Recruits

Gone were the days when the Waffen-SS only accepted volunteers who had passed rigorous fitness and ideological tests. Tens of thousands of Labour Service draftees, policemen, concentration camp guards and assorted misfits now had to be turned into élite combat soldiers. The officer ranks of the new Waffen-SS panzer force had to learn how to coordinate large numbers of tanks in battle, as well as all the skills necessary to keep tens of thousands of men supplied with all the tools of mobile warfare. As the news from Stalingrad grew worse, it became clear to the Waffen-SS veterans that they would soon be heading east again. The transformation of the armed SS from being an insignificant part of the German order of battle to becoming the potential saviour of the whole Eastern Front was rapid.

The first SS motorized divisions

In late 1940, as Hitler was mustering his forces for Operation Barbarossa - the invasion of the Soviet Union - he ordered a massive expansion of the Waffen-SS. The Leibstandarte was up-rated to a full motorized division. The SS-VT was split in two to create the Deutschland (soon renamed Das Reich) and Wiking Motorized Divisions. The four Waffen-SS divisions were each some 16,000 men strong and now boasted 150mm howitzers, 75mm anti-tank guns and the deadly 88mm flak or antiaircraft guns. The only tracked armoured fighting vehicles assigned to them at this point in the war were Sturmgeschütz (StuG) III assault guns armed with short-barrelled 75mm guns.

The Waffen-SS motorized divisions were in the thick of the action during the invasion of Russia in June 1941, with the Leibstandarte and Wiking Divisions fighting in the south, and the other two divisions leading the German advance in the north and central sectors. By the spring of 1942, the four divisions had suffered horrendous casualties in desperate defensive actions during the Soviet winter counteroffensive of 1941-42, and were barely functioning as fighting formations. They each mustered 2000 men fit for action. However, their tenacity in defence against massive odds, and especially their refusal to yield ground, greatly impressed Hitler.

Rebuilding the divisions

In the summer and autumn of 1942, the Leibstandarte, Das Reich and Totenkopf Divisions were withdrawn from the Eastern Front and moved to France for reorganizing as Waffen-SS panzergrenadier divisions. Wiking remained in the southern sector of the Eastern Front and was steadily reinforced with so-called "foreign volunteers" from occupied countries, but it was never as powerful as the three original SS panzergrenadier divisions.

The Waffen-SS panzergrenadier divisions were so lavishly equipped with tanks and armoured vehicles that, in reality, they were far more powerful than army line panzer divisions.

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