Last Nazis, The by Biddiscombe Perry

Author:Biddiscombe, Perry
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752496429
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2013-04-15T16:00:00+00:00

THE RELUCTANT DEATH SQUAD

While Lotto and company were more than willing to spill blood, they could not be everywhere at once. As a result, the Weser-Ems Gauleitung also used another agency – Battle Group ‘Wichmann’ – in order to conduct a terror campaign in southern Oldenburg. ‘Battle Group Wichmann’ had a distinctive pedigree. It was originally organized in late March 1945 as the contribution by Gau Weser-Ems to the Freikorps ‘Adolf Hitler.’ The leader, Wichmann, was a thirty-year-old Hitler Youth leader who had served at the front as a decorated officer and had been returned home to Oldenburg when he was badly wounded in July 1944. In early April 1945, Wichman assumed command of a Freikorps camp at Münster, where his own Gau contingent was joined by the men and women mustered by five other Gaue, a number totalling about 600 volunteers. Wichmann, however, was opposed to the fact this his fighters were being trained in Werwolf tactics and guerrilla warfare; he preferred a potential deployment in open battle. On these grounds, he appealed to Gauleiter Wegener and was allowed to withdraw the Weser-Ems 100-person phalanx from the Freikorps ‘Adolf Hitler’, whereafter it became a special Volkssturm battalion informally called ‘Battle Group Wichmann.’ Wichmann was also careful to ensure that his unit’s members were supplied with field grey uniforms and military pay-books, and that they were attached to regular military units, such as Luftwaffe paratroop divisions. Unfortunately, while Wichmann was scrupulous in defining the conditions in which his volunteers would fight, he was not so careful – even despite his own absence of party membership – in preventing his troops from being used as Nazi vigilantes.

On 7 April, Wegener informed Wichmann that the political and military situation in the Gau was stabilizing, an impression probably created by the difficulties faced by the Allies in battling their way through a spine of hills and heavy forests called the Teutoberger Forest. He also noted, however, that the Wehrmacht was complaining about the behavior of civilians, who were interfering with the erection of tank obstacles, abusing German troops and hoisting white flags. Wegener announced that it was the duty of the party to impose a ‘people’s justice’ in southern Oldenburg, handling ‘traitors’ and ‘defeatists’ in the same summary manner as had been done in previous districts approached by the Allies. ‘In our Gau’, said Wegener, ‘we will give them short shrift, without the benefit of a trial. Houses that show the white flag will be set alight and looters will be finished off immediately. You have certainly read in the papers, Wichmann, how “traitors to the people” have already been dealt with. It would also be good if such events were to play out before the eyes of the many foreigners interspersed amongst our population.’

With this mandate, Wichmann and his unit reported on the following day to the front near Wildeshausen. Although they were deployed in action against the British – they suffered their first losses in combat on 9 April – the battalion was still functioning more like an armed party formation than a military unit.

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