Facing Impossible Odds (Panzergrenadiers of the Waffen-SS)

SS-Untersturmführer Hans Bernhard

An unidentified SS-Panzergrenadier

Wounded or captured Waffen-SS men or other volunteers against the Soviet Union were usually summarily executed on sight. The SS-Panzergrenadiers had no illusions about their fate if taken prisoner. The Soviet atrocities carried out against surrendered elite troops were well known among the Waffen-SS. On several well-documented occasions their fallen comrades had been found bestially mutilated and murdered. The barbarization of warfare in the East made surrender not an option. The year 1944 was depressing, but the men of the Waffen-SS did not have any idea of the occurrences for which they would later be made liable. The volunteer of the Waffen-SS was often prepared to hold the line when reason and casualties might have suggested all was lost. They played a significant part in holding enemy attacks when all else had failed. Our will to fight, our moral will to fight, seemed bigger, and in general our success were bigger, the Leibstandarte officer Hans Bernhard recalled in a filmed interview for Zeitzeugenportal der Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur published in 2009. The soldiers of the [Waffen-SS] were to demonstrate – toughness, a determination to do one's duty no matter what the cost, a willingness to go to the limits of physical and mental endurance. Men like Bernhard and his comrades-in-arms made formidable opponents. He died aged 90 on October 2 2010. Left image: Ordonnanz-Offizier Hans Bernhard, pictured here as an SS-Untersturmführer in the SS-Artillerie-Regiment 1 Leibstandarte SS. He ended the war as an SS-Hauptsturmführer. Credit: Bekors. Private Collection. Right image: a photo of an unidentified SS-Panzergrenadier by SS-Kriegsberichter Max Büschel taken in Ukraine around new year 1944. Credit: Wehrmacht39. Commons Bundesarchiv.