BRANDENBURG PARATROOPS
The Brandenburg Division began as a Special Purpose Battalion, the Bau-Lehr-Bataillon zbV 800, formed on December 15th 1939 to carry out special operations and sabotage. These special purpose troops were based near Berlin, in Brandenburg, hence the nickname that would become part of their official unit designation. The first Brandenburg paras were a small detachment under the command of a sergeant, who reported for jump training in February 1940. They received the Luftwaffe Parachutists’ Badge. In May 1940, the battalion became the Brandenburg-Lehr-Regiment zbV 800 and the para-trained elements were formed into a platoon, based at Stendal under Leutnant Lütke, as part of the 4th Company of the regiment’s 1st Battalion.
Brandenburgers took part in the invasions of the Low Countries, France and Norway. There is a photograph of a Brandenburger posing in civilian clothes with Luftwaffe Fallschirmjäger at Moerdijk. But these Brandenburgers are not known to have jumped into action. They may not even have been para-trained. The Brandenburg paras’ first airborne mission as a unit came on June 25th 1941, in the opening stages of the invasion of the USSR, when the parachute platoon jumped and secured two railway bridges on the Lido-Molodechno line. Increased to company strength that autumn, the platoon became the 1st Battalion’s 4th (Parachute) Company, under the command of Leutnant Kürschner and, later, Leutnant Gerlach. Brandenburgers also participated in raids behind enemy lines and operations against Free French forces in North Africa. Some of these missions were certainly airborne but remain to be researched.
As well as spearhead operations, the Brandenburg Regiment was heavily involved in anti-partisan warfare in Russia throughout 1942 and early 1943. The 1st Bn was attached to Army Group A. In January 1943, as a prelude to the expansion of the regiment to divisional size, the battalions were temporarily renamed. Regimental HQ became Brandenburg Sonderverband 800, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Battalions becoming, respectively, Brandenburg Sonderverband 801, 802 and 803.
With the formation of the Brandenburg Division - which still retained the special purpose designation ‘zbV 800’ for zur besonderen Verwendung in its title - in Germany in April 1943, the airborne company was reformed as 15 (Parachute) Coy, 3rd Bn, 4th Light Infantry Regiment, Brandenburg Division zbV 800. At this time, they were still receiving Luftwaffe jump badges.
The 4th Regt was posted to Yugoslavia on April 17 1943, on attachment to the 1st Mountain Division based at Sjenica. As in Russia, they found themselves embroiled in brutal anti-partisan warfare. With the 4th Regiment’s subsequent move in October to Sarajevo to disarm Italian forces there, 15 (Parachute) Coy moved to a new base at the Mataruska Banja airfield outside Kraljevo, about 200 km to the east, where the Luftwaffe had relocated Parachute School N° 3, where SS-Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon 500 recruits would later be trained.
On October 5th 1943, 15 (Parachute) Coy and elements of 22 Airlanding Division carried out Operation Polar Bear (Eisbär), a glider borne assault aimed at neutralizing the British airbase on the Greek island of Kos, just off the Turkish coast. Polar Bear was a success, depriving Allied forces in the Dodecanese of vital air support and paving the way for Operation Leopard the following month, the intended capture of the small but strategically vital island of Leros to the north. After Kos, the Brandenburg paras also seized the islands of Stampalia and Levita from Anglo-Italian forces.
Leros was defended by an Anglo-Italian force of more than 8550, commanded by the British General Tillney and supported by heavy artillery. The German forces, under the command of Luftwaffe General Müller, comprised the 1st Bn, 2nd Parachute Regiment - I./FJ-R2 - commanded by Hauptmann Martin Kühne, and 15 (Parachute) Coy, backed by 22 Airlanding Division and the 3rd Bn, commanded by Leutnant Max Wandrey, of the Brandenburg Division’s 1st Light Infantry Regt, would come in by sea, accompanied by elements from the Küstenjäger-Abteilung, the Brandenburger’s coastal raiders.
Just after 1300 hrs on November 12th 1943, 15 (Parachute) Coy jumped on Leros from a height of 600 feet with the 2nd and 4th Companies of 1/FJR2. Once on the DZ, they formed up and moved out quickly, capturing Monte Rachi, one of the island’s dominant heights.
The next day, the defending forces in the north and south having been cut off from one another by the Germans, a second drop of reinforcements from FJR2 came in. Meanwhile, other reinforcements were landing by sea. But the defenders were putting up a ferocious resistance and there were times when the German position looked very shaky indeed. On the 14th, a Stuka-supported attempt by I./FJR2 and 15 (Parachute) Coy to take the British HQ on Monte Meroviglia in the north-west of the island was beaten off and the paras had to retreat back to their SP on Monte Rachi.
But the next day, I./FJR2 and the Brandenburgers rose out of their positions on Monte Rachi and stormed Monte Meroviglia, routing the British. On the 16th, Leutnant Wandrey, who would go on to win the Knight’s Cross in 1944 and then the Oakleaves in 1945, captured General Tillney and it was all over bar the shouting. By nightfall on the 17th, the Allied forces on Leros had all surrendered.
In February 1944, the Fallschirmjäger-Bataillon Brandenburg was formed at Stendal under the command of Hauptmann Weithöner, while 15 (Parachute) Coy remained on the order of battle as an independent sub-unit under Oberleutnant Oschatz. FJ-Btl Brandenburg didn’t have to wait long for their first mission. In March 1944, the battalion took part on Operation Margarethe, the occupation of Budapest, arrest of Hungarian leader Admiral Horthy and disarming of forces loyal to the Honvéd, the Hungarian government, following a Hungarian declaration of intent to surrender as soon as the first Allied troops crossed their borders.
The operation was planned along classic Trojan Horse lines by Brandenburg Divisional commander Generalmajor von Pfuhlstein. Two convoys of troops, one composed of Brandenburgers from the 1st, 2nd and 4th Regiments and elements of the Panzer Lehrdivision, supposedly “in transit”, would just happen to be in Budapest in the evening of March 18th, the day before the start of the operation. At the same time, FJ-Btl Brandenburg would capture the airport at Budaörs just outside Budapest. By March 16th, a Brandenburg signals unit was already installed in a Budapest hotel room to coordinate the operation.
Other units involved included Otto Skorzeny’s SS-Jagdverbände, SS-Fallschirmjägerbataillon 500, sub-units from SS divisions Florian Geyer, Reichsführer-SS, Wiking, Maria Theresia and various Army units. Operation Margarthe was successful and FJ-Btl Brandenburg returned home to Stendal.
In May 1944, Brandenburg personnel and specialists took part in the airborne assault by SS-FJ-Btl 500 on Tito's HQ at Drvar. In June 1944, the battalion was sent to Estonia to mount an airborne assault on the Baltic island of Aaland in order to deny it to advancing Soviet forces in the aftermath of the Finnish capitulation. The mission was cancelled.
In August, two companies of FJ-Btl Brandenburg, merged with two companies of the Brandenburg’s 3rd Regiment, took part in the ill-fated “Relief of Bucharest”. The aim was to rescue two generals - and their troops - whose HQ was encircled by pro-Soviet Romanian forces. A small force of Brandenburg paras seized Bucharest’s Otopeni Airport at midday on August 24th and held it until 1900 hrs, when their comrades began arriving in Me 323 Gigants.
By 2100 hrs, the airport and encircled German HQ areas were under German control. Negotiations with the Romanians, some of whom still professed loyalty to their German allies, secured promises that German forces in and around Bucharest would have safe passage to the Yugoslav border. But all pretence of any cooperation ended on September 1st. As the German column was leaving Bucharest, protected by Brandenburgers, the Romanians turned them over to the Soviets. Few if any of the Brandenburgers survived Soviet captivity. The ORBAT of FJ-Btl Brandenburg was reduced by half as a result of the Bucharest mission.
On September 13 1944, the Brandenburg Division was converted into a regular Panzergrenadier Division and assigned to Panzerkorps Grossdeutschland. The veterans of the Brandenburg’s special forces units were very disgruntled by this. But to be fair to the OKW, the Brandenburg Division had really grown out of its original rôle. Several Brandenburg officers had also been implicated in the July 20th bomb plot and the Brandenburg was still seen by the Nazi hierarchy and the RSHA in particular as an Abwehr creation and therefore essentially suspect in Nazi eyes.
Politics aside, the Brandenburg Division numbered some 14,000 men by the summer of 1944, of whom not more than 2500 - the FJ-Btl, Kustenjäger-Btl and 15 Independent Para Coy - could be described as Special Forces. And of those, no more than an estimated 900 spoke one or more foreign languages. The vast majority of Brandenburgers were trained as and fought as regular infantry.
The paras and coastal raiders were not included in the new ORBAT and were offered transfers to other units. Many naturally went to Skorzeny’s SS-Jagdverbände and to SS-FJ Btl 500 which reformed in October and November 1944 as SS-FJ Btl 600. Some Brandenburg paras went with the new Panzergrenadier Division Brandenburg, as the photograph of the Pz-Div Brandenburg assault gun crew members sporting the Army Parachutists’ Badge on their grey wrappers show.
To some extent, the RSHA had stepped into the gap created by the expansion of the old Brandenburg Regiment into a Division, forming the SS-Jagdverbände commando units, based in Friedenthal under Otto Skorzeny. A number of Brandenburgers had already transferred to the SS-Jagdverbände, one of the more notable being Adrian von Folkersam who had won the Knight’s Cross for his leadership as a Leutnant of the daring behind-the-lines mission to seize the Russian oil refineries at Maykop in the Kuban steppes in August 1942. The debonair von Folkersam, who was very active in persuading Brandenburgers to transfer to the SS-Jagdverbände, can be seen with Skorzeny in many of the photographs taken during the occupation of Budapest.
After several months of reorganization, during which time the majority of the division’s personnel fought in the Balkans, Panzergrenadier Division Brandenburg went into action on the Eastern Front in January 1945 as part of the Großdeutschland Division. The division received the “Brandenburg” cuff title After bitter fighting and heavy losses, the division was moved to the Sudetenland on April 29 1945 where it fought several fierce defensive and rearguard actions.
After Germany surrendered, the surviving Brandenburgers fought their way to the Western sector. It was good that they did: of more than 2000 Brandenburgers taken prisoner by the Soviets between 1941 and 1945, none is recorded has having made it home afterwards.
Source: WAF
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