The Uman Pocket

The Nordland Regiment was detached from the division during this period to help the 13th Panzer Division as it swung around north of the Uman Pocket. During early August, the reconstituted Wiking Division was swinging south towards Kherson on the lower Dnieper as part of the drive to trap the Soviet forces in Odessa. It was then sent northwards to the Dnieper bend to help III Panzer Corps seize Dnepropetrovsk. In heavy fighting it captured the suburb of Kamenka and then pursued the Soviet defenders out of the city into the jaws of the 13th and 14th Panzer Divisions. In cooperation with the 198th Infantry Division, it then spent most of early September mopping up around the city and helping create a bridgehead for the panzer corps to strike eastwards again.

The Wiking Division helped in Kleist's successful encirclement operations, swinging south to close the ring around the Soviet armies at Melitopol on 30 September. It then joined XIV Panzer Corps for the next phase of the advance that took it to the northern reaches of the Mius River. Plunging temperatures in mid-November allowed Kleist's panzers to roll again towards Rostov and the Wiking Division was deployed as flank guard on the left wing of the German advance. It ran into heavy resistance at Astachowo to the northwest of Rostov from interlocking dug-in Soviet anti-tank guns. The Waffen-SS men had to fight for trench after trench in freezing weather. The fight for Rostov was sucking in more and more German troops, leaving the depleted Wiking units to hold a lengthening sector of front. On 23 November the Soviets launched their Rostov offensive, hitting Steiner's men hard and forcing them to reel back. With the Wiking's position buckling, a general retreat from Rostov was ordered.

An ss mountain Division

The final major Waffen-SS formation committed to Barbarossa was the Nord Mountain Division. This had been created in April 1941 by expanding the Nord infantry brigade with an influx of ethnic Germans who were allegedly mountaineers. Even though it was poorly trained and composed largely of middle-aged Totenkopf reservists, it was shipped to Norway to join the German forces assisting the Finns strike at the strategic Soviet port of Murmansk. In July 1941, the Waffen-SS men had hacked their way through dark Finnish forests to strike at the Soviet stronghold of Salla. Two major attacks were easily repulsed, badly mauling five Waffen-SS battalions. The Soviets then brought up tanks and struck back at the Nord Division. The inexperienced SS men panicked. Hundreds fled, and in the chaos 50 Waffen-SS men were killed and 232 wounded. Much to Himmler's fury, 147 of his Waffen-SS warriors surrendered rather than fight to the death. The division eventually recovered and fought on the Finnish front until 1944 with some distinction.

The Waffen-SS balance sheet

In the first six months of Operation Barbarossa, the Waffen-SS had been bloodied in the cauldron of all-out war. Its troops had surged eastwards with great professionalism and played a key part in the German victories of the summer and autumn. Of the 100,000 Waffen-SS men who had entered Russia in June 1941, almost 40,000 were now casualties, including 1238 officers. More than 13,000 had been killed in action.

prev | next