Waffen ss epitaph (1 Viewer)

[Poppo]

In Europe are not only memorials of the allies and epitaphes( posted by many members), but also some which remember waffen ss units, like in Estonia.
I visited this little baltic state in 2008 and just near the usual sovietic propaganda memorial ( they are scattered throughout all eastern Europe, Berlin included), I found a little german ww2 cemetery where also was a tombstone remembering the ss estonian legion and the Nordland waffen ss division who fought hard in Narva and throughout the baltic states, with great results.

This shows how terrible and scaring was the red terror...The german ww2 soldiers are seen still today in Latvia and Estonia( apart from the russian population), as ancient allies against the soviets. Some northern european nations as Latvia, Estonia, and even Finland made technical alliances with Hitler to fight the common enemy: Stalin.

 

[larso]

I'm surprised to see the units listed (not offended I hasten to add). It was probably wise to leave the 'SS' part of the titles out though. Thanks for posting.

I met a former member of one of those divisions at a rest-home dinner once. He talked quite a bit about his service. From memory he was at Uni and the whole class was enlisted without much say in the matter. Or so he told it.

 

[Mitch]

Nice pictures. They were soldiers fighting for their country and deserve this remembrance also.
Mitch

 

[Scott]

Nice pictures. They were soldiers fighting for their country and deserve this remembrance also.
Mitch

That was my father's view and I think I remember that it was an SS unit he was fighting when he was wounded.

 

[Poppo]

The 11th waffen ss panzergrenadier division "Nordland" was created in early 1943 with Norvegian, Danish, Swedish and German volunteers.Even some Finnish, Estonians, Hungarians, Dutch, Swiss...

This division ideology was different from the other waffen ss ,it was not strictly nazi, but the "pangermanist" idea to create a "german Europe" and to defend the continent from the bolscevism.

Nordland fought till the end in Berlin battle.
It made its training in the "anti partisan" war in Jugoslavia were atrocities happened on both sides. The volunteers hated this kind of war in the wodden hills, a terrible guerrilla in which the enemy was invisible and striked hard and fast. Then, they fought in the Leningrad front,then in the baltic countries containing a huge red army. Then, in summer 1944 the central german front was broken in Belarus and Nordland was surrounded and closed in the Kurland pocket in Latvia, fighting with the ocean behind them and evacuated by ships. Reformed, fought hard in Poland and finally together with the french survivors of waffen "ss Charlemagne", it was the last organic german unit to defend Berlin under the command of Brigadefuhrer Krukenberg.

The few survivors were sent back to their countries and executed.

It is wierd that the last defenders of Berlin were not german, but by other european nations, even spanish...