Fritz Christen, the First Enlisted Totenkopf to Win the Knight's Cross

Postkarte Unsere Waffen-SS

Anti-Tank Crew of the Totenkopf in the Novgorod Oblast

In the morning of September 24 1941, the then SS-Sturmmann Fritz Christen and his Anti-Tank Battery of the SS-Division Totenkopf were fighting Russian forces north of the village of Lushno north of Demyansk. They knocked out 6 of 15 attacking tanks. The next day Soviets repeated the attack, and Christen's gun took hit. All crew members were killed and Christen wounded. Moreover, gun's sight was destroyed. Christen, alone manning the 50mm Anti-tank gun without a sight, destroyed 7 incoming T-34 and holding the line. At night, he would sneak from his firing pit out to other gun sites and retrieve ammunition to continue his fight. When a counterattack by other Totenkopf troops three days later recaptured Lushno, they found Christen manning the Anti-tank gun alone. In front of his lone position 13 destroyed tanks and about 100 killed Red Army soldiers were found. Fritz Christen was awarded with the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler himself in Wolfsschanze, making him the first enlisted man in the Totenkopf to be given the honor. SS-Oberscharführer Fritz Christen was captured in May 1945 by American forces. The Americans turned the severely diminished 3.SS-Panzer-Division Totenkopf over to the Soviet Red Army. The senior officers were executed on the spot by the NKVD. The surviving remnants of the Totenkopf later died in Soviet Siberia. Only few of them survived captivity to return to Europe. Fritz Christen survived ten years in the Gulags and was released to return home in 1955. He died on September 23 1995 at his home in Neusorg in Bavaria. Top image: an original Nazi era propaganda postcard of the Unsere Waffen-SS series. According to various sources, it shows Fritz Christen when posing for SS-Kriegsberichter Ernst Baumann after his Knight's Cross recommendation in 1941. U.S. National Archives. Bottom image: Totenkopf soldiers in camouflage smocks firing from an anti-tank gun 37mm Pak.35/36 near Lake Ilmen in the Novgorod region. Photo by SS-KB Ernst Baumann during the Barbarossa campaign in 1941. Credit: Karl Mensburg. Commons: Bundesarchiv.