1944 they were back in Russia, gaining addi-
tional laurels during the Ternopol campaign.
Here Hausser brilliantly orchestrated the
largest breakout operation of the entire war,
which saved thousands of German troops from
capture. After a brief rest in Poland, the II SS
Panzer Corps was dispatched to France again
in anticipation of an Allied invasion. Hausser
replaced Gen. Friedrich Dollman as head of
the Seventh Army, becoming the first SS gen-
eral to command such a force. While operating
under the aegis of Gen. Hans von Kluge,
Hausser’s Seventh Army thwarted every at-
tempt by British forces to break out of the Nor-
mandy beachhead. But constantly assailed by
air power and naval gunfire, the Germans
could not advance to crush them. The impasse
was broken on July 25, 1944, when American
forces broke free at Saint-Lô and the Germans
struggled to contain them. Hitler, furious, or-
dered Kluge to attack at once and seal the
breach. That general had no alternative but to
send four outnumbered and rundown panzer
divisions forward, including Hausser’s. On Au-
gust 7 they engaged American forces in a battle
around Mortain but were beaten back with
stiff losses. Meanwhile, the Third U.S. Army
under Gen. George S. Patton, in concert with
Canadian forces farther north, caught the re-
treating Germans in the Falaise Pocket. This
proved a deathtrap ringed with fire, and the
Germans lost 50,000 infantry and around 9,000
vehicles of every description. Among the casu-
alties was Hausser, who recklessly exposed
himself and was evacuated on the back of a
tank. By January 1945, he had recovered suffi-
ciently to take charge of Army Group G on the
Rhine with a rank of colonel general, but this
was a force in name only. Steadily pressed
back by superior Allied numbers, Hausser
steadily gave ground despite orders to stand.
Hitler, angered by this final act of defiance, re-
moved the hard-charging SS general on April 2,
- It was a humiliating finish for one of the
Third Reich’s best combat officers.
After the war Hausser was detained by the
Allies but never implicated in any war crimes.
Following his release he wrote the first his-
tory of the SS and vainly tried to expunge its
reputation for mass murder and brutality. He
was unsuccessful, for blood-stained SS troops
are indelibly associated with the running of
Hitler’s death camps and the mass murder of
civilians and military prisoners. Hausser also
worked ceaselessly to have SS members
given pensions and veteran status, arguing
they were simply “soldiers like any other.”
After some reluctance, the postwar German
government granted them parity with regular
army veterans. “Papa” Hausser died at Lud-
wigsburg on December 21, 1972, the best and
most accomplished Waffen-SS general.Bibliography
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