Twilight of the Gods: A Swedish Waffen-SS Volunteer's Experiences with the 11th SS-Panzergrenadier Division 'Nordland', Eastern Front 1944–45

Together with Army Group North, which consisted of the 16th and 18th armies, III (Germanic) Panzerkorps under SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner was cut off from the other German forces, in Courland. The seaport of Libau was of vital importance for the encircled forces. From the middle of October 1944 Steiner´s Panzerkorps, which consisted of the 11th SS Panzergrenadier Division ‘Nordland’, and the 23rd SS Panzergrenadier Division ‘Nederland’, held the front at Preekuln–Purmsati–Skuodas.

The main line of defence ran along the railway, through the ruins of Purmsati and the village of Bunkas. On one side of the railway tracks lay the SS soldiers, and on the other, the Red Army. About 1 kilometre north of Purmsati lay the village of Bunkas. At times it was very cold–temperatures below 30°C were recorded.

1

New Year’s Eve 1944–1945

We sat round the roughly-made bunker table playing cards, and listening to the front’s New Year radio appeals from the highest commanders of the different services. We could also tune in to Christmas music. The bunker had been decorated, as well as we could, on Christmas Eve. There was a Christmas tree, fresh spruce-twigs, tinsel, and small items we had received in the recent field-post parcels. By New Year’s Eve it was still looking as homely as it could in a temporary underground bunker. Soldiers’ rough, chapped and frozen hands had tenderly and carefully conjured up this Christmas treasure for all to share. We still cared for such in the days between Christmas and New Year.

On the stove were some canteens with steaming Glogg, our Nordic version of English mulled and spiced wine. Every now and then each man took a mouthful from one of the canteens, for once carefully cleaned. We had enjoyed smoking lots of the generously distributed Christmas cigarettes, from field-post parcels that had also contained sweets and biscuits. The playing cards regularly slammed down on the rough table. Quiet humming to the melodies on the radio was only occasionally interrupted by some racy comment on the game, or by a violent snore from one of the comrades of the relief guard sleeping on the floor, the exhausted sleep of a frontline soldier.

There was a jarring signal from the field-telephone. It was the company commander. He wanted to speak to me about a planned fire correction for the next day. Our mortar fire was to be aimed at a new target in the enemy positions. He ordered me to go to our outpost closest to the enemy, outside the village, to try to get a general view of the area that my mortars would fire on in the morning.

One of my comrades took over my cards. I put on the snow camouflage overall, took the ammo-pouch for the submachine-gun and put the white-painted steel helmet on my head. On the way out, I took a generous swig of Glogg from my canteen on the stove as I looked around the bunker. Suddenly, it seemed so warm, cozy and full of comfort, even with its stamped-down earth floor. On the partially-boarded, black-brown, damp walls fluttered the shadows of the men around the radio, in the light of the Christmas candles. With my trusty MP40 submachine-gun under my arm, I nodded to the men at the table, shoved the white-frosted door open with my foot, and went out into the night.

The moon appeared from behind a silver-edged cloud and covered the entire surroundings in a dazzling bright light. In the reflected whiteness of the cold sparkling snow, all outlines appeared razor sharp. A group of trees, riddled by bullets and shells, with their splintered trunks and twisted network of branches, reminded me of grotesque figures in a fairy-tale about brownies and hobgoblins.

The village, or small town, or what once had been something like that, looked more ghostlike than usual. Out of the snow-covered piles of stone and rubble, where houses used to stand and where there were now neither houses nor streets, only solitary chimneys blackened by fire rose up here and there, missed by the Russian artillery and mortar-fire. In the snow-covered dead village, black holes irregularly dotted the ground among the ruins. They were the only traces of the day’s Russian shelling. The artillery shells had made furrows, but where the rounds from the big 12cm mortars had hit, there were big round spots, with black splashes around them, spread out on the frozen ground.

No life was visible in the ruins. But if the alarm should go, warning of an enemy attack, swarms of ‘creatures’ would leap up among them, because under the ground, in the cellars of the damaged houses, there were soldiers everywhere. They were ready to run out into the trenches to meet the Bolsheviks with a deadly fire.

Such was the New Year’s Eve of 1944–45 in Bunkas, the little ‘nest’ in Courland that had given us protection among its ruins from death out in the wide-open spaces of this vast landscape. Because of that it had become a link in the defence line that we soldiers called the HKL–Hauptkampflinie, or main line of defence - in the Courland bridgehead. Cut off from every connection with mainland Germany, we stood there ready to try to stop the violent assault from the east, from Asia.

After more than 3 years of struggle in the east, and 2 years of almost continuous retreat, our fighting spirit was still unbroken. We persevered under the hardest conditions. Every day, comrades faced death and destruction. The last physical energy and mental force was almost drained out of the common soldier, but our fighting spirit was still there. Our faith lay firmly in the final victory of the superior power of our weapons. Our trust in our own combat skill, against the barbaric masses from the east, was as strong as ever.

It was true that every day we heard on the radio, of the British and Americans pushing our comrades in the west ever harder and harder. Giant bomber ‘armadas’ every day and night threw their murderous cargo over German cities, obliterating lives and homes. But we knew that a significant part of the most vital German industries had gone below ground and were therefore invulnerable from the air. We knew that even better weapons would soon be mass-produced, and that the German forces in the west, just a few days before, had started a successful offensive in Belgium and Luxembourg. Soon, the terrible pressure of numerically superior forces would have to ease. We just needed some months of breathing space!

Then we would hit back with annihilating power, especially here in Courland. The 11th SS Panzergrenadier Division Nordland and the other troops in this isolated island of resistance had an extremely important mission. With our toughness and persistence against the furious assaults of the Red Army, we could offer a breathing space to the reserves, who were now being organised and freshly equipped in Germany.

I put out my dangerously gleaming cigarette against the doorway. The bunker with the mortar crew was situated about 300 metres behind the actual front line. The company commander’s bunker was in the cellar of what once was the railway station. He had told me to come to him first, to get further instructions. In fact it was quite a distance to get there, but on the other hand I could feel safe from enemy observation almost all the way. I moved the ammo-pouch to the side, gripped the submachine-gun harder and went off. In passing, I kicked a dead, stiff, frozen rat that had disgustingly exposed front teeth. There were plenty of big, fat rats in Bunkas.

Many rude words had been spoken in Swedish, German, Danish, Norwegian, and later, most likely, in Russian and Mongolian tongues too, over the ruins in Bunkas. I did the same, as I made my way to the CO’s bunker, stumbling over frozen bricks. Fortunately, I did not have to bother about the Russian snipers, who otherwise were very numerous in our sector. We only had to watch out for the artillery and the mortars! However, they seemed to be celebrating New Year’s Eve in peace and quiet at that moment. With aching knees I approached a protecting wall, about 20 metres from the CO’s bunker. Between the wall and the bunker entrance the distance was open and unprotected. During the previous day, Ivan had managed to take a small hillock on the other side of a low railway embankment. From there he could cover the open distance with his machine-gun fire. Crouching, I ran over the open space and reached the bunker door just as I heard machine-guns ‘rattle’. With a nasty singing and whirring they hit the walls and piles of bricks. Further back in the ruins the bullets ricocheted up in the air.

Reporting to the company commander, who was playing chess at that moment, I was permitted to take a short rest in the welcome warmth. The company commander was my fellow countryman SS-Obersturmführer Hans-Gösta Pehrsson, ‘GP’. The strong discipline, even in the daily work at the front, which only genuine comradeship between superior officers and their subordinates managed to maintain, gave the Waffen-SS part of its fighting power. Down here the men had made it, if possible, even more homely than in the mortar crew’s bunker. A wall-runner saying „Egen härd är guld värd" (‘Our hearth is worth gold’), which in some strange way had found its way out here to the furthest outpost in the east, contributed to the cosiness.

Without interrupting the chess game the commander gave me the orders. They concerned just that ‘troublesome’ machine-gun nest out there, which had to be wiped out. Our mortars had to make it a grave for any Red Army soldier who dared to go there. The company commander served me a drink from a bottle of Steinhäger schnapps–for its good warmth, he said–and I went out to make my observations. A connecting trench led me to the two soldiers by their machine-gun in the outpost. Wild shooting was going on and I naturally, wondered what was happening.

Oh, they are just firing in the sky over there, to celebrate New Year’s Eve, and we have to answer.

By then the insane shooting-party had spread to the whole sector. Everywhere firearms crackled on both sides.

Seems they are totally drunk on the other side, the machine-gunner said. Listen to their brawling!

On the other side of the railway embankment, only about 50 metres from our machine-gun nest, the Bolsheviks had their most advanced position, which was manned only at night. Sometimes they used to attack our guards by crawling across and throwing hand-grenades. In the daytime the position was empty.

Some sounds were heard that were rather unusual for ordinary nights at the front. Someone played a mouth organ, and we could hear the others talking quite loudly. After a while the firing became less intense and soon it ceased completely. Even the exhilarated Bolsheviks over there became silent. In peace and quiet I could make my observations and calculations for the next day.

The weather was on my side, because the clouds, which occasionally swept over the front line, covered me as I went to take a look at surroundings that were usually lit by the moon. The violently battered area was silent. The silence was only occasionally broken by the metallic sound of a weapon that hit some object, or by a hushed mumble from the enemy side. Not even the usual sounds of engines from supply columns, so common at night, nor the clattering sounds from tanks, could be heard. Only now and then a flare rose into the sky and for some moments threw a sharp light over the deserted and lacerated landscape. New Year’s Eve at the front!

The beautiful scene kept me out there after I had carried out my orders. Generated by the stillness and the meaning of the Eve, a mood caught me as I was standing there in the trench, together with my two comrades. My thoughts began to wander. They were suddenly interrupted when from the Russian trench on the other side of the railway track I heard a raucous guttural Mongolian voice:

Comrade, why are you so melancholy? Did you get cabbage soup for dinner today, again?

The words came slowly, in terribly broken German, but in a conversational tone. In the calm, bright night they reached us as clearly as if the Russian were here, among us three, in the machine-gun nest. The machine-gunner grabbed my arm and we all looked at each other in amazement. For the first time, in three and a half years of war, we experienced a Bolshevik talking to us over no-man’s-land. So bitter had been this struggle that it had never happened, as it had during the First World War, that the soldiers fighting each other had spoken across the trenches during a pause in the fighting.

As we recovered from the surprise, we started to laugh out loud, and the laughing spread to the other posts in the guard line, where they too had heard the Russian. The slow tone, the heavy accent and the mutual point about soldiers’ food always having recurrent cabbage soup, had given a perfect comic effect. The machine-gunner beside me fired a joyful burst up into the sky and, for a few moments, the rattle of all automatic weapons in the neighbourhood rolled out over the wide-open spaces. Then it became quiet. We waited excitedly for what might come next.

Why do you shoot, comrade? asked the same voice from the Russian side.

If you come over here and play the mouth organ for us, I will not shoot any more, said the machine-gunner.

We peered cautiously over. It could be a trick to make us feel safe. You never knew. The shrewdness of the Bolsheviks had often caused us inconvenience.

The night sky was now completely cloudless, and the intense, cold moonlight, strengthened by the reflective light of the gleaming snow, made the surroundings almost like daylight. All the guards nearby had heard what the two had said, and were now waiting for the Russian’s answer, without relaxing their attention. From the other side an eager mumble was heard. It was obvious that the proposal from this side has been taken under consideration. Then it became quiet on the other side. Through the wide open doors of a freight car that had fallen over on the railway track between us and their ‘nest,’ I saw a head come up and stand out clearly against the gleaming white background. Then a pair of shoulders emerged and indeed, there came a Red Army soldier, in full view, struggling towards the railway embankment. Another two followed.

Having reached the car, the first one blew a few tunes on the mouth organ to convince us that the asked for music session had come. They made some completely unsuccessful attempts to climb the wrecked car. Obviously there was a lot of vodka splashing around in their stomachs. But after all, it was New Year’s Eve only once a year. Even on our side the mood was quite good, thanks to the generous bestowal of Steinhäger, Korn, Stargarder Kümmelschnapps and wine, which we had received in the Christmas parcels. The drunken (to put it mildly) Bolsheviks gave up their attempts to climb into the car amid general laughter, and instead lined up in front of it, on our side.

The first tune was burdensome and melancholy,