The “thousand-man-action”

from what i read, about 50.000 ethnic germans from romania joined the ranks of the waffen SS in various units, most notably "Prinz Eugen" and "Florian Geyer".

Phleps was a Lt. General in the romanian army between the wars.
however, he was captured near Arad, which is definetly not close to his natal village (Biertan, Sibiu).

i fear that source, Henri Landemer, wrote a quite badly researched book. i'm not sure if i'm not mixing it up, but if it's the one lately found in bookstores in romania about the SS then you practically can ignore it. if it's the one i'm talking about, the author writes that the 7.SS was destroyed on the Oder river in early '45 and also he re-iterates the bogus Paul Carell affirmation of "Pathers at Prochorovka" and so forth. this only from a brief glance at the book.

This post has been edited by dead-cat on November 04, 2008 06:33 pm

Hi Victor,

I think you overstate the proacative reasons why Romanian Germans joined the Waffen-SS in 1943.

The Waffen-SS was deeply disappointed by the shortage of volunteers from Eastern and South-Eastern European countries up to 1942. This was apparently a universal problem.

Therefore, in early 1943 Germany concluded agreements with all its allies that thenceforward allowed all ethnic Germans reaching military age to be conscripted into the Waffen-SS rather than the various national armies. It wasn't nationalism. superior pay, conditions or weaponry that motivated most of them, but compulsion. As they became more desperate in 1943-45 the Waffen-SS compulsorily enlisted older age groups of ethnic Germans as well.

Due to casualties and inadequate recruitment, the Waffen-SS had virtually run out of the necessary manpower to maintain its field divisions by late 1942. That was why most of them were withdrawn from the Eastern Front to rebuild over the winter of 1942-43.

The great expansion of the Waffen-SS from 1943 was heavily dependent on the conscription of ethnic Germans in allied countries, because volunteerism had failed to produce many men in earlier years.

Cheers,

Sid.

Hey, Sid! Where have you been the past two years?

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on August 21, 2010 07:19 pm