Hitler's Baby Division

percent of the required vehicles - all captured Italian machines had finally
arrived. At the end of January infantry companies, tank companies and
artillery batteries began to demonstrate their proficiency by combat
exercises with live ammunition. Sport exercises, tactical instruction and
sandbox instruction for NCOs by company commanders followed. Heinz
Guderian, the General Inspector of Armored Troops, and Field Marshal Gerd
von Rundstedt, the Commander in Chief West, observed some of these war
games and acknowledged a high level of performance according to Kurt
Meyer. Armored infantry companies placed special emphasis on
reconnaissance, night fighting and flexible shifting from attack to defense.
Fully one third of the training time was devoted to nocturnal maneuvers.
Physical exercises were conditioned by consideration for the performance
capacity of young recruits. Communication practice in the area of the I. SS
Panzer Corps near Dieppe revealed the unreliability of the Italian vehicles and
led to their replacement with German made machines by order of the
“highest authority”--presumably Hitler. 30
At least three hours a week were set aside for indoctrination to be
conducted by company commanders for the most part. After eight years of
incessant doctrinal drilling in the Hitler Youth and four weeks of intensive
propagandizing in the WELs, it was still deemed necessary to conduct regular
weekly indoctrination sessions within the division itself. Witt believed, as
most SS officers believed, that the war against Soviet Russia had made it
painfully clear that a “fanatically indoctrinated enemy” could only be
conquered by the "bearer of a superior ideology." Every young soldier
therefore had to know what he fought for. Hence, “attitude, spiritual
strength and emotional power were thought to be the deciding factors in
generally perceived popular wars.” Company commanders were expected to
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