Paybooks sometimes contain clerical errors or confusing information. One example is this SS-Fallschirmjäger paybook which shows first one date for the award of the jump badge and then a second date, months after the Luftwaffe had closed their jump schools.
In his paybook, SS Lieutenant Walter Scheu is listed as receiving the Fallschirmschützenabzeichen des Heeres on August 8th 1944. This date is then crossed out and replaced with the date December 20th 1944. There are other SS paratrooper paybooks showing November and December award dates and SS-Funker (Signaller) Walter Redeker - lots of Walters in this unit - still has his 1943 pattern A5 Army Para Badge certificate dated November 1st 1944.
Collectors and students have often queried these dates because the Luftwaffe parachute schools were all closed by then due to shortages. Scheu actually qualified in May and June at Fallschirmschule III at Kraljevo in Serbia. Scheu's Fallschirmschützenschein (Parachutist's Licence), issued by SS HQ, is dated July 25th 1944, by which time the school and the SS Para Bn's Reserve and Field Training Company had moved to the Hungarian airborne base at Papà.
Scheu probably received a provisional certificate dated August 8th from Fallschirmschule III before it closed down. A copy would have been sent to SS HQ in Berlin. SS HQ then issued Army Para Badge certificates to recipients in November and December 1944, months after they had qualified as paratroopers.
Scheu stated that he had never received his official certificate. This is not surprising as most of the active members of SS Parachute Battalion 600 were in the Ardennes with Skorzeny and his Panzerbrigade 150. The rest, including HQ Company of which Scheu was the commander, were recruiting and training new members in preparation for the coming battles on the Eastern Front.
Above are the opening pages of Scheu's paybook, showing the parachute licence (Fallschirmschützenschein) number. The soldbuch is a duplicate. Note the photo, retouched to show him as an SS-Untersturmführer.
The page showing entries for Scheu's SS Driving Licence and Parachute Licence, signed his company commander, Fritz Leifheit, who would later lead two companies of the SS Parachute Battalion as part of Skorzeny's Panzerbrigade 150 in the Ardennes. Scheu, as a co mbat-experienced officer, was in the Reserve and Field Training Company at this stage.
Page showing wounds and that Scheu was in hospital at the end of the war. This is why his documents remained together and he was able to keep them. Most of the 180 surviving SS paratroopers destroyed their documents during the headlong retreat from the Soviets towards the American lines in May 1945. Some who kept their documents had them confiscated by the US Army. Battalion CO Siegfried Milius was one such case. His paybook presumably lies in some US Army box file.
Here is Scheu's POW/Civilian Internment Camp ID card, issued by the Americans. The SS paratroopers were lucky that the Americans didn't hand them over to the Soviets as per Allied policy in the case of SS soldiers retreating towards Allied lines from the Eastern Front.
And here we have Scheu's release/denazification document. Note the rather sinister, Orwellian heading "Ministry for Political Liberation".
There's more but that will do for now. A recent find was a paybook to a Heer soldier and driver recruited into SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 by Walter Scheu in November 1944 when the battalion was reforming.
Scheu was OC of HQ Company while the cadre of the battalion was reforming in Neu-Strelitz and went about the countryside with a team rounding up likely recruits from army and airforce depots, telling them that life was better in the SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl than in warm, comfy depots - such was his charm and persuasiveness that they believed him! - and altering their papers to make them SS men, which infuriated local Wehrmacht commanders.
What Scheu did was totally illegal but no rear echelon officer was going to argue with the business end of an MP40. The paybook is complete with driving licence, hospital voucher and demobilisation paper from July 1945. But I haven't put them up on the net yet so that will have to wait. They're amusing because the army officer filling out the demob paper reclaims the soldier from the SS, giving him back the army number Scheu's sidekicks crossed out.
Scheu was also OC of the 2nd Company for a brief time during the terrible fighting on the Oder Front. In one morning, his company destroyed seventeen Soviet tanks with smallarms and Panzerfausts. Scheu was entitled to two Tank Destruction Badges but never got them. He died a couple of years ago. He is remembered by surviving comrades as a rebellious individual with an irrepressible sense of humour and optimism and also as a soldier's officer. Hardly surprising as he had been an NCO from 1941 to 1944 with SS-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 5 and had been through the mill in Russia with the Wiking Division.
Initially tipped for a stellar career, Scheu's tendency to tell it like it was made him unpopular with his superiors and promotion was blocked. As soon as he put in for a transfer to the parachute battalion, after meeting them in Budapest, he was commissioned. This was typical of SS paratroopers. They were not penal cases but many were disciplinary cases or soldiers who had upset the powers-that-be in some way, be it through lippiness or not being as convinced of the Nazi credo as they ought to have been.
To round this post off, here are a couple of photos taken of Walter Scheu with fellow officers and senior NCOs around the swimming pool at Papà in the summer of 1944. Papà was also the depot of the Hungarian paratroopers. The written messages are on Scheu's business cards from the 1950s and are from the men in the swimming pool photos who survived WW2.
Prosper Keating
In his paybook, SS Lieutenant Walter Scheu is listed as receiving the Fallschirmschützenabzeichen des Heeres on August 8th 1944. This date is then crossed out and replaced with the date December 20th 1944. There are other SS paratrooper paybooks showing November and December award dates and SS-Funker (Signaller) Walter Redeker - lots of Walters in this unit - still has his 1943 pattern A5 Army Para Badge certificate dated November 1st 1944.
Collectors and students have often queried these dates because the Luftwaffe parachute schools were all closed by then due to shortages. Scheu actually qualified in May and June at Fallschirmschule III at Kraljevo in Serbia. Scheu's Fallschirmschützenschein (Parachutist's Licence), issued by SS HQ, is dated July 25th 1944, by which time the school and the SS Para Bn's Reserve and Field Training Company had moved to the Hungarian airborne base at Papà.
Scheu probably received a provisional certificate dated August 8th from Fallschirmschule III before it closed down. A copy would have been sent to SS HQ in Berlin. SS HQ then issued Army Para Badge certificates to recipients in November and December 1944, months after they had qualified as paratroopers.
Scheu stated that he had never received his official certificate. This is not surprising as most of the active members of SS Parachute Battalion 600 were in the Ardennes with Skorzeny and his Panzerbrigade 150. The rest, including HQ Company of which Scheu was the commander, were recruiting and training new members in preparation for the coming battles on the Eastern Front.
Above are the opening pages of Scheu's paybook, showing the parachute licence (Fallschirmschützenschein) number. The soldbuch is a duplicate. Note the photo, retouched to show him as an SS-Untersturmführer.
The page showing entries for Scheu's SS Driving Licence and Parachute Licence, signed his company commander, Fritz Leifheit, who would later lead two companies of the SS Parachute Battalion as part of Skorzeny's Panzerbrigade 150 in the Ardennes. Scheu, as a co mbat-experienced officer, was in the Reserve and Field Training Company at this stage.
Page showing wounds and that Scheu was in hospital at the end of the war. This is why his documents remained together and he was able to keep them. Most of the 180 surviving SS paratroopers destroyed their documents during the headlong retreat from the Soviets towards the American lines in May 1945. Some who kept their documents had them confiscated by the US Army. Battalion CO Siegfried Milius was one such case. His paybook presumably lies in some US Army box file.
Here is Scheu's POW/Civilian Internment Camp ID card, issued by the Americans. The SS paratroopers were lucky that the Americans didn't hand them over to the Soviets as per Allied policy in the case of SS soldiers retreating towards Allied lines from the Eastern Front.
And here we have Scheu's release/denazification document. Note the rather sinister, Orwellian heading "Ministry for Political Liberation".
There's more but that will do for now. A recent find was a paybook to a Heer soldier and driver recruited into SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl 600 by Walter Scheu in November 1944 when the battalion was reforming.
Scheu was OC of HQ Company while the cadre of the battalion was reforming in Neu-Strelitz and went about the countryside with a team rounding up likely recruits from army and airforce depots, telling them that life was better in the SS-Fallschirmjäger-Btl than in warm, comfy depots - such was his charm and persuasiveness that they believed him! - and altering their papers to make them SS men, which infuriated local Wehrmacht commanders.
What Scheu did was totally illegal but no rear echelon officer was going to argue with the business end of an MP40. The paybook is complete with driving licence, hospital voucher and demobilisation paper from July 1945. But I haven't put them up on the net yet so that will have to wait. They're amusing because the army officer filling out the demob paper reclaims the soldier from the SS, giving him back the army number Scheu's sidekicks crossed out.
Scheu was also OC of the 2nd Company for a brief time during the terrible fighting on the Oder Front. In one morning, his company destroyed seventeen Soviet tanks with smallarms and Panzerfausts. Scheu was entitled to two Tank Destruction Badges but never got them. He died a couple of years ago. He is remembered by surviving comrades as a rebellious individual with an irrepressible sense of humour and optimism and also as a soldier's officer. Hardly surprising as he had been an NCO from 1941 to 1944 with SS-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 5 and had been through the mill in Russia with the Wiking Division.
Initially tipped for a stellar career, Scheu's tendency to tell it like it was made him unpopular with his superiors and promotion was blocked. As soon as he put in for a transfer to the parachute battalion, after meeting them in Budapest, he was commissioned. This was typical of SS paratroopers. They were not penal cases but many were disciplinary cases or soldiers who had upset the powers-that-be in some way, be it through lippiness or not being as convinced of the Nazi credo as they ought to have been.
To round this post off, here are a couple of photos taken of Walter Scheu with fellow officers and senior NCOs around the swimming pool at Papà in the summer of 1944. Papà was also the depot of the Hungarian paratroopers. The written messages are on Scheu's business cards from the 1950s and are from the men in the swimming pool photos who survived WW2.
Prosper Keating
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