Hitler's Vikings

The Nazis’ dream of a world dominated by legions of Aryan ‘supermen’, forged in battle and absolutely loyal to Hitler, was epitomised by the Waffen-SS. Created as a supreme military élite, it grew to become Nazi Germany’s ‘second army’, an immense force totalling almost one million men by the end of the War. An astonishing fact about the SS is that thousands of its members were not German. Men stepped forward from almost every nation in Europe — for many, sometimes complex reasons — that included hatred of Bolshevism and nationalist sentiment or even straightforward anti-Semitism. Foremost amongst them were Scandinavians from Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. Thousands were recruited from 1940 onwards and fought with distinction on the Russian Front. They served at first in national legions but were then brought together in the Wiking Panzer Division and the Nordland Panzer-grenadier Division. In Hitler’s Vikings, Jonathan Trigg details the battles these men fought and what inspired them to join the Waffen-SS, based wherever possible on interviews with surviving veterans. Many of the photographs reproduced here have never before been published. Hitler’s ‘Vikings’ were amongst the last men still fighting in the ruins of Berlin in 1945 — their story is truly remarkable.