UNKNOWN: I will just tell you about one scene which I myself witnessed with my own eyes—otherwise I shouldn’t speak about it. That was during the winter fighting, when four Russian divisions, a Guards cavalry division, two Guards infantry divisions and one other division, broke through the neighbouring division on my left wing. I now formed a defensive flank. My front was like this, and the defensive flank projected like this, it formed an acute angle—ridiculous. I was right in the centre at a distance of 4 km. with my battle headquarters, at a distance of 2 km. from both fronts. In order to form the defensive flank, I got as a second unit an S.S. battalion, that is, it wasn’t much more than a glorified company. The company consisted of about a hundred and seventy-five men, a few heavy machine guns and two mortars. There was one Hauptsturmführer von BENDEN, a grand fellow who had also been in the World War. These fellows had been acting as a protective division in the rear and had engaged guerrillas. They were then withdrawn and sent up to the front. I gave them orders to take the village of VOLCHANKA (?). As they hadn’t any heavy weapons, I gave them two light machine guns and three anti-tank guns, which I also immediately withdrew. The attack was begun. I couldn’t believe my eyes, how quickly the attack proceeded, it developed splendidly, we advanced against the village and met with fire. Suddenly BENDEN stood up in his car and drove up to the head of his battalion and the battalion fell in and marched on in step against the village.
BÜLOWIUS: … … complete madness.
UNKNOWN: They had nine officers. Out of these nine, seven were killed or wounded. Out of a hundred and seventy infantrymen, about eighty were lost. They took (?) the village…. Afterwards they held the village with eighty men for a whole week, or rather they had to leave it once and got back again. In the end they had twenty-five men left. Yes, it was an absolute scandal. I gave him a troop of quick-firing (?) guns, he didn’t fire a round, not a single round. (I said), “You must fire, von BENDEN.”—“Nonsense, we can take it this way too.” Utter madness.767
Most listeners reacted to tales like this in the same way as Lieutenant General Karl Bülowius did, by declaring SS behavior completely senseless.
The truth of such narratives was never doubted. Everyone accepted them as plausible. But SS units weren’t the only ones who were imagined to have incurred horrendous and senseless losses. Upon hearing such a story from SS Hauptsturmführer Benden, Major General Fritz Krause remembers one of his own:
