Hello dear friends, today we are going to look at
the memoirs of Erwin Bartmann, who was a soldier in the Waffen SS division "Leibstandarte Adolf
Hitler". Remember to rate the video and give us your opinion in the comments, and we begin...
At the beginning of the path. I joined the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler on May
1, 1941. I was from Berlin and never had any doubt whether I would volunteer for this unit
one day sooner or later. I saw them many times during parades in the city, on guard at the Reich
Chancellery, etc. What was striking was their nice uniforms, their comradely treatment of each other
and, in addition, all of them were very tall guys, being at least one meter eighty-two centimeters.
The Eastern front (the southern direction). ... As the offensive to the east continued, we
were moving toward Kherson, where the battles were fought from August 19 to 22, 1941.
Our 1st Battalion stormed the village of Snigeriovka. The Russians ran away, dropping
a huge number of weapons and ammunition. Next our aim was towards the Caucasus, and we
took Berdyansk, Mariupol and Taganrog one after another - the last one fell on October 17.
As we moved from Mariupol to Taganrog, we made a halt on the roadside. The patrol was sent out for
reconnaissance and returned shortly afterward, noticing Russian units moving westward passing
us. Probably the Russians did not have any idea that we had already broken through the defense at
their forward positions, or they were trying to outflank us in order to make an attack from the
rear, although the latter was probably unlikely. We set up our machine gun points on the railroad
embankment and got our mortars ready to fire right on the road. The battle that followed did not last
long. Praise God, we did not suffer any losses, and the Russians moved away, abandoning a large
number of weapons and equipment. The offensive on Taganrog went on. We came across an airfield,
jumped off from our trucks, and then attacked and captured it, while the Russian planes
kept landing and taking off in the air.... By the time we reached Taganrog, we were
given the mission of capturing the harbor, the port buildings, and, in addition, the
radio station, located on a hill nearby. When we entered into the building that housed
the radio station, the Russians had already abandoned it. They had broken the aerial, and
the entire floor was flooded with the mercury from the broken radio equipment..... Some large
vessel attempted to leave the harbor, but was sunk by the barrage of our 88mm anti-aircraft
guns. I still remember this vessel half-sunken in shallow water in 1942 - it was a short
time before we were taken on leave to France. We kept our offensive to the east, but before
long we were stopped and forced to entrench. We stayed in these positions for three weeks
- we were stretched out over a wide sector of the front because there was a large flat area
to defend. I stayed with my telephone between the command post and position of the 3rd
platoon. It was raining incessantly and the artillery bombardment continued day after day.
We waited constantly for the Russian offensive, though it seemed it would never happen. Once a
Russian shell burst near my trench, blowing my telephone and my entire stock of hand grenades to
pieces. Overwhelmed by the explosion, I couldn't hear anything and thought I was dead, but I
was just shell-shocked. There was no telephone, but I was still alive, which meant the most ...
Our losses were gradually increasing, and everyone who could fight stayed in
the line. We had less and less ammo, and literally every shot counted. We were in our
trenches with bayonets ready, expecting an enemy attack. And the Russians showed up, but with their
hands up - instead of attacking, they surrendered, shouting for us not to fire. They were
finished.... We witnessed how the commissars who followed them started to run away, and we
started to shoot at them, but they were nimbler. By November 17, 1941, we were ready to initiate an
offensive on Rostov. On November 20, early in the morning, we pushed forward. We were supposed to
leave at 5 a.m., but the mist was so thick that the offensive was postponed until 11 a.m. The
scouts moved first, and after 20 minutes they were followed by the infantrymen, supported by
tanks. Later, everyone said that there was never such an offensive before: normally, when the
tanks stopped, the infantry began to entrench, but on this occasion, when the tanks
stopped, hitting the anti-tank ditches, we went on the offensive. The ammunition trucks
followed us as the engineer units made their best effort to get them over the anti-tank ditches. It
was the very next day that we entered Rostov... Nevertheless, we had to abandon Rostov on December
2: the enemy was too strong. We were running out of ammunition and food, as we were too fast on
the offensive and had cut ourselves off from the supply lines. There was no communication with
the Army Headquarters and the intendant units - we were simply left on our own. The weather
was very cold, we had no winter clothing, and the clothes we were wearing were obviously
out of season. Our retreat was a disaster - we had to get away as soon as possible. The fuel
in the tanks of our diesel trucks was freezing, so we had to feed the engines directly. One guy
would sit in the cab with a full can of fuel, while another would pour fuel directly into
the engine from his mug, that's all we had to do all the way until we reached our people.
Our comrades from the Wehrmacht were taking up defensive positions: they did not join us when
we entered Rostov. Here, in the frozen trenches, we found ourselves spending Christmas and New
Year's Eve. We made our dugouts as comfortable as possible, making lamps out of empty tin cans
filled with fuel oil and fitted with a wick. In January 1942 we moved to some village and
constructed ourselves shelters with machine gun nests in the village houses. For our standards,
the conditions were luxurious. In front of our positions, by the river, there were the positions
of a rifle company scattered over a wide sector of the defense. We had suffered heavy losses by this
time, and there were no replenishments. I remember each of us had to remain four hours at the post,
then followed by a four-hour rest. The guys from the rifle company had a more difficult time,
because they constantly had to beat back enemy attacks. Often, we had to support our comrades
from the rifle company with machine-gun fire. As spring came, the results of our work became
evident. The snow melted, and the frozen corpses showed up from underneath and quickly began to
decay. The stench was unbearable, but soon we were withdrawn from the front and replaced by
police units. We were about halfway to Taganrog when it was reported that the Russians had smashed
our defensive positions, and we had to go back and knock the Russians out of our defensive lines they
had taken. Afterwards the Russian loudspeakers wished us a good time in France as a farewell!
In this way we learned for the first time that we would be completely withdrawn from the front
and sent to France for rest and re-forming.
Near Kharkov - 1942.
We took up defensive positions. The snow was deep and the frost was severe. I got the order to take
a reel and run a telephone wire to the neighboring unit's location. The mission was very simple,
but along the way I came across the Russians. Actually, it was a Russian women's battalion. It
was scary, I have to say.... They were jumping out of their trenches, screaming like witches, and I
was afraid I was going to be finished, so I rushed out of all of them and finally reached our men.
How fortunate I was then! After a couple days they attacked our positions. We were forced to retreat
and abandon our wounded. After fighting back our trenches, we find that all our comrades had been
killed. One of them was my friend who, as I had been, had served as a telephone operator. We used
to carry the necessary tools in our knapsacks: screwdrivers, pliers and so on. So, they put the
pliers right in his throat and suffocated him. I had to pick up the soldier's dog tags of the
soldiers who died before they were buried.... Who knows what might have happened to me if I had been
caught by the Russians that day? The thought of it to this very day still makes me shudder...
Near Kharkov - 1943. I went back to my unit when it was getting ready
to battle on the Kharkov direction. Starting the offensive, we took over a section of the Russian
defense in a ferocious battle. Then the Russians recaptured it, but we regained the position.
The end of fighting for this sector of the front seemed to never come. We took it three times,
expecting that this time would be the last, but the Russians captured our forward guard posts
once again in a night attack, and our positions again fell into enemy hands. Our squad had to
use a ruse to elude the Russians. We saw the Russians closing in on the house we were in, so we
decided to outsmart them and not engage in battle. We had an interpreter with us, and he yelled
orders in Russian, and then we opened a window, and one by one we jumped out of it and fled.
I guess the Russians were pretty surprised to see us leaping out of the window one by one
and running past them. As luck would have it, it was only a small isolated group of Russians.
Our losses were minimal after all this.... Following these events, we began to organize
for the offensive on Kharkov. It looked like the offensive launched successfully, but everything
was not going so well, and we soon had to pull back with heavy losses: our high command was not
interested in a repeat of Stalingrad. The attack on Kharkov began again on February 18, 1943
and ended on March 18. The Leibstandarte and Das Reich divisions attacked the city on March
6, and two days later we broke into the city. The resistance of the Russians became fiercer and
we had to engage in heavy street fighting. Once we entered the suburbs, I was sent to the rear to
inform them of the need to send us ammunition. On the way to the rear, I came across a branching of
roads. I had to make a decision as to which road to take. After some thinking I took the right
branch, and after a couple of minutes I noticed a group of soldiers who didn't look German.
Those guys stopped, too. They waved their hands, calling me over, and then I made sure that they
were Russians. I moved back, trying to get out of the place as soon as possible, reached a
junction, changed paths, and finally reached the Intendant's office. Here I reported to the
feldwebel that I saw some Russians. It caused a considerable disturbance - the Russians were
just a few kilometers away from the location of our Intendant units! When I arrived back at
my unit in the evening on an ammunition truck, my unit was engaged in hard street fighting for
every house. I remember one block we had to clear of Russians. We were running up the staircase
of some house, and the Oberscharführer was in advance of me. I saw him slip through a
door and disappear. When we ran closer, the door was closed, but he was gone without a
trace. We cleared the block from the Russians, but we never saw our Oberscharführer again. It is most
likely that he was captured by the Russians... After taking Kharkov we moved to Olkany, but we
returned to the city after a few days and settled in Soldatenheim (a temporary soldier's rest
house), where we rested, cleaned ourselves of dirt and cleansed ourselves of lice. After a nice meal
we were given the opportunity to go to the cinema or to the opera. My choice was the opera and I
went to listen to "Boris Godunov"..... However, the offensive went on, and we began to move
in the direction of Belgorod. One incident I remember well - like it was yesterday. We were
out on a reconnaissance patrol, and things were going normally until we climbed some hill and
saw a Russian artillery gun on the top. However, the crew was out of position and we rushed off
before they could fire on us. I was sitting in the sidecar of a motorcycle, which stalled just
at the most inappropriate moment. So, we ran to one of our vehicles, hopped in, and reached our
positions with everyone else. I felt annoyed as my photo camera remained in the sidecar of the
motorcycle, so the next day, when darkness fell, the driver of the motorcycle, myself and another
comrade using the other motorcycle headed to the place where we had left our vehicle. After
stopping the motorcycle at the edge of the hill, we continued on foot. Then we crawled through
some roadside ditches and finally found our motorcycle. After crawling up to it, we managed
to turn it on at the first attempt. The Russians, of course, opened fire, but we luckily
escaped unharmed. The motorcycle and the camera went back to their owners ...
It was not long before our battalion began to advance. I and another guy were sent on a
reconnaissance. We pulled over by a haystack that allowed us a good view of the surrounding area.
We settled in comfortably, but kept on guard. Reflecting back on this moment, I can now say
that we acted pretty foolishly as we had no radio or telephone and we had no means of contacting
our unit. When two German planes flew over us, we jumped up and waved our hands at the pilots.
They spotted us, but somehow decided we were Russians and started diving. Two times they fired
on us. My friend survived unharmed, but I was shot in the right thigh. As I felt warm blood running
down my leg, I pushed down my pants to examine the wound. Thankfully, the bullet was not too deep,
so I was able to remove it and bandage myself. We returned to our men and gave the commander a
report on the situation. I expected to be sent to the hospital, but they found the wound not
serious enough, and I stayed in the line...
The Battle of Kursk.
The time for the greatest tank battle in history had arrived. We were going to attack
on the southern edge of the Kursk bulge shoulder to shoulder with the Panzergrenadier Division
Grossdeutchland. Our division launched the attack, and while crossing a small forest, I was wounded.
The shells blew up over the treetops and there was so much shrapnel and splinters that every
second person was wounded. A shrapnel fragment hit my right shoulder, penetrated my lung, passed
a few millimeters from my heart and lodged between my ribs. I lost partially my vision and barely
distinguished between light and dark colors. I was taken to a dressing station by one of my
comrades who had been lightly wounded. Here I was bandaged and waited for a transport to
bring me to the hospital. The vehicle arrived, but on our way to the hospital we were forced to
move along the road, which the Russians observed as if it were a palm. They gave no relaxation to
the sanitation vehicles, and we received murderous fire, but we managed to get to the hospital. I
was taken out of the vehicle on a raincoat that was pulled out as a stretcher and laid on straw.
I had to wait because there were a lot of guys with much worse wounds. I witnessed many of them
dying right there on the ground. At night they took me to the operating tent and put me on the
table. They gave me some kind of weak painkiller, but I tried to stay conscious anyway. I felt that
if I blacked out, I would never come to my senses again. The next day I was driven to the railroad
station, where, together with many other guys, I waited all day to be loaded on a train. A rumor
came through that the Russians had broken in..... What now? I had already witnessed things that
happened to SS-Waffen soldiers who got caught up in the hands of the Russians. Fortunately, all
ended well: a train arrived and we were taken far to the rear, where we were transferred to another,
a more comfortable hospital train. Eventually I found myself in a hospital in Kursk, where I spent
another week. Then I was on the road again, going through Czechoslovakia and Austria to an army
hospital. When we stepped off the train, all those who were able to go, went to the hospital on foot,
and I was among the chosen ones. How we must have looked as we wandered through that little town!
The doctors could not find any shrapnel inside my body! Being aware that something was in me,
I asked if I could be sent to the SS hospital in Vienna. After long words of displeasure, the local
commanding officers agreed. At the SS hospital I got an X-ray and they found a fragment of shrapnel
stuck between my ribs. It remains in my body to this day.....
1945. On April 17, we reached Lichtenberg, located at
the country road between Pillgram and Markendorf. We took up defensive positions on the edge of
the forest the same day. I was in command of a heavy machine gun squad. Having two machine
guns, we entrenched ourselves and positioned our weapons as we were supposed to. The night was
calm. We could hear the sound of artillery guns thundering somewhere in the distance, towards
Frankfurt-on-Oder, and could not tell whether it was our artillery or Russian gunnery. On April
18 we were ready for battle, and in the afternoon, we attacked the Russians in our sector of
the front. The infantry moved forward first, and we followed them at a prescribed distance, the
way we had been taught. Unexpectedly we heard the rumble of rocket mortars, we were hit by enemy
fire, but continued the attack. We were alive, but by evening the order to retreat to the
former defensive positions came. Two of our guys died in that attack, and I myself was slightly
wounded - a small fragment hit me in the face. The following day went on comparatively
peacefully, and we buried our dead in the Lichtenberg cemetery. After midday the
Russian tanks showed up on the road between Frankfurt-on-Oder and Mullrose. We saw the German
women and young girls and even children tied to the gun barrels, so there was nothing we
could do. We had no intention of killing our own women and children. What we could do
was to stand silently watching as the enemy tanks moved into new positions. This maneuver
was a big price to pay for us the next day. At 02.30 a.m. on April 20, the Russians attacked
us, and in this attack, they suffered heavy losses. A bit later, at 05.30 a.m. they came at
us again, this time after an intense artillery bombardment. This time, we could not hold our
positions: the barrels of our heavy machine guns got so hot that it became impossible to use them
further. We retreated to the reserve positions that had been prepared for us. At 6 p.m. a new
Russian attack came, this time with the support of aircraft and tanks. Then the Russians entrenched
themselves in front of us. The order came in the evening to send forward a reconnaissance
patrol to see what forces were facing us. I and two other guys went on this sortie.
Things were bad: no one to take command. Our officers left us, and there was only the
company commander, a kid of 18-19 years old, he had no combat practice and had just
graduated from the officer's school. Still, the worst was ahead of us. On April 21, my
platoon commander informed me that our regimental commander - SS Obersturmbannführer
Rosenbusch, killed himself .... We regrouped and took up the defense line that
stretches from Petersdorf to Briesen. In Briesen we were told that a rail train would be formed
at the station to transport us to a place where we would be found a better use. We waited for
a while, but this train never came. There were also several thousand refugees and many soldiers
of various branches of the military. At last, we made up our minds not to wait for this
train. We went on foot to the highway, and there we took up defensive positions
together with other troop units. On April 21, the Russians attacked us again. They were backed
by tanks, assault aviation, and Zeydlitz troops (Zeydlitz troops are somewhat mythical military
units formed of ex-German captives of war who agreed to fight on the side of the Soviet Army).
After some violent fighting, we retreated back again. Before long, my unit grew in numbers as
the Hungarians who fought on our side joined us. I remember going from village to village
struggling to find some provisions as my soldiers only had some food left from their inviolable
personal supplies. The men were starving and a soldier is not a warrior on an empty stomach.
At one village we came across the headquarters of some general. We reported our arrival and
were given a hot meal, which lifted our morale greatly. We were also provided with bread and
some provisions, which lifted our spirits even more, whereupon we started on our way...
We met SS Obersturmbannführer Junghans near a place called Storkow, who took charge of us.
He asked if I and my soldiers would be willing to follow him, and we agreed and followed him.
From then on, I became his personal guard and followed him everywhere. Under his command there
was a diverse unit consisting of many battalions and companies, and he sought to reconstruct
the front line held by these units. First, we were in the areas where I used to take a combat
training course, then we drove to Spreenhagen through Markgrafpieske. Approaching the edge of
the village, we saw white sheets on the windows signaling that the locals were ready to surrender.
And at that moment we came under mortar and rifle fire from the Russians. We kept moving towards
Spreeau. We found out that the Russians had already taken this town and killed some German
soldiers. It became clear that among those killed there were several Waffen SS soldiers who had been
sold to the Russians by an old man who lived in a house that was far away from the others...
The following day, April 24, an attempt to attack a farm, which the Russians had taken the
day before, was launched by our commander with several tanks. He intended to seize this farm as
it was a crucial position in the defense line he wanted to build in this area. This attack failed
and we lost our commander who was wounded in this battle. We were on our own again and had to go
farther west. Not long afterward we ran into a column of soldiers and refugees who were rushing
to the west, anxious to save their lives. So, we had to follow them. We made it to Kummersdorf,
where we took the fight with the Russians who were chasing us. After this battle, I, along with a
small group of my comrades from the Waffen SS, joined the endless column of soldiers of all
branches of the army and refugees going west... We ran into Zeidlitz's soldiers again, pushing our
way through some woods. As it turned out later, these units were commanded by Soviet commissars.
Then, the Russian infantrymen attacked us. We moved along a firebreak, and the Russians attacked
us, running alongside.... Zeidlitz's soldiers were wearing German uniforms but armed with Soviet
rifles. They kept attacking us over and over again, but some of them seemed to be making an
effort to blend in with our column. There was one of these guys right next to us, and we discerned
an armband on his sleeve that said Komitee Freies Deutchland. A Wehrmacht officer shouted to us,
"Where are the SS? Shoot this man!". For me personally, there was no point. We told the
officer that if he wanted to shoot someone, he could do it himself. I really felt a
strong distrust for those staff officers, at that moment we were all thinking only
about the same - how to save our own lives. We were going on and on in a huge column
of people. I can't remember anymore when we came across the radio tower at Königs
Wusterhausen. Probably it was after we escaped from the encirclement. Before we got into the
cauldron, we found a large canister of alcohol, and emptied it by drinking it, mixing its liquid
contents with apple juice. I guess we never would have made it out of the cauldron without that
booze..... We reached a road somewhere around the cauldron's boundary, between two hills.
At the top of each hill there was a Russian gun. Attempting to run between shots, we
all, with no exception, slipped between the hills - only a few of us were slightly wounded.
Generally, we were thinking of making our way to Berlin. Since I was from Berlin, I figured it was
better to be in the city than to be in the middle of this road mess. Now I think: thank God we never
got to Berlin. A lot of my comrades lost their lives in the last battles for the capital ... On
April 28, I met my last company commander again. Other officers from my former unit were also with
him. We passed through Beelitz, Belzig and Ziegar together and reached a town called Genthin, where
we stayed overnight. The next morning, we searched for a way to cross the Elbe. Near Jericho we
found a half-submerged barge filled with sugar, candies, chocolates, and other delicacies. Each
of us stuffed our pockets full of sweets. Then we went back to the shore and hid in the bushes
so that the Americans on the opposite shore could not see us. In the evening of the same day about
6 p.m. an American officer arrived at our shore by a ferry and, upon his own motion, tried to
talk us into surrendering. We refused and began to look for a boat to cross to the opposite shore.
On April 29, in the evening, a military unit with the headquarters of some general showed up at our
location. They were about to seize the boat from us to rescue their lives, but we refused flatly
to hand it over. The general himself appeared to confiscate our boat, but we agreed among ourselves
that we would first cross to the other side, and then the two of us would return back to
rescue the general. So, we crossed and fell right into the position of an American artillery
unit. We saw no sentries - everybody was asleep! We went around their position and went
to Königslutter-in-der-Elm. We slept in the woods (the area is mostly wooded in
these lands) and slept there for a day, before setting off again at night. This is how we
reached Koenigschlütter, where we found shelter in the SS field hospital. I was there until
May 13th. Then, because of my foolishness, I was under arrest - I was captured by the Germans
- former prisoners of one of the concentration camps. That was the point at which my military
service ended. I spent three years and eight months in a British prisoner-of-war camp, whence
I was released on December 24, 1948. Since I was from Berlin, I had no possibility of returning
home, so I voluntarily remained in Great Britain, whose citizen I became later, on November 5, 1955.
That is all for today! If you enjoyed the video, please give it a like and support the channel
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