SS Englander: The Amazing True Story of Hitler's British Nazis

By Eric Meyer

The incredible story of an Englishmen imprisoned in Germany at the outbreak of World War II, then forced to join the SS Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler by his one time fencing partner Reinhardt Heydrich. In 1944 he was given the task of assisting in the formation of the British Free Corps, a volunteer Waffen-SS Unit consisting mainly of British POW's and deserters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Swordworks Books
• Release date: Oct 11, 2010
• ISBN: 9781906512446

Eric Meyer

An internationally recognized expert on the subjects of HTML, CSS, and Web standards, Eric has been working on the web since late 1993. He is the founder of Complex Spiral Consulting, a co-founder of the microformats movement, and co-founder (with Jeffrey Zeldman) of An Event Apart, the design conference series for people who make web sites. Beginning in early 1994, Eric was the campus Web coordinator for Case Western Reserve University, where he authored a widely acclaimed series of three HTML tutorials and was project lead for the online version of the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History combined with the Dictionary of Cleveland Biography, the first example of an encyclopedia of urban history being fully and freely published on the Web.

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SS Englander

The Amazing True Story of Hitler's British Nazis

by

Eric Meyer

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY:

Swordworks Books

SS ENGLANDER

Copyright © 2010 by Eric Meyer

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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SS Englander

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

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SS Englander

FOREWORD

I first met the enigmatic Englishman at a militaria fair, held in Dusseldorf, where I happened to be on holiday at the time. I was looking at a Soviet PPSh sub-machine gun, complete with drum magazine, on sale for the bargain price of three hundred euros. Offers considered, of course. I said to my wife, ‘that’s a weapon with an amazing history, there must have been tens of thousands of these made, they were used in lots of different theatres of war, from Russia to French Indochina. I wonder what it would look like on the wall of my study.’ Another man was looking at the gun, studying it intensely, with a look of curiosity on his face. I asked him did he know anything about the PPSh. He didn’t answer at first, then said that he had never touched one, but his father had owned one in the war. I am fluent in both English and German, he was obviously English, although he spoke good German, I asked him in which theatre of the war his father fought. He told me the Eastern Front.

We chatted about the gun for a few minutes, I asked the dealer how old it was, then I asked the Englishman the question that I had been desperate to ask since he said that his father had used it on the Eastern front, the war between the Soviet Union and Germany. The English army did not send troops to that area of the war. Which unit was his father in? There was another long pause, I thought at first that he wasn’t going to answer. When he did, I was certain that I was hearing things. He replied, ‘The Waffen-SS, initially SS-Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler, afterwards the SS-British Freecorps. I was staggered. An Englishman, fighting for Hitler, in an elite SS regiment, then as part of the unit of turncoats and traitors founded by John Amery, son of Julian Amery, the British conservative politician? I pressed him on this, but he was adamant, even slightly angry that I appeared to doubt him. He asked me in an aggrieved tone, did I want proof? It was too good an opportunity to miss. I told him that I was an avid student of the history of the second world war, and if he did have any documentation that supported his statements, I would be very, very grateful for the chance to see them.

I offered to buy him dinner, and we agreed to meet the following evening at ‘Im Schiffchen’, one of the city’s nicest restaurants. He arrived carrying a briefcase full of documents, which he gave to me to read. I was allowed to take notes, but not to take any of the material away. The material was a war diary, the property of SS-Hauptsturmführer Winston Wolf, which my contact said was not in fact his father’s real name. There were several maps, a paybook and various decorations including the Iron Cross first class. There were various certificates, awards for sport fencing, together with numerous black and white photographs, in one of which I saw a tall, good looking man who my companion said was his father, Wolf, standing in white fencing kit with Reinhardt Heydrich, Olympic fencing champion and founder of the SS intelligence organisation, the Sicherheitsdienst. Other photos showed Wolf with a beautiful, elegant young woman, several showed Wolf in full SS uniform together with another man, an SS sergeant. I asked the man’s real name, but he smiled and refused, saying the war was over, why dredge up the past? His family had apparently suffered badly at the hands of MI5, the Security Service, who gave the family of an English renegade a particularly hard time during the war.

I made copious notes, filling a two hundred page A4 refill pad with written material. I my dining companion what was his first name, he told me, with a smile, it was Winston, like his father. I never had another chance to review the material, Winston left after the meal, packed everything into the briefcase and declined another meeting. He told me he shouldn’t have shown me as much as he did, it was just that after all of these years of secrecy, he wanted someone to know about his father. A brave man, the Iron Cross proved that, a traitor, without a doubt. A mystery, certainly.

In view of the dubious reputation of some war ‘recollections’, I decided to write the story as a novel, using all of my written notes for the basis of it. The ‘Hitler Diaries’ were exposed as fakes, as have many other supposed true accounts. The post war story of the SS serving in the French Foreign Legion, while presented as fact, is believed by many to be more fiction than fact, despite the truth of a great many former German soldiers, including Waffen-SS, joining the Legion. But as a story, a work of fiction, it makes thrilling reading.

The SS-British Freecorps existed, that is a fact. MI5 did monitor their activities carefully, I afterwards found out, documenting as much as they could about the people involved and their families. The fear of German spies in wartime was a very real one. I believe the story of Winston Wolf, as he called himself, to be essentially true. The events and people that he depicted and wrote about are certainly part of historical record. You will have to make up your own mind as to the veracity of the rest of it, how much really occurred and how much was the rambling fantasy of an English traitor caught up in the cruelty of the most horrific war the world has ever known.

Eric Meyer

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CHAPTER ONE

OCTOBER 4TH 1942

Shells crashed into the ground close to the bunker, churning up earth already turned over and pulverised many times by the incessant barrages. Perhaps it was an exaggeration to call our position a bunker when it was just a stinking hole in the ground surrounded by the smashed and shattered remnants of buildings that once were the pride of Stalingrad, the city on the Volga named after the Soviet warlord in 1925.

The industrial city of Stalingrad had been a centre of heavy industry and transport, once well served by both rail and river and critical to the Russian war effort. The city was no stranger to war, having been fought over by the Tartars, Cossacks and then it suffered the ravages of the White armies in three massive assaults during the Russian Civil War under Ataman Krasnov, the White commander.

There were eight of us in the bunker, but just one ducked as a shower of dust and stone chippings showered down. Perhaps the rest of them were showing what fearless, tough soldiers they were, but I was already numb to the passion and the horror of battle. Quite frankly, living or dying had ceased to be of any particular interest. It seemed certain that there would be only one end to this battle and living was not an option on the table. Two of the occupants, Russian prisoners, were bound with baling wire, ducking was not an option for them either.

Lieutenant I can see some movement in the department store across the street. I think we are in luck.

The speaker gave me a challenging look. Stabsfeldwebel Lutz Fassbinder was a veteran of Von Paulus’ 6th Army, seconded from the 76th Infantry Division to command the group of four Wehrmacht soldiers who acted as my guard. He knew full well that I was an Obersturmführer in the Waffen SS Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler. He used my Wehrmacht equivalent rank in an endless attempt to bait me, to draw me out, probably for his unit’s amusement. I couldn’t care less. There were of course no Waffen SS serving in the 6th Army, except for me...and Müller.

By rights I should have been serving a life sentence in Germany for murder. Instead, my old fencing partner Reinhard Heydrich had given me the alternative of accepting a commission in the SS-LAH, a chance to redeem myself, he said at the time. It seemed like a good idea then. Germany was not really fighting England, despite the declaration of war, people called it ‘the phoney war’. The uniforms were smart, the girls all loved them, and an SS officer’s mess was a major improvement to a prison cell. With my old fencing partner as protégé my future seemed rock solid. Years before we had fenced hard often without protective masks and jackets. Heydrich was as mad as I was, like me tall, athletic, a superb shooter, fencer and reckless with both life and women. Then the offer to fence for the German national team together with his commission in the embryo Sicherheitsdienst, the SD, Nazi secret service of the SS, made him a real celebrity in Nazi Germany, a national hero.

The reputation of the SD was well known throughout the Reich. It had been created in 1931 by Heinrich Himmler and run by Reinhard Heydrich. This early form of the SD was originally known as the Ic-Diensthad and had expanded rapidly with the success of the Nazi regime. The organisation was renamed Sicherheitsdienst (SD) with its primary role now being the detection of enemies of the Nazi leadership and their neutralisation. By 1938 its remit had expanded further, making it the intelligence organisation for the State as well as for the Party. It actively supported the Gestapo and worked with the general and interior administration through its network of agents and informants. A very powerful organisation indeed, Heydrich could do no wrong and I was at that time his protégé. That was of course until Germany went to war leaving me trapped on the wrong side, then Heydrich was assassinated and I was left isolated without favour or influence in the command structure of the Nazi hierarchy.

I picked up my rifle and carefully wiped the sensitive optics of the telescopic sight. The rifle was a Soviet Mosin Nagant 7.62 mm, a weapon I preferred to the Kar98k that was the preferred choice of the high command, and which I had used to win the SS-LAH marksmanship competition in Berlin, spurred on by my mentor, Heydrich. But Heydrich was dead, the high command was not in Stalingrad, I was, and when the dust and rubble, mud and ice prevented the Kar98k from firing, the slightly inferior Mosin Nagant kept pumping rounds into the enemy. The Mosin Nagant model 1891/30 was the standard issue 7.62mm bolt-action rifle to all Soviet infantry.

The sniper rifle variant was fitted with a 3.5 power PU telescopic sight. As found with many pieces of Soviet equipment it had to be modified to work outside of its original specification. Because the scope was mounted above the chamber of the rifle it would interfere with the bolt action. This required the bolt handle to be replaced with a longer, bent version so the shooter could work the bolt without hitting the scope. This made the rifle look like it almost had a broken bolt mechanism. The rifle carried a 5-round non-detachable magazine, loaded individually or with five-round stripper clips. All of this was nothing next to the rifle’s single most important feature to me, that of its almost silent bolt-action mechanism. I had taken the rifle from a wounded Soviet sniper left lying like a discarded bag of rubbish, legless and dying in the mud after getting too close to an exploding round from one of the panzers. It wasn’t a one-way transaction. I gave him the gift of a bullet from my Walther automatic to send him on his way to the communist heaven, or wherever Joseph Stalin’s slaves wound up after death. He was my first killing of the war, a good death, I hoped. But there were to be no more good deaths, this was Stalingrad, men called it ‘The Cauldron’, a sealed container of hellish butchery.

I checked with my telescopic sight through the viewing slot. Fassbinder was correct, the Ivans were moving around, occasionally showing themselves as they prepared for what would undoubtedly be an attack. Fassbinder turned to his men.

Get yourselves ready to move, men. When the officer starts firing we won’t have more than ten or fifteen minutes before the Ivans start to zero on top of us.

The three Wehrmacht infantrymen, Koch, Farber and Hoffmann, began to pick up their packs. Stuffing their meagre possessions into them, food, dry socks and most important of all ammunition, prior to a rapid exit.

What about the prisoners, Lieutenant? Fassbinder asked.

I looked at them dispassionately. One was a Soviet captain, a woman. The second and the most prized capture of all, a commissar. They were ragged and filthy having endured brutal, severe treatment from my men after they were taken. I had to give them credit, they didn’t look frightened, although they must have realised their inevitable fate. We were a small, fast moving unit. Prisoners were not a luxury we indulged in. My job was to liaise with 6th Army high command, reconnoitre the battlefield and interrogate prisoners, whilst doing as much ancillary damage to the Soviet command structure as possible. That meant interrogating, or killing, high ranking Soviet officers, then reporting back to Berlin, doubtless to demonstrate the superiority of the SS over the Wehrmacht where matters of conducting a mere battle were concerned. Certainly, Himmler was looking for ammunition to ingratiate himself with Hitler, to show that his Waffen SS could solve any problem that the Wehrmacht was incapable of. Personally I couldn’t care less. Like every man here, I would say what was needed to be said, finish up and get out of the ruined city.

I had no need to issue orders about the prisoners. The sixth member of my unit, SS Scharführer Albert Müller was already leering at me in a way that I found increasingly repulsive as the battle went on. Like me, Müller was a member of SS Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler. Unlike me, coerced and blackmailed into joining, Müller was a true fanatic. His God was Adolf Hitler and he worshipped at the altar of cruelty and death. A prison officer before hostilities began the war gave him the opportunity to indulge his deepest psychotic fantasies in the brutal hell of Soviet Russia. He had originally been assigned as my aide on the orders of Heydrich, before the SD supremo was assassinated. So here I was, surrounded by the misery and blood of probably the most violent battle in modern European history, with a committed psychopath for an assistant, as if the damned war itself was not enough. It was almost a macabre joke, except that I often wondered if Müller had orders to shoot me should he decide that I was less than a hundred per cent loyal. I preferred not to put it to the test.

Herr Obersturmführer, if I may be permitted to put some questions to the Ivans before we have to move?

I nodded for him to go ahead. The Russians were both squatting in a pool of filth. The stench was appalling, as if we were sheltering in a cesspit. Perhaps we were, I wondered briefly if it was a Russian cesspit or a German cesspit. No matter, Russian shit, German shit, what the hell, it still stank like shit. The prisoners were secured with baling wire around their wrists and ankles, tied so tightly that it was obvious their circulation had been cut off to their bound limbs. As Müller moved across to them, it occurred to me that their circulation was the very least of their problems. The watching infantrymen had seen it all before, they gathered around now to watch the fun. Koch, Farber and Hoffmann, factory workers, possibly farm boys. Now they were like the crowd in the Colosseum, lusting for blood, for the visceral torment of the hacking, slashing, wounding blows, for the ultimate agony of death. Fassbinder looked at me and shrugged. There was nothing to say or do, only to stand apart and try not to let what was coming spill onto our psyches, to infect and destroy what little human compassion we soldiers of Stalingrad had left.

Now, my friend Ivan, Müller said to the commissar. Tell me what you know of the attack your friends are launching. What is their objective, how many men and tanks are they planning to use?

Surprisingly Müller, like me, was fluent in Russian. Unlike me, he had learned from a brutal Russian stepfather who lived with his mother after finding her bed more comfortable than his berth on a Soviet freighter docked at Bremen. I had learned Russian at university, when I was convinced as a gullible teenager that communism was the way the world would go forward into a golden future. Was that why Müller hated all Russians, his stepfather? But then he hated everybody, except of course his idol Adolf Hitler. He was undoubtedly mad. But weren’t we all, in this Wagnerian hell?

Yob Tvoy Mat, hissed the commissar. Go fuck your mother.

Hmm, feisty one, are you? he said, smiling. Let’s see if I can help you out here.

Müller took his knife out of his jackboot, the prized weapon that he spent hours every day honing and polishing so that it was constantly razor sharp. But he didn’t use it to shave. He moved the knife slowly to the front of the commissar’s face. Then with a quick slashing motion he literally carved off the man’s nose, as if it was part of the Sunday roast. The man screamed out in pain. The woman, the Russian captain, shifted her position, her face now betraying her terror at the sudden brutality.

Now let’s see, my friend, what shall I cut off next? The knife moved downwards, towards the man’s midriff. Then suddenly it slashed up, slanted sideways and took off the man’s left ear.

Anything to tell us, Ivan?

The Russian moaned, shook his head. As he did so, Müller slashed again, taking off the other ear. Still, the Russian shook his head, twisting against the wire that held his arms and legs to try and ease the terrible shock and agony.

Right then, still nothing to say to Uncle Albert? His face had a strange, far away stare. Arousal, I wondered, was he getting off on this terrible torture of a human being? About to climax sexually?

Then his knife slashed down, ripping through the man’s waistband and down through his trousers, so quickly that it was a few seconds before his trousers fell apart. He wasn’t wearing underwear, so his genitals were exposed, a red line showing where the knife had cut flesh. The men laughed, Look, no underwear, dirty bastard, grinned Koch. The other two chuckled. But Müller didn’t like Koch stealing his limelight. He reached down, grabbed one of the exposed testicles in his hand and slashed across. Blood was pouring down the man in increasing torrents from his multiple wounds.

Hey, I’ve got an idea, he said to his audience, looking serious. He slashed again, cutting away the other testicle.

Man’s got no balls. The infantrymen roared with laughter.

Shut up you men! I snapped. Müller, hurry up, we’re running out of time.

I pushed the barrel of my rifle through the vision slot and looked through my telescopic sight. A Soviet soldier was clearly in view and in range, it was a worthwhile target, a Russian colonel. Gently, I squeezed the trigger. The 7.62 bullet crashed out of the barrel