Soldiers Of Destruction

The men of the SS Totenkopf Division had stalled the advance of the Firth Guards Tank Army in late September. Then, silence. No fighting had occurred for the past three weeks. Replacements arrived; weapons were stripped and cleaned. The three …

1944-10-10

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The men of the SS Totenkopf Division had stalled the advance of the Firth Guards Tank Army in late September. Then, silence. No fighting had occurred for the past three weeks. Replacements arrived; weapons were stripped and cleaned. The three week lull around Warsaw ended abruptly with the fury of the renewed Russian offensive. By sheer weight of numbers, the Fifth Guards Tank Army pressed the SS units back 30 kilometers northwest to the conjunction of the Vistula and the Bug. There , SS Totenkopf division held until the Soviets had exhausted themselves, late in October, 1944.

Radzymin, Poland

The 3rd SS Panzer Division "Totenkopf" was an elite division of the Waffen-SS of Nazi Germany during World War II, formed from the Standarten of the SS-TV. Its name, Totenkopf, is German for "death's head" – the skull and crossbones symbol – and it is thus sometimes referred to as the Death's Head Division. The division was formed through the expansion of Kampfgruppe Eicke, a battle group named, in keeping with German military practice, after its commander, Theodor Eicke. Most of the battle group's personnel had been transferred to the Waffen SS from concentration camp guard units, which were known collectively as SS-Totenkopfverbände; others were former members of Selbstschutz: ethnic German militias that had committed war crimes in Poland. The division became notorious for its brutality, and committed numerous war crimes, including the Le Paradis massacre.

Wikipedia: 3rd SS Panzer Division Totenkopf

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