SS Charlemagne: The 33rd Waffen-Grenadier Division of the SS

The events in Berlin did not signal the end of the Charlemagne as such. There was still the group left behind at Carpin and about another 1,200 men at Wildflecken

The three trucks carrying ninety men of the Storm Battalion that had found their route to Berlin cut returned to Carpin, and the elements of the second echelon were reorganised. The remnants of the Division, amounting to 700 men, of which 400 were now non-combatants, prepared for the final offensive across the Lower Oder as part of the 9th Panzer Army.

At 0700 hours on 20 April, following a short but intensive artillery preparation, the Soviets crossed the Oder south of Stettin. Counterattacks with the feeble forces available on the 21st failed and the Soviets were soon attacking the second line of defence. On 25 and 26 April, while the remains of the Division were still reorganising, the Soviet masses crossed the river at different points and broke out of the Schwedt bridgehead. Stettin was surrounded on the 25th and the Oder front collapsed. The line Prenzlau–Pasewalk held out until the evening of the 26th, but was breached at Prenzlau the next day.

At 1000 hours on 27 April a Soviet spearhead of seventy tanks was reported only 15km from Carpin. It was the end. The Soviets pressed on fiercely, overwhelming all opposition, and the remains of the Wallonien, Langemarck (Flemish) and Latvian SS Divisions, together with the 1st Naval Division, withdrew to the line Neustrelitz–Neubrandenburg.

The remains of the Charlemagne were organised roughly as follows:

Commander: SS-Colonel Zimmermann (but hospitalised in Neustrelitz)

Deputy Commander: Major Boudet-Gheusi (1) SS-Captain Hochhauser

Liaison Officer and Ic: SS-Second-Lieutenant Bender

Reserves: Lieutenant Bénétoux (IIa/b), Lieutenant Audibert, Second-Lieutenant Radici

Battalion 58

Commander: SS-Captain Kroepsch

5th Company: Officer-Cadet Aumon

7th Company: Lieutenant Fatin

8th Company: Second-Lieutenant Jacques Sarrailhé

Construction Battalion

Commander: Captain Roy

Medical & Veterinary Services

IVb: Lieutenant Dr Métais

IVd: Second-Lieutenant Verney

Motor Transport

IVa: SS-Captain Hagen

IVb: SS-Lieutenant Meier

The Charlemage no longer came under the 9th Panzer Army’s Rear Services and was tasked with defending the anti-tank barrier at Carpin with one company and the Furstensee barriers on the Berlin–Neustrelitz road with the other two companies.

At 1800 hours on 27 April, Major Boudet-Gheusi moved the divisional headquarters behind the barriers to Zinow. Next morning an armoured division of the Wehrmacht made an unsuccessful counterattack towards Woldeck, and that evening the Russians occupied Bergfeld at 1800 hours.

Major Boudet-Gheusi withdrew his headquarters to Neustrelitz and sent the company that had been guarding the Carpin anti-tank barrier, but meanwhile relieved by the Wehrmacht, to join the two other companies at the Drewin and Fürstensee anti-tank barriers.

The situation was critical, for the enemy, attacking from the southeast, had almost surrounded Neustrelitz from the north and Neubrandenburg had already fallen. With foresight, the Construction Battalion had been sent two days previously to the Malchin area and beat a retreat towards Teterow-Gustrow, while the motor transport withdrew rapidly towards Waren and Malchow.

Since the previous day, the Army Group had been under the command of Luftwaffe-Colonel-General Kurt Student, with General Kurt von Tippelskirch reluctantly standing in temporarily for him.

All the Army Group was in full retreat and for three days of forced marching, the isolated elements of the Charlemage, harassed by Allied aircraft, hampered by columns of refugees and mixed up in a flood of diverse elements of the 3rd Panzer, 12th and 21st Armies, made their way across Mecklenburg at increasing speed to escape the constant threat of encirclement by the Russians.

On the evening of 1 May, the exhausted units reached the line Wismar–Schwerin, but the rapid advance of the 2nd British Army’s Vlllth Corps had already cut off the route to Denmark, the only way out. The Mecklenburg pocket was sealed with the remains of the Division inside.

The capture of the Baltic port of Wismar by the British 6th Airborne Division and Soviet troops put paid to Major Cance’s plans for saving the remains of the Charlemagne. Cance, who had been wounded in the foot in the Carpathians in 1944 and subsequently served as director of the SS Franco-Wallonian Officers’ School at Kienschlag (Neweklau) and then at SS Main Office in Berlin, had made plans for the evacuation of the retreating French troops to Sweden by sea, for which he had chartered some ships in Wismar harbour. When the French failed to arrive in time, some Wehrmacht elements appropriated the chartered vessels.