Norwegian Waffen-SS Legion, 1941–43 by Massimiliano Afiero & Ramiro Bujeiro

Author:Massimiliano Afiero & Ramiro Bujeiro
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472834386
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2018-12-28T00:00:00+00:00

SS-Hstuf Jonas Lie, commander of the new Polizei-Kompanie, photographed with Reichsführer-SS Himmler at the Legion’s rear holding camp at Mitau, Latvia during summer 1942. Note that Lie does not wear the Norwegian flag patch. The pale item between his Rikshird badge and the Legion cuffband is a document which he has tucked into the functioning turn-back tunic cuff. (Legionsminner, 1943)

On 16 May the volunteers received news of an imminent visit by Quisling, who had been head of the Norwegian government since 1 February. As the senior Nasjonal Samling official in the unit, Björn Østring took charge of organizing some details of the reception unbeknown to the battalion staff and the German liaison team. Immediately after Quisling reviewed the Legion and congratulated those who had recently been decorated, Østring managed to steer him into his own bunker for a frank conversation about the actual condition of the battalion, and this ended with Quisling giving the sergeant-major assurances about the Legion’s future.

On 25 May the entire Legion was transferred by trucks to the Gongosi sector, a few kilometres south of Leningrad, where two particularly sensitive points marked the limits of the front they were to hold: on the left, the Soviet-held ‘Hill 66.6A’, and on the right the village of Pulkovo. Here, snipers were a plague, and three men were mortally hit on 27 May alone. With the sudden warm weather mosquitoes added to the troops’ misery in the lice-ridden trenches, and the stench of unburied enemy dead in no-man’s-land became nauseating.

On 12 June it was ordered that while the CO took a week’s leave, command of the Legion would pass temporarily to Leg-Hstuf Finson, whose anti-tank company would in turn pass to Leg-Ustuf Opsahl. On 15 June another group of legionaries were awarded the Iron Cross by order of Gen Böckmann, but German-Norwegian relations were growing acrimonious once again. A few days before taking his leave, Leg-Stubaf Quist had learned that somebody from the High Command was planning to transfer the Legion to the Minsk area, to be deployed in anti-partisan warfare alongside the Freikorps Danmark, the Danish volunteer SS unit. Quist categorically refused to consider his men being employed in rear-area security operations (a mission which had sinister implications). To try to calm tempers, on 1 July 1942 the Secretary General of the Nasjonal Samling, Jörgen Fuglesang (who was also a minister in the Quisling government) visited the Legion, as did Reichskommissar Josef Terboven and the Higher SS & Police Leader for Norway and Finland, SS-Ogruf Wilhelm Rediess. Fuglesang assured the Norwegian volunteers that the transfer to Minsk had been cancelled.

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