Wiking

French Text

The Wiking division was the only armored SS division to fight exclusively on the Eastern Front. It is true that it was partly composed of Flemish, Dutch and Scandinavian volunteers whose primary motivation—for most of them—, was to fight against Bolshevism. It would have been a political mistake to go up against the Western Allies. The division fought with an unrelenting energy despite the fact that victory was not always equal to its efforts and sacrifices, as in Cherkasy or Hungary. Among the ranks of its officers were included high calipered men such as Felix Steiner, Herbert Otto Gille, August Dieckmann, Hans Dorr and Walter Schmidt to name a few. The history of this division, extremely detailed and illustrated by more than 2,500 exceptional photos largely from personal collections is here traced through a series of three volumes. The first covers the period from December 1940 to April 1942, the second from May 1942 until April 1943 and the third, recounts the last two years of war.