1st Cossack Cavalry Division | |
---|---|
German: 1. Kosaken-Kavallerie-Division | |
Active | 1943–45 |
Country | Nazi Germany |
Branch | Wehrmacht Waffen-SS |
Type | Cavalry |
Role | Bandenbekämpfung Maneuver warfare Raiding |
Size | 25,000 troops |
Part of | XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps |
Engagements | World War II |
Commanders | |
Notable commanders | Helmuth von Pannwitz |
Insignia | |
Identification symbol |
The 1st Cossack Cavalry Division (German : 1. Kosaken-Kavallerie-Division) was a Cossack division of the German Army that served during World War II. It was created on the Eastern Front mostly with Don Cossacks already serving in the Wehrmacht, those who escaped from the advancing Red Army and Soviet POWs. In 1944, the division was transferred to the Waffen SS, becoming part of the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps, established in February 1945. At the end of the war, the unit ceased to exist.
It was one of two cossack cavalry divisions, the other being the 2nd Cossack Cavalry Division. [1] : 189
Adolf Hitler authorised the formation of the division on 6 April 1943, ordering that all Cossacks serving in the Wehrmacht to be concentrated into the division. [2]
The division was formed and trained at Mielau (Mława) in the spring-summer of 1943. [3] The Cossacks brought their wives and children with them, forcing the Germans to establish another camp to house the dependents. [4]
The division was formed starting 4 August 1943 by merging the Platow and von Jungschulz Cossack regiments under the command of the Reiterverband Pannwitz, which had all existed since 1942. To these, additional new regiments were added. [5] Some other units brought in were the Cossack Reconnaissance Battalion, led by Don Cossack Nikolai Nazarenko, the Cossack detachment of 600 led by Ivan Kononov, also a Don Cossack, and a force of Terek Cossacks led by ataman Nikolai Kulakkov of the Terek host. [3]
Many of the German officers were Baltic German émigrés who possessed the necessary knowledge of Russian. [6]
However, owing to a shortage of officers with the necessary Russian language skills, the Wehrmacht was forced to relax its policy against accepting émigré officers, and a number of Cossack émigré officers living in Yugoslavia, France, Germany and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (modern Czechia) were recruited into the division. [4] Other officers were the sons of Cossack émigrés who had served in the armies of France, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria before the war. [4] A disproportionate number of the German officers were cavalrymen, and Austrians were over-represented as it was felt that Austrians were more "tactful" in dealing with Slavs than the Prussians. [6]
Initially organized to fight the Red Army in southern Russia, the division was soon deployed to the puppet Independent State of Croatia, where they were placed under the command of the Second Panzer Army and were used to protect the railroad line from Austria through Zagreb to Belgrade. Some units were also used to fight Partisans. [7]
The division's first fighting engagement was on 12 October 1943, when it was dispatched against Yugoslav Partisans in the Fruška Gora Mountains. In the operation the Cossacks, aided by 15 tanks and one armored car, captured the village of Beocin, a Partisan HQ. In that operation many villages were burned, including a monastery on Fruška Gora, and around 300 innocent Serbian villagers were killed. Subsequently, the unit was used to protect the Zagreb-Belgrade railroad and the Sava Valley. Several regiments of the division took part in security warfare (Bandenbekämpfung) and guarded the Sarajevo railroad. As part of a wide security sweep, Napfkuchen, the Cossack division was transferred to Croatia, where it fought against Yugoslav Partisans and the Soviet Army in 1944-1945. [8]
The Cossacks felt closer to this Serbian minority in NDH than they did to the Croatian people. Due to the Cossack identification with the Serbian cause, the Cossacks concluded an unofficial truce with Tito’s rival, the royalist Serbian resistance leader, General Dragoljub Mihailović, who regarded Tito and the Ustaše as a more serious enemy than the Germans. [9]
In Croatia the division quickly established a reputation for undisciplined and ruthless behavior, not only towards the partisans but also the civilian population, prompting Croatian authorities to complain to the Germans and finally to Adolf Hitler himself. Besides raping women, killing people and plundering and burning towns suspected of harboring partisans and their supporters, the division used telegraph poles along the railroad tracks for mass hangings as a warning to the partisans and others. Although the behavior of the Cossacks was not as ruthless as portrayed by Partisan propaganda, nevertheless during its first two months of deployment in Croatia, special divisional courts-martial imposed at least 20 death sentences in each of the four regiments for related crimes. [10]
The Cossacks' first engagement against the Red Army occurred in December 1944 near Pitomača. The fighting resulted in Soviet withdrawal from the area. [11]
In December 1944 the 1st Cossack Division was transferred to the Waffen-SS and reorganized by the SS Führungshauptamt. Until 30 April 1945, together with the 2nd Cossack Division it became part of the newly formed XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps. [5]
At the end of the war Cossacks of the division retreated into Austria and surrendered to British troops. They were promised safety by the British but were subsequently forcibly transferred to the USSR. [12] The majority of those who did not manage to escape went to labour camps in the Gulag. The German and Cossack leadership were tried, sentenced to death and executed in Moscow in early 1947. The remaining officers and other ranks who survived the labour camps were released after Stalin's death in 1953. [13]
In 1944 the division was composed of the following units: [14]
Kuban Cossacks, or Kubanians, are Cossacks who live in the Kuban region of Russia. Most of the Kuban Cossacks are descendants of different major groups of Cossacks who were re-settled to the western Northern Caucasus in the late 18th century. The western part of the region was settled by the Black Sea Cossack Host who were originally the Zaporozhian Cossacks of Ukraine, from 1792. The eastern and southeastern part of the host was previously administered by the Khopyour and Kuban regiments of the Caucasus Line Cossack Host and Don Cossacks, who were re-settled from the Don from 1777.
The 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg was a German mountain infantry division of the Waffen-SS, the armed wing of the German Nazi Party that served alongside, but was never formally part of, the Wehrmacht during World War II. At the post-war Nuremberg trials, the Waffen-SS was declared to be a criminal organisation due to its major involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar was a mountain infantry division of the Waffen-SS, an armed branch of the German Nazi Party that served alongside but was never formally part of the Wehrmacht during World War II. At the post-war Nuremberg trials, the Waffen-SS was declared to be a criminal organisation due to its major involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity. From March to December 1944, the division fought a counter-insurgency campaign against communist-led Yugoslav Partisan resistance forces in the Independent State of Croatia, a fascist puppet state of Germany that encompassed almost all of modern-day Croatia, all of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, and parts of Serbia.
The 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen", initially named the SS-Volunteer Division Prinz Eugen, was a mountain infantry division of the Waffen-SS, an armed branch of the German Nazi Party that served alongside but was never formally part of the Wehrmacht during World War II. At the post-war Nuremberg trials, the Waffen-SS was declared to be a criminal organisation due to its major involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity. From 1942 to 1945, the division fought a counter-insurgency campaign against communist-led Yugoslav Partisan resistance forces in occupied Yugoslavia. It was formed in 1941 from both Reich Germans and Volksdeutsche – ethnic German volunteers and conscripts from the Banat, Independent State of Croatia, Hungary and Romania. The division surrendered on 11 May 1945 to Yugoslav Partisan forces, with thousands of stragglers surrendering by the 15th near the Austrian border.
Helmuth von Pannwitz was a German general who was a cavalry officer during the First and the Second World Wars. Later he became a Lieutenant General of the Wehrmacht, a SS-Gruppenführer of the Waffen-SS, and Feldataman of the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps. In 1947 he was tried for war crimes under Ukaz 43 by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union, sentenced to death on 16 January 1947 and executed in Lefortovo Prison the same day. He was rehabilitated by a military prosecutor in Moscow in April 1996. In June 2001, however, the reversal of the conviction of Pannwitz was overturned and his conviction was reinstated.
The Serbian Volunteer Corps, also known as Ljotićevci, was the paramilitary branch of the fascist political organisation Zbor, and collaborated with the forces of Nazi Germany in the German-occupied territory of Serbia during World War II.
Artur Gustav Martin Phleps was an Austro-Hungarian, Romanian and Nazi German army officer who held the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS in the Waffen-SS during World War II. An Austro-Hungarian Army officer before and during World War I, Phleps specialised in mountain warfare and logistics, and had been promoted to Oberstleutnant by the end of the war. During the interwar period he joined the Romanian Army, reaching the rank of General de divizie, and also became an adviser to King Carol. After he spoke out against the government, he was sidelined and asked to be dismissed from the army.
The Russian Protective Corps was an armed force composed of anti-communist White Russian émigrés that was raised in the German occupied territory of Serbia during World War II. Commanded for almost its whole existence by Lieutenant General Boris Shteifon, it served primarily as a guard force for factories and mines between late 1941 and early 1944, initially as the "Separate Russian Corps" then Russian Factory Protective Group. It was incorporated into the Wehrmacht on 1 December 1942 and later clashed with the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and briefly with the Chetniks. In late 1944, it fought against the Red Army during the Belgrade Offensive, later withdrawing to Bosnia and Slovenia as the German forces retreated from Yugoslavia and Greece. After Shteifon′s death in Zagreb, the Independent State of Croatia, on 30 April 1945, Russian Colonel Anatoly Rogozhin took over and led his troops farther north to surrender to the British in southern Austria. Unlike most other Russian formations that fought for Nazi Germany, Rogozhin and his men, who were not formally treated as Soviet citizens, were exempt from forced repatriation to the Soviet Union and were eventually set free and allowed to resettle in the West.
The XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps was a World War II cavalry corps of the Waffen-SS, the armed wing of the German Nazi Party, primarily recruited from Cossacks.
The 23rd Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Kama was a German mountain infantry division of the Waffen-SS, the armed wing of the German Nazi Party that served alongside but was never formally part of the Wehrmacht during World War II. At the post-war Nuremberg trials, the Waffen-SS was declared to be a criminal organisation due to its major involvement in war crimes and crimes against humanity. The division was composed of German officers and Bosnian Muslim soldiers. Named Kama after a small dagger used by Balkan shepherds, it was one of the thirty-eight divisions fielded by the Waffen-SS during World War II. Formed on 19 June 1944, it was built around a cadre from the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar but did not reach its full strength and never saw action as a formation.
The 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS(1st Belarusian), originally called the 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS , was a short-lived German Waffen-SS infantry division formed largely from Belarusian, Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian personnel of the Schutzmannschaft-Brigade Siegling in August 1944 at Warsaw in the General Government.
Army Group E was a German Army Group active during World War II.
The 369th (Croatian) Reinforced Infantry Regiment was a regiment of the German Army raised to fight on the Eastern Front during World War II. The regiment was formed in July 1941 by Croatian volunteers from the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), including a Bosnian Muslim battalion. It was commonly referred to as the Croatian Legion. The troops swore a joint oath of allegiance to the Führer, the Poglavnik, the German Reich and the NDH. The unit was sent to the Russian front, where it was attached to the 100th Jäger Division. It was the only non-German unit to participate in the battle of Stalingrad as part of the 6th Army, where it was destroyed. On 31 January 1943, the 800 surviving Croatian legionaries, led by their commander Marko Mesić, surrendered to the Soviet Red Army.
The 369th (Croatian) Infantry Division was a legionary division of the German Army (Wehrmacht) during World War II.
The 373rd (Croatian) Infantry Division was a division of the German Army during World War II. It was formed in June 1943 using a brigade from the Home Guard of the Independent State of Croatia with the addition of a German cadre. The division was commanded by Germans down to battalion and even company level in nearly all cases, and was commonly referred to as a "legionnaire division". Originally formed with the intention of service on the Eastern Front, it was used instead for anti-Partisan operations in the territory of the NDH until the end of the war. It fought mainly in the western areas of the NDH, and was involved in the attempt to kill or capture the leader of the Partisans, Josip Broz Tito, in May 1944. Severely depleted by desertion, the division withdrew towards the Reich border in the early months of 1945, eventually surrendering to the Partisans on 10 May 1945 near Brežice in modern-day Slovenia.
The Hadžiefendić Legion or Muslim Legion was a Bosniak self-defence militia and Croatian Home Guard unit based in the predominantly Muslim Tuzla region of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during World War II. The brigade–sized force was formally a "Volunteer Home Guard Regiment", and was raised in late December 1941 under the command of the former Royal Yugoslav Army reservist Major Muhamed Hadžiefendić, who had been commissioned into the Croatian Home Guard. By the end of the year, the Legion had commenced forming battalions in six towns in northeastern Bosnia.
Among the approximately one million foreign volunteers and conscripts who served in the Wehrmacht during World War II were ethnic Belgians, Czechs, Dutch, Finns, Danes, French, Hungarians, Norwegians, Poles, Portuguese, Swedes, Swiss along with people from Great Britain, Ireland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Balkans. At least 47,000 Spaniards served in the Blue Division.
Nikolai Grigorievich Nazarenko was a Don Cossack emigre leader who served as president of the World Federation of the Cossack National Liberation Movement of Cossackia and the Cossack American Republican National Federation.
Vyacheslav Grigoryevich Naumenko was a Kuban Cossack leader and historian.
The 2nd Cossack Cavalry Division was a short-lived cavalry division of Nazi Germany's Waffen-SS during World War II. The division existed from November 1944 until May 1945. It was one of two Waffen-SS Cossack divisions, along with the 1st Cossack Cavalry Division.