Charles Messenger - Hitler’s Gladiator: The Life and Wars of Panzer Army Commander Sepp Dietrich

HITLERS
GLADIATOR

HITLERS
GLADIATOR

THE LIFE AND WARS OF PANZER ARMY
COMMANDER SEPP DIETRICH

CHARLES MESSENGER

Skyhorse Publishing

Copyright 1988, 2001, 2005, 2011 by Charles Messenger

All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or .

Skyhorse and Skyhorse Publishing are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., a Delaware corporation.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-61608-283-3

Printed in Canada

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Photographs reproduced by kind permission of: Wolf-Dieter Dietrich (14,35,36); Strasheim collection, original taken by Theodor Larsen (4); Dipl. Ing Franz Kosar (1,2); Munin Verlag (18,37); The Trustees of the Imperial War museum, London (3,5,11,12,19,30,32); U.S. National Archives (24,33,34); Historical Research Unit (10,13,15,16,17,20,21,22,23,25,26,27,28,29,31,38); Authors Collection (6,7,8); Bruce Quarrie (9).

CONTENTS

LIST OF MAPS

LIST OF PLATES

PLATE l 77-mm field gun FK % n.A. with which Dietrich went to war in 1914

PLATE 2 7.6-cm Krupp L16.5 infantry gun used by Dietrich when he was supporting storm troops with Infantry Gun Battery 10.

PLATE 3 Storm troops in training at Beuville.

PLATE 4 Bayerische Sturmpanzerkraftwagen Abteilung 13 at Roux, near Charleroi, late June or early July 1918. Dietrich is sitting on the right of Bobs driver cab.

PLATE 5 Mark IV booty tanks, male in front and female behind, possibly Abteilung 14, waiting to move up, Rheims, June 1918.

PLATE 6 The monastery at Annaberg, where the Freikorps Oberland covered itself with glory in May 1921 during the fighting in Upper Silesia.

PLATE 7 Oberianders in Upper Silesia, summer 1921. Their badge, which can be seen on their collars, was the Edelweiss flower.

PLATE 8 Review of the Freikorps Oberland late September 1923. Ludendorff is to left in pickelhaube, and Goering in right foreground.

PLATE 9 November 1923. Himmler, with flag, helps to man a barricade out side the War Ministry in Munich.

PLATE 10 SS-Standartenfhrer Dietrich when commanding the SS Standarte Mnchen.

PLATE 11 New recruits to the Leibstandarte take the oath of allegiance, Feldherrnhalle, Munich, 9 November.

PLATE 12 SA and SS on parade at the 1934 Nuremberg Rally.

PLATE 13 Dietrich, Hitler and Himmler listen to the band of the Leibstandarte playing in the gardens of the Chancellery, Berlin, on Hitlers 48th birthday, 21 April 1937.

PLATE 14 Dietrich, unusually on horseback, reviews the Leibstandarte at Lichterfelde.

PLATE 15 Hitler, accompanied by Dietrich, inspects a Leibstandarte barrack room, December 1935.

PLATE 16 Poland, September 1939. Dietrich and Himmler in a rare moment of bonhomie.

PLATE 17 Hitler, with Dietrich on his right, celebrates Christmas with the Leibstandarte, Metz, 26 December 1940.

PLATE 18 Obersepp dressed for the Eastern Front.

PLATE 19 Somewhere on the Eastern Front. Leibstandarte motor-cycle detachment. Note the divisional sign.

PLATE 20 Marriage to Ursula, 19 January 1942.

PLATE 21 Kharkov, March 1943. Dietrich congratulates Panzer Meyer.

PLATE 22 Russia, April 1943. Dietrich and his commanders. Front row (left to right) Walter Ewart, Walter Staudinger, Hermann Besuden, Kurt Meyer, Sepp, Hermann Weiser, Rudolf Sandig, Alfred Bludau, Georg Schonberger.

PLATE 23 A joke with his men. Sepp Dietrich decorates SS-Untersturmfhrer W Schulze with the Iron Cross 1st Class.

PLATE 24 Sepp puts on an act as a Russian peasant woman. Photograph taken by Eva Braun, Hiders mistress.

PLATE 25 Shaking hands with Wilhelm Mohnke when meeting the staff of the newly formed SS Hitlerjugend in Belgium, winter 1943-44.

PLATE 26 Dietrich with Rommel in Normandy, Summer 1944.

PLATE 27 A grim faced Dietrich receiving the Diamonds from Hider, August 1944.

PLATE 28 It is understandable why Allied air power made such an impression on Dietrich in Normandy, he very nearly suffered the same fate as Rommel. Gazing at the remains of his car after it had been strafed by an Allied fighter.

PLATE 29 Dietrich, wearing a Waffen-SS camoufalge jacket, with General Hans von Obstfelder and in black Panzer uniform, General Heinrich Eberbach, August 1944.

PLATE 30 A Leibstandarte Royal Tiger moving up prior to the Ardennes offensive, December 1944.

PLATE 31 Dietrich, with his Adjundant, Hermann Weiser, during the Ardennes offensive.

PLATE 32 Last bow for this Hitlerjugend Panther outside the village of Krinkhelt, 17 December 1944.

PLATE 33 The Dachau Trial. Dietrich (11), Kraemer (33), Priess (45), Peiper (42).

PLATE 34 Prisoners of War, Nuremberg, 24 November 1945.

PLATE 35 Dietrichs sons, cl950, (L to R) Gtz-Hubertus, Lutz, Wolf-Dieter.

PLATE 36 The Hunter.

PLATE 37 Sepp Dietrich, as his soldiers will remember him, although to many he had a darker side.

PLATE 38 Sepps tombstone in Ludwigsburg.

INTRODUCTION

The biographer who undertakes the portrayal of an important character from the Nazi era faces a problem which requires some self-examination. The enormities of the events, which the Third Reich brought upon the world, strain not only moral sensibilities, but also the intellectual objectivity that is the historians duty to bring to his subject.

Recent events, such as the Waldheim controversy, the Barbie trial and the death of Rudolf Hess, show how long is the Nazi shadow, and dispel the temptation to imagine that, after more than forty years of peace in Europe, enough time has passed for passions to cool and for dispassionate analysis to prevail. I certainly make no such supposition, but believe that the reader who embarks on the study of this period will, as his knowledge of it grows, experience these strains of moral outrage versus cool appraisal just as vividly, regardless of whether he belongs to tomorrows generation or yesterdays. Given then that the Nazi spectre will continue to haunt for many years to come, it is better to marshal the evidence while it is still comparatively fresh, than to wait for wounds to heal while it partially evaporates.

Besides, it is not the historians duty to temper his tale to the sensibility of his reader, but to tell the truth, however unpalatable it may be. And truth, in the portrayal of Sepp Dietrich, a controversial character who ranked high in the Nazi hierarchy, requires both a strict avoidance of whitewashing and black-washing alike, and an exclusive attention to provable facts. Certainly it would have been much easier to portray Dietrich as the loud-mouth and bully which popular opinion reckons him to have been, than to paint him according to the evidence.

And here Dietrich poses a special difficulty. Most biographers begin with the advantage that their subject has felt obliged to favour posterity with an autobiography, diaries, speeches or papers. With one or two very minor exceptions, Dietrich left none. He himself died over twenty years ago, and his second wife, Ursula, who could probably have thrown much light on her husband, died in 1983. His sons were too young, and saw too little of their father during the crucial years, to know much about him, and the memories of those who served with him have obviously dimmed with the passage of time. Much that has been written about him is inaccurate, and he was himself guilty of untruths over parts of his early life, something which has misled many historians. Furthermore, there are gaps in his life which it has proved very difficult, if not impossible, to fill.