Monday, 31 December 2018

Artwork Collection - Cities and Buildings

Erich Mercker (1891-1973) - Putzig near Danzig (1943)

 Georg Friederich (1868-1943) - The Cologne Cathedral on the Rhine (1940)

 Will Tschech (1891-1975) - Winter in the Old Town Dusseldorf (1939)

 Otto Hamel (1866-1950) - St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna (1939)

 Otto Hamel (1866-1950) - Prague (1940)

Cäcilie Graff-Pfaff (1862 - 1939) - Hohenstaufenburg in Italy (1939)


Friedrich Schüz (1874-1954) - Salzburg (1943)

 Friedrich Schüz (1874 - 1954) - Danzig - Krantor (1940)

 Friedrich Schüz (1874 - 1954) - Nuremberg (1939)

 Karl Leipold (1864 - 1943) - Meissen with the Albrechtsburg (1942)

 Karl Walther (1905-1981) - Place at the Zeughaus Berlin (1940)

 Cornelius Wagner (1870-1956) - Port of Hamburg (1938)

Saturday, 22 December 2018

Die Deutsche Wochenschau – Newsreel No. 679 – 08 September 1943


- Hitler Youth Summer Games;
- Soviet Thrust Repulsed on Eastern Front;
- Germans Retreat from Sicily;
- German Planes Torpedo British Mediterranean Convoy;

Thursday, 20 December 2018

Of the Eternal Laws of Life


Source: SS Leitheft, Year 4, Issue 8

According to the Führer’s words, “National Socialism is a cool teaching of reality based on sharpest scientific knowledge and their logical expression”. Our piety is “the unconditional bow to the divine laws of existence made known to us men. - Our prayer is: Courageous fulfillment of the resultant duties.”

National Socialism wins its truth from the view of the world. It is a real world-view. Possessing a world-view, however, means behavior toward life and the values of life that is in harmony with the view one has of the world. Each person looks at the world through his eyes; he experiences the world according to the pulse of his blood. World-view is hence always bound to the kind, and each folk has - becomes it is bound by common blood - its special world-view.

How do we Germans view the world?

When a German strolls across a field on a bright summer day or on a white winter night, he looks in reverence at the beauty of the world: Overhead the sky’s blue and the sun’s light, or the army of ever shining stars, or the clouds of dark hunt; all around the ripening fields and wide meadows full of stalks and blooms, or the glistening sea, or the light snowflakes of snow. And when in autumn nights he experiences the whipping sound of rainfall, as the forest struggles with the force of storms or the dunes on the coast with the waves of the sea, he may understand that the world, a place of beauty, is at the same time a field of eternal struggle. The strong man affirms the world as it is.

Never would be bore in a German heart the idea that the world is nothing by an “earthly valley of woe”. The divine creative force, according to our faith, is too sublime and too rich to create an “earthly valley of woe”.

The German man who talks a spring walk along forest paths and listens to the pious song of a bird that has built its nest in a tree, in which five young now dream toward life, could never produce the idea the young birds hatched from their eggs burdened with original sin. However, when listening to the light bird song he feels the joy of nature that proclaims that conception and birth are fulfillment of divine law. Does not a mother of our folk also fulfill the divine law of existence, when she gives the folk children? Never could German parents believe that the joy of fatherhood or motherhood is bound to a curse or a sin. Never could German children enter the world with original sin!

Through conception and birth emerge the things of life, and through death they depart again. When the leaves fall in autumn, when the ancient tree falls in the wind, that is a necessary event. The death of the individual living being, however, is not the “wage of sin”. The individual tree comes and departs according to natural laws: but the forests sing eternal! - So comes and departs the individual person: but the folks live eternal!

From the view of the world he thus wins the realization: The world in which we live is not an earthly valley of woe, rather blessed homeland earth; conception and birth are not sin and guilt, rather fulfillment of divine will; and death is not the wage of sin, rather life-law, necessity and fate. The Führer once explained:

“At the summit of the program does not stand secretive suspecting, rather clear realizing. - There were eras when half-darkness was the prerequisite for the effectiveness of certain teachings, and there is today an era where light is the basic prerequisite for our successful action.”

In the sunlight of knowledge shine the eternal truths of the National Socialist world-view. It is the result of Germanic struggle for knowledge and at the same time the inner certainty of Germanic character.

The struggle for knowledge, for light and truth, was always called heresy by obscurantists. So knowledge of the causality of the universe came under the curse of priests. And today the knowledge and the conscious observance of the eternal laws of life are also under the church’s ban.

Giordano Bruno was burned as a heretic, because he dared to speak out with heroic passion, completely in our spirit: “We seek God in the unchanging, unbending law of nature, in the reverent disposition of a spirit directed according to this law; we seek him in the brilliance of the sun, in the beauty of things that emerge from the lap of this our mother earth, in the genuine reflection of his essence, the sight of countless stars that shine on the immeasurable fringe of the one sky...”

The Germanic soul experiences God from the start directly: in the law of the earth, in the rustling of forests, in the raging of seas and storms, and the observation of the star-filled heaven it speaks reverently and piously. In such reverence it bears responsibility before the laws of nature. Heeding the laws of nature means affirming God; violating them means to alienate from the divine.

Today we again know: the law of the earth is also the law of our human life. And as the earth lives as a result of the sun, so must we humans remain loyal to the laws of life. As our ancestors, following the healthy instinct of their race, lived in harmony with the laws of nature, so can we - having become knowing through view and knowledge - consciously bring our life in harmony with the causality of the world.

Reverence for life is always the basis for a living faith and genuine piety. The person for whom the world is divine, because it appears to be shaped by God’s will, will never lose reverence for life and its laws. The separation of God and world springs from an alien way of thinking. The banishment of the divine from nature has as its result the contempt of earth and of earthly life. While original man - with the consciousness of being the bearer of earthly life - had reverence for himself as well as reverence for life itself, the man who only images a God beyond the world has neither reverence for himself nor reverence for what blossoms and prospers on earth. He only has reverence for what he images above the world, and receives a feeling of reverence for himself only along the detour of the feeling of being a creature, that means God’s creation.

We see eternal heaven in the beauty and thousand-fold blessed and holy earth. Heaven reveals itself to us in the millions of blooms in the young year, the waving gold of summer com fields, the shine of the snow and the purity of falling snow flakes at Christmas, the birth of life from the motherly lap.

Here Rosenberg’s words are valid: “If one labels this great reverence religion-hostile and atheistic, then the following decisive contradiction lies in this formless claim: if namely one teaches the existence of a creator and praises him in songs and prayers, then one cannot in the long run present the acceptance and observance of the laws of this creation as religion-less and their violation as religious duty.”

Observation of the history of all folks of the earth leads to the realization that each folk has the fate that it deserves. Since folks have emerged in accordance with the will of life, they themselves bear the responsibility for their fate. And the statement is valid: No God distributes right or injustice in history: the folks are responsible for themselves.

The decline of a folk is the natural result of the frivolous violation of the laws of nature. Only a reverent affirmation and the conscious observance of the divine laws of existence secure eternal life for a folk. The eternal life of our folk is the purpose of our work and all struggles. For “the victory of life is the purpose of the world”.

Everywhere we see manifestations of life, we recognize the will to preserve and perpetuate the own kind. “The divine law of the individual is to preserve and defend its own kind” (Houston Stewart Chamberlain). So each organism struggles for its life. Through that the world becomes the place of continuous struggle. It secures “the great health” for the world. For what cannot triumph in struggle, necessarily perishes.

Nature is the eternal teacher of the folks. It shows again and again the mortality of the individual, but also the endurance of the whole and the eternity of life-connections, at it at the same time shows the way by which this eternity will be won.

Nature is endlessly manifold and offers one and the same thing in a million-fold variety. But each organism and each act of nature reveals certain laws. They are necessary, for without their necessity, hence without causality, there would be no order in the world. Order, however, belongs to the essence of life. It is the task of man to comprehend the order of nature and to affirm its causality.

Through National Socialism German reverence for life was reborn; and in the struggle for a true-to-kind world picture the consciousness within us has become awake, that we honor God only by observing the eternal laws that rule the world as God’s eternal will.

SS-Hscha. Dr. Schinke

Monday, 17 December 2018

God Lives Only in Proud Hearts


Source: SS Leitheft, Year 10, Issue 6, 1944

A poet of our time whose work has achieved highest recognition wrote as his belief the pitiless words: “Only the people who need God, seek him. Whoever does not need him, does not seek him. Even whoever calculates about him, needs him.” Only the people who need God, seek him... Is that so? Is God, however one perceives him, a God of the burdened and of those despairing of life, a deception that we ourselves cleverly invented in order to deal with a world that, as it is, does not satisfy us? Is prayer always just a requesting, an act of comfort or of our impotence? Many pray in order to request, many pray in order to be comforted - but the God of comfort is not ours.

When we affirm the statement: “God lives only in proud hearts”, then we mean a different God than the comforting one, or at least a different way of association with him: we mean that God and courage and strength seriously belong together, and that hence even those men pursue God who do not need him, leastwise not out of fear.

It would be conceivable that a young man, after he has, together with a handful of men, bravely defended himself against a superior enemy force and in a manly manner held out in the most bitter hours between life and death, that such a man, after he had survived the danger, would squeeze his feeling into some kind of shout, yes, that he would curse! It is nonetheless to be presumed that he prays. And indeed in a very ardent and passionate manner. We are not so much moved by whether or what the man might be able to say - we are moved because the man, in the highest moments, is amazed at life as an ever greater, yet inscrutable, totality, and that this amazement, far removed from weakening or lowering the man, only then actually confirms him as part of a final, mighty fate. The man elevates himself beyond all that is only visible, tangible, practical; he elevates himself beyond all individual things and advances to the consciousness of the world, that secretive experience into we find ourselves born and from which we are tom by death, unasked, when the time comes. It is the might and greatness of man, however, that he, born without will, does not live through his existence arbitrarily, rather since the earliest years already and then ever more daringly faces this his existence as a seeker, what thirty, sixty, ninety years of life actually want and what this is: loyalty, love, comradeship, courage.

It is mankind’s mercy and curse, that to this hour nobody has found a concise answer for such thoughts and nobody may find it. God is not an “x” that could be precisely calculated with full certainly from some kind of equations; for us humans he is not a fact, rather a question, and to again and again pose this question, to again and again become aware of the conditionality of our existence, without tiring from it, that appears to us to be for the intellect the most beautiful and most fertile courage that can be imaged.

It does not mean much, to live. Everything born passes the short span until death and struggles for food and drink. But to step out from the spell of life, to freely affirm or reject it, that is the pride and nobility of our humanity; through this nobility and through this pride we first become the men. No point is set for thought where it must forever end; wonderfully fit and firm remains each person who carries within his heart the daring for a healthy, joyful world-feeling and god-feeling. How should he ever become bourgeois, small, low? There is a measure of things to which he must again and again stretch up and fight up: It is not him, rather the all of creation, as wide and as deep as it only appears to men.

We require an elevation and admit it straight out, that we require it, namely the elevation out of the all too stubborn and the all too prejudiced. We want to be uneasy and we want to be dissatisfied, as if we would indeed someday learn the secret of the clouds and seas, the secret of life, manifold a hundred- thousand times and a million-times. We ask the stars who placed them in the wonderful game of their fall and rise, and we ask the water to what distance and depth it wishes wants to escape us. We are stout-hearted enough not to flee from the eternal whence and wither, and we accept no ever so thorough account of nature as a sufficient interpretation of its foundation.

No amazement at the depth of the world should alienate us from the facts, not even from the struggle for bare existence; we want to become neither contemplative natures nor divided men, rather take up life with a free voice, the daily and often so bitter life as well as the transfiguring and purpose-giving. The God in whom we have trust corresponds to our hearts; he is our own heart in its world-open and world-affirming hours.

God lives in us, because we have set out to penetrate his world with the spirit of strength and to usurp it. Does it not, however, require a wonderful pride and an upright courage to set about such a conquest of world and God; does it not require also a noble steadfastness and reflection, to hold one’s own as a man before tremendous God?

We praise God and his world-creation more believably, the more proud, the more confident we appear in it. The laughing eye, the quickness of stride, a soul that can genuinely enjoy and elevate itself, genuine youth, genuine manliness, perseverance, love, comradeship, those are God’s banner-bearers. And here we join again with the spirit of the poet from which we started, who concluded the affirmation of his poet-faith with the words that bind us all: “Man, however, should carry the divine into the world!”

Friday, 14 December 2018

George Frideric Handel – “Water Music”


Conductor: Herbert von Karajan
Performance: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Suite in G Major, HWV 350, ‘Water Music’

I. Allegro
II. Air
III. Bourée
IV. Hornpipe
V. Andante espressivo
VI. Allegro deciso


Wednesday, 12 December 2018

Die Deutsche Wochenschau – Newsreel No. 675 – 11 August 1943


- German Night Fighters Engage British Bombers;
- Rommel and His Tanks in Salonika;
- Heavy Fighting in Sicily;
- German Troops Evacuate Orel

Sunday, 9 December 2018

Adolf Hitler – speech at the opening of the Second German Architecture and Industrial Art Exhibition in the Haus der Deutschen Kunst – 06.12.1938


Munich, December 6, 1938

Let me take up the topic of just one single project: the blueprint for a new opera house in Munich. For many years, it was worked upon, and it is now that its outlines are taking shape and form. Yet it still will take a long time for this work to reach its final completion. And the same applies to the great buildings in Berlin and the enormous building projects all over the Reich.

Let us never forget: we are not building for our time, we are building for the future! That is why the structures must be grand, solid, and durable, and thereby they will become beautiful and worthy. May every man commissioning a work, every architect who finds himself enchanted with some latest fad that he thinks remarkable or interesting, may he think again and ask if his project will be able to stand up to the criticism of the centuries. Because this is what counts! That is easily said. But we have countless examples for works, works where evidently someone was not thinking, works which evidently were not built with a purpose in mind and hence do not do justice to this purpose, either in size or in the long run.

Let me just cite one of these examples. In Germany there are about forty million Protestants. The Confessional Church537 built for itself a cathedral in Berlin which serves as the central church for the three and a half million Protestants living in the capital of the German Reich. The cathedral holds 2,450 seats, each of which is numbered in order to accommodate the more prominent Protestant families in the Reich.

My Volksgenossen! Something like this is happening in an age of so-called democratic evolution. Here the churches ought to lead by example being the most democratic since after all they deal with souls and not with professions or even social classes. Now it is somewhat difficult to follow how this church of 2,450 seats can possibly do justice to the spiritual needs of three and a half million faithful. The dimensions of the building structure are not the result of technical necessities but rather they are the net result of a narrowminded and thoughtless building process. Actually this cathedral ought to accommodate 100,000 persons.

You might ask me: “Do you believe that 100,000 persons will actually go there?” It is not my business to answer this question, a question that would have to be answered by the Church! But you will now understand that we, as a true Volk movement, must keep the needs of our Volk in sight as we carry out our building projects. Hence we must build halls into which 150,000 or even 200,000 persons will actually fit. That means: we must build them as big as the technical possibilities of our day permit, and we must build for eternity! Another example can be found in the realm of theater buildings. Around 1800, a small town of 15,000 to 20,000 inhabitants built for itself a theater with 1,200 seats. Now in the course of the years, commissioners from building inspection authorities and fire protection agencies come along and begin to limit the number of theatergoers for security reasons. In this same time period, the small town grows; 100,000 or 150,000 people live there now. In other words, while the number of seats in the theater declines, the number of inhabitants of the city increases continuously. It becomes necessary to build a new theater.

And now the city of 150,000 people begins to build yet another theater holding 1,000 or 1,200 seats, as many seats as the old theater already held a hundred years ago.

Well, it seems that one has forgotten the fact that the orchestra has swollen to sixty musicians today instead of the sixteen musicians of the past. This is largely due to our new composers-I need only name Richard Wagner. Both supernumeraries and choir also have an increasing membership, and overall technical requirements today demand the participation of far more people.

Today this same theater needs to accommodate 450 or 500 stage hands, members of the choir, soloists, dancers, that is 450 or 500 members and an audience of one thousand. That means every member of the audience must support two members of the crew. That is possible perhaps in a capitalist age. For us, this is impossible, for we must finance our theaters through contributions from the Volk.

Because this alone necessitates that the masses of our Volk go to our theaters, these theaters must have a certain size.

Now we are asked: “What? You want to build an opera with three thousand seats here?” Yes, indeed, we would like to increase that number even more because we want thousands of our Volk to partake of the fruits of German art.

Another objection might be: do we have to build so much just now? Yes, we do! We must build more now than ever before, because before us, they built either nothing or pitiful miserable structures.

And secondly: we just happen to find ourselves today in an epoch of great rejuvenation for the German Volk! He who has not realized this yet, he must nonetheless believe it! That is a fact! Posterity will have greater appreciation of the years 1933, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1938 than certain of our contemporaries who seem to live behind the times! Posterity will see this epoch of the greatest resurrection of the German Volk ever in the context of the foundation of an enormous, great and mighty Reich.

These years will one day be seen as corresponding to the ascent of a movement to which we owe that the German Volk emerged from the confusion of party politics, segregated classes, and various confessions and melted into one entity of great spiritual strength and willpower. Such an epoch has not only the right to leave its mark upon eternity in the form of great monuments, it has a duty to do so! If someone says to me, “Why do you build more than earlier?” all I can reply is: “We build more because we are more than we were earlier.” Today’s Reich is different from that of yesterday. It is not just a passing fancy since it is supported not by merely a few individuals or certain interest groups. For the first time in its history, the German Reich has its foundation in the willpower and consciousness of the German Volk. Hence it well deserves that monuments now built will one day testify to its greatness even when its people have long been silent.

Furthermore, this art of building also spawns other arts, such as sculpture and painting. How true this is you can see by looking at the two wonderful sculptures exhibited here. They represent Party and Wehrmacht and no doubt they belong to the most beautiful art ever created in Germany. [-] We are incapable of assessing what countless German artists have created with truly painstaking diligence and zealous dedication. As the speaker for the German Volk, I wish to express its gratitude to those involved since it cannot possibly thank each artist individually.

Naturally, the true recompense lies within the work itself! Through it, the artist makes his way into eternity. I have the honor of declaring this exhibition open to the public, an exhibition that will prove to you that there are indeed many artists making their way here in our country, finding it, and continuing upon it.

Thursday, 6 December 2018

The History of the SS-Standarte “Der Führer”

Published in „Siegrunen“ Magazine - Volume 6, Number 1, Whole Number 31,

July – September 1983

Titles:
SS-Standarte 3/VT
SS-Regiment 3 “Der Führer”
SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 4 “Der Führer”
Abbreviation: SS-“DF”
Stationed: Vienna

A few days after the return of Obersturmbannführer Keppler’s I. Btl./SS “Deutschland” to Munich from Austria at the end of March 1938, Keppler was given the assignment of forming the third regiment of the SS-Verfugüngstruppe using a large dose of new Austrian volunteers. The new regimental unit garrison were established as follows:

Regimental Staff and I.Btl.: Vienna
II. Btl.: Graz
III. Btl.: Klangenfurt

Austrian recruits were quickly sent to each of the above locations. Over the course of the next year, each city would build new barracks facilities for their assigned portions of SS-“Der Führer.” I./“DF” was formed using personnel from II./ “Deutschland,” and its first commander was that battalion’s old commander, Sturmbannführer Wilhelm Bittrich. II./“DF” received some personnel from the “LSSAH” and its commander was Stubaf. Fritz von Scholz, who had formerly been in charge of the 8th Machine Gun Co. of II./SS-“D.” III./“DF” was formed around a nucleus of veterans from the “Germania” Rgt., and its commander was Ostubaf. Wäckerle, who had previously commanded I./SS “G.”

Both II. and III./“DF” were largely filled out with Austrian recruits. Regimental formation got underway in earnest in early May 1938, when the now Oberführer Georg Keppler assembled his cadre personnel in Klangenfurt. In a very short time a sense of inseparable comradeship developed between the SS men from the old Reich and the young volunteers from Tyrol, Steiermark, Kärnten, Vienna, Salzburg, Upper Austria and the Burgenland.

There were so many volunteers for the new SS regiment that a very rigid selection process had to be implemented. Only the absolute best of those who presented themselves could be taken in. All over Austria the SS soldiers were greeted with open arms by the civilians, who (contrary to “Allied” propaganda), were deliriously happy to be part of the Greater German Reich.

After the basics of training, the regimental commander placed great emphasis on military drilling, so the men of SS-“DF” saw no shortages of such activities. For Oberführer Keppler, the great psychological bonding between the German and Austrian soldiers took place at the Nuremberg Party Day celebrations in September 1938. At these festivities, the regiment formally became part of the SS. It received the title “Der Führer” and the regimental and battalion colors were presented. Afterwards, the Austrian SS regiment marched through the streets of Nuremberg to the strains of the “Prinz Eugen” March and the cheers of large throngs of spectators.

After returning to their garrisons, the men of “DF” undertook an accelerated program of strenuous day and night training. Late in September, the Army commander in Vienna, Gen. Kienitz, alerted the “DF” Rgt. to stand by for possible service during the forthcoming Sudetenland occupation. Since the regiment still was not fully operational, a special combat battalion composed of three reinforced companies was formed, drawing its manpower from all of the “DF” units. This battalion was assigned to serve as part of an ad hoc regiment with Gen. Schubert’s “Vienna” Div., which was supposed to occupy the Sudeten territory around Znaim.

The “Vienna” Div. began its march into Czechoslovakia on 1 October 1938, and the resulting occupation went off smoothly. The men of SS-Kampfgruppe “DF” found themselves warmly greeted by the local inhabitants. Following this diversion, the battalion returned to the main regiment and its men went back to their old units.

During the winter of 1938/1939, training for the “Der Fuehrer” Rgt. continued at a rapid pace, and the unit was transformed from a horse-drawn formation to a fully motorized one. By early March 1935, “DF” was considered to be operationally fit, except for a lack of experience in the utilization of motor vehicles. At this time, the regiment was placed in the Army’s mobilization plans for the total occupation of Bohemia and Moravia. “DF” was given the mission of occupying Pressburg (Bratislava) in southern Slovakia. Actually no long-term occupation of Slovakia was planned; the idea was to liberate this territory from Czech influence and then allow the long-suffering Slovak patriots to take over.

Collar patch

Sleeve title

Regimental shield

 Georg Keppler, first “DF” commander.

 Stubaf. Bittrich, first CO of I./”DF.”

Early members of the “Der Führer” Regiment.

 Ostubaf. Wäckerle, first CO of III./“DF.”

  First NCO training class for the Regiment in Vienna.

On the night of 14/15 March 1939, SS Rgt. “DF” assembled for its task near the bridge over the Leitha River on the Czech frontier. The forward elements were quickly placed into combat readiness positions. Back in Vienna, reports were received that “strong resistance” from the Czech Army could be expected in the “DF” sector, and this caused Gen. Kienitz to issue orders postponing the “DF” advance into Slovakia. But he was too late; the “DF” Rgt. went into motion just before dawn on 15 March, before the new orders were received.

To the east of Gänserndorf (northeast of Vienna), the regiment the Czech frontier and marched through the Little Carpathians to Boesing (Peczinok), without the slightest opposition from the "other side.” From there, "DF” prepared to secure the Waag Valley from Pressburg in the south to Jablionca in the north. A battalion was detached to link-up with an Army division to the north.

The bridge to the east of Gänserndorf was set aside for use by the regiment’s “heavy vehicle” convoy. Just as this column was getting underway, snow began to fall, and this combined with ice build effectively shut down the roads leading into the Little Carpathians. As a result, the entire heavy vehicle column had to be sent back to Gänserndorf to await improved weather conditions. In the meantime, I./"DF” managed to make contact with an Army division to the north and Oberführer Keppler established his command post in Bösing. During the course of the morning, Keppler learned that the bulk of the regimental vehicles probably would not be coming through to join the rest of the unit; news which caused more than a little consternation at the command post.

However, at about mid-day the snow stopped and the commander of the "DF” heavy vehicle convoy decided to proceed. What followed for the young, inexperienced truck drivers was a hair-raising journey along winding ice- and snow-covered mountain roads, but by evening they had caught up with the rest of the regiment without incident. By day’s end, SS Rgt. “Der Fuehrer” had fulfilled its original mission.

On 17 March, the Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Generaloberst von Brauchitsch radioed the “DF” command post that he wished to visit the regiment. Oberführer Keppler informed him that the route through the Little Carpathians was a difficult and dangerous one, but this did not discourage von Brauchitsch. After arriving in Bösing the Generaloberst personally inspected the regimental units and spoke with individual soldiers. He praised the regiment for its successful actions and then proceeded on to the positions of I./“DF” farther to the north. For the men of SS Rgt. “DF” the occupation-march proved to be a valuable training exercise.

In May 1939, the regiment traveled in a motorized convoy to the Grossborn Training Grounds in Pomerania. It was quite an experience for many of the “DF” troopers who had never been out of their native Alpine valleys. At Grossborn, SS-“DF” underwent its most extensive military training to date, both as an entire unit and in detached elements. Emphasis was placed on marksmanship and sharpshooting along with coordinated heavy weapons supported exercises. It has been said that the Grossborn experience was the building block for Rgt. “DF’s” later successes during the war.

In June 1939, “Der Fuehrer” was named the “Guard Regiment” of Reichsprotektor von Neurath in Bohemia-Moravia, and was sent on to Prague for garrison duty. The outbreak of WWII on 1 September 1939, found “DF” still in place in the Czech capital. When France and Britain declared war on Germany, the decision was made to send SS-“DF” to the “West Wall” fortifications facing the French border. At the same time, the senior SS regiments were going into action in Poland.
  
By mid-September 1939, “Der Fuehrer” had reached Waldkirch, Schwarzwald, after a long march from the “Protectorate.” It was then made the motorized reserve for Gen. Dollman’s Army in the south Schwarzwald. In early October 1939, SS Rgt. “DF” was sent to the old Czech military training camp at Brdy- Wald, east of Pilsen, were it was combined with the other units of the SS-VT (except the LSSAH) to be formed into the new SS-“V”-Division under SS-Gruppenführer Paul Hausser.