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71-1029: Initially formed from regiments of the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT), Das Reich initially served during the Battle of France in 1940 before seeing combat on the Eastern Front between 1941 and 1944. It was transferred to the Western Front in 1944, where it fought in the Battle of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge . Toward the end of the war, it was transferred back to the Eastern Front, where it participated in Operation Spring Awakening in Hungary . The division became notorious for its brutality, committing numerous war crimes during its operations. The division

142-548: A company commander in Das Reich, led his men across Yugoslavia to the capital, Belgrade , where a small group in the vanguard accepted the surrender of the city on 13 April. A few days later Yugoslavia surrendered. For the invasion of the Soviet Union ( Operation Barbarossa ), Das Reich fought under Army Group Center , taking part in the Battle of Yelnya near Smolensk ; it was then in the spearhead of Operation Typhoon aimed at

213-472: A consequence of the sabotage of the rail cars, Das Reich left Montauban on 8 June with 1,400 vehicles and proceeded northward by road. Travel by road caused the steel tracks of the tanks and assault guns to wear out; vehicles broke down frequently; and fuel was in short supply. Pinprick attacks by groups of resistors, called Maquis , killed 15 Germans on the first two days of the movement. More than 100 French were killed, many of them unarmed civilians. Das Reich

284-578: A counter-offensive, Operation Lüttich , from Vire towards Avranches ; the operation included Das Reich. The Allied forces were prepared for this offensive, and an air attack on the combined German units proved devastating. Paris was liberated on 25 August, and the last of the German forces withdrew over the Seine by the end of August, ending the Normandy campaign. The US 2nd Armored Division had encircled Das Reich and

355-513: A mass grave in Alibunar's Serbian Orthodox Church's yard, as well as 54 others in the nearby settlement of Selište. The crimes were committed as a retaliation for the involvement of armed civilians during the fighting in the area and the murder of the regimental adjutant. A support unit of the division aided an SS extermination group in the slaughter of 920 Jews near Minsk in September 1941. After

426-576: A motorcycle company and a mortar company. The unit was officially designated SS-Verfügungstruppe ("Dispositional troops", i.e. troops at the personal disposal of the Führer). The men were to be volunteers who had completed their service in the Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD; Reich Labour Service). The existence of the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT) was publicly declared on 16 March 1935 by Hitler in

497-593: A patrol over the ruined bridge at IJssel and taking Fort Westervoort by surprise. On the following day, the rest of the SS-VT Division crossed into the Netherlands, participating in the drive for the Dutch central front and Rotterdam , which they reached on 12 May. After that city had been captured, the SS-VT Division, along with other German formations, were sent to "mop up" the remaining French-Dutch force holding out in

568-671: A speech at the Reichstag . The SS-VT had to depend on the German Army for its supply of weapons and military training, and the army also retained control of the recruiting system through local draft boards responsible for assigning conscripts to the different branches of the Wehrmacht to meet quotas set by the German High Command ( Oberkommando der Wehrmacht or OKW in German). As a consequence,

639-571: A unit from the Totenkopf , the 4 Company, committed the Le Paradis massacre ; 97 captured men of the 2nd Battalion Royal Norfolk Regiment were machine gunned after surrendering, with survivors finished off with bayonets . Two men survived. By 28 May the SS-Leibstandarte had taken the village of Wormhout , 10 miles (16 km) from Dunkirk. There, soldiers of the 2nd Battalion were responsible for

710-785: The SS-Verfügungs-Division with Paul Hausser as commander. The LSSAH was expanded into a motorized regiment. In addition, the armed but ill-trained Totenkopfstandarten , together with SS Heimwehr Danzig , were organized into the Totenkopf-Division under Eicke's command in October 1939. A further division, the Polizei-Division , was created from the Ordnungspolizei . These formations took part in combat training while under army commands in preparation for Fall Gelb against

781-486: The 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division Götz von Berlichingen around Roncey . In the process Das Reich and 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division lost most of their armored equipment. Around Roncey P-47 Thunderbolts of the 405th Fighter group destroyed a German column of 122 tanks, 259 other vehicles, and 11 artillery pieces. A separate attack by British Hawker Typhoons close to La Baleine destroyed 9 tanks, 8 other armored vehicles, and 20 other vehicles. A column around La Chapelle

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852-579: The Atlantic Coast or the Mediterranean Sea . In May the division received 37 Panzer IV and 55 Panther tanks , well below the official complement of 62 of each, but a full complement of 30 Sturmgeschütz III assault guns. Fuel and truck shortages hampered training and movement and many of the more than 15,000 men in the division were recent recruits and inadequately trained. The Allied Normandy landings took place on 6 June 1944. On 7 June Das Reich

923-986: The German Spring Offensive and later that year of the Second Battle of the Lys, which was part of the Allies' Hundred Days Offensive . During the Second World War , the Battle of the Lys was part of the 1940 German offensive in Flanders towards the English Channel. The Leie/Lys was a commercial navigation from the Middle Ages, but it was the river's devastating floods rather than navigation improvements which justified major works and meander cut-offs started around 1670. The 9 meter difference in elevation between Aire-sur-la-Lys and

994-563: The II SS Panzer Corps , which took part in the Battle of Kursk that summer. The division operated in the southern sector of the Kursk bulge during the Battle of Prokhorovka . It was pulled out of the battle along with the other SS divisions when the offensive was discontinued, giving the strategic initiative to the Red Army. The Battle of Kursk was the first time that a German strategic offensive

1065-623: The SS- Stabswache and SS-Sonderkommando Berlin . The LSSAH, under the command of Josef "Sepp" Dietrich , continued to serve exclusively as a personal protection unit for Hitler and an honor guard during this timeframe. By 1937 the SS was divided into three branches: the Allgemeine-SS (General SS), the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT), and the SS-Totenkopfverbände (SS-TV) which administered

1136-695: The SS-Verfügungstruppe regiments Deutschland, Germania and Der Führer were organized into the SS-Verfügungs-Division with Paul Hausser , a former army officer, as commander. Thereafter, the SS-VT and the LSSAH took part in combat training while under army commands in preparation for Fall Gelb , the invasion against the Low Countries and France in 1940. In May 1940, the Der Führer Regiment was detached from

1207-553: The Scheldt . Its source is in Pas-de-Calais , France, and it flows into the river Scheldt in Ghent , Belgium. Its total length is 202 kilometres (126 mi). Historically a very polluted river from the high population density and industrialisation in both Northern France and Belgium, it has seen substantial improvements in recent years, partly due to the decline of the principal industry,

1278-694: The Wormhoudt massacre , where 80 British and French soldiers were murdered after they surrendered. After the close of the Battle of France, the SS-VT was officially renamed the Waffen-SS, in a speech made by Adolf Hitler on 19 July 1940. Himmler also gained approval for the Waffen-SS to form its own high command, the Kommandoamt der Waffen-SS (Waffen-SS Command Office) within the SS-Führungshauptamt (FHA), which

1349-476: The concentration camps . On 17 August 1938 Hitler decreed that the SS military formations were to be placed at the "disposal" of the army in time of war. Hitler stated, at Himmler's request, that service in the SS-VT qualified to fulfill military service obligations. Further, during wartime, units of the SS-TV would be used as reserves for the SS-VT. Over the course of the war this led to a constant flux of men between

1420-458: The invasion of Poland . It fought alongside army units at Rozan , Modlin , Łomża and Kmiczyn . The division was disbanded near the Polish city of Nidzica on 7 October 1939. In spite of the swift military victory over Poland in September 1939, events during the invasion of Poland raised doubts over the combat effectiveness of the SS-VT. The OKW or Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (High Command of

1491-480: The 1944 Massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane : We felt the bullets, which brought me down. I dove... everyone was on top of me. And they were still firing. And there was shouting. And crying. I had a friend who was lying on top of me and who was moaning. And then it was over. No more shots. And they came at us, stepping on us. And with a rifle they finished us off. They finished off my friend who was on top of me. I felt it when he died. Darthout and Hebras' eyewitness testimony

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1562-506: The Allied second front opened on 6 June 1944, all resistance groups joined "into the uprising". Part of the division was ordered to attack the rural strongholds of French Resistance fighters as it moved to Normandy. After a successful FTP offensive on 7 and 8 June 1944, Das Reich was ordered to the Tulle-Limoges area. The arrival of the SS troops "rescued the beleaguered" army troops and ended

1633-638: The Armed Forces) reported that the SS-VT units took unnecessary risks and had a higher casualty rate than the army. They also stated that the SS-VT was poorly trained and its officers unsuitable for combat command. As an example, OKW noted that the Leibstandarte had to be rescued by an army regiment after becoming surrounded at Pabianice by the Poles. In its defence, the SS insisted that it had been hampered by having to fight piecemeal instead of as one formation, and

1704-438: The LSSAH, along with the SS-VT Division were positioned to hold the perimeter around Dunkirk and reduce the size of the pocket containing the encircled British Expeditionary Force and French forces. A patrol from the SS-VT Division crossed the canal at Saint-Venant , but was destroyed by British armor. A larger force from the SS-VT Division then crossed the canal and formed a bridgehead at Saint-Venant; 30 miles from Dunkirk. On

1775-561: The Leie are, from source to mouth: Laquette , Clarence , Lawe , Deûle , Gaverbeek  [ nl ] , Heulebeek  [ fr ; nl ; vls ] , and Mandel . The river was the location of three battles between the Allies and the German Army during the two world wars. During the First World War in 1918 the location was the scene of the First Battle of the Lys , which was part of

1846-454: The Low Countries and France in 1940. Elements of both the SS-VT and the LSSAH participated in the ground invasion of the Battle of the Netherlands . In the five-day campaign, the LSSAH linked up with army units and airborne troops after a number of clashes with Dutch defenders. After the surrender of Rotterdam, the LSSAH left for The Hague , which they reached on 15 May, after capturing 3,500 Dutch soldiers as prisoners of war . On 16 May

1917-572: The SS Totenkopf Division was ordered to France and was attached to army divisions which formed the northern "spearhead" of attack. In France, the SS Totenkopf was involved in the only Allied tank attack in the Battle of France . On 21 May units of the British 1st Army Tank Brigade , supported by the 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division , took part in the Battle of Arras . The SS Totenkopf

1988-528: The SS was given the lowest priority for recruits, thereby limiting its size. In 1936, Himmler selected former Lieutenant General Paul Hausser to be Inspector of the SS-VT with the rank of Brigadefuhrer . Hausser worked to transform the SS-VT into a credible military force that was a match for the regular army. The SS-VT trained alongside Hitler's personal bodyguard, the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH), which had also been formed from

2059-520: The Waffen-SS and the Nazi concentration camps . The military formations under Himmler's command on 1 September 1939 consisted of several subgroups: Elements of the SS-VT served with the Wehrmacht during the occupation of the Sudetenland , Austria , and Czechoslovakia . For those operations, the SS-VT was under the command of the army. The SS-VT also formed an Artillery Regiment during this time-frame which

2130-467: The Waffen-SS divisions were assigned numbers much later in the war these first formations, Leibstandarte, Das Reich, Totenkopf, Polizei and Wiking , were recognized as SS divisions 1 through 5. Leie River The Lys ( French pronunciation: [lis] ) or Leie ( Dutch pronunciation: [ˈlɛiə] ) is a river in France and Belgium , and a left-bank tributary of

2201-455: The approximately two hundred SS soldiers who had been involved. Only twenty-one of them were present. Seven of them were Germans, but fourteen were Alsatians , (French nationals of Germanic culture). On 11 February, twenty defendants were found guilty, but were released after only a few months for lack of evidence. In December 2011 German police raided the homes of six former members of the division, all aged 85 or 86, to determine exactly what role

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2272-587: The area of Zeeland and the islands of Walcheren and South Beveland. On 17 May the Deutschland Regiment successfully made an opposed crossing of the Sloedam from east to west, a feat attempted four years later by elements of the 2nd Canadian Division and the 52nd (Lowland) Division during the Battle of the Scheldt . After the fighting in the Netherlands ended, the SS-VT Division was transferred to France. On 24 May

2343-461: The auspices of HIAG , the historical negationist organization and a lobby group of former Waffen-SS members. The unit narrative was extensive and strived for a so-called official representation of their history, backed by maps and operational orders. "No less than 5 volumes and well over 2,000 pages were devoted to the doings of the 2nd Panzer Division Das Reich ", points out the military historian S.P. MacKenzie . The Das Reich divisional history

2414-417: The border was gradually overcome by six locks and weirs, completed in 1780. The river carried a heavy traffic in grain and linen through to Ghent and Antwerp. The navigation was leased out to a company around 1825, and the locks upgraded to 5.20 m wide, for a draught of 1.60 m. In December 1899, more than 40 schoolchildren skating on the frozen river at Frelinghien fell through the ice and drowned. The river

2485-552: The capture of the Soviet capital. By the time the division took part in the Battle of Moscow , it had lost 60 percent of its combat strength. It was further reduced in the Soviet Winter counter-offensive: for example, the Der Führer Regiment was down to 35 men out of the 2,000 that had started the campaign in June. The division was "mauled". By February 1942, it had lost 10,690 men. By mid-1942,

2556-402: The church and spraying it with machine gun fire: It was simply an execution . There were a handful of Nazis in front of us, in their uniforms. They just raised their machine guns and started firing across us, at our legs to stop us getting out. They were strafing, not aiming. Men in front of me just started falling. I got caught by several bullets, but I survived because those in front of me got

2627-463: The combat effectiveness of the SS-VT. Himmler insisted that the SS-VT should be allowed to fight in its own formations under its own commanders, while the OKW tried to have the SS-VT disbanded altogether. Hitler was unwilling to upset either the army or Heinrich Himmler , and chose a third path. He ordered that the SS-VT form its own divisions but that the divisions would be under army command. In October 1939

2698-423: The day. As a result, Das Reich arrived only piecemeal to the Normandy battlefield between 15 and 30 June, its arrival delayed at least several days by the resistance attacks and air strikes. Rather than going on the offensive to try to push the Allies back into the sea, Das Reich initially found itself mostly plugging gaps in the German defenses. The division was not reunited until 10 July. On 4 August Hitler ordered

2769-467: The days before 6 June French operatives of the SOE's Pimento network, headed by Anthony Brooks , sabotaged the rail cars by draining the axle oil and replacing it with an abrasive powder that caused the axles of the cars to seize up. The powder had been parachuted in by SOE. The perpetrators of the sabotage were a 16-year-old girl named Tetty, her boyfriend, her 14-year-old sister, and several of their friends. As

2840-589: The division and relocated near the Dutch border, with the remainder of the SS-VT Division behind the line in Münster , awaiting the order to invade the Netherlands . The regiment and LSSAH participated in the ground invasion of the Netherlands, which began on 10 May. An NCO in Der Führer’s 3rd Battalion, Oberscharführer Ludwig Kepplinger, became the first Waffen-SS recipient of the Knight’s Cross , awarded for leading

2911-457: The division in the last phases of its northward journey. On 11 June British bombers attacked and destroyed several railcars full of much-needed gasoline at Châtellerault . The airstrike was directed by B Squadron, 1st Special Air Service (SAS) and was codenamed Operation Bulbasket . After its advance elements crossed the Loire River on 13 June, the division was under constant air attacks during

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2982-505: The division reported having 12,357 officers and men, down from 17,283 on 1 July. The division surrendered to the U.S. Army in May 1945. During the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, members of the division committed crimes against the civilian population as well as Yugoslav prisoners of war in the area of Alibunar (Vojvodina, Serbia) where an estimated 200 people were murdered. 51 corpses were found in

3053-415: The division was pulled out of the fighting line and sent to the west to refit as a Panzergrenadier division. In January 1943, the division was transferred back from France to the Eastern Front . There it participated in the fighting around Kharkov . Here the unit engaged in some heavy fighting against 1st Guards Cavalry Corps , among other units. Thereafter, it was one of three SS divisions which made up

3124-766: The drive towards Paris. After the Battle of France, the SS-VT was officially renamed the Waffen-SS in July 1940. In December 1940 the Germania Regiment was removed from the Verfügungs-Division and used to form the cadre of a new division, SS Division Germania. By the start of 1941, the division was renamed "Reich" (in 1942 "Das Reich"), and "Germania" was renamed as SS Division Wiking . In April 1941, Germany invaded Yugoslavia and Greece . The LSSAH and Das Reich were attached to separate army Panzer Corps. Fritz Klingenberg ,

3195-466: The fighting in the city of Tulle . On 9 June, in reprisal for the German losses, the SS hanged 99 men from the town and another 149 were deported to Germany. On 10 June 1944, the division massacred 642 French civilians in the village of Oradour-sur-Glane , in the Limousin region. SS- Sturmbannführer Adolf Diekmann , commander of the I Battalion, 4th SS Panzergrenadier Regiment (Der Führer) that committed

3266-414: The following day, British forces attacked Saint-Venant, forcing the SS-VT Division to retreat and relinquish ground. On 26 May the German advance resumed. On 27 May, Regiment Deutschland of the SS-VT Division reached the Allied defensive line on the Leie River at Merville . They forced a bridgehead across the river and waited for the SS Division Totenkopf to arrive to cover their flank. What arrived first

3337-454: The full impact. I was so lucky. Four of us in the barn managed to get away because we remained completely still under piles of bodies. One man tried to get away before they had gone – he was shot dead. The SS were walking around and shooting anything that moved. They poured petrol on bodies and then set them alight." Marcel Darthout's experience was similar. His testimony appears in historian Sara Farmer's 2000 book Martyred Village: Commemorating

3408-453: The invasion of Poland, "[t]heir...capabilities were employed instead in terrorizing the civilian population through acts that included hunting down straggling Polish soldiers, confiscating agricultural produce and livestock, and torturing and murdering large numbers of Polish political leaders, aristocrats, businessmen, priests, intellectuals, and Jews." Further, members of the Leibstandarte also committed atrocities in numerous towns, including

3479-460: The massacre, claimed that it was a just retaliation due to partisan activity in nearby Tulle and the kidnapping of Sturmbannführer Helmut Kämpfe , commander of the III Battalion, although the German authorities had already executed ninety-nine people in the Tulle massacre , following the killing of some forty German soldiers in Tulle by the Maquis resistance movement. On 10 June, Diekmann's battalion sealed off Oradour-sur-Glane, and ordered all

3550-417: The men had played that day. SS- Brigadeführer Heinz Lammerding , who had given the orders for retaliation against the Resistance, died in 1971, following a successful business career in West Germany . The French government never obtained his extradition from the German authorities. Following the war, one of the regimental commanders of the division, Otto Weidinger , wrote an apologia of the division under

3621-435: The murder of 50 Polish Jews in Błonie and the massacre in Złoczew, where 200 civilians were machine gunned. Złoczew's children also suffered; SS men beat and murdered them, sometimes with rifle butts, crushing the skulls of toddlers. Shootings also took place in Bolesławiec , Torzeniec , Goworowo , Mława , and Włocławek . In October 1939 the SS-VT regiments Deutschland , Germania , and Der Führer were organized into

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3692-432: The nucleus of the Waffen-SS . The SS-VT was formed on 24 September 1934 from a merger of various Nazi and paramilitary formations such as the SS Special Detachments ( SS-Sonderkommandos ) and the Headquarters Guard ( SS- Stabswache ) units. The SS-VT consisted of three regiments, modelled on the infantry regiments of the German Army ( Heer ) and regulations; each regiment consisting of three infantry battalions,

3763-421: The positive, "heroic" side of National Socialism. The French author Jean-Paul Picaper, who studied the Oradour massacre, notes the tendentious nature of Weidinger's narrative: it provided a sanitized version of history without any references to war crimes. Structure of the division in 1943: SS-Verf%C3%BCgungstruppe SS-Verfügungstruppe ( SS-VT , lit.   ' SS Dispositional Troops ' )

3834-423: The sacristy; after the explosion they climbed on a stool and jumped out of a window three meters from the ground. A burst of machine gun fire hit all of them, but Rouffanche was able to crawl into the presbytery garden. The woman and infant were killed. Diekmann was later killed in the battle of Normandy in 1944. On 12 January 1953, a military tribunal in Bordeaux , heard the case against the surviving sixty-five of

3905-448: The spinning and weaving of flax . The region of the Leie (between Deinze and Ghent) was known as a favourite place for numerous painters in the first half of the 20th century. The source of the Lys is in a village, Lisbourg , east of Fruges , in the Pas-de-Calais department of France. It flows generally northeast through the following departments of France , provinces of Belgium and towns and municipalities: The main tributaries of

3976-414: The start of 1941, Germania was renamed Wiking , with command given to then Brigadeführer Felix Steiner , the former commander of the SS-VT regiment Deutschland . The Verfügungs-Division was also renamed Reich (in 1942 Das Reich ). In addition, the Polizei division was brought under Waffen-SS administration. The Leibstandarte was also expanded to a division for Operation Barbarossa . When

4047-445: The townspeople to assemble in the village square, ostensibly to have their identity papers examined. All the women and children were locked in the church. The men were led to six barns and sheds. One of the six survivors of the massacre, Robert Hebras, described the killings as a deliberate act of mass murder . In 2013, he told the U.K. newspaper The Mirror that the SS intentionally burned men, women, and children after locking them in

4118-489: Was a unit of British tanks, which penetrated their position. The SS-VT managed to hold on against the British tank force, which got to within 15 feet of commander Felix Steiner 's position. Only the arrival of the Totenkopf Panzerjäger platoon saved the Regiment Deutschland from being destroyed and their bridgehead lost. By 30 May, most of the remaining Allied forces had been pushed back into Dunkirk where they were evacuated by sea to England. The SS-VT Division next took part in

4189-465: Was attacked at point blank range by 2nd Armored Division artillery. Over the course of two hours American artillery fired over 700 rounds into the column. The division suffered the loss of 50 dead, 60 wounded and 197 taken prisoner. Material losses were over 260 German combat vehicles destroyed. Beyond the town another 1,150 German soldiers were killed in combat. The division also lost an additional 96 armored combat vehicles and trucks. On 13 September 1944,

4260-419: Was corroborated by other survivors of the massacre. One other survivor, Roger Godfrin, escaped from the school for refugees despite being shot at by SS soldiers. Only one woman, Marguerite Rouffanche, survived from the church. She later testified that at about five in the afternoon, two German soldiers placed a crate of explosives on the altar and attached a fuse to it. She and another woman and her baby hid behind

4331-434: Was created in August 1940 under Gruppenführer Hans Jüttner . The Totenkopf Division, together with the independent Totenkopf-Standarten , were transferred to FHA control. Further that same month, SS chief-of-staff Gottlob Berger approached Himmler with a plan to recruit volunteers in the conquered territories from the ethnic German and Germanic populations. At first Hitler had doubts about recruiting foreigners, but he

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4402-472: Was formed in 1934 as combat troops for the Nazi Party (NSDAP). On 17 August 1938 Adolf Hitler decreed that the SS-VT was neither a part of the Ordnungspolizei (order police) nor the Wehrmacht , but military-trained men at the disposal of the Führer . In time of war, the SS-VT were to be placed at the disposal of the army. The SS-VT were involved in the German invasion of Poland in September 1939. By 1940 these military SS units had become

4473-437: Was halted before it could break through enemy defences and penetrate to its strategic depths . In October, the division was redesignated, this time as SS Panzer Division Das Reich to reflect its complement of tanks. In April 1944, Das Reich took up a new base near the city of Montauban in southern France. The location was chosen so that the division could respond quickly to the anticipated Allied invasion of France on either

4544-487: Was improperly equipped by the army to carry out its objectives. Himmler insisted that the SS-VT should be allowed to fight in its own formations under its own commanders, while the OKW tried to have the SS-VT disbanded altogether. Hitler was unwilling to upset either the army or Himmler, and chose a third path. He ordered that the SS-VT form its own divisions but that the divisions would be under army command. In addition, Eicke's SS-TV field forces were not military, and during

4615-416: Was ordered to move to Normandy to reinforce the German units contesting the Allied invasion. An unopposed movement of men and equipment by railroad would have taken three or four days over approximately 700 kilometres (430 miles). However, the option to move by rail had been preempted by the Special Operations Executive (SOE). The rail cars to be used for transporting the tanks and equipment were unguarded. In

4686-406: Was ordered to suppress the Maquis during its journey; "to break the spirit of the population by making examples." The division carried out the order by massacring hundreds of civilians on 9 and 10 June in Tulle and Oradour-sur-Glane .(see below) Attacks by resistance forces mostly ended on 12 June as Das Reich moved into less favorable territory for ambushes. Air attacks hindered the progress of

4757-425: Was overrun, finding their standard anti-tank gun , the 3.7 cm PaK 36 , no match for the British Matilda tank . After the Dutch surrender, the LSSAH was moved south to France. On 24 May the LSSAH, along with the SS-VT division, were positioned to hold the perimeter around Dunkirk , assisting in reduction of the size of the pocket containing the encircled British Expeditionary Force and French forces. On 27 May,

4828-416: Was persuaded by Himmler and Berger. He gave approval for a new division to be formed from foreign nationals with German officers. In December 1940 the Germania Regiment was removed from the Verfügungs -Division and used to form the cadre of a new division, SS-Division Germania . It was made up of mostly "Nordic" volunteers from the newly conquered territories, Danes, Norwegians, Dutch and Flemings. By

4899-468: Was published by HIAG's publishing house Munin Verlag. Its express aim was to publish the "war narratives" of former Waffen-SS members, and the titles did not go through the rigorous processes of historical research or assessment common in the traditional historical works; they were negationist accounts unedited by professional historians and presented the former Waffen-SS members' version of events. The divisional history, like other HIAG publications, focused on

4970-442: Was responsible for several massacres, including the Tulle massacre on 9 June 1944, and the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre on 10 June 1944. In August 1939 Adolf Hitler placed the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH), later SS Division Leibstandarte , and the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT) under the operational command of the High Command of the German Army . The units' performance during the Invasion of Poland raised doubts over

5041-413: Was used to fill the gaps in a number of army units for those events. The SS-VT regiments Deutschland and Germania along with the Leibstandarte participated in the invasion of Poland , with Der Führer (recruited in Austria after the Anschluss ) in reserve at Prague. In September 1939, a combined unit of SS-VT and Heer (army) troops conducted operations jointly as Panzer Division Kempf during

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