Most heinous crimes are crimes of passion. Penitentiaries are brimming with folks who suffer from poor impulse control. Whether it is spontaneous road rage or a husband spurned, it is the heat of the moment that drives so many people to do so many things they might later regret. Little is more emotionally heated than modern combat.
The most effective soldiers are, with few exceptions, young and impressionable. Lord knows I was. Old guys with a little mileage wouldn’t be willing to do the job. If nothing else we have come to better appreciate the reality of our own mortality. The toxic combination of youth, patriotic fervor, and the very real prospect of imminent violent gory death can be an explosive milieu indeed.
In June of 1944, the entire world was changing. The Allies had a foothold in Normandy, and the Germans were appreciating for the first time what a self-inflicted catastrophe they had created for themselves. Realizing the stakes, Hitler and his general staff mobilized a number of first-rate combat divisions on the Western front to oppose the British, Canadians, and Americans during their breakout from Normandy. Among them was the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend.
Adolf Hitler had a great many repugnant things for which to answer when he finally faced divine judgment in 1945. Right after the cold-blooded murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust, primary among them was the Hitler Youth. The Hitler Youth dates back to 1922. Its formal title was “Hitler-Jugend, Bund deutscher Arbeiterjugend.” That mouthful of kraut-speak translates to “Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth.” This paramilitary organization indoctrinated German boys age 14 to 18 to prepare them to become good little Nazis.
Your typical fourteen-year-old lacks the sense to pick out his own clothes, much less intelligently assimilate political ideology. As a result, the Hitler Youth did a simply fantastic job of creating fanatical Hitler acolytes. When Hitler’s total war finally caught up with Germany, the 12th SS Panzer was formed from the ranks of the Hitlerjugend. Senior NCOs and officers were typically drawn from other experienced SS divisions, but the rank and file junior enlisted men were products of the Hitler Youth.
The 12th SS Panzer was a well-equipped and well-trained combat unit that first saw action on June 7, 1944. During defensive operations around Caen they suffered heavy casualities. The stage was set for Something Truly Horrible.
The Setting
Waffen-SS Standartenfuhrer Kurt Meyer commanded the 12th SS Panzer Division during this critical time following the Allied landings in Normandy. He was revered by his men. Behind his back they called him “Panzermeyer.”
Meyer’s command post was established in a Premonstratensian monastery in Saint-Germain-la-Blanche-Herb near Caen. The towers of the Abbaye d’Ardenne offered a commanding view of the battlefield. These relatively unbloodied SS troopers were arrayed against Canadian forces moving inland from Juno Beach. Canada was a critical partner with the Allies during the D-Day invasion, providing some 14,000 combat troops to the effort.
By the evening of June 7, the Norman countryside was a battlefield. Battlefields exemplify chaos. Now some 36 hours into the close fight there were eleven Canadian prisoners being held at the Abbey. Five were assigned to the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, while the remaining six hailed from the 27thArmoured Regiment (The Sherbrooke Fusiliers). The 12th SS Panzer was being pressed mightily, and Kurt Meyer felt cornered.
A Polish-born SS trooper named Jan Jesionek was present for what came next and testified for the prosecution at the war crimes tribunal after the end of hostilities. Jesionek reported that a pair of SS soldiers arrived at the command post with seven Canadian prisoners on June 8. One of the guards queried Jesionek regarding the location of Standartenfuhrer Meyer. Meanwhile the Canadians were remanded to a stall adjacent the Abbey for safekeeping. When informed of the seven prisoners, Meyer reportedly said, “What should we do with these prisoners? They only eat up our rations.”
Meyer then purportedly had a quiet discussion with one of his officers out of earshot of the troops working nearby. He supposedly said, “In the future, no more prisoners are to be taken.”
The officer with whom Meyer had been speaking then questioned each prisoner individually. As each prisoner’s name was called he was led into the garden of the Abbey where this officer subsequently waited. As each Canadian turned into the garden the officer shot him in the back of the head with his machine pistol. All seven prisoners were brutally executed in this manner.
Once the officer and guards departed, Jesionek and three fellow drivers examined the bodies lying in the garden. Jesionek reported that the Canadians realized what was happening, and that each prisoner shook hands with his comrades before walking to the garden to be shot. Jesionek admitted that he never heard Meyer give the order to kill the Canadians, but the calculus of the event was fairly self-evident.
The Gun
The German MP40 was the seminal submachine gun used by German forces during the war. Like the American Thompson and the Russian PPSh, the MP40 became a national icon. Roughly one million copies were produced before the gun was supplanted by the MP44 assault rifle.
The MP40 was a streamlined development of the MP38 that was itself an evolutionary successor to the MP36. The MP36 was developed by Berthold Geipel working at Erma Werke with funding from the German Army. The MP36 never made it past prototype stage but laid the foundation for the profoundly successful guns to come.
The MP38 featured the same familiar layout as the subsequent MP40 but was built around a milled receiver formed from a piece of drawn tubular steel. The MP38 can be identified at a glance by the longitudinal grooves milled into the receiver as well as the dime-sized holes cut in the sides of the magazine well.
The definitive MP40 employed a pressed steel receiver and synthetic Bakelite furniture. As a result, the MP40 was the first general issue infantry weapon in the world to eschew wood in its manufacture. The underfolding steel stock was copied almost exactly onto the AKMS folding stocked Kalashnikov rifle.
The MP40 runs from the open bolt and feeds from a double-column, single-feed 32-round magazine. The rear sight is flip adjustable between 100 and 200 meters. The gun fires full-auto only at a sedate rate of around 550 rounds per minute. While fairly heavy at 8.75 pounds empty, the front-heavy nature of the design makes the MP40 exceptionally controllable in action.
The Rest of the Story
All totaled, as many as 156 Canadian POWs were executed by members of the 12th SS Panzer during the Normandy Campaign. A few bodies were discovered by members of the Regina Rifle Regiment a month later on July 8 when they liberated the Abbey. The first eleven victims were not discovered until spring of the following year when locals accidentally stumbled across the remains. The forensic analysis demonstrated that, while many had been shot in the head as described by Trooper Jesionek, others had been bludgeoned to death with either rifle butts or entrenching tools.
In December of 1945, Kurt Meyer was formally charged with murder by the Allied War Crimes Tribunal. Trooper Jesionek along with SS Private Alfred Helzel testified for the prosecution, with Helzel reporting that Meyer had commanded that no prisoners be taken. SGT Stanley Dudka, a Canadian survivor, offered first-person damning testimony as well.
For his part, Kurt Meyer denied all knowledge of the killings. He later claimed that he was aware of the presence of the bodies, but that he had not seen them until two days after the murders. Throughout his trial Meyer denied having issued the order not to take prisoners.
Meyer was convicted of incitement to commit murder for his role as Division Commander at the time of the atrocities. He was sentenced to death on December 28, 1945, though his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment on January 14, 1946. He served nine years of his sentence before being released on September 7, 1954.
After his release from prison Meyer became an active member of HIAG, a lobbying group formed from high-ranking Waffen SS troops. HIAG stands for “Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit der Angehörigen der ehemaligen Waffen-SS,” which literally translates to “Mutual Aid Association of Former Waffen-SS Members.”
Throughout the rest of his life Meyer remained a vocal SS apologist, painting SS troops as non-politically affiliated, profoundly brave fighters who had little to nothing to do with the crimes of the Nazi regime. Historians have since reliably debunked these claims.
In 1957 Meyer published Grenadiere, the memoirs of his time with the Waffen SS. In this book, Meyer condemned the “inhuman suffering” to which Waffen-SS personnel had been subjected”for crimes which they neither committed nor were able to prevent”. Historian Charles W. Sydnor subsequently described Grenadiere as “perhaps the boldest and most truculent of the apologist works” of the post-Nazi era.
Later in life, Kurt Meyer’s health declined precipitously. He suffered from kidney failure and heart disease and required a cane to walk. Meyer died two days before Christmas in 1961 at age 51. 15,000 people attended his funeral.
Special thanks to www.worldwarsupply.com for the period gear used in our photographs.
Pure bullshit. There are mountains of evidence documenting the holocaust and, as another writer pointed out, it was well documented by the nazis themselves.
Those die-hard Nazis denied it all to their bitter ends. May God have mercy on their wretched souls.
You actually believe none of them were killed in gas chambers? You realize the records from the Nuremberg trials are available on line. While I’m not going to do your legwork, you should be ashamed for even suggesting such a lie.
Wow, a lot of pseudo excuses here for the Nazi’s atrocities.
Hells bells, Warsaw ALONE was plenty of evidence for the claims against the Nazi’s, so the excuses of the Concentration camps is total B.S.
I admire the German Tech, but deplore the Nazi’s as a whole, and whereas some make excuses, the claims that the Nazi’s DIDN’T do all that has LONG been debunked.
Yes, the Japs and Stalin were often worse, but that does NOT detract from what those people did.
And to then claim the Nazi’s were “demonized” is pure horse shit, they WERE demons, plain and simple.
What were those ovens for?? Baking bread?
Get real.
These historical articles are great, keep ‘em coming.
I would recommend doing more research on the Holocaust. There is a massive amount of strong evidence contradicting the narrative that the Nazi concentration camp program was one of mass murder. Strong evidence suggests that far, far fewer than “6 million Jews” died, and probably none of them were killed in the famous gas chambers. A few of these pieces of evidence are the physical impossibility of killing and disposing of that many bodies in the manner described by “witnesses”, the absence of Nazi orders to mass murder camp inmates, and aerial photographs showing no burning bodies in camps when murder and cremation is claimed to have been at its peak. More information is available in Thomas Dalton’s book “Debating the Holocaust”.
Why does it matter? All militaries, including the Nazis, committed war crimes during World War 2. However, the crimes of the Nazis have been greatly exaggerated in order to demonize and cripple right-wing political movements ever since. The “Holocaust” is used as a rhetorical weapon to make our society a worse place.
Wow! Research ? You are obviously quite ignorant, as there is a staggering mountain of evidence proving that the Holocaust took place and was just as bad as described. The Nazis provided much of the evidence themselves since they were quite compulsive about documentation. Eisenhower deliberately publicized what he saw in the camps so that no one could deny what happened. He correctly predicted that people would claim it was propaganda.
Even the Iranian Islamic morons know that the holocaust was real. It’s what they want to do to all current Jews, too. You sir, are a moron.
I believe this is a double negative – “truculent of the apologist.”
I always find it amazing how easy it is to put the Nazi’ down for their atrocities, but not see what great things the Nazis did for the world e.g. Jet planes, Rockets, Atomic energy etc.. The list is long..
An “apologist” is someone who defends something controversial (such as the atrocious acts of the SS). “Truculent” describes someone aggressively defiant. Meyer was aggressively defiant and argued that the SS wasn’t guilty of the accusations leveled against them. The wording is perfectly apt.
As for the excuse that the Nazis may have also done some brilliant bits of engineering, that doesn’t tip the balance even remotely in their favor. It’s well outweighed by the death and destruction Hitler and the rest caused and created.
Much of the science the nazis used was stsrted by Jewish scientists. To suggest the nazis provided anything of value is to deny their evil intent.
Yeah, that “Love your neighbor” stuff is really menacing.
My father was attached to an RAF Typhoon squadron that went over on D-Day 26, as soon as an airfield was available. His squadron was heavily involved in pushing the Germans out of Caen as they were known as the tank killers. He told me about these atrocities much later in his life and he added that once it became known to the Canadian forces, as well as American forces, not many SS were taken prisoner after that. Many thousands of SS were summarily executed and quickly buried for just being SS. There was justice, just not officially.
Nazi Germany is a whipping boy and deservedly so, but compared to the communists of the 20th century, they were a drop in the bucket. See https://hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
The Allies, even American soldiers, committed atrocities as well. There were several instances of POW massacres, the most famous of which is the Biscari massacre, where 73 German POWs were machine gunned by American troops.
“The toxic combination of youth, patriotic fervor, and the very real prospect of imminent violent gory death can be an explosive milieu indeed.”
No truer words have been written.
The victor writes the history.
Which is why you are reading it in English instead of German or Japanese. You should be thankful. Otherwise you might never have been born.
Will I always look forward to reading your column on mondays. Your storytelling that combines historical situations with the firearms and the role of the firearms illustrates the impact of these tools on humanity. What I’m going to say next is a little precarious because I don’t want to be perceived as defending the Nazis. The Nazis were not the only and perhaps not the worst evil doers in that war. The Soviets and their atrocities seldom get written about yet they were horrible people who did horrible things that largely get overlooked because the socialist leaders like Roosevelt chose to ally with them under the auspices that the enemy of my enemy is my friend so the Soviet atrocities get over looked. When I read in your story about the 6 million that the nazis killed I feel pretty sure that the Soviets are just as guilty but we don’t get that narrative because they were “on our side”. How about telling one of those stories once? J
He may have escaped man’s judgment for the most part… but unless he found our Lord, Jesus Christ… he’s enduring eternal judgment now. Unfortunately/fortunately (depending on individual views) , he’ll have plenty of company from today’s “society”.
You’re entitled to place faith in whatever omniscient, all powerful, hypothetical supreme being(s) you choose to. But please don’t threaten others with eternal judgement (damnation) if they don’t happen to subscribe to your religious dogma. Based on your comment, your mindset is not much, if any, different than that of any other zealot who menacingly warns everyone, “Either believe the way I do, or else (fill in the blank).”
I threatened NO ONE. I don’t have to. I only relayed what God’s Word says. You of course, can believe whatever you choose. I swore an oath to protect that right for you. That same oath however, permits me freedom of speech.
Well said Frank, I fought for all, believers of God or not. I chose Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior a few years ago. It changed my life tremendously. I am God’s Warrior, I am a Patriot. Keep spreading God’s word is all we can do, no more. God Bless you and all, brother.
Right on Frank, the godless are never happy,and that’s to bad.
Sorry Hondo, as a Satanist I’m pretty happy overall. I don’t feel the need to believe in myths to guide my actions, and I’m freely able to laugh at those who do, e.g. folks making blanket ignorant statements about non-believers burning. 🙂 As far as Nazi scum like Kurt, they were all a-holes who deserved to die. I’ll take a happy Satanist over a Nazi or religious zealot any day of the week.
Hmm, many of the very happy Satanists that I know would disagree on that one. Better to live free for oneself than to be tied to mythical dogma. Oh, and the Nazis were a-holes who deserved to die.
You too will become a believer. But it sounds like it will happen after your death. That might be too late.
Macht nichts, Link, macht nichts. Empty threats are just that, empty.