German vs. German in open combat.

[andrek]

Just going over the FJ site is saw this mentioned,Peter H info is pretty much the same as this one,just different words etc...,info below.

Men of the 8th Parachute Division were called upon to neutralize a group of die hard SS and German Partisan's (Werewolf units) in the first days of May 1945. They dug themselves in within a forest called Forst Segeberg in Northern Germany. They were intent on battling against 2 Battalions of the British 11th Armoured Division. In Flensburg on the German/Danish border, Admiral Doenitz, now chief of state after Hitler's death, ordered them to surrender. When they refused Doenitz dispatched some splinter groups of the 8th Parachute Division to deal with them. Under the eyes of the British, a fierce battle broke out between the two German forces. The remnants of the fanatical SS Kampfgruppe surrendered a couple of days later.

http://web.archive.org/web/200603021723 ... k/misc.htm

Could you please verify this with real documents and not with the very oddly online source as reference? Maybe newspaper articles or something from the german naval archive. I was born in the above mentioned area. Never heard about that. Fanatical SS-Kampfgruppe (maybe with 20 KC holders?) ? No Sir! The whole story is bullshit.

[Ypenburg]

[quote="andrek
Could you please verify this with real documents and not with the very oddly online source as reference? Maybe newspaper articles or something from the german naval archive. I was born in the above mentioned area. Never heard about that. Fanatical SS-Kampfgruppe (maybe with 20 KC holders?) ? No Sir! The whole story is bullshit.[/quote]

Could you please verify this with real documents, maybe newspaper articles or something from the german naval archive.
And I would really love to know what the german naval archive has to do with FJ's and SS.

According to: Hitler Youth, The Hitlerjugend in War and Peace 1933-1945 by Brenda Ralph Davis, MM Amber Books Ltd. London mentions that is was a Wehrwolf groop that was hiding in this forest north of Hamburg and refused to surender. Admiral Dönitz send in 8 Fsch. Jg. Div. to call it an end. They found most boys dead between the trees, the view survivers were hiding in bunkers. (page 185, dutch translation).

[Michael Kenny]

I posted it earlier in the thread but here it is again. This appears to be the source for all subsequent versions. It is on page 116 of 'Tauraus Pursuant' the Official History of 11th AD. The book was finished in August 1945. Written by those who were there and thus it is as near as anyone is going to get to the real story.

The page in 'Taurus Pursuant':

I"n the meantime we had suffered a disappointment: Denmark was not
for us. Instead the division was to occupy the furthest districts of Schleswig-
Holstein, the area of Schleswig and Flensburg south of the frontier. Yet
even thither we did not move for another four days. In the Forst Segeberg,
west of the present positions of 3 R Tks and 4 KSLI, were a number of SS
troops who had decided to continue the war on their own. The Germans,
therefore, undertook to enforce their surrender and 8 Parachute Division,
the enemy formation in the area, was ordered to operate against them. In
due course the SS yielded. On May 10th we moved up through Neumunsiei
and Rendsburg and began to establish ourselves in our new homes"

[Fallschirmjäger]

Could you please verify this with real documents and not with the very oddly online source as reference? Maybe newspaper articles or something from the german naval archive. I was born in the above mentioned area. Never heard about that. Fanatical SS-Kampfgruppe (maybe with 20 KC holders?) ? No Sir! The whole story is bullshit.

I cant verify it with these things as dont have them or know where they may be,but that site may not be active(is that the odly remark?) now,but had realy good FJ info and pictures etc...still.And if never herd of it too,how can ytou say its bullshit too then,sounds believable to me.

[andrek]

I cant verify it with these things as dont have them or know where they may be,but that site may not be active(is that the odly remark?) now,but had realy good FJ info and pictures etc...still.And if never herd of it too,how can ytou say its bullshit too then,sounds believable to me.

... because there is a lot of absurdity available on the US market. Believable has nothing to do with the reality. Only trust verified sources.

Forst Segeberg (Segeberger Forst) is mentioned. I now that place.

Which SS units stayed in that forest, if you know the units maybe you also know their strength?

The 8. Fallschirmjäger-Division (FJR.22, FJR.24, FJR.32) was located where in May 1945 especially the 22. FJR?

Coming to a point, from my grandparents i know that a lot of Fremdarbeiter terrorized the Hartenholm area, but also Bad Segeberg and the Forst Segeberg (which is a large area by the way). That became a real problem. This started May 7 or 8, when a large number of sowjet Fremdarbeiter escaped. These Fremdarbeiter got armed and it was such a large number that the british rearmed german soldiers (60-70 men) and they indeed went to fight against the Fremdarbeiter together with british soldiers, this is verified. The dates on the graves of the killed sowjets are dated May 8 and this was more or less Bandenkampf.

Source No.9 mentions that the 22. FJR fought in the Forest Segeberg against the SS-Division "Hitler-Jugend". That is absurd and not verified not even through author No. 9.

For your pleasure some sources:

Harry Weller, Die Geschichte und Entwicklung Hartenholms, 1986

Karsten Dölger, Vom Zwangsarbeiter zum heimatlosen Ausländer. In: Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Schleswig-Holsteinische Geschichte, Band 1996

Erich Busch, Die Fallschirmjägerchronik. Friedberg 1983

H. G. Martin, The History of Fifteenth Scottish Divison 1939-1945. Edinburgh 1948

Alfred Hofmann, Segeberger Forst im Mai 1945 - Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der 8. Fallschirmjäger-Division. Manuskript, 1988.

Gerhard Hoch, Zwölf wiedergefundene Jahre. Kaltenkirchen unter dem Hakenkreuz. Bad Bramstedt, 1980

Thomas Hampel, Die Geschichte des Flugplatzes Kaltenkirchen. 9. Juli 1995

[Ypenburg]

Hello Andrek,

Do you have any idea how i can get a copy of Alfred Hofmann, Segeberger Forst im Mai 1945 - Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der 8. Fallschirmjäger-Division. Manuskript, 1988. It seems it isn't available for buying.

Cheers

Ypenburg

[Wolfgang luth]

I heard of the Sedgeburg forest battle mentioned in "The End of the War" by Charles Whiting. He did not go into any detail like I've just read.

I also saw mention of a large number of SS hiding there in some SHAEF documents I've got photocopied. Will dig it out if anyone is interested, it just doesn't tell much.

I've just written a novel taking place during the "Flensburg Reich" of Admiral Doenitz, which Simon&schuster will be putting out in early February 2009, if not before. ITs called Germania

[andrek]

Hello Andrek,

Do you have any idea how i can get a copy of Alfred Hofmann, Segeberger Forst im Mai 1945 - Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der 8. Fallschirmjäger-Division. Manuskript, 1988. It seems it isn't available for buying.

Cheers

Ypenburg

@Ypenburg

I am sorry for my late reply, but i don' t read this forum very frequently. The above mentioned book is a manuscript and was never published. The only existing exemplar i am aware of is a bunch of typed papers and is storing in a german town archive. Hofmann himself is dead.

[Ypenburg]

Hello Andrek,

Since I can frequently be found in Germany, can you name the German town archive we're talking about??

Cheers

Ypenburg

[Jan-Hendrik]

Maybe you try to contact the author of this article?

Jan-Hendrik

[Ypenburg]

Danke schön .

Cheers

Ypenburg

[andrek]

Hello Andrek,

Since I can frequently be found in Germany, can you name the German town archive we're talking about??

Cheers

Ypenburg

Bad-Segeberg. It is in the not indexed part of the archive. Lots of cardboard boxes and stuff like that, if you understand. The manuscript itself has round about 280 pages. It is under copyright by the way, if you like to publish it under your name or parts of this paper. Also the "Grossdeutschland" archive should have a copy.

[Stephen Hart]

The Forst Segeberg "incident" remains rather a mystery.

All the subsequent British accounts, and there are quite a few, agree that it was "an SS unit". The original source seems to be contemporary War Diary documentation dated 8 May from 15th Scottish Division. A history of 3rd RTR published in 2002 adds the seemingly new detail "We found the SS unit to be a complete anti-tank battalion recently returned from the Russian Front." Without any reference to a source. Not sure on that explanation. The other suggested identity was that it was the 12th SS HJ - obviously not the division but the SS Ers u Ausb Bn 12 HJ, which was fighting in this general area, so is a possible candidate. There were some Hungarian SS Ers personnel in the general hamburg area at the time of capitulation, as well. The other proferred explanation was that armed recently liberated Russian slave labours and PoW were the miscreants.

All sources seem to agree that the German personnel involved in "clearing" up the "pocket" came from 8 FJD. Some sources suggest that the British cordoned off the area and allowed the FJ to go in; a few others imply that British and German forces operated conjointly; this seems unlikely to me.

Beyond this, all remains unclear. If anyone has any points of clarification on this mystery, I would appreciate them.

Stephen

[Jan-Hendrik]

In the March issue of Der Freiwillige of the year 1994 there is an interesting, well sourced article by Alfred Hoffmann on the Bad Segeberg incident (Hoffmann himself was a Fallschirmjäger within the 9.Fsch.Jg.Div.).

He states that III./FJR 22 was rearmed by the brits...to clear the Bad Segeberg forest from marauding russian foreign workers. In fact, there is no evidence for a fight with any kind of "SS men", as there isn't any grave of SS soldiers around. The only ones in that area from 1945 belong to 7 Estonian soldiers that have died in the Reservelazarett in Bad Bramstedt- All in all 17 Estionians of 20th WGDiv. and one Usbek died from drinking Methylaclcohol on 8th/9th May near Malente.
But there are all in all 15 russian laborers that died after the capitulation.

The author states that he don't believe that german Fallschirmjäger would have carried out an order by the Brits (!) to go and shoot Waffen-SS-Soldiers

Jan-Hendrik

[Marcus]

Interesting Jan-Hendrik, what is the title of the article?

/Marcus