In January 1945, Steiner was recalled to Germany to head up the newly formed Eleventh SS Panzer Army, and many of his units followed soon after. With Soviet troops now on the border of Germany, the fate of the army group trapped on the Courland Peninsula was precarious. The foreign volunteers who remained in Courland were looking for a means to escape the inevitable defeat. Some Scandinavian and Western European Waffen-SS started to take to boats to sail across the Baltic to safety in neutral Sweden. For the Estonian and Latvian Waffen-SS volunteers, there was no escape. Many, having been released from their oath of enlistment by their German superiors, now drifted away and took refuge in the forests of their home countries to form partisan bands to fight a guerrilla war against the Soviets. Some were still fighting in the 1950s with the help of the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The Americans and British saw these men as valuable allies in the Cold War against the Soviets. They turned a blind eye to their new allies' previous involvement in Hitler's élite force.

prev | next