So if you want to know what kind of troops the Skull Division was in World War II, you have to start with his first division commander.
The vicious and cold-blooded first division commander set up this division with his battalion guard as the team.
Aldo Ike, the first division commander of Skull Division, was born a commoner, free and stubborn, dropped out of school in his early years, joined the army in World War I and won the Iron Cross. Ike is rude, violent, ruthless and politically radical. After World War I, Ike often participated in violent activities. After being recruited by Himmler to join the SS, Ike was appointed as the head of Dachau concentration camp, a position very similar to Ike's temperament. Skull team? The establishment of. Skeletons use skeletons as their symbols to warn their enemies and tell Hitler that they are prepared to use their lives to realize their leader's ideals.
After the Battle of Poland, some new Waffen-SS divisions were established in Germany. The Third Waffen-SS Division consists of the reserves of domestic backbone organizations and other Waffen-SS divisions. After the training, Ike, commander-in-chief of the domestic skeleton organization, became a teacher.
Although Ike's military command ability is not on the table, his fierce and cold-blooded temperament has penetrated into the troops he led. Coupled with the dark background of the guards in the Skull Division concentration camp, Skull Division is more cruel, ruthless and reckless than other SS divisions.
In the French campaign, when the division was in charge of cleaning up the remaining resistance forces, there were incidents of killing prisoners of war and civilians, and fanaticism produced more than courage or madness.
Demjan Sk became famous in the First World War.
After the Soviet-German War, he went to the Eastern Front to join the war. 1in the spring of 942, the divisions were trapped in Demjan's pocket. But the Soviet army lacked experience in siege warfare. Most of the newly formed troops of the Soviet army are recruits, and most of the Germans are experienced veterans on the battlefield. Based on the terrain, the Germans quickly began to resist the Soviet attack and constantly looked for opportunities to break through.
In the breakout battle, the Skull Division is the pioneer of breakout. The battle plan is that the division first broke into the Soviet defense line, then broke through the weakest area of the Soviet Union, opened the gap and joined the support forces.
/kloc-in the early morning of 0/5, all the personnel of the Skull Division threw away all unnecessary equipment, only carried more ammunition and quietly touched the Soviet position. At this time, the Soviet Union was exhausted, and the Germans began to make a surprise attack on the Soviet Union. The Germans jumped into Soviet positions and launched fierce hand-to-hand combat with the Soviets. The Germans shot the Soviets with MP40 submachine guns in the trenches, and the explosive charges were tied to them, and they continued to fight the Soviets to death. Some Skull Division soldiers also used their bodies to resist the tracks of tanks and organized tanks to move forward. Many Skull Division soldiers' wrists were blown off. In this way, the skull and bones division quickly tore a hole in the case of losing more than half, and the German army successfully broke through. This battle also made the Soviets realize the horror and madness of the famous Skull Division in World War I. ..
Skull division in Kharkov's counterattack
After the victory of Stalingrad, the Soviet Union launched an attack on Kharkov occupied by the Germans and occupied Kharkov. Then Hitler ordered Manstein to recover Kharkov. Manstein took advantage of the carelessness of the Soviet Union in a series of victories, as well as the exhaustion and serious shortage of materials and fuel caused by continuous fighting for three months, and organized Hitler's 16 division transferred from the western front to launch a counterattack against the Soviet Union. Manstein's first card was the Panzer Corps, and the Skull Division was the main force of the first attack. The Skeleton Division seized the weak flank of the Soviet Union and gave it a sudden and violent blow. Skull division's tiger tank was unstoppable, which opened a huge breakthrough and the German army won a total victory.
Then the Skull Division went into battle as the main force to attack Kharkov. Within two days, the Skull Division fought fiercely with the Soviet defenders in Kharkov and finally won Kharkov. At the same time, the stubborn resistance of the Soviet defenders angered the Skull Division, and they slaughtered more than 700 Soviet wounded on the spot.
The fall of the Skeleton Division
In Kharkov's counterattack, Ike, the division commander of Skull Division, was killed, which was also the beginning of the decline of Skull Division.
After that, Skull Division participated in the Battle of Kursk, and participated in the tank battle in prokhorov with other SS troops on the southern line. Due to the defeat of the Kursk Germans, the Skull Division retreated with the Germans, then retreated from Kharkov and advanced to the Dnieper River.
Later, the division was sent to the south to participate in the Budapest clearance war, but failed to rescue the trapped Germans. After that, the division retreated to Vienna and surrendered to the US army on May 9, 1945. Because of their notoriety, they knew that if they fell into the hands of the Soviet Union, the end would be miserable. But at the strong request of the Soviet Union, the United States handed them over to the Soviet Union as prisoners of war. According to statistics, 80% of the skeleton division in the prison camp.