![]() In this battle, the Waffen SS played the largest supporting role, contributing 821 combat troops to infamous SS-und-Polizeiführer (SS and Police Leader) Jürgen Stroop‘s 2,054 men. The surviving Jewish residents were shipped to the death camps, the majority to Treblinka. The Germans eventually crushed the resistance, killing 13,000 of the defenders. From 19 April to, the Jewish resistance battled heroically in a doomed struggle against hopeless odds. This battle began when the Jews concentrated in the Warsaw Ghetto rose in armed resistance to the Nazis attempt to “liquidate” the Ghetto and deport the residence to the Treblinka extermination camp. Meanwhile, as the SS Panzer Korps was resting and refitting for the battles to come, other Waffen formations were engaged in one of the darkest incidents in German military history: the April ’43 destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was decided by Hitler’s OKW that a summer offensive would be conducted to eliminate this bulge and straighten out the German lines in the east. ![]() “General Mud” in April had brought the German counter-offensive to a halt, leaving a Soviet salient, centered on Kursk, bulging into their lines. ![]() Disobeying orders, the Waffen had then stormed Kharkov in March 1943, recapturing the city they had been forced to retreat from a month earlier in a well-executed and courageously conducted street battle. To start from the beginning, go to Part One)Īs part of Von Manstein’s Donetz Campaign, the SS Panzer Korps played a decisive role in the maneuver battles that had destroyed the advancing Soviet armored spearheads pushing deep into German-controlled Ukraine, following the fall of Stalingrad. Few military organizations or formations in history have evoked such fear, loathing, or grudging respect as the Waffen SS! Hitler’s elite private army, their role and history are highly controversial to this very day. ![]()
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