German Marines

[AirborneAllTheWay]

Anybody got anything on the marines during the war???

[Siegfried Wilhelm]

Would that be the Naval 'land forces'? The ones who wore the Feldgrau uniforms and often manned coastal artillery?
Third Reich 'Marines' weren't the assault shock troops American Marines came to be, but there is a bit about them...just not very glamerous. Although there are some pretty heroic actions performed by them particularly connected with the Normandy invasion.

SW~

[David Thompson]

The Third Reich Factbook has some excellent information at:

http://www.skalman.nu/third-reich/krieg ... ne-div.htm

[ZackdeBlanc]

The Waffen SS was the German equivalent of the marines. The US Marines were our elite fighting force as were the Waffen SS.

[Marcus]

ZackdeBlanc,

Some Waffen-SS units were elite, but definately not all of them.

/Marcus

[jpipes]

Feldgrau.com has full unit histories on all German naval ground units that were raised during the war. Last time I checked we have well over 500 naval ground unit listings, including all the infantry units.

The Kriegsmarine didn't have marines per-say in the sense that the US or British military has them. The German answer to the concept of the marines was the formation of the Kustenjager - coastal raiders. they were formed in 1943 and saw action mainly in the Med and Adriatic Seas. There was also a naval assault unit formed much earlier in WWII, the Marinestosstruppe/Marine-Artillerie-Atbeilung 531 (von Diest) which saw action in the landing operations on the Westerplatte in Poland, the Channel Islands in 1940 and in the Baltic Sea during the campaign in the East 1941-44.

Hope this helps!

[Caldric]

ZackdeBlanc,

Some Waffen-SS units were elite, but definately not all of them.

/Marcus

Yes some being the minority of the 30+ SS divisions, and some were not even fully staffed and equiped.

I would put elite at no more then 8 or less divisions of the SS, and one or two of these were not even comprised of Germans but foreign volunteers..

[Andy H]

There's a good book called "Not a Procession" which deals with the actions of the German 2nd Marine Infantry Division during 1945.

Again as already stated the 'Marine' Divisions were merely redundant Kreigsmarine personnel given the basic (At most) infantry traing and equipped accordingly.

Andy from the Shire

[Karl da Kraut]

ALL German servicemen, regardless of their branch, did actionally receive an in-depth basic drill, including a thorough infanteristic training, before passing on into specialized qualification. Thus Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe personnel could quite easily be put on garrison duty or comitted, if necessary, into ground warfare.

I'm not sure if this time-intensive principle survived later in WWII.

The modern German armed forces still stick to it; basic training has been reduced to three months by now, however.

[panzertruppe2001]

During the July 20th putsch, in Paris the Gestapo men were arrested. Admiral Voss said Stupnagel that que would free the Gestapo men with the marines if Stupnagel did not free them.
So i deduce that a Marine Infantry unit was settled in Paris in 1944