What if the SS were in North Africa?

What if one SS division was sent down to Africa to aid the DAK, let's say the "Leibstandarte", hypotheticly. Now, do you think the presence of the Leibstandarte, Hitlers own if you may, would make Hitler more concerned about the African campaign? Would more supplies possibly have been sent down for aid? If that material had made it to Africa, the whole thing probably would have turned out differently.

The key to North Africa and the Mediterranean was Malta, which brings up an interesting question: Would Hitler's pride in the SS convinced him of the need to take Malta. He would not want to see one of his own lost in the desert. How about this, would the presence of one SS division complicate matters for Rommel? Rommel fought a very "clean" war in North Africa. The Desert War did have its atrocities on both sides, however these were very much the exception, not the rule. Overall both sides had a good reputation on how they treated each others prisoners.

The Waffen SS panzer divisions had a more brutal reputation than the Wehrmacht infantry, panzer and panzergrenadier divisions. If the Waffen SS acted in the Western Desert as they did in Russia or in France, Belgium and Germany, the Desert War could have become much more brutal very quickly. In that case, would Rommel be able to bend the SS to his will or would the friction create more problems for Rommel? (Imagine Rommel trying to discipline an SS unit for killing some local tribesman over some minor dispute).
 

Proctol

Banned
More cases like the scene in "The Young Lions" (Marlon Brando 1958) where surrendering British Desert Rats get massacred will result in lots of "noble" DAK troops being shot out of hand, especially by the Anzacs.
 
Proctol said:
More cases like the scene in "The Young Lions" (Marlon Brando 1958) where surrendering British Desert Rats get massacred will result in lots of "noble" DAK troops being shot out of hand, especially by the Anzacs.

which in turns sets the stage for savage reprisals by both sides, then....

please go on with more of these sources...
 
just too clear things up..I would just like to point out that there were two forms of the SS. There was the Waffen SS that fought side by side with the regular army from day one in Poland, and then there was the Allgemeine SS that formed the "Einsatzgruppen" that I mentioned as well as concentration camp guards, etc.
 
It depends on which W-SS divisions wea re talking aobut in first place. Divisions with higher numbers (20 and more) were more of an auxilary and I-need-more-power-for-my-evil-schems tool for Himmler and those with number 13 or more were more or less foreign.

So we are down to 12 divisions. 12th (HJ) wasn't operational in time for Africa, 8th (Floriyan Geyer) was cavalry and 4th was Polizei division (though not to be confused with Polizei units, simialr to Einsatzkommando). Of the rest 5th, 6th. and 11th (Wiking, Nord, Nordland) were foreign altough mixed foreign and occupied countries. As they volunteered to fight communism I doubt they would be sent to N Africa

Which practically leaves us with 1st, 2nd and 3rd (LSSAH, DR and TK). Here we are faced with two problems. One they were ideological and racial elite troops and hence SU was the place to be used, not fighting againt bretheren-by-blood Brits. another problem isthat they were relatively late transformed tank or PG units. Not much use in having troops walking on foot in desert, is there?

So fromt he technical POV is unlikely W-SS division would go to N Africa.
 

Proctol

Banned
Einsatzgruppen SS in North Africa will result in heavy losses amongst the more than 1 million dark skinned Sephardic Jews of Libya, Morocco and Tunisia, impacting on their mass emigration to Israel in 1950. Witness the entire ancient Jewish Sephardi community of Salonika in Greece sent to Auschwitz in 1944.
 
aktarian said:
One they were ideological and racial elite troops and hence SU was the place to be used, not fighting againt bretheren-by-blood Brits. another problem isthat they were relatively late transformed tank or PG units. Not much use in having troops walking on foot in desert, is there?

you have to think if the SS came down say at about the time Auchinleck was having his problems dealing with the Fox, Churchill et al wouldn't have gone down to sleep any time. He'd surely be sipping Bovril and Anacins. I'd say that's a change that couldn't be ignored beacuse of the precarious situation. I'm a big one for the psychological in warfare and of course those guys had a certain cachet in the Reich. Their presence would give off many signals.

So what possible use could the SS have besides...
walking on foot in desert
Well, Rommel was a resourcful man. Maybe he might have deployed the SS division in Italians in position, hmmm? Shoot a few officers, here and there, as an example...take away the extra water ration so no pasta? I don't know if Rommel could have shielded the prisoners of the Palestinian Battalion of the 1st Free French Brigade successfully is let us saw Totenkopf was one of the assault divisions at Bir Hakim. Soem people fail to see the difference between the regular German combat troop, as opposed to the lines of SS police/prison guards. In fact, many German troops felt resentment towards the SS because they themselves were getting blown up by mortars while SS troops were safely behind the front lines. Even when the SS was finally called upon to join in the fighting, the German regulars seemed to separate themselves from them. Also, you should realize their structure, employment and uniform the two were completely different. I honestly don't know much about logistics of the SS, except that they were one of the finest equipped and armed with the best weaponry, but that gradually began to decline towards the end of the war.
 
From what I've read, Rommel disliked the SS, and had only a tiny group of SS people in his army. I wonder if he was stuck with a whole unit of them, if he might not use them up in combat at every opportunity ("and in today's battle plan: our glorious SS troopers have again volunteered to attack the main line of the British army...")....
 
I can't see the point of this. Why on earth should Hitler send an SS division to a sideshow which is being run on a shoestring when the war will be decided on the Eastern Front? And if one was sent, it would be very difficult to fit it in to the command structure in North Africa. Although Waffen SS units were under the operational control of the Army, SS High Command kept hold of things like recruitment, training, and discipline. Incidentally, the Russians seem to have considered the ordinary German Army divisions generally more effective than the SS. They admired the SS's fighting powers, but considered their tactics wasteful due to poor staff work and less skilled officers.

And there wasn't that much difference in the East between the behaviour of the SS and the Army. See Bartov's monograph, THE BARBARIZATION OF WARFARE ON THE EASTERN FRONT which he based on the examination of divisional war diaries. The SS, though, had the habit of behaving in the West in the same way they did in the East. This week saw the start of what will probably be the last major war crimes trial from WWII. Six SS officers of the 16th Division are being tried in absentia for their part in the Sant'Anna di Stazzema atrocity of August 1944. A column hit an Italian village and killed about 560 people. Since virtually all the adult males were hiding in the forests, the dead were nearly all old men, women, and children. They included eight pregnant women. One had just gone into labour. They killed her, pulled the child out, and killed that as well. Think of that next time someone comes out with "Wow! Cool uniforms" or "they were just fighting soldiers."
 
Prunesquallor said:
Think of that next time someone comes out with "Wow! Cool uniforms" or "they were just fighting soldiers."

IMO, i do know such of these actions, I'm just trying to figure out what combat use they might inflict in this theater...including such actions like the one you mentioned..
 
As I said, I simply can't see why they'd be sent there. From their background and ideological leanings I'd have thought the Eastern Front was the natural place for them. I can, in fact, imagine Himmler lobbying Hitler to intervene if the idea of them being sent to Africa came up. "My men must be allowed their proper share of glory in the true struggle, the expansion to the East and the liquidation of Bolshevism" etc etc. Rommel wouldn't want another infantry division, he wanted mobile troops and the conversion to armour of the best of the Waffen SS units didn't take place till 1942-43. And nasty though they were, I can't really see them have any real effect on relations with the native inhabitants. The Western Desert is not exactly the most densely populated area of the world.
 
Prunesquallor said:
I can't really see them have any real effect on relations with the native inhabitants. The Western Desert is not exactly the most densely populated area of the world.

if I'm not mistaken, isn't there somewhat a jewish population in north africa......
 
From what I've heard, Rommel and the SS did NOT get along. At one point, Rommel was commanding in Italy and he expelled some SS units for brutality.

Perhaps having to deal with SS units (esp. one like the "Adolf Hitler" group that he cannot easily control for political reasons) will get him more involved in anti-Hitler plottings?

On the matter of the Sephardic Jews, the Nazis, given their priorities, might very well have taken time and effort to kill them off. Towards the end of the war, Himmler was commandeering trains that the Army needed to fight the Soviets to take Jews to the death camps.

Might those pursuing the Afrika Corps up into Tunisia find a grisly trail of burnt synagogues and dead Jews? Or perhaps an SS unit is so busy killing Jews in a particular town that they don't notice they're being encircled and get "caught in the act"?
 
Let me rephrase that:

Perhaps having to deal with SS units EARLIER (the Italy business was later on) would get him more involved in the anti-Hitler groups than in OTL.
 
As far as I know there there was no great Jewish presence (no great civilian presence for that matter) in the area where the war was fought between Rommel's arrival in Africa and Alamein, Libya and the portions of Egypt west of Alamein. I'd doubt if the total population came to a million on the outbreak of war. There are also other factors to consider. The war in Russia was definitely an ideological war on the part of the Germans. They were going in and they were going to stay there and God help any native who got in their way. By contrast the Germans in North Africa knew they were transients. By and large, they wanted a quiet life. I seem to remember that Rommel in his pursuit of this pushed the Italian commanders into handling the inhabitants rather more gently than they might have liked. Also here at this point you had nothing like the indigeneous anti-semitism which the Germans played on in occupied Russia and the Baltic States. Nor did you have the anti-partisan activities which tended to move into Jew killing exercises. Finally, in a small army, an SS division would have been much more tightly controlled than one in Russia.
 
Anybody read that AH text on how Hitler nearly wins WWII ? Can't recall the title right now, but what happens is that Rommel manages to push the Afrika Korps into Egypt, taking the Suez Canal, and onto Palestine. In the course of the adance thru Egypt, there are some SS units attached who commit atrocities against local Arabs and Jews (indistinguishably) and who are esp targeted by the Zionist PALMACH commandos when the Germans get into Palestine.

quote: This week saw the start of what will probably be the last major war crimes trial from WWII. Six SS officers of the 16th Division are being tried in absentia for their part in the Sant'Anna di Stazzema atrocity of August 1944. A column hit an Italian village and killed about 560 people. Since virtually all the adult males were hiding in the forests, the dead were nearly all old men, women, and children. They included eight pregnant women. One had just gone into labour. They killed her, pulled the child out, and killed that as well. Think of that next time someone comes out with "Wow! Cool uniforms" or "they were just fighting soldiers."

Man, there's actually been a trial started against members of the 16th SS Pz Div for the St Anna massacre ? Guys, you should definitely read James McBride's MIRACLE AT ST ANNA, which offers a very fine fictionalised account, from the perspective of 4 black American soldiers of the 92nd BUFFALO div trapped behind German lines in northern Italy, of the whole tragic affair during late 1944.
 
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