SS Charlemagne

Chapter One Formation

The crushing military defeat of France in 1940 arose out of many factors, but principally out of the devastating results of the First World War of 1914–1918, from which the country had yet to recover. The country’s faith in the defences of the Maginot Line had been shattered when the German blitzkrieg smashed through between the French mobile forces covering the still open northern flank and the Maginot Line itself. Poor military leadership and lack of political willpower led to a swift disintegration of the state and humiliating surrender.

Following the signing of the armistice at Compiègne on the 22 June 1940, the new French government, headed by Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain with Pierre Laval as Deputy Premier, settled in the town of Vichy. France was now divided into occupied and unoccupied zones, but the coastal and border areas became restricted zones, while the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine were absorbed into the Third Reich, coming under the German conscription laws, as did the Duchy of Luxembourg, and the conscripts from these areas were deliberately deployed away from their home territory.

With the population stunned by the crushing defeat of French arms and the German invasion, Pétain and Laval sought to set aside the political turmoil of the inter-war years under the Third Republic by reviving morale with what they dubbed a National Revolution devoted to ‘Work, Family and Country’.

On 11 October 1940, Pétain broadcast a speech to the nation in which he alluded to the possibility of France and Germany working together once peace had been established in Europe, using the word ‘collaboration’ in this context. In any case, with 1,700,000 French servicemen in German prisoner-of-war camps, his government had little alternative but to comply.

The Germans, on the other hand, were out to avenge their own humiliation at Versailles at the end of the previous war, and had no real interest in establishing a sympathetic ally or even an independent fascist state in France. In its relationship with France, all other concerns were subordinate to German interests.

A plethora of collaborationist political movements arose in the Paris area. The principal parties concerned were the Mouvement Social Révolutionaire (MSR), founded by Eugène Deloncle, Marcel Bucard’s Parti Franciste, the Parti Populaire Français (PPF), founded in 1936 by Jacques Doriot, and the Rassemblement National Populaire (RNP), founded in February 1941 and led by Marcel Déat and Eugène Deloncle.

On 22 June 1941, the day that Adolf Hitler began his attack on the Soviet Union, Jacques Doriot launched the idea of forming a legion of French volunteers to fight Bolshevism alongside the German Army. The Germans were not particularly enthusiastic about allowing the French to participate, but eventually approval was given on 5 July 1941 for the formation of the Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF), limiting the effective strength to 100,000 men. It was to be recruited from men aged 18 to 45, born of Aryan parents and in good health.

Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain’s Vichy Government supported this initiative, sending a telegram with his best wishes to the head of the LVF, and the Prefects of Departments also gave their support. Despite an impressive press campaign, only 1,600 volunteers came forward, out of which only 800 passed the strict German medical examinations, and were assembled at Versailles, where they held the first parade at the Borguis-Desbordes Barracks on 27 August 1941. The reasons for volunteering were mainly ideological, out of catholic or political conviction, but also because of the attractively high rates of pay and allowances. Between July 1941 and June 1944, some 13,000 volunteers were to apply, but only about half of these passed the rigorous German medical examinations.

Doriot left in September 1941 as an NCO with the first contingent of volunteers for Deba in Poland, where the recruits were equipped with German uniforms bearing a tricolour sleeve badge, and mustered into the Wehrmacht’s Infanterie-Regiment 638 under the command of 65-year-old Colonel Roger Henri Labonne (1881–1966), a former officer of French colonial troops. They were also required to swear an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler as commander-in-chief. Both the uniform and the oath came as a shock to the volunteers, who had been expecting to wear French uniforms and saw no reason for swearing the oath to a foreign commander-in-chief, but these obstacles were quickly overcome with the enthusiastic aid of their padre, the Roman Catholic, national socialist enthusiast, Monsignor de Mayol de Lupé. They would, however, be allowed to wear French uniforms when on leave in France.

The regiment consisting of two battalions, the 1st under Captain Leclercq, later Major de Planard, the 2nd under Major Girardeau, then left Deba at the end of October and reached Smolensk on 6 November 1941. No better equipped for the severity of the Russian winter than the rest of the German Army at that time, the troops then marched towards Moscow in blizzards and icy rain, their heavy equipment following them in horse-driven wagons. By the time they reached the front, only 63km from Moscow, a third of the men were suffering from dysentery and the regiment had lost 400 from sickness or straggling. The regiment was then assigned to the 7th Infantry Division and the regimental headquarters established in Golovkovo.

On 1 December, with the temperature down to -40 °C, the 1st Battalion was ordered to attack elements of the 32nd Siberian Division in a snowstorm. Within a week the 1st Battalion was so depleted that it had to be replaced by the 2nd Battalion. By 9 December, when the regiment was taken out of the line, it had suffered 65 killed, 120 wounded and over 300 cases of frostbite. Lieutenant-Colonel Reichet, the divisional chief-of-staff reported: ‘The men are keen enough, but lack military training. The NCOs are quite good, but cannot do much because of their inefficient superiors. The officers are incapable and were only recruited on political criteria. The Legion is not fit for combat. Improvement can only be achieved by renewal of the officer corps and thorough military training.’

The regiment was then sent back to Poland, where 1,500 volunteers were dismissed and returned to France, together with most of the officers, including Colonel Labonne. A fresh batch of volunteers arrived to replenish the ranks and training continued with an emphasis on the NCO backbone. The remains of the two existing battalions were merged and a new second battalion formed from fresh volunteers arriving from France. Eventually the regiment was reorganised into 3 battalions of about 900 men each, which were then allocated separately to various security divisions to assist in anti-partisan operations behind the lines, where the German assessment of the LVF remained poor. In February 1944, the regiment was reunited and assigned to the 286th Security Division.

On 18 July 1942, the Vichy Government instituted La Légion Tricolore as an official French Army replacement for the LVF, but the Germans refused to accept this concept and after only six months its members were absorbed into the LVF.

In June 1943, Colonel Edgar Puaud (1889–1945), a former officer in the French Foreign Legion, was given command of the LVF. Marshal Pétain later promoted him to the rank of general in the French Army, and made him a Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur, but the Germans were not prepared to accept him in that rank, and he initially served with the rank of a Wehrmacht colonel.

Another 91 officers, 390 NCOs and 2,825 soldiers left for the Eastern Front in 1943, but incidents with the police involving LVF volunteers on leave did nothing to enhance their reputation. Militarily ineffective and supplied with recruits of dubious quality, the LVF remained a political and propaganda instrument of the collaborationist parties, despised by most Frenchmen, and considered suspect both politically and militarily by the Germans.

Consequent upon a new decree of 23 July 1943 enabling direct enlistment into the Waffen-SS, a new recruiting drive began in the Unoccupied Zone (Vichy France), attracting some 3,000 volunteers. This led to the formation of the Französische SS-Freiwilligen Grenadier Regiment (French SS-Volunteer Grenadier Regiment) the following month. Also known as the Brigade Frankreich or the Brigade d’Assault des Volontaires Français, it was placed under the command of the 18th SS-Panzer-Grenadier Division Horst Wessel in Galicia, where it suffered heavy casualties.

Parallel to the LVF, other Frenchmen were engaged in the German Army and Navy (Kriegsmarine), the NSKK (Nazi Party Transport Corps), whose units were gradually becoming armed, the Organisation Todt (OT) (Construction Corps), police and guard units. Individuals from these various organisations now began leaving to enlist in the Waffen-SS.

In fact, the creation of this first French SS unit signalled a deep change in the type of engagement. From then on the political aspirations of the collaborationist parties had little impact. It was no longer a question of fighting for the glory of France, but for Europe, primarily for a national-socialist German victory. As someone commented: ‘The French SS are in fact purely and simply German soldiers.’

On 27 August 1943, the second anniversary of the founding of the LVF, a battalion of the regiment paraded at Les Invalides in Paris, where General Bridoux, the Vichy Minister of War, presented the regiment with a new Colour. This Colour, which was of the regular French Army pattern, bore the legend ‘Honneur et Patrie’ and the battle honours ‘1941-1942 Djukowo’ and ‘1942-1943 Bérésina’. There was then a presentation of awards to wounded veterans, and a march past in their honour by the mounted Garde Républicaine. Led by a company in German uniform and carrying their Tricolore standard, the battalion then marched to Notre Dame for a celebration of mass before proceeding up the Avenue des Champs Elysées for a wreath-laying ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe, cheered all the way by representatives of the many political parties supporting collaboration with the Germans.

The LVF was still an active force. As the German forces reeled back from the Soviet onslaught of 1944, Major Eugène Bridoux’s battalion was called upon to form a combat team to block the Moscow–Minsk road in front of Borrisov near the Beresina River. On 22 June, his battalion, along with police units and a handful of tanks, fought a delaying action until the following evening that cost it 41 dead and 24 wounded, but inflicted considerable damage to the Soviets, including the loss of some 40 tanks. It fought so well that the Soviet opponents reported being up against two divisions. Exhausted and starving, the survivors reached the LVF depot at Greifenberg two weeks later. Here all French servicemen within the German armed forces were being assembled.

In the spring of 1944 the German High Command (OKW) had issued a general order foreseeing the transfer of all foreign soldiers serving in the German armed forces to the Waffen-SS in order to simplify the situation and maintain the strength of the Waffen-SS, for which German citizens were exempt from conscription by law and could only volunteer. The French were some of the last to be affected by this order, both the LVF and the French SS-Storm Brigade still being actively engaged on the Eastern Front.

The creation of the Waffen-SS Charlemagne Brigade was decided in August 1944 when Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler gave the necessary orders for the LVF and the French SS-Storm Brigade to assemble during September at the Waffen-SS training area northeast of Konitz in the former Danzig Corridor. To these troops were added some 3,000–3,500 French volunteers from the German Navy, the latter coming via the LVF depot at Greifenberg in Pomerania, which was to become the Charlemagne Brigade depot. Individual transfers from Wehrmacht units were to continue to arrive right until the Charlemagne left for the front.

Once it had been assembled, the Brigade was moved to Wildflecken Camp in Franconia, 90km northeast of Frankfurt-am-Main and about 900m high in the Rhön massif, where the first companies detrained on 28 October, replacing elements of the SS-Wallonien and Hitler-Jugend Divisions.

Then, on 5 November, a reinforcement of 1,500 Miliciens arrived from France to be absorbed into the Brigade. They were not generally welcome. The Milice Français had been created by Premier Pierre Laval on 31 January 1943 as his own private police force, with Joseph Darnand as its Inspector General. Then on 2 June, the Franc Garde wing of the Milice was created for police and security tasks in the Unoccupied Zone under the command of Major Jean de Vaugelas, but remained unarmed until November, during which time several members were assassinated by members of the Resistance. Discussions with the SS led to an agreement whereby, in exchange for the provision of light weapons, the Milice would encourage enlistment in the Waffen-SS. Some 200 Miliciens then joined the Waffen-SS, including Henri Fenet, who was later to play a prominent role in the Charlemagne.

On 27 January 1944, the Milice was given permission to recruit in the Occupied Zone, and Jean Bassompierre and François Gaucher were recalled from the LVF on the Eastern Front to become inspectors in this organisation. The strength of the Milice rose in mid-1944 to 30,000, of which 10–12,000 were members of the Franc Garde active in the rounding up of Jews and assisting the German troops against the Resistance in what was virtually a civil war, gaining the Miliciens a reputation for assassination of political opponents, brutality and torture.

By August 1944, with Paris liberated and much of France under Allied control, the Milice and their families had to flee. Darnand led convoys of them, running the gauntlet to the relative security of Lorraine, where 6,000 Miliciens and 4,000 of their dependants gathered before moving on to Germany. Of these, 1,500 Miliciens opted to join the Charlemagne, while Darnand took most of the remainder to fight against the partisans in northern Italy. Those that did get through paid a heavy price: 76 were executed by firing squad in the Grand Bornand following a peremptory trial by their compatriots on 24 August. Consequently, the absorption of the Miliciens into the Charlemagne was not an easy matter, as we shall see.

The formation of the Charlemagne as a Waffen-SS unit was allocated to SS-Major-General Dr Gustav Krukenberg. Born on 8 March 1888 in Bonn, Krukenberg had ended the First World War as a young second-lieutenant attached to the General Headquarters at Spa with Kaiser Wilhelm II. Between the wars he lived more than five years in Paris, where he had formed several relationships in journalist and diplomatic circles, and came to understand the French mentality particularly well. From Paris he had moved to Berlin, where he worked as a legal adviser to an English firm in the chemical industry.

In 1939 Dr Krukenberg was mobilised in various headquarters in the rank of colonel of the reserve, his last position being with Wirtschaftstab Ost. He then spent time as chief-of-staff to the Vth SS-Mountain Corps in Yugoslavia. He was then transferred from the Army to the Waffen-SS as Inspector of SS Latvian formations and, after the invasion of Latvia by the Red Army in July 1944, he organised the defence of Dunaburg with these local forces with considerable success. On 24 September 1944, he was promoted to SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Waffen-SS, and assigned as Inspector of SS French formations.

In a memorandum prepared by him in 1958, Krukenberg recalled his tasks:

General Krukenberg then requested and obtained the approval of the High Command for the following points considered by him to be necessary:

Krukenberg wrote of the arrival of the Miliciens:

The senior French officer was still Colonel Puaud, who had expected to be appointed to the same rank as Krukenberg, but the Germans did not want to have a French SS-General among their ranks, and only accorded him the rank of SS-Oberführer (Brigadier). However, in an interview with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler at the SS Main office in Berlin, Puaud was given the following assurances:

The Vichy Government had been compulsorily removed to the German town of Sigmaringen on the Danube in August, causing both Marshal Pétain and Laval to refuse to continue to function in their roles. However, they had appointed Fernand de Brinon, who had been Vichy’s official Delegate in the Occupied Zone, to exercise his authority on behalf of the French citizens on German soil (POWs and workers) as head of the so-called French Governmental Delegation in Sigmaringen.

Krukenberg suspected that the French Governmental Delegation was considering fielding the Charlemagne on the Western Front, which would have been totally against the volunteers’ terms of enlistment. Krukenberg later wrote of Puaud that:

The OKW had forbidden the Inspector all contact with Sigmaringen. Should the need arise, contact would be conducted in either direction by the OKW. The SS Main Office alone remained competent on all questions of enrolment or assignment of volunteers and for all units formed from foreigners.

The unification of the various comprising units gave rise to much debate and friction as a consequence of the different aims of the volunteers in each of these units from the outset. The opposing views of the various political parties were fortunately more artificial than realistic and all these volunteers were agreed on the absolute necessity of the fight against Bolshevism.

The principal component remained the LVF, which had the distinction of having been first in battle. Purged by its long campaign in Russia, it no longer contained any of the doubtful elements or arrivistes of 1941–1942. The LVF, despite its revised appellation as Wehrmacht Grenadier-Regiment 638, regarded itself with pride as an exclusively French unit, part of the French Army, commanded in French by French officers under the French flag, representing France on the Russian Front according to the instructions of the legitimate head of the French state, Marshal Pétain.

As for Germany, it was for them their neighbour, and it is always best to get on well with one’s neighbours. In the face of a common danger, one must stand shoulder to shoulder, and since Germany found itself suddenly the sword and buckler of Europe against Bolshevism, it was natural to fight shoulder to shoulder with its soldiers. Should there be a German victory, France’s interests would have a say in the matter, and the LVF provided this possibility.

Many of the legionaries, some of whom had once been militants in the Communist Party and had followed Jacques Doriot when he broke away from it, agreed that it was preferable to take up the anti-Bolshevik fight openly as a soldier on the Russian steppes rather than on French territory against other Frenchmen, most of whom were as mistaken in their views as they themselves had been.

The remnants of the LVF and the SS-Sturmbrigade provided about 1,200 men each for the Charlemagne.

The Miliciens similarly regarded themselves as belonging to the National Revolution and loyal to the Marshal, but reproached the legionaires for having adopted German uniform and for deserting their primary duty to France. By this they meant directly combating those terrorists and guerrillas operating under communist direction in France, a task they primarily regarded as an interior matter to be settled among Frenchmen, and not one to be left to the German army of occupation.

On the subject of Franco-German relations, the Miliciens were animated by the same sentiments as the members of the LVF and their patriotism was certainly no less. At the same time it was their political origin that led them to regard the fight on French soil against the communist-led Francs-Tireurs et Partisans as far more important than that against the guerrillas of the Secret Army (l’Armée Secréte).

They did not have to be told of the importance of the fight on the Eastern Front and it should be noted that the original French members of the Waffen-SS were former Miliciens, a point that many members of the Charlemagne Brigade forgot when accusing them of being latecomers!

The 1,500 volunteers coming from the German Navy had little in common with the others save taking orders in German. For the rest, they were far less idealistic than any in the other formations.

There were also about 1,000 volunteers each from the NSKK (National Socialist Transportation Corps) and the Organisation Todt construction corps.

The invasion of France by the Western Allies dried up the source of new volunteers, condemning the various units already in existence to a more or less rapid but certain thinning out. But a major French formation was to remain on the anti-Bolshevist front right until the end of the conflict.

The French Waffen-SS was to produce a new type of combatant, young and fanatical, most of whom, not having served in any other army, could be typified as the ‘European Soldier’. They were like brothers to the other European soldiers of the Waffen-SS. They were no longer just Frenchmen, as the others were no longer just Danes, Letts, Germans or Belgians. More amenable than the older men to German military instruction, they were commanded in German, manoeuvred in German and sang in German, all things appearing somewhat scandalous to the Brigade’s original volunteers, but was this not the common language of the Axis forces in the European Army? Their symbol was no longer the Tricolore or the war flag with the swastika of the Greater German Reich, but the black flag with white runes of the Waffen-SS.

The founding of a large combat-ready unit with this variety of components posed some difficult problems for SS-Major-General Krukenberg and Waffen-Oberführer Puaud to resolve. But the fusion of these elements under the Waffen-SS cloak, which was at that time the subject of an incredible number of reservations, scruples or criticisms by the parties concerned, appears to have been the only practical and sustainable solution. In 1944 the Waffen-SS was, much more than the strictly German Wehrmacht, the true upholder of the European concept, and the only place for non-German Eurpeans was in its ranks.

Krukenberg was fortunate to have SS-Standartenführer (Colonel) Walter Zimmermann as the officer responsible for training. Born on 1 October 1897 at Meissen in Saxony, and a former member of the ‘Black Reichswehr’, Zimmermann had joined the new Wehrmacht in 1935, from where he transferred to an engineer battalion of the Waffen-SS at Dresden. He too had been attached to the Vth SS-Mountain Corps, in which he had served as Chief of Engineers. He soon became the most popular of the German officers through his tact and knowledge of Parisian slang. His capacities were stretched even further and he was to prove himself in Pomerania.

The Inspectorate headquarters, completely German, supervised the Brigade’s headquarters, which was entirely French, until it became the Divisional headquarters at the front in February 1945.

At first the Brigade at Wildflecken was commanded as follows:

Soon after their arrival at Wildflecken, as a result of their French Army qualifications the senior Milice Française officers obtained the main command posts within the Brigade. There was considerable upheaval among the officers at this stage, and during February 1945. A total of fifteen officers, including Lieutenant Coutray, a friend of Darnard, were returned to France for various reasons.

To everyone’s surprise Major Bridoux suddenly resigned and left the Brigade at the beginning of December 1944 following a visit by his father, General Bridoux, the Vichy Minister of War. Before leaving, he tried to encourage other officers to follow his example. His departure suited Brigadier Puaud, who saw him as a potential rival for command of the Charlemagne, and tried to camouflage Major Bridoux’s departure as leave. Indeed, some of the Waffen-SS liaison staff would have liked to have seen Bridoux in command. His upright character had not only made him many friends, but he was held in high esteem by the Germans, to whom he would recite extracts from Hindenburg’s memoirs.

Then Major Paul-Marie Gamory-Dubourdeau, a former lieutenant-colonel in the French Army, was posted to the SS Main Office to head the French Department under SS-General Berger, and the two vacant regimental commands were taken over by Captains Victor de Bourmont and Emile Raybaud.

De Bourmont, a captain serving with the Tirailleurs Algériens, a prisoner of war released after volunteering for service in Syria, but too late for action, had then commanded the Milice in Lyon. Straightforward, reasonable and well-loved by his men, he was given command of the 57th Regiment of former SS men but, in contrast to de Vaugelas, Raybaud and Boudet-Gheusi, was not promoted Major until going to the front.

Raybaud, born in 1910, formerly an officer with the Chasseurs Alpins, who had served with the Milice at Limousin, a particularly devoted and courageous officer, was given command of the 58th Regiment of former LVF personnel.

Captain Jean de Vaugelas, born in 1915, a French Air Force captain in 1940, commander of the 2nd Cohort of the Milice at Glières in the Limousin, became Brigade chief-of-staff.

Captain Monneuse, former chief of the 5th Cohort of the Milice at Dijon, a 50-year-old of little military appearance, but patriotic, honest and courageous and with a good military grounding, was given command of the 1st Battalion of the 58th.

Then the Milice officers Captain de Bourmont and Bassompierre (an earlier transfer from the LVF to the Milice) were sent on a battalion commanders’ course. In all the Miliciens received a good number of command posts, in particular that of Captain de Vaugelas as chief-of-staff to the Brigade.

During the harsh winter of 1944–1945, while the grenadiers trained under the difficult conditions imposed by the cold, snow, sparse rations and lack of clothing and equipment, the future specialists were trained at the Waffen-SS special military schools.

The Charlemagne sent two batches of candidates to the officer-cadet school at Neweklau. Some thirty potential officers, mainly LVF, went from Saalesch, while others went direct from their officers’ prisoner-of-war camp. The course lasted three terms, and concentrated on the training of leaders and directing small units on exercise as Panzergrenadiers, using captured Russian T-34 tanks to work with. It also focused on the training of platoon and even company commanders and dealing with tactical problems.

Then in December 1944, a group mainly consisting of former Miliciens plus some former LVF that had already attended the first part of the course either at Deba or at Greifenberg attended just the second part of the Neweklau course. Several old firebrands from the LVF like Walter, Vincenot and Bellanger joined this course voluntarily, not wanting to go back to basic training after two or three years combat experience in Russia. Several of these individuals were to lead companies in Pomerania.

Selected candidates then took an examination at the end of six months. Elimination of unsuitable candidates took place particularly during the second term, and the 200 that had started in December were reduced to 50 by the end of March. ‘Returns to unit’ took place every fortnight, those concerned retaining their ranks and even being eligible for promotion to higher noncommissioned rank.

Conditions at the school were tough, to say the least. Few armies would have subjected their officer-cadets to such rough conditions. There was no heating in the abandoned Czech village, so one was entitled to flap one’s arms once every half hour to warm up. For lack of hot water, the cadets shaved themselves with their morning coffee. They were always hungry, and in order to study at night in their rooms, they had to fashion candles out of boot polish.

Vigour, authority and responsibility were the order of the day. The instructors repeated: ‘You can leave when you want; the door is open. We are not holding back anybody!’ And it was true. ‘We always had the choice,’ wrote one of the candidates, ‘but they were even more demanding once we had decided to continue.’

The candidates were woken up for exercises up to four times a night, and weapon handling took place in temperatures of -15 and -20 °C. But in this selection of an elite, the instructors never had to resort to bullying. Having made an assessment of the fighting on all the fronts, they said: ‘Now it is clear that the war is technically lost, but we continue to be confident. Those who want to go can leave!’

The course finished at the end of March 1945. Some twenty to thirty Frenchmen were classified for promotion to second-lieutenant, but continued to wear the rank badges of officer-cadets, presumably remaining under probation. However, they were unable to rejoin the Division immediately and were first distributed among various units of the Regiment remaining behind, bringing them fresh blood. For three weeks their task was to bolster up the spirits of the young grenadiers demoralised by the fighting in Pomerania. They succeeded marvellously and without them the fighting in Berlin, where many of them were later to fall, would not have been possible.

The school was finally disbanded on 9 April and, apart from a small number sent to the depot at Wildflecken, the students returned to the units in Mecklenburg, where they arrived on 14th.

Meanwhile, those detailed for the specialist tasks within the division were dispersed to courses run at Josefstadt for gunners, Lissa for infantry gunners, Brunschau for engineers, Janowitz-Beneschau for anti-tank and self-propelled gun crews, Sterzing (Viptino) for signallers, Göttingen for mounted troops, Stettin for medical-aid men, Berlin for vehicle mechanics, Oranienburg for interpreters and Breslau for clerks. The last course at Breslau for company-quartermaster-sergeants was unfortunate, as the city was cut off by the Soviets while they were still undergoing their training and they were obliged to take part in the defence.

The Brigade’s only fully trained unit was the flak battery, which had been transferred intact from the SS-French Storm Brigade and was sent off on 3 January 1945 to deploy in defence of the little town of Fulda, a frequent target for Anglo-American air raids. This unit of about 150 men had been designated the Storm Brigade’s Flak Battery and was placed under the command of Captain Maudhuit, a veteran of the First World War, at Neweklau in Czechoslovakia. It contained several other former French Army officers in the current rank of sergeant-major, including Croisille, Crespin, Roy, the Count Foulques de Larentie and the Marquis de Tolosan, a former air attaché in Brussels.

Fayard, an officer-cadet fresh from the Bad Tölz SS School, was then attached to Captain Maudhuit and took over the training. Then Maudhuit was transferred and Sergeant-Major Guignot, a former captain in the Foreign Legion, took over the battery.

However, there were no proper facilities at Neweklau for training the battery, so on 25 April 1944, the unit entrained for Munich, where it was accommodated in the ultra-modern barracks of the SS-Das Reich Panzer Division. Three days later it received its official title as the SS-Französische Flak-Batterie, the only French unit to bear the title of SS, as opposed to Waffen.

Paradoxically, the 3rd Company that provided the Flak nucleus was a kind of disciplinary unit containing the hotheads whose behaviour while on leave in France had led to complaints to the German Military Administration.

At Munich it conducted its training alongside German troops, while the three platoon commanders, Fayard, who was to replace Guignot in the August, Ouvre and Mary attended a platoon commanders’ course elsewhere. The battery also took an active and successful part in the defence of the city and their own barracks against the Anglo-American bombers.

After three month’s training, on 28 July, the battery was issued with new uniforms and entrained for Bruss in the Danzig Corridor, where it was issued with its complete establishment of nine 37mm guns, arms, ammunition and vehicles. It then moved to Saalesch, and Officer-Cadet Fayard, soon to be promoted to second-lieutenant, took over the battery, which began training up to 10 hours a day.

Then, on 31 October, the battery entrained for Wildflecken Camp to join the Charlemagne Brigade. Some two months later, on 3 January 1945, being considered the only unit of the Brigade fit for combat, the Flak Battery was detached in defence of the little town of Fulda, a frequent target of Anglo-American air raids.

With the Greifenberg Depot under the command of Swiss SS-Major Hersche coming under threat from the Russian advance, it was obliged to move to Wildflecken. The Depot units consisted of the 1st Training Company under SS-Second-Lieutenant Schüler, the Depot Company under SS-Lieutenant Allgeier and the Recruit Company under Lieutenant Crespin. Having dispensed with about 250 undesirable or dubious characters, the Depot now amounted to about 400 men.

According to one of the instructors, the value of those elements trained at Greinfenberg was very mediocre. They were good at drill, but were not much use on the ground, not knowing how to conceal themselves or to spread out, and they also lacked firing training.

On 23 January 1945, all these depot elements were formed into a field replacement battalion under Captain Michel Bisiau, which eventually arrived to reinforce the Division at Körlin on 3 March. The final establishment of the Charlemagne Division was as follows:

Divisional Units (engineers, signals, supply, etc. with the serial number 57):

Each regiment consisted of:

HQ Company with:-

HQ Staff

– Reconnaissance Platoon

– Pioneer Platoon

– Signals Platoon

3 x Rifle Companies, each of 144 men:-

– HQ Platoon

– 3 x Rifle Platoons (each of 3 sections)

– 1 Heavy Machine Gun Section

Tank Hunting Company:-

– 50mm Pak Platoon

– Panzerschreck Platoon

– Panzerfaust Platoon

Infantry Gun Company:-

– HQ Platoon

– Heavy Platoon (2 x 150mm guns)

– 3 x Light Platoons (each of 2 x 75mm guns (short-barrelled))

3 x Rifle Companies, each of 144 men and:-

– HQ Platoon

– 3 x Rifle Platoons (each of 3 sections)

– 1 Heavy Machine Gun Section

Heavy Weapons Company of 170 men:-

– HQ Platoon

– 2 x Mortar Platoons (4 x 80mm each)

– 3 x Heavy Machine Gun Platoons (4 x HMG each)

The Tank Hunting Battalion consisted of:-

– 1 x Heavy Company (75mm Pak)

– 1 x Flak Company (9 x 37mm)

– 1 x Assault Gun Company

– 1 x Infantry Escort Company

Each of the Artillery Regiment’s batteries had 4 x 105mm guns.

Theoretically, the Brigade’s fire-power was quite considerable, but in fact it was to be sent into action without its artillery and armoured vehicles, being thus deprived of 12 x 105mm pieces and 14 light tank-hunting Czech-built Hetzer tanks with 75mm guns.

The troop establishment was satisfactory, but that of the battalion and regimental headquarters less so, because of the lack of sufficient qualified technical personnel. There was a dearth of officers and, upon departure for the front, each of the regiments was only commanded by a captain, several companies by a WO I or II, and several platoons by a sergeant. The Charlemagne, now officially rated as a Division, consisted of 102 officers, 886 noncommissioned officers and 5,375 men, a total strength of 6,363 all ranks.

The command structures of the Inspectorate, Brigade, Regiments and Battalions with the names of the officers concerned prior to departure is given at Annex B.