Third Battle of Kharkov:ϟϟ-Panzergrenadier-Division „Leibstandarte ϟϟ“

SS-Standartenführer Fritz Witt with fellow Leibstandarte officers

Battlefield portrait of SS-Unterscharführer Paul Klose

On March 14 1943, German radio interrupted its normal broadcasts with a fanfare from the Horst Wessel song, and announced that Waffen-SS troops had recaptured the Ukrainian city of Kharkov. The five-day battle to win control of the Soviet Union's fourth-largest city was the culmination of a two-month campaign by the Wehrmacht's Army Group South to turn back the advancing Red Army after the destruction of the German 6th Army at Stalingrad. Top image: SS-Standartenführer and commander of SS-Panzer-Grenadier-Regiment 1 of the Leibstandarte SS Fritz Witt puts a combat mission to his subordinates in Peresechnaya in the Kharkov region in March 1943. Also seen in the picture is the commander of the 1.SS-Reconnaissance Battalion SS-Obersturmbannführer Kurt Meyer and the commander of the 1.Battalion of SS-Panzer-Regiment 1 SS-Sturmbannführer Max Wünsche. Credit: Bekors. Commons: Bundesarchiv. Bottom image: in a series of photographs taken in Kharkov after the fighting was over in the sector, while mopping-up was still under way down the street, a SS-Kriegsberichter and film camera crew arrived to shoot some footage. The pictures show SS-Unterscharführer Paul Klose, a platoon leader in Leibstandarte SS who led his men into the assault of the Maidan Dzerzhynskoho, known to the Germans as the Red Square. He and his men may well have shared a laugh over the strangeness of the day. One minute they were involved in a life and death struggle with flesh and blood enemy and the next moment a camera-man is filming a sham battle. However, Klose was a genuine combat veteran and had just finished leading his men in real fighting. In these pictures, Klose is back in character, with a grenade in his hand and a nonchalant look on his face, suitable for a hard-bitten veteran. Source: Platz der Leibstandarte. Credit: OTL. Commons: Bundesarchiv.