Скачать с ютуб Norwegen Legion Pt 2 - 2nd SS Brigade - Quisling - Heinrich Himmler - Waffen SS - Siege of Leningrad в хорошем качестве

Norwegen Legion Pt 2 - 2nd SS Brigade - Quisling - Heinrich Himmler - Waffen SS - Siege of Leningrad

SUPPORT THE CHANNEL www.Patreon.com/Military1945 Today we’ll continue with part 2 of the Norwegian Legion series as we follow the unit through their basic training which had a strong emphasis on both physical fitness and political indoctrination. A series of bad decisions on on the part of the German High Command effected the moral of the Legion and eventually caused their originally successful recruitment campaign to stall. With basic training completed the unit was finally ready for active duty; their assigned region of deployment would come as a nasty surprise. To entice new recruits, they were signing short 3-month trial enlistments. The unit was being billed by Norwegian fascist Quisling as the new Norwegian army and it had been intended to be organized as such. Those that had military experience in the former Norwegian army were especially interesting to the Germans. On 29 July 1941, the first 300 Norwegian volunteers arrived in Kiel, Germany, and were then sent on to Fallingbostel Training Camp for basic training. By the end of August the total number of recruits had grown to over 700 and by the end of 1941, it had the strength of 1218 men with an additional reserve battalion provided for replacement. That it was quietly placed within the hierarchy of Himmler’s SS and issued standard SS rather than Norwegian uniforms was an unpleasant surprise to some but the truth is, most decided reenlist anyway. In order to join the Norwegian Legion, the volunteers needed to prove their nordic ancestry and be free of physical disabilities. The relatively limited amount of advanced military training was meant to be compensated by a heavy focus on physical fitness and ideological indoctrination. They were being trained to operate as aggressive assault infantry, or Stosstruppen. As stated in a Waffen SS training manual “Sport arouses belligerence, hardens the will, promotes self-discipline, and therefore promotes the training of the SS man to the level of a combat-effective fighter.  The indoctrination was based on the National Socialist worldview which pitted the idealized Germanic and Nordic cultures and the supposedly superior Arian gene-pool against barbaric and inferior Judeo-Bolshevism. It was a kind of ideological religion where loyalty, courage and self-sacrifice were the commandments; disloyalty was the worst “sin”. The war in the east was presented as a crusade; a fight to the death between the forces of good and evil. The SS had planned to form a full German-style infantry regiment of 3 brigades with historic Norse names. The first named Viken with the majority of the recruits coming from the Oslo area, the second would be called Gula and the third Frosta. The recruiting campaign that had started out so well had lost some of its shine. Among the volunteers it became common knowledge that the German High command fully expected the war against the Soviet Union to be over by Christmas which left the future of the Legion in question. The Legion’s officers and NCOs were all Norwegians, but German advisors were detailed to our units. Officially they had no command authority, but some of them tried to acquire some, which caused a considerable amount of friction. In addition, the majority of the equipment and weaponry being issued, none of which being heavy, was either old or captured. Clearly, rather than being made into an effective frontline fighting force the unit was being used entirely for its propaganda value. By the end of 1941 hundreds of men were leaving as soon as their initial three-month term was up, including their first commander, the Norwegian Army Colonel Finn Hannibal Kjelstrup. Kjelstrup’s place was taken by the Viken battalion commander, Jørgen Bakke, but within two weeks he too resigned in disgust. The unanimously unpopular decisions had a materially negative effect on the influx of new recruits. Due the lack of volunteers the Gula and Frosta brigades would never be formed. Not until December of 1941 was much needed stability brought to the Legion when the Norwegian ex-Calvalry officer Artur Qvist took over its leadership. Then, eight months after the Norwegian Legion’s formation, with basic training completed, everything suddenly fell into place. There was an excitement in the air as the exact location as to where the unit was be be deployed had been kept a secret. In February of 1942 a fleet of Ju-52 transport planes arrived to the Fallingbostel training camp and literally, as the soldiers were being loaded on, they learned that rather than being deployed in Finnland as promised, they were being flown to the northeast over the occupied Baltic States and would take up positions in the zig zag of trenches around the besieged city of Leningrad. In addition, they would be under the command of German officers as part of the 2nd. SS Brigade. Any illusion that the young legionnaires might still have had, now most certainly must fallen away completely.