SS Charlemagne

Preface

On VE Day, 8 May 1945, a firing squad from General Leclerk’s 2nd Armoured Division summarily executed twelve prisoners from the Depot Battalion of the 33rd Waffen-Grenadier-Division of the SS-Charlemagne as traitors in a woodland clearing near the village of Karlstein in southeastern Bavaria. These prisoners had been part of a batch taken in the area by American troops and handed over to the Free French forces as they moved on.

If nothing else, this incident brought home the consequences of collaboration with the Germans during their occupation of France and the complications of interpreting and assessing such matters in relation to the prevailing political situation. The subject remains open for debate.

This book is mainly based upon material collated and most generously provided by Monsieur Robert Soulat, a former member of the Charlemagne, whose experience as a corporal clerk in the organisation provided the incentive. I was reluctant at first to undertake the task of writing up this story, as it involves such a complicated and sensitive era in French history, but in the end I could not let this interesting material go to waste.

In the spring of 1944 a new OKW general order foresaw the transfer of all foreign soldiers serving in the German Army to the Waffen-SS in order to simplify and improve their organisation. The assassination attempt against Hitler of 20 July 1944 accelerated this transfer, and particularly that of the French volunteers, who found themselves among the last involved in this reorganisation. Further, the two principal organisations concerned, the Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF) and the French Storm Brigade of the Waffen-SS, were then both currently engaged on the Eastern Front, where the situation was becoming increasingly critical.

Under Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s pseudo-mystic leadership, the greatly expanded wartime Waffen-SS was considered to consist of three categories of personnel, German, Germanic and non-Germanic, the French fitting into the latter category. This classification was also reflected in formation titles, with ‘volunteer’ used in Germanic formation titles and non-Germanic titles being styled ‘Waffen-Division der SS’. However, the title of ‘Division’ did not necessarily mean that it met that establishment in either numbers or equipment.

Though eventful, the life of the Charlemagne as a brigade, division and finally battalion from August 1944 to May 1945 was brief. Uniformed, equipped, trained and commanded as a Waffen-SS unit, its members were listed with SS ranks bearing the Waffen prefix, i.e. W-Obersturmmführer (lieutenant) as opposed to SS-Obersturmführer. I have therefore translated all ranks into their British equivalents and only used the SS prefix for German Waffen-SS personnel. Also, although the rank of SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Waffen-SS actually equated to Brigadier in the British Army, I have used SS-Major-General in my translation, to allow the insertion of the intermediate rank of Oberführer, peculiar to the Waffen-SS, as Brigadier.

We should be under no illusions as to what kind of people enlisted in or were compulsorily transferred into the Charlemagne. As we shall see, there may have been some honest political motivation among the original members of the Légion des Volontaires Français of 1941, but the Miliciens who swelled the ranks in 1944 were essentially fugitives from the wrath of their now mainly Gaullist or Communist compatriots, who considered them as both outcasts and renegades.

Nevertheless, it should be noted that no war crimes could later be attributed to the Charlemagne. It fought both bravely and well.