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| Carl Svensson as SS-Untersturmführer of SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers |
The SS-Kriegsberichters or SS War Correspondents who covered the war in the 1940´s were masters of their art. The images are like snapshots taken as the drama unfolds before their - and our - eyes. Historians owe them a deep dept of gratitude for having faithfully documented this historic struggle under enemy fire and in the most appalling conditions. In 1945, several months before the end of the war, an order issued by the RSHA, or Reichssicherheitshauptamt required that all photographic material of the Waffen-SS was to be destroyed. This order was quickly carried out and all the film negatives were burned. Oddly enough, many archival albums which contained the contact strips managed to somehow survive. Today all the surviving SS War Correspondent albums are safely stored in the German Federal Archives. Top image: the then SS-Hauptsturmführer d. R. der Waffen-SS and combat war correspondent Gunter d'Alquen eating with his driver during the opening days of the invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed
Operation Barbarossa. He was chief editor of the SS weekly
Das Schwarze Korps, the official newspaper of the Schutzstaffel. Photo by SS-Kriegsberichter Ernst Baumann. U.S. NARA. Middle image: rising through the ranks Gunter d'Alquen became SS-Standartenführer of the famed unit
SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers in 1943. Gunter d'Alquen died on May 15 1998 aged 88. Fair use. Bottom image: Swedish SS-Kriegsberichter Carl Stodenberg Svensson was posted to the
Leningrad front after graduation at
SS-Junkerschule Bad Tölz. There he received his promotion to SS-Untersturmführer in March 1943 and assumed command of a propaganda company composed of radio reporters, cameramen and journalists. Svensson, having previously specialized in radio propaganda, shadowed a Tiger tank crew for several days, something which he considered to have been his best reportage. He was promoted to SS-Obersturmführer on Nov. 3 1944. After having been released from his contract by Gunter d'Alquen during the last weeks of the war, Svensson travelled to København in Denmark where he destroyed his identity papers and pistol before boarding a flight to Malmö in Sweden on May 5 1945. Carl Svensson died on Jan. 17 1999 aged 83. Credit: Lars Larsson. Photo: Lars Larsson Archives. Fair use.
DÁlquen himself was a distinguished war reporter and served in the front lines. From 1948 until his release (during his time as a POW) he worked on propaganda tactics for the American CIA. He was fined DM 88,000 by the Berlin De-nazification court in the 1950s and deprived of all civic rights for a period of three years and debarred from drawing an allowance or pension from public funds. It is believed that these fines were indirectly paid for by the U.S. Government as part of their repatriation deal. DÁlquen was judged to have glorified the Waffen-SS and for having played an important role in the war propaganda. He was also banned from ever working in journalism.
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