III SS Panzer Corps

Himmler also developed plans to form a third Waffen-SS corps in the spring of 1943 comprising the Western European volunteers, and it was to be built around the Wiking and Nordland Panzergrenadier Divisions. The Wiking Division's commander, Felix Steiner, was eventually to take command of the corps when it was sent to the Eastern Front in December 1943. Unlike its two sister corps, III SS Panzer Corps was never afforded a high priority for equipment to allow it to become a hard-hitting armoured force.

In autumn 1943, the final stage in the evolution of the Waffen-SS armoured units occurred when the panzergrenadier divisions began to be renamed panzer divisions and were given numerical designations. For example, the Leibstandarte became the 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. The renaming was largely a symbolic act, because the Waffen-SS divisions had always been better equipped than most army line panzer divisions for well over a year. For reasons of clarity, this book will refer to them by their honorific titles only.

SS panzer division tactics

To understand why the Waffen-SS panzer divisions were so successful in battle, it is essential to have some idea of the background and characters of some of the personalities who built and commanded them. While there was no such thing as a typical Waffen-SS officer, there were a number of distinctive groups.

The senior leadership in the early years were nearly all stalwart cronies of Hitler from his time in Munich during the 1920s. "Sepp" Dietrich and Theodor Eicke were old-guard Nazis, who liked to cultivate images of themselves as gruff, no-nonsense soldiers. They loved visiting the frontline trenches and swapping war stories with ordinary SS troopers. This bonhomie was largely a way to cover up for their own inadequacies as commanders and tacticians. Both, however, were sensible enough to leave complex technical problems to more talented subordinates. Others of the old Munich gang who joined the ranks of the SS remained behind in Germany and the occupied territories, supervising the mass murder of enemies of the Third Reich rather than serving at the front. Dietrich, who formed and led the Leibstandarte up to mid-1943, was far from the cuddly grandfather figure that Nazi propaganda suggested. In 1941, for example, he ordered 4000 Russian prisoners to be executed in retaliation for the death of six captured Leibstandarte Division troopers.

The founder of the Totenkopf, Eicke, had a reputation as a sadist. He personally shot the SA leader Ernst Röhm during the "Night of the Long Knives". "Papa" Eicke was the first commandant of Dachau concentration camp, and by 1939 was head of the Reich's whole prison camp network. He invented the Death's Head, or Totenkopf, insignia that became synonymous with evil and mass murder between 1939 and 1945.

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