d) Supervising the theoretical and practical instruction of former French Army officers and NCOs to ensure that their tactical training and military habits conformed to German conceptions.
e) Establishing a military training plan for the troops and surveillance of its execution, despatching officers and soldiers to courses at various German military schools of the various arms.
f) Initiating and maintaining all measures to psychologically prepare those members of the Brigade who had not previously experienced defensive fighting against the Red Army.
g) Before the transfer to the front – and giving full command authority to the French commander of the Brigade – acting as intermediary with the German headquarters.
h) Taking into account all the directives, transforming the Brigade into a Division in the spring of 1945. [Without imposing on the French commander’s position, the Inspector continued to act as the Division’s supreme Judge Advocate General.]
i) Thanks to an organisation immediately subordinate to the Inspectorate, alleviating the concern of the French soldiers with regard to their families on German territory.
General Krukenberg then requested and obtained the approval of the High Command for the following points considered by him to be necessary:
1) The line of conduct for French volunteers of all ranks could only be, in accordance with their terms of engagement, defensive fighting against the Soviet Army advancing on Western Europe.
2) Despite what Colonel Puaud had said, every volunteer had the right at the time of transferring to the Waffen-SS to terminate the terms of enlistment formerly entered into by him with other arms of the Wehrmacht. This was equally applicable to the new arrivals. Those who wanted to leave should be released without making it difficult for them. Nevertheless, they could only use this opportunity once.
3) To respect to a large extent the religious sentiments of the French volunteers, who almost without exception considered their engagements to be in defence of the Christian West, a point that had played a decisive role in their enrolment in France, and to support this point of view in the form of the divisional chaplain, Monsignor Comte de Mayol de Lupé and his auxiliaries.
4) There was no question of applying national-socialist propaganda among the volunteers. They were to remain French and not just French-speaking SS. The manner in which they saw the future of their country was their business. The troops were not to treat this matter otherwise than official. Arguments about internal political matters were to be discouraged as endangering the spirit of camaraderie.
5) The honour of the French flag and the prestige of the French soldier remained supreme not only in battle, but also in the way the German civilian population regarded them.
Krukenberg wrote of the arrival of the Miliciens:
In October 1944, the SS Main Office transferred several thousand [1,500] members of the Milice Française to the Charlemagne Division. They had retreated into southern Germany with their chief, Darnand, ahead of the advance of General de Gaulle’s liberation forces. The latter (Darnand) remained in Sigmaringen, sending his followers to Wildflecken, where their arrival posed a problem for the already assembled volunteers, especially those from the Storm Brigade, who refused to accept them. This was particularly due to Darnand’s activities as the Vichy Government’s Chief of Police. They believed, not without reason, that the particular nature of the Milice’s employment in France would harm the reputation of other members of the Division in the eyes of their fellow countrymen. Apart from this, in their constituent formation the militiamen were an insecure factor for the whole Division. With the Inspector’s [Krukenberg’s] permission, they were divided up among all the units and their new oath taking ceremony ordered for [12] November.
Without being invited, Darnand wanted to come and watch this at Wildflecken. He arrived late and after the ceremony. He vividly criticised the fact that his men had not been kept in a specially separated unit and above all that we had not been satisfied with the initial oath [they had previously taken] to him personally. He expressed his two criticisms in a letter to SS-Obergruppenführer Berger, Chief of the SS Main Office, whom he considered his personal friend, firstly because they had fought against each other in the same sector during the First World War, and secondly because they had been in agreement over the actions conducted in occupied France. Darnand complained to the German Inspector – and also to the Laval Government – that ‘he had been deprived of his last combatants.’ On Himmler’s orders, he was nevertheless obliged to retract his letter.
This did not prevent Darnand from appearing again soon – still without warning – at the Division, this time in the uniform of an SS-Sturmbannführer [Major]. To the Inspector, who asked him if he wanted to demonstrate his membership and stay a while with the troops, he said that he had come charged with a mission from the French Government, of which he was a member with the rank of Secretary of State. He wanted to address the Charlemagne. The Inspector said that he was not competent to authorise such a step, and Darnard became very angry.
The senior French officer was still Colonel Puaud, who had expected to be appointed to the same rank as Krukenberg, but the Germans did not want to have a French SS-General among their ranks, and only accorded him the rank of SS-Oberführer (Brigadier). However, in an interview with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler at the SS Main office in Berlin, Puaud was given the following assurances:
1. The Brigade would fight under the French flag.
2. One would avoid, as far as possible, engaging it on a front where it would find itself exposed to fighting other Frenchmen.
3. Although the Brigade was an SS unit, the practice of Christian religions in it would be absolutely free of restraint.
4. Finally, the capital point, in case of a German victory, the integrity of French national territory and its colonies would be scrupulously guaranteed.
The Vichy Government had been compulsorily removed to the German town of Sigmaringen on the Danube in August, causing both Marshal Pétain and Laval to refuse to continue to function in their roles. However, they had appointed Fernand de Brinon, who had been Vichy’s official Delegate in the Occupied Zone, to exercise his authority on behalf of the French citizens on German soil (POWs and workers) as head of the so-called French Governmental Delegation in Sigmaringen.
Krukenberg suspected that the French Governmental Delegation was considering fielding the Charlemagne on the Western Front, which would have been totally against the volunteers’ terms of enlistment. Krukenberg later wrote of Puaud that:
…when he was nominated commander of the Charlemagne in September 1944, the latter had told the OKW in the name of both units that their volunteers agreed to their transfer to the new Division. It was impossible to verify to what extent he was justified in making such a declaration. In any case, on the day of arrival of the newly appointed Inspector, a certain number of volunteers opposed the transfer, upon which Puaud, without authority and without the knowledge of the new Inspector (Krukenberg), sent the opponents to a concentration camp. Next day the Inspector had them brought back by his intelligence officer and demobilised them.
The OKW had forbidden the Inspector all contact with Sigmaringen. Should the need arise, contact would be conducted in either direction by the OKW. The SS Main Office alone remained competent on all questions of enrolment or assignment of volunteers and for all units formed from foreigners.