Chapter Thirteen - Surrender and Imprisonment

Summary

It was far from all SS soldiers who were prepared to die for Hitler and Nazism. In March 1945, the western Allies crossed the Rhine, and the following month the Soviet offensive against Berlin was launched. No one doubted any longer that the downfall of the Third Reich was imminent. Thus, as a soldier of the Reich one might choose to go down with the regime or try to survive either by surrendering oneself to the Allies or by deserting.

During the last days of the war, the German SS men fought primarily in their own country and might hope to return to civilian life when the war was over. The foreign Waffen-SS soldiers’ situation was different; many of them would be facing trial in their home countries. Nonetheless, many perceived prosecution at home as preferable compared to falling into the hands of the Red Army, for example by seeking refuge in the remaining embassies in Berlin, such as the Danish and Swedish. These endeavours were not particularly successful, but many succeeded in avoiding capture in various other ways. From the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, Baltic Waffen-SS soldiers got across to the Swedish coast or to Denmark and mixed with refugees. At the moment of surrender, other non-German SS men hurried into civvies pretending to be forced labourers, or they hid with friends, family, or girlfriends.

The extent to which the former SS soldiers managed to hide may be illustrated by the case of the 1st SS brigade. During post-war legal processes in West Germany, almost 1,000 former members of the unit were asked about their spell as prisoners-of-war, and it turned out that 10 per cent had completely avoided incarceration. Considering their war record as continuous participants in genocide it comes as no surprise that former members of the 1st SS brigade would do whatever it took to evade captivity. Those who, like the 1st SS brigade, belonged among the very worst henchmen of the Holocaust, were of course especially tempted to try to assume new identities during their imprisonment or simply lie low vis-à-vis the victors. Through listening to radio, Allied broadcasts, or the Nazis’ own propaganda, there was an awareness that the Allies had an ambitious agenda of bringing Nazi culprits to justice and that SS men were very much in the allied spotlight.