Some sources claim that the unit also included volunteers from some French colonies and Switzerland. Joining them were French collaborators fleeing the Allied advance in the west, as well as Frenchmen from the German Navy, the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK), the Organisation Todt, a construction unit and the Vichy French Milice. In September 1944, a new unit, the Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS “Charlemagne”, also known as the Französische Brigade der SS was formed out of the remnants of the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (LVF) and French Sturmbrigade, both of which were disbanded. Knowing that they would not survive should Germany be defeated, they were among the last to surrender in the brutal urban combat, during the final days of the Battle for Berlin – the last days of Hitler’s much-vaunted Thousand Year Reich. They were one of the last German units to see action in a pitched battle during the war, where they held central Berlin and the Führerbunker against the final onslaught of the vast Red Army. From estimates of 7,400 to 11,000 at its peak in 1944, the strength of the division fell to just sixty men in May 1945.
The 33rd Waffen-SS Charlemagne (1st French) were French volunteers in the Wehrmacht and latterly the Waffen-SS during the Second World War.
0 kommentar(er)
