniform and given easy to use weapons and thrown en mass to cause some casualties when they died. We know from their descriptions what visuals of the battle actually happened and what was Stalin's propaganda. The primary source for contradicting the Soviet narrative is the Russian soldiers themselves. Those soldiers certainly would ask their officers what opposition they faced and those officers would definitely give a truthful answer (why hide the identity of a defeated enemy?) the fact that after the battle not a single hard pressed Russian Unit got told it's enemy was the French Charlemagne division is important.

3. It is very hard enough to reconcile no Russians realizing this "division" existed it is even harder to reconcile the fact that the Germans in Berlin didn't realize it either. To date no German Civilian known to be in Berlin during the battle, Wehrmacht Regular known to be there or even other SS units have ever corroborated the tales of valor told by Charlemagne or even knew them to exist at all.

4. Military culture matters, the fact that the SS actively fostered a dishonest military culture for the purpose of inspiring people with tales of (often fabricated) valor makes SS stories more suspect when compared to others, which brings me to my next point.

5. It doesn't matter what the reputation of the force is if the evidence of the tale of valor it gives has no evidence. There is no evidence Charlemagne did the things it claims. If it had the list of German and Russian witnesses would be endless. The list of impressed Russian officers talking about the difficulty taking 75 on whatever street would be endless to, which brings me to point 6.

6.Not everyone in uniform is a combat hero. I was in the navy and never once did I fire a gun, perform emergency damage control, fish someone out of the water, endure enemy fire or anything else that would qualify as heroic. If we had independent evidence of what Charlemagne did (if anything) in Berlin we could say for sure what they did but we don't leading to the final point

7. There is other types of evidence besides that pertaining to a particular battle like unit history military culture etc. The Charlemagne Division never operated as a division or grew out of just being the predecessor units or even attracted large numbers of new frenchmen. The history of the predecessor units is strong evidence against them doing anything heroic.

8. The reason I introduced the documentary I did is because you might notice the Japanese show fact checked themselves with American combat pilots. They fact checked their 343rd and successfully found former enemy combat pilots who faced it. That is what history looks like in an event as recent as the second world war. The closer to the present you get the more evidence you have access to and so the higher your obligation to gather such evidence. The lack of evidence for Charlemagne means it most likely no longer exists.

[sandeepmukherjee196]

Logical fallacies. The Japanese as a defeated Nation behaved very differently from post war Germany. They were not morally devastated and ashamed of themselves as a race.
Germans went into deep denial and into deep shame as a race and a Nation.
The Charlemagne were not even German. They were the despicable ones of a country that was deeply divided during the war but which went into wholesale falsification of history after the Gaulists turned up on the right side of events.

Who will write or even acknowledge anything about the Charlemagne? Except for a handful of discredited individuals who had no business even surviving those events .... but somehow did.

France wanted to relegate all Frenchmen who were pro Vichy or anti Gaulist into the doghouse of history. Who will even bother to get into real events about pro German Frenchmen unless those had to do with war crimes etc.

I don't see why Krukenberg's version isn't good enough! He was a German. He was not ideologically messed up with the Foreign volunteer movement or anything. He didn't need to identify himself with their ethos or anything like that. He was just a regular commander of a regular military unit.

And coming to the continuously repeated assertion that the SS had a culture of lying. . Well that couldn't have possibly surpassed the inbuilt culture of concoction ingrained in the Soviet system surely?

[Michael Kenny]

Who will write or even acknowledge anything about the Charlemagne? Except for a handful of discredited individuals who had no business even surviving those events .... but somehow did.

A well know phenomenon.
The vast number of SS Old Comrades Associations belies that organisations mythos of always 'fighting to the death' and I understand when a reunion was held for the survivors of The Charge Of The Light Brigade some 10 years after the event more men turned up than served in the Light Brigade.

Anyway in response for your never-ending search for pictures of foreign troops in Berlin I give you this:

One a celebration the start of the 1000 Year Reich and the other 3 celebrating the demise of the same just 5 years later in the exact same street.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWhyriN5NzM

[sandeepmukherjee196]

How so very informative ! While you are at it..to show how, just about all foreign armies, except Germany's allies, usually have a field day on the streets of Berlin, why not clap on the following too ? :

The Bulletins de la Grande armée: 21st Bulletin, 28 October, 1806, Berlin

«Yesterday, the 27th, the Emperor ([*]Napoleon)[/b] made a solemn entrance into Berlin. He was accompanied by the Prince de Neufchatel, the marshals Davout and Augereau, his Grand maréchal du Palais [Duroc], his Grand-écuyer and his ADCs. Marshal Lefebvre led the march with the imperial foot guard; the cuirassiers from Nansouty's division lined the route. The Emperor rode in between the grenadiers and the Chasseurs à cheval of his guard. He dismounted at the Palace at three in the afternoon; he was received by the Grand maréchal du palais, Duroc. A huge crowd lined the route, Charlottemburg avenue in Berlin is very beautiful; the entrance by this gate is magnificent. The weather was superb. All the town officials, presented by general Hullin, military governor, came to the gate to offer the keys of the city to the Emperor. These officials then retired to the H.M.'s residence, General Prince d'Hatzfeld at their head… »

(Bulletins de la Grande armée, Prieur Dumaine, 1844, t3, pp.399-400).

[MagnusStultus]

Logical fallacies. The Japanese as a defeated Nation behaved very differently from post war Germany. They were not morally devastated and ashamed of themselves as a race.

Irrelevant the point is even Japanese Amateur historians know they needed to fact check claims made by people who fought on their side. It then took very little time and effort for them to track down American Combat Pilots to confirm or deny claims made concerning the Shiden Kai and 343rd. Getting confirmation from both sides is not optional, even amateurs know that (as I demonstrated). Japan also was definitely morally devastated it was occupied after the war.

Germans went into deep denial and into deep shame as a race and a Nation.
The Charlemagne were not even German. They were the despicable ones of a country that was deeply divided during the war but which went into wholesale falsification of history after the Gaulists turned up on the right side of events.

You are right it was formed from the predecessor units of volunteers from France. It is much easier to use the term German however because it refers to the side they fought on. I used the term Russian for the Soviet Union although thousands of Ukrainians, Cossacks, Kalmyks, Tatars, Poles, Kazhaks, Mongols, Azeris etc fought on the Russian side.

Who will write or even acknowledge anything about the Charlemagne? Except for a handful of discredited individuals who had no business even surviving those events .... but somehow did.

There were sympathetic ears in France from out of the mainstream. It was also in the interest of former Charlemagne members to exaggerate their military experience in order to get a chance to join the French fight in Indochina instead of being executed for treason (another reason to be skeptical of unconfirmed tales of heroism from them).

France wanted to relegate all Frenchmen who were pro Vichy or anti Gaulist into the doghouse of history. Who will even bother to get into real events about pro German Frenchmen unless those had to do with war crimes etc.

You are wrong about anti-Gaullist many of the most celebrated Frenchmen are socialists who only ever (at best) had a truce with the Gaullists (and de-Gaul himself hated socialism). Pro-Vichy was relegated to the doghouse because of the enormity of the crime. Vichy commited treason to France and that alone relegates it to the dustbin of history. The horrors of it's participation in the Holocaust, support for Barbarossa, opposition to the allies, enabling Germany to occupy France with at most a skeleton force etc, these things are not easily overlooked.

I don't see why Krukenberg's version isn't good enough! He was a German. He was not ideologically messed up with the Foreign volunteer movement or anything. He didn't need to identify himself with their ethos or anything like that. He was just a regular commander of a regular military unit.

His testimony to the Soviets was that Charlemagne played a very minor role, he claimed to have failed to even bring a hundred of them to Berlin. The discrepancy between the claims of Charlemagne testimony and what Krukenberg actually told his interrogators has already been mentioned in this thread by other people.

And coming to the continuously repeated assertion that the SS had a culture of lying. . Well that couldn't have possibly surpassed the inbuilt culture of concoction ingrained in the Soviet system surely?

Soviet Military culture while dishonest (and by western standards brutal) never reached the point where a commanding officer couldn't trust internal documents written by his underlings to give him his units actual strength, the SS military culture did. the SS was in a class by itself in terms of military culture.

[Rob - wssob2]

This hypothesis is not based on logic at all..but rather born out of rigid prejudice against the Waffen SS, its foreign volunteer units and the Wehrmacht.

I don’t think there is any such thing.

The Foreign volunteers in the Waffen SS were not distinguishable from their German colleagues, to the Russian frontoviki who fought them. Colour, race, uniform, ethos ..it was all homogenous.

But on April 26 1945 a contingent of French SS troops managed to convince their frontoviki captors that they were slave laborers forced into service, and the Red Army troops let them go. Is that part of the ethos you are referring to?

Krukenberg, their commander, vouches for their presence in Berlin.

Have you read his 1964 account? I’ve seen references to it in books like The French Who Fought For Hitler but have not read it myself. It seems pretty obscure.

He handed out the RKs too. Certainly not for nothing.

I think that the context - handing out medals by candlelight in a burned out trolley in a destroyed city while the enemy surrounds you 100 yards away – is important to acknowledge.

Germans went into deep denial and into deep shame as a race and a Nation.

Would that be East Germans or West Germans?

The Charlemagne were not even German. They were the despicable ones of a country that was deeply divided during the war but which went into wholesale falsification of history after the Gaulists turned up on the right side of events.

What exactly has been falsified ? (Other than the over exaggerated accounts of tanks knocked out)

Who will write or even acknowledge anything about the Charlemagne?

There’s nothing to acknowledge, other than a tiny fraction of the French SS fought – and lost – in the Battle of Berlin. Charlemagne’s war record is nothing compared to units like the French Second SS Armored Division. At least the Allies gave them tanks.

France wanted to relegate all Frenchmen who were pro Vichy or anti Gaulist into the doghouse of history. Who will even bother to get into real events about pro German Frenchmen unless those had to do with war crimes etc.

There are literally scores of books written about French collaboration during WWII. I think you also have to remember that thousands more Frenchmen participated as slave laborers for the Third Reich than fought for it. So in the main, the general experience of France in WWII is quite different than what the Charlemagne troops experienced.

I don't see why Krukenberg's version isn't good enough!

Again, have you read it?

He was a German. He was not ideologically messed up with the Foreign volunteer movement or anything. He didn't need to identify himself with their ethos or anything like that. He was just a regular commander of a regular military unit.

Actually, Krukenberg had been a civil servant and an international businessman stationed in Paris. In the 1930’s he joined the Nazi Party and the General-SS and worked for the NSKK and the Propaganda Ministry. He spoke French fluently and was appointed French Waffen SS Inspector (and later division commander) because the SS saw him as a guy whose prior experience would help him organize the disparate parts of the Charlemagne unit into a coherent whole. Given the lack of time and desperate war situation, he was unable to accomplish that mission. On March 27 and April 23, 1945, he released up to 700 French SS from service and assigned another 400 to a non-combat construction battalion. It seems clear that Krukenberg recognized that most of the survivors of his division weren’t up to the task of defending Berlin. On April 24, he took a cadre of 90 French SS die-hards with him. At the suburb of Alt-Strelitz they passed Himmler in his staff car. The Reichführer refused to acknowledge them.

Soviet Military culture while dishonest (and by western standards brutal) never reached the point where a commanding officer couldn't trust internal documents written by his underlings to give him his units actual strength, the SS military culture did. the SS was in a class by itself in terms of military culture.

I think what Magnus is correctly pointing out is that the Soviet accounts of the Battle of Berlin don’t make much, if any, references to the French SS. Nowadays, with other battles, you can literally compare German and Allied sources over the exact time and location of a loss of a single tank. We have French SS veteran accounts claiming literally hundreds of Red Army tanks knocked out. The actual number of tanks destroyed by the French SS is impossible to verify, but most likely isn’t as high as guys like Fenet claimed decades after the war.

[Rob - wssob2]

Germans went into deep denial and into deep shame as a race and a Nation.

As Hitler said:
"...If the war is lost, the German nation will also perish...Those who remain after the battle are those who are inferior, for the good will have fallen."

[Art]

1. There is no better after action report besides the one written when you have captured all of the enemy officers and taken all of their documents; Charlemagne is mentioned by no Russian Officer in the endless documents written up for superiors in their chain of command.

I wonder, that is based on what?

....
During the day prisoners were captured belonging to ...1/57 Infantry Regiment 33 SS Infantry Division "Charlemagne"...
The prisoners testified:
....
d/ Out of 33 SS Division "Charlemagne" only one 57 Infantry Regiment of two infantry battalions remained, 58 Infantry Regiment was disbanded. The remains of division in the region of Berlin were included in the 57 IR. Battalions of the 57 IR consist of 4 companies, 80-100 men in a company. 2nd Battalion is in the region of Neustrelitz. On 25.4 1st Battalion of 57 IR was committed to action in the Neukölln borough. The battalion's actions were supported by 2 assault guns and a T-VI type tank.
e/ As confirmed by documents the former SS Infantry Division "Charlemagne" is now called SS Infantry Brigade "Charlemagne".
...

Intelligence summary of the 1 Guards Tank Army's staff, 26.4.45:
https://pamyat-naroda.ru/dou/?docID=112677340

[George Lepre]

Hi all -

Art - Thank you for posting that document. Having Red Army documents available to us is great!

George

[Panzermahn]

Interesting document posted by Art.

I am pretty sure that the Russian archives had interrogation reports of captured Charlemagne troopers in Berlin just that it hasn't been declassified or no researchers had managed to find it yet. Henri Fenet was captured by Soviet forces in Berlin after the Battle of Berlin and he was only repatriated back to France in 1948 to face Gaullist justice.

The majority of malgre-nous (as well as members of Charlemagne division) captured by the Russians were sent to the camps in Tambov

[sandeepmukherjee196]

................


During the day prisoners were captured belonging to ...1/57 Infantry Regiment 33 SS Infantry Division "Charlemagne"...
The prisoners testified:
....
d/ Out of 33 SS Division "Charlemagne" only one 57 Infantry Regiment of two infantry battalions remained, 58 Infantry Regiment was disbanded. The remains of division in the region of Berlin were included in the 57 IR. Battalions of the 57 IR consist of 4 companies, 80-100 men in a company. 2nd Battalion is in the region of Neustrelitz. On 25.4 1st Battalion of 57 IR was committed to action in the Neukölln borough. The battalion's actions were supported by 2 assault guns and a T-VI type tank.
e/ As confirmed by documents the former SS Infantry Division "Charlemagne" is now called SS Infantry Brigade "Charlemagne".
...
Intelligence summary of the 1 Guards Tank Army's staff, 26.4.45:
https://pamyat-naroda.ru/dou/?docID=112677340

Thanks a lot Art. Just to get it straight, is the above English version a direct translation of the document found in the link given by you, as under ? I am asking since I can't read Russian at all.

art.ahf.JPG (158.59 KiB) Viewed 1289 times

Cheers
Sandeep

[sandeepmukherjee196]

Logical fallacies. The Japanese as a defeated Nation behaved very differently from post war Germany. They were not morally devastated and ashamed of themselves as a race.

Irrelevant the point is even Japanese Amateur historians know they needed to fact check claims made by people who fought on their side. It then took very little time and effort for them to track down American Combat Pilots to confirm or deny claims made concerning the Shiden Kai and 343rd. Getting confirmation from both sides is not optional, even amateurs know that (as I demonstrated). Japan also was definitely morally devastated it was occupied after the war.

Germans went into deep denial and into deep shame as a race and a Nation.
The Charlemagne were not even German. They were the despicable ones of a country that was deeply divided during the war but which went into wholesale falsification of history after the Gaulists turned up on the right side of events.

You are right it was formed from the predecessor units of volunteers from France. It is much easier to use the term German however because it refers to the side they fought on. I used the term Russian for the Soviet Union although thousands of Ukrainians, Cossacks, Kalmyks, Tatars, Poles, Kazhaks, Mongols, Azeris etc fought on the Russian side.

Who will write or even acknowledge anything about the Charlemagne? Except for a handful of discredited individuals who had no business even surviving those events .... but somehow did.

There were sympathetic ears in France from out of the mainstream. It was also in the interest of former Charlemagne members to exaggerate their military experience in order to get a chance to join the French fight in Indochina instead of being executed for treason (another reason to be skeptical of unconfirmed tales of heroism from them).

France wanted to relegate all Frenchmen who were pro Vichy or anti Gaulist into the doghouse of history. Who will even bother to get into real events about pro German Frenchmen unless those had to do with war crimes etc.

You are wrong about anti-Gaullist many of the most celebrated Frenchmen are socialists who only ever (at best) had a truce with the Gaullists (and de-Gaul himself hated socialism). Pro-Vichy was relegated to the doghouse because of the enormity of the crime. Vichy commited treason to France and that alone relegates it to the dustbin of history. The horrors of it's participation in the Holocaust, support for Barbarossa, opposition to the allies, enabling Germany to occupy France with at most a skeleton force etc, these things are not easily overlooked.

I don't see why Krukenberg's version isn't good enough! He was a German. He was not ideologically messed up with the Foreign volunteer movement or anything. He didn't need to identify himself with their ethos or anything like that. He was just a regular commander of a regular military unit.

His testimony to the Soviets was that Charlemagne played a very minor role, he claimed to have failed to even bring a hundred of them to Berlin. The discrepancy between the claims of Charlemagne testimony and what Krukenberg actually told his interrogators has already been mentioned in this thread by other people.

And coming to the continuously repeated assertion that the SS had a culture of lying. . Well that couldn't have possibly surpassed the inbuilt culture of concoction ingrained in the Soviet system surely?

Soviet Military culture while dishonest (and by western standards brutal) never reached the point where a commanding officer couldn't trust internal documents written by his underlings to give him his units actual strength, the SS military culture did. the SS was in a class by itself in terms of military culture.

The self-deprecation of the German race and their collective shame, weren't the same as that of the Japanese. Losing a major war is one thing but getting to collectively believe in the enemies' version of things and their evaluation of yourself..is totally at another level of losing your identity!

What Krukenberg said about the numbers he brought to Berlin and what other versions say, have been mentioned by me above if you read my posts. I have given my hypotheses about the discrepancy too.

Enormity of the crimes of Vichy France? Well well well. Says who? The Gaullists and the Communists ? And of course the allies? Just to put the record straight , as per events in real time at that period (without the benefit of hind sight), France declared war on Germany not the other way round. Germany offered to stop hostilities after Poland, before any action started in the west. Hitler said he had no demands to make on France.

Against that backdrop, France lost the war comprehensively. The war hero of Verdun...Marshal Petain, became the Head of France and saved his Nation from total destruction and total humiliation, like any responsible Statesman and patriot. Germany had no agenda to impose any Carthaginian peace on France. Hitler has been eternally damned for continuing a hopeless war driven by hyper-nationalist madness. Even though the only other option was "unconditional surrender" and the Morgenthau Plan. German Generals like Schorner were jailed by their country later for enforcing strict military discipline even in the face of certain defeat. But Petain is a criminal !

There was no German version of the Morgenthau Plan directed towards France. In practice too, Germany started a benign occupation of Northern France. The publications of the French Communist Party started making interesting comments about the friendly fraternisation between the German troops and the "French Workers". I haven't heard any of these "French Workers" being called traitors or criminals after liberation!

This was of course at the time of the Hitler - Stalin bonhomie. These same Communist Maquisards, after Barbarossa, vitiated the entire occupation climate with their cruel terrorism against both French civilians and German personnel which begot equally vicious reprisals.

The British bombed the French navy at port. Well. De gaulle was in support of that British move. If he had lost the war, what would have been history's verdict then?
Everyone very conveniently forgets that French society was deeply divided in the 30s. All facts about the fissures in French public opinion about the occupation and the Vichy Govt are driven under the carpet. But a genuine study of history has to transcend all that I guess.

[Michael Kenny]

The self-deprecation of the German race and their collective shame, weren't the same as that of the Japanese. Losing a major war is one thing but getting to collectively believe in the enemies' version of things and their evaluation of yourself..is totally at another level of losing your identity!

The 'Germans' are not a race. This basic error plus your allusion to 'losing their 'identity' (dog whistle/code for immigration)is the rhetoric of the lunatic far-right.

France declared war on Germany not the other way round.

Another far-right lie and so indicative of your mind-set.

There was no German version of the Morgenthau Plan directed towards France. In practice too, Germany started a benign occupation of Northern France.

France was systematically looted by the German. Her industry, agricultural output, cultural heritage and natural resources were stolen and her population enslaved. Only the most myopic die-hard Nazi admirer would suggest otherwise.

Everyone very conveniently forgets that French society was deeply divided in the 30s. All facts about the fissures in French public opinion about the occupation and the Vichy Govt are driven under the carpet. But a genuine study of history has to transcend all that I guess.

All societies have divisions and your utter contempt and hatred for the anti-Nazi faction inside Germany is only matched by your deep uncritical admiration for the French who threw in their lot with Hitler and his band of cut-throat war criminals. If you want to find out about duty and honour far better to study the actions of 2e DB rather than the laughably overblown claims of a couple deluded French traitors.