ϟϟ-Division „Reich“

SS-Regiment (mot.) Der Führer

SS-Division Reich

During the invasion of the Soviet Union, the SS-Division Reich fought with Heeresgruppe Mitte, taking part in the Battle of Yelnya near Smolensk, and then in the spearhead to capture Moscow. The war in the Soviet Union was going well but the cost to the Waffen-SS was extreme. With the Soviet capital in sight of the division, weather, massive losses and a major Soviet Winter Counter-Offensive pushed the division back. The Soviet numerical advantage was considerable and the Red Army proved it could replace huge losses quickly. The first winter in Russia came as a shock to the Waffen-SS with night temperatures at times registered -50 °C. They had to strip the fallen for warm clothing. For the rest of the war in the Soviet Union, Waffen-SS and the Wehrmacht would be short of infantry and support services. The distinguished veteran of World War I, SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Waffen-SS Matthias Kleinheisterkamp assumed command of the Reich on January 1 1941 until April 1942, earning the Knight's Cross during his tenure. Later in the war, Kleinheisterkamp became a corps commander and achieved the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer before committing suicide on May 8 1945. In May 1942, Reich was renamed as SS-Division Das Reich. Top image: a reconnaissance patrol from the SS-Regiment Der Führer of the Reich with improvised winter camouflage clothing in the Rzhew sector in March 1942. Due to the high losses in the area of Rzhew suffered by the Red Army, the battles became known by veterans and historians as the "Rzhev Meat Grinder". c. Bundesarchiv. Bottom image: Grenadiers of the Reich in Jan. 1942. The harsh Russian winter in 1942 tested the strength and endurance of the Waffen-SS to the limit. c. Bundesarchiv.

ϟϟ-Division „Wiking“

10.Kompanie of SS-Regiment Germania

Waffen-SS catching a Soviet sniper in a country landscape

Heavy Soviet counterattacks during the winter meant that Heeresgruppe Süd had to fall back from Rostov-on-Don to defensive lines on the river Mius. The SS-Division Wiking fought a delaying action east of the River Mius from Dec. 1941 to July 1942. During this time, several parts of the division were sent to defend critical points on the front of the Army Group South especially to the west and north of Stalino, now Donetsk. It regularly provided good results from short and long range reconnaissance and Soviet POWs were continuously brought back from these operations. The Wiking, which consisted, in part, of volunteers from western and northern Europe - mostly former soldiers and anti-Communists - proved to be a first-class division on the Eastern Front and lend credence to the elite status of the early Waffen-SS. The Finnisches Freiwilligen-Bataillon der Waffen-SS was sent to the front at the beginning of Jan. 1942 where it was attached to SS-Regiment Nordland of the Wiking. About 1,400 men served in the Finnish Battalion. The officers of the Wiking demonstrated consistently good leadership and ensured that their artillerymen maintained a high level of proficiency, despite the challenges imposed by a campaign conducted at the end of a long supply line that forced batteries to ration the number of shells they fired each day. In spring 1942 the Wiking division received fresh recruits at its winter quarter along the Mius river in southern Ukraine. Top image: volunteers of SS-Regiment Germania of the Wiking departing on a train towards Soviet Union. Those young men - unbroken and ready to master whatever fate threw their way - faced a dark future. Each had to face it to the best of his ability and on his own. They were faithful and loyal, proud and brave. They were the volunteers of the Wiking. Credit: Julia Kotterias. FU. Bottom image: Waffen-SS soldiers capturing a well-hidden Russian sniper and drags him out of his hole while an officer stands ready with a German Stielhandgranate. The SS soldier on the left wears a Soviet padded telogreika or vatnik, a warm cotton wool-padded jacket. The feared sniper can only pray to come out of this alive. Photo was taken in 1942. Commons: Bundesarchiv.

ϟϟ-Division „Leibstandarte ϟϟ Adolf Hitler“

Soviet political commissar captured by men of the Leibstandarte SS

Leibstandarte SS officers and NCOs in Ukraine

Leibstandarte SS troops welcomed as liberators by Ukrainians

During Op. Barbarossa, the SS-Division Leibstandarte SS had penetrated 960 km into Soviet territory. It spent the winter 1941-42 fighting ferocious defensive battles on the front of Heeresgruppe Süd in temperatures of down to -40°C with minimal winter clothing and only 150 grams of rations per man per day. Despite this, the division held. After the spring rasputitsa had cleared, the exhausted division joined in Op. Case Blue, participating in the fighting to retake Rostov-on-Don, which was recaptured in late July 1942. Leibstandarte SS alone took over 10,000 Red Army POWs during the first assault on Rostov-on-Don. Many Ukrainians welcomed German troops as liberators and welcomed them with flowers or the traditional Ukrainian bread and salt of hospitality and friendship. In occupying Ukraine the Germans were particularly concerned to exploit the country's agriculture and raw materials for the war effort. Under such conditions Ukrainian political activity, predicated originally on cooperation with the Germans, increasingly turned to underground organizational work and resistance. Top image: a captured Soviet commissar who is most likely to be shot. The Commissar Order was an order issued by the German OKW on June 6 1941 before Barbarossa. It instructed the Wehrmacht that any Soviet Political Commissar identified among captured troops be summarily executed. These commissars were not to be recognized as soldiers. Photo by Leibstandarte war correspondent SS-KB Paul Augustin. Augustin served with the division from at least 1940 until March 1943. Middle image: officers and NCOs of the Leibstandarte SS during a lull in the fighting somewhere in Ukraine. The standing man is wearing the SS Palmenmuster smock whereas the others are wearing the well known Platanentarn smocks. Photo by Paul Augustin. Credit: Karl Mensburg. U.S. NARA. Bottom image: Leibstandarte SS greeted by a Ukrainian woman. The divisional insignia seen on the mudguard was a skeleton key, in honor of its commander Josef Sepp Dietrich. c. Bundesarchiv.

Second Battle of Kharkov and Soviet losses in the Spring of 1942

Red Army during the meat grinder offensives against the Wehrmacht 

Waffen-SS Radio operators in camo smocks with a Field Radio Fu.H.E.v.

Soldiers of the Leibstandarte SS collecting Soviet POW's in Ukraine

In May 1942, the Red Army started a drive against Kharkov. The Germans broke into the salient and the battle that followed was an overwhelming German victory, with 170,958 killed, missing or captured and 106,232 wounded Soviets troops compared to just 20,000 casualties for the Germans and their allies according to military historian David M. Glantz. The Soviet losses during the spring 1942 in the southern portion of the Eastern Front amounted to approximately 490,000 POWs, most of whom would die in captivity. By this time at least 4,000,000 Soviet troops had been killed, wounded, or captured. The Soviets’ reserves appeared to be inexhaustible, especially when the losses of the previous year were taken into consideration: Between Kiev and Moscow, they had lost 1,300,000 men captured and 9,000 artillery pieces and 2,000 armored vehicles lost or captured. The Germans was gathering POWs at a staggering rate. As one young SS grenadier wrote: No time to disarm them; a quick hands up, a gesture towards the west and we moved on again. For the Germans, Soviet POWs were expendable: they consumed calories needed by others and, unlike Western POWs, were considered to be subhuman. There's a story going around that the Leibstandarte SS killed 4,000 Soviet POWs in the Kherson Oblast in reprisal in August 1942. The story originally came from the Austrian prolific far-right author and former SS-Obersturmbannführer Erich Kernmayr. He wrote in the book Der große Rausch (1948), that after members of the Leibstandarte SS found the mutilated bodies of SS-Sturmmann Gehrken, Lippke, Steiner and Schwillinsky and SS-Schütze Mehnke and Ploetz together with 103 massacred Heer soldiers on August 18 1942, an order was received from divisional commander Josef Dietrich that no prisoners should be taken for three days after the discovery. This unconfirmed story was then repeated by authors Gerald Reitlinger (1956) and George H. Stein (1966) and has since been spread by authors like Sir Max Hastings and others. These allegations have been researched using war diaries but the allegations remain unproven. There has never been any accusations from Soviet authorities regarding this claim. Top image: Soviets in formation 1942-43 showing the ethnic diversity in the ranks. Photo by Belarusian photojournalist Boris Ignatovich. Credit: Dương Minh Trí. PD. Middle image: original Nazi era postcard of the Unsere Waffen-SS series 1942. Photo by SS-KB Wolfgang Wiesebach. Credit: Johannes Dorn. Source: Division Das Reich im Bild. Bottom image: LSSAH collecting POWs in Ukraine 1941-42. Photo by SS-KB Paul Augustin. Credit: Julius Backman. c. Bundesarchiv.

ϟϟ-Division „Das Reich“ and „Leibstandarte ϟϟ“ withdrawn to recover

Waffen-SS Panzertruppen transported on Reichsbahn railway

Waffen-SS troops on the Eastern Front

The front line divisions of the Waffen-SS that had suffered through the Soviet winter of 1941–1942 were withdrawn to recover (except for the SS-Division Wiking) and to be formed with a full regiment of tanks rather than only a battalion. The SS-Division Das Reich was pulled out of the fighting in the spring of 1942 and transferred to France for new formation and conversion into a SS-Panzergrenadier-Division and in November 1942, the division was retitled SS-Panzergrenadier-Division Das Reich. Severely understrength and completely exhausted, SS-Division Leibstandarte SS was pulled out of the line in August 1942 and spent the remainder of 1942 refitting as a SS-Panzergrenadier-Division in occupied France. They each received nine Tiger tanks, which were formed into the heavy panzer companies. Das Reich Division's manpower strength was 17,112 men and the Leibstandarte SS Division's manpower strength was 20,844 men in December 1942. Top image: screenshot showing SS Panzer troops on a transport train loaded with tanks and other military vehicles. The SS-Ostuf. to the left wears the Knight's Cross. He is one of the 457 men of the Waffen-SS who received the Knight's Cross during the war. The Ritterkreuz, and its variants were the highest awards in the military of Nazi Germany. Deutsche Wochenschau. Bottom image: SS grenadiers on the Eastern Front 1941-42. Credit: Flynn Harris. c. Bundesarchiv.

Waffen-SS Commander Felix Steiner's Foreign Volunteers and Conscripts

SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS Felix Steiner

Flemish volunteers of the Waffen-SS

In 1942, the Waffen-SS was further expanded and an increasing number of Western European volunteers and conscripted ethnic Germans, so-called Volksdeutsche, began entering the ranks. The officer and decorated combat veteran of WWI SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS Felix Steiner created a capable formation from these disparate elements. He had served in the anti-communist paramilitary Freikorps in the East Prussian city of Memel and in the German Reichswehr before joining the SS-Verfügungstruppe in 1935. Felix Steiner commanded the multinational SS-Division Wiking competently through the many battles in the east from 1941 until April 1943. SS-Division Wiking Division Command Post 22 January 1942. Combat leadership and treatment of personnel. More than any other formation, this Division must be careful to ensure that the treatment of its soldiers by the chain-of-command is handled in the correct manner. The most important consideration for enlightened treatment of personal is the tireless and continuing care of the superior for the well-being of his subordinates. He must reach the state where all of his subordinates have complete trust in him and know without a doubt that he is always their best comrade. In particular, platoon leaders and company commanders must always be near their men. They must be their men´s model and example, have their confidence in all manners and never be standoffish. The more sensible, conscientious and warmhearted the leadership of a unit is, the greater is its cohesiveness and fighting value. It is exactly in regard to our Nordic volunteers that this humane treatment of our forces appears to me to be of quite decisive importance. /signed/ SS-Gruppenführer Felix Steiner. Credit: Peter Straßner: European Volunteers. Top image: a formal studio portrait of SS-Gruf. Felix Steiner by Adolf Hitler's official photographer Heinrich Hoffmann. Hoffmann Postcards Knight Cross Holders Series R 201 - R 250. Bottom image: Flemish Waffen-SS volunteers during military training in order to fight against Bolshevism and Soviet supremacy in 1941. Photo by German press photographer Hanns Hubmann. Credit: Karl Mensburg. FU.

Europäische Freiwillige der Waffen-SS – ϟϟ-Division „Wiking“

Scandinavian Waffen-SS Volunteers

Dutch/Flemish SS-Infanterie-Regiment Westland

The SS-Division Wiking was well known not only for being a fierce and bitter fighting unit, but because a great number of its members were not German, but foreign volunteers. Danes, Dutch, Finns, Flemings, Norwegians, Swedes and Walloons made up the core of the division. One of the reasons the Wiking fought exclusively on the Eastern Front was the fact that its substantial minority of foreign volunteers - primarily from the Netherlands, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries - were enticed into German service by the promise of being able to fight Russian Bolshevism. Another reason for volunteering among the Nordic citizens was the urge many felt to help Finland in their war against the Soviets. Within a year of their home countries falling to the Germans in 1940, Belgian, Dutch and Scandinavian citizens volunteered to join the Waffen-SS and fight against dictator Joseph Stalin's Communist Soviet Union. By the end of the war tens of thousands had volunteered. Top screenshot is from a Norwegian newsreel showing Reserve battalion Holmestrand of the Norwegian SS Legion on June 14 1942 at the Royal Palace in Oslo. National Archives of Norway. Credit: Julius Backman Jääskeläinen. FU. Bottom image: Dutch and Flemish recruits to the Westland Regiment of the Wiking Division perform their morning exercises while undergoing training at a camp in München under the command of German SS-Obersturmbannführer Berthold Mack. The cult of the Germanic body was a central tenet of Nazi ideology, and physical exercise was taken seriously by the Waffen-SS. Certainly, it helped produce first-class troops able to withstand the physical rigors of campaign life. The photo was used in a poster in 1942 to recruit Dutch volunteers for the Westland. Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie. Public domain.

Axis Powers: Hungarian and Romanian Armies under Heeresgruppe Süd

3.Infanterie-Division (mot.) during Axis summer offensive Fall Blau

Royal Hungarian Second Army

Volunteers in one of the three Hungarian field armies 1942

On April 11 1942, the 209,000-man-strong Hungarian Second Army was assigned to the German Heeresgruppe Süd in Ukraine. In June 1942 the Second Army was divided between Heeresgruppe A and Heeresgruppe B for the offensive Case Blue, the Axis summer offensive. Their participation was noted by German observers for its particular cruelty, with occupied peoples subjected to arbitrary violence. Volunteers in the Hungarian Army were sometimes referred to as engaging in "murder tourism." In fall 1942, the Hungarian Second Army was deployed to protect the Italian Eighth Army's northern flank, between Novaya Pokrovka on the Don River and Rossosh, while German Sixth Army attacked Stalingrad. Hungarian Second Army, like other armies protecting the flanks of the Sixth Army, was annihilated in the Soviet counter-offensives of the winter of 1942-1943. Soviet forces drove through the Romanian Third Army and Romanian Fourth Army, trapping Sixth Army in Stalingrad. The Romanians committed more troops to the Eastern Front than all the other allies of the German Reich combined. Their troops were responsible for the persecution and massacre of up to 260,000 Jews in Romanian-controlled territories in Ukraine, Bessarabia and elsewhere. Credit: Wikipedia. Top image: a German medium tank, commonly known as the Panzer IV, moving through a burning village in Ukraine during the Axis summer offensive Case Blue in June or July 1942. Panzer IV n°324 belonged to the German 3rd Motorized Infantry Division. In mid-1942, the division was transferred to Heeresgruppe Süd to take part in the offensive Case Blue. It was ultimately caught up in the Battle of Stalingrad, where it was destroyed in the encirclement with the German 6th Army in Feb. 1943. Credit: Julius Jääskeläinen. c. Bundesarchiv. Middle image: Hungarian volunteers with a three-legged anti-aircraft gun mount (Schwarzlose) on Eastern Front in 1942. Photo by Hungarian Major Tamás Konok. Bottom image: Hungarian volunteers before the departure for the Don in 1942. Photo by Hungarian military officer Jenő Kókány. Credit: Ana-Maria Bujor. Fortepan. FU

ϟϟ-Freiwilligen-Legion „Norwegen“

Norwegian SS Volunteers during a inspection by Vidkun Quisling

Commander of DNL Legions-Sturmbannführer Arthur Qvist

SS-Freiwilligen-Legion Norwegen in the Leningrad oblast

The SS-Freiwilligen-Legion Norwegen or Den Norske Legion was a Norwegian voluntary formation of the Waffen-SS. It was initiated by the Minister President of Norway Vidkun Quisling and Reichskommisar to Norway Joseph Terboven on June 29 1941. Vidkun Quisling nominally headed the government of Norway during the occupation of the country by Nazi Germany during World War II. There were many arguments for volunteering. Strongest was most likely the desire to help to fight Bolshevism before it reached the borders of Scandinavia. The Legion was stationed at Krasnoye Selo near Pushkin in Northern Russia in February 1942. One of the fiercest battles of the unit was during the Battle of Urizk on April 22 1942. It was the most difficult portion of the front around Leningrad. While the Norwegians remarkably only lost three soldiers during this battle, the Soviets lost hundreds, which was most attributed to their tactics of the “human wave” and that their retreating soldiers were shot by their own political commissars. All troops who fled the battlefield were met with the machine guns of the Soviet Army’s Security troops. It is unlikely there were any survivors from the attack. The Legion Norwegen was disbanded in March 1943. Survivors who wanted to continue fighting were transferred to SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 23 Norge, one of the regiments of the then newly formed 11.SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Division Nordland. Top image: Vidkun Quisling pays a visit to the headquarters of SS-Gruppenführer Felix Steiner at the Ukrainian front in May 1942. Here, Quisling is seen inspecting Norwegian volunteers of the SS-Division Wiking. These men belonged to SS-Infanterie-Regiment Nordland which was composed of fellow Scandinavians. Quisling was charged with high treason after the war and executed by firing squad in Oslo on October 24 1945. Credit: Jussi Luostarinen. The National Archives of Norway. Clips: Commander of the Norwegian Legion, the Olympic horse rider Legions-Sturmbannführer Arthur Qvist visiting volunteers with a Norwegian government official at the Leningrad front in the summer of 1942. Qvist died aged 77 in 1973. The National Archives of Norway.

ϟϟ-Division „Wiking“ and Operation Edelweiß

Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler before Edelweiß began in 1942

Convoy of StuG.IIIs of StuG.Apt.210 during Edelweiß

After successfully holding the line over the winter of 1941–1942, SS-Division Wiking was ordered to participate in the recapture of Rostov-on-Don and advance into the Caucasus, securing the region's vital oilfields. The German plan to launch another great summer offensive crystallized in the early months of 1942. Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's decision was influenced by his economists, who told him that Germany could not continue the war unless it obtained petroleum supplies from the Caucasus. This attack was known as Operation Edelweiß, and formed a part of Heeresgruppe Süd's offensive Case Blue, aimed at capturing Stalingrad and the Baku oilfields. Launched at the height of summer, the offensive was unexpectedly successful. On July 1942, the first tank battalion of the Waffen-SS - SS-Panzer-Abteilung 5 of the Wiking Division - headed eastward towards Rostov on Don under the command of SS-Sturmbannführer Johannes Mühlenkamp. Their overall enthusiasm and pride in belonging to an esteemed branch of service, which they were helping to create within the ranks of the Waffen-SS, was palpable. Each of the tank companies had three line platoons with five tanks each, as well as a company headquarters section with two tanks. As with all of the other division vehicles, the tanks also bore the Wiking divisional tactical sign, the so-called Sonnenrad, a swastika with rounded corners. The veteran of the Panzer battalion "Wiking" SS-Sturmbannführer Ewald Klapdor later wrote: With understandable tension, we awaited the order “Panzer marsch.” The hatches were closed. Just like exercises conducted in the past few weeks, we rolled over the rise in the familiar W formation. Within six weeks, Rostov and the entire Don region had been recaptured, and Wiking was advancing deep into the Caucasus. Credit: Viking Panzers. Top image: Adolf Hitler watching a demonstration of military hardware before Op. Edelweiß. Also seen in the picture is Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel, SS-Oberführer der Allgemeinen SS Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ferdinand Porsche and Hitler's Ordonnanzoffizier the then SS-Hauptsturmführer Richard Schulze-Kossens. Photo by the Führer's private cameraman Oberleutnant Walter Frentz in the spring of 1942. FU. Bottom image: a convoy of StuG 3 assault guns of the Sturmgeschütz-Abteilung 210 heading towards the Caucasus in 1942. The photo is credited to Kriegsberichter Hilmar Pabel and was published in Signal Magazine in Sept. 1942. After the war, the photographer Pabel became very active in the Bavarian Red Cross, photographing close to 2,000 children in the effort to locate their parents and relatives. Later on he covered the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, and two photoessays he filed from the Vietnam War were widely praised. Credit: Facundo Filipe. Commons: Bundesarchiv.

ϟϟ-Division „Wiking“ and the Recapture of Rostov-on-Don

14.Panzer-Division west of Rostov-on-Don

SS-Division Wiking west of Rostov-on-Don

Flak 38 mounted on a half-track

On July 24 1942 German troops captured Rostov-on-Don and SS-Division Wiking rolled through the city, which was still in death throes, opening the Caucasus region of southern Soviet Union and the oil fields beyond at Maykop. It had been a daring but successful operation that had brought the fall of Rostov. The Soviets had expected an attack, but not the way it was conducted. The defenders were from the 18th and 56th Armies of the Soviet Union's Red Army. The Russians conducted a fighting withdrawal and avoiding giving the Germans the large bags of prisoners their more rigid defense had led to in 1941. The main German effort was a hook from the north by Generaloberst Ewald von Kleist's first Panzer group, with the 17th Army taking a more direct route at the city from the west. The outer hook got there first, and was led by the 14. and 22.Panzer-Divisions, joined soon after by the Wiking. Note that Wiking was already a Panzergrenadier division in effect at this point, as it had a 50+ tank panzer battalion plus a StuG battalion organic. A company of the tanks were Panzer IV longs, another III longs and another's worth were just Pz IIs. 14.Panzer-Division bypassed the city after the first day or two of the fighting, before it continued to its destiny at Stalingrad, 22.Panzer-Division was involved longer, before moving to the northern flank of Stalingrad, and Wiking was clearing it block by block for days. The 17th Army arrived in time to participate in the street fighting phase. The 100.Jäger-Division was one of its formations involved. The division got a reputation as street fighting experts there, and carried it to Stalingrad later in the campaign. The German assault had taken the Soviets completely by surprise. Credit: Battlefront Community. Top image: tankers of a Panzer III of the 14.Panzer-Division scan the horizon west of Rostov-on-Don early in the campaign in 1942. Photo by Kriegsberichter Schmidt-Geyer. Credit: Julius Backman. c. Bundesarchiv. Middle image: Wiking volunteers of the 9th platoon of the 8th company of the Germania before the recapture of Rostov-on-Don. Credit: Johannes Dorn. c. Bundesarchiv. Bottom image: troops part of Heeresgruppe Süd on a halftrack Sd.Kfz 10 with a 20mm anti-aircraft gun mounted on it in July 1942. c. Bundesarchiv.

Soviet Blocking Units and Penal Battalions in the Southern Sector

General Secretary of the communist Soviet Union Joseph Stalin

Soviet machine-gun Maxim with crew

European Waffen-SS Volunteers

During the first months of Barbarossa, Soviet Communist dictator Joseph Stalin issued the Stavka Directive No. 1919 concerning the creation of barrier troops in rifle divisions of the Southwestern Front, to suppress panic retreats. Each Red Army division was to have an anti-retreat detachment. Their primary goal was to maintain strict military discipline and to prevent disintegration of the front line by any means. These barrier troops were usually formed from ordinary military units and placed under NKVD command. On July 28 1942, Stavka Directive No. 227 established that each front must create one to three penal battalions, which were sent to the most dangerous sections of the front lines. From 1942 to 1945, a total of 422,700 Red Army personnel were sentenced to penal battalions. According to Russian military historian Grigori F. Krivosheev, very few of them survived the war. Anti-retreat detachments were used to prevent withdrawal or desertion by penal units as well. Order No. 227 also stipulated the capture or shooting of fleeing or retreating panicked front-line troops. Credit: Professor of International History Evan Mawdsley and author Robert W. Stephan. In 2011, historian Timothy D. Snyder summarised modern data made after the opening of the Soviet archives in the 1990s and states that Stalin's regime was responsible for 9 million deaths, with 6 million of these being deliberate killings. He further states the estimate is far lower than the estimates of 20 million or above which were made by other historians before him. Top image: Joseph Stalin in the Moscow Kremlin. Credit: Marina Amaral. Soviet Union propaganda photo. Public domain. Middle image: Soviet machine gun crew operating a Maxim gun in the Voronezh Oblast in September 1942. Credit: Georgiy Stanislavskiy. Public domain. Bottom image: three Waffen-SS grenadiers who previously received the Iron Cross Second Class. Some sources identifies the trio as a Swede and two Dutchmen of SS-Division Wiking. During the second half of 1942, the Wiking fought into and through the Caucasus region. Credit: Karl Mensburg. Commons: Bundesarchiv.