ARTUR PHLEPS

By Nino Oktorino

Artur Phleps born in Biertan (Berethalom, Birthlm), a village in Southern

Transylvania, part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, on November 29,
1881. Belong from a Volksdeutsche family; his father was a doctor and his
mother a farmers daughter. Started his military career in the Austro-
Hungarian Army, Phleps served as a mountain trooper during WW I and
ended the War as a first lieutenant. He raised a national guard in 1918 in his
native Transylvania to fight Bela Kuns Hungarian Communists. Finding that
he could this better in the company of the Romanians who had advanced on
Budapest, Phleps took service in the Romanian army and played a prominent
part in the modernization of the army. After served as an instructor at the
Military Academy in Bucharest, Phleps was promoted to the rank of general
and with the versatility of some hero of the thirty years war he commanded
the Mountain Corps until he was put into reserve in 1940.

In 1941, Phleps asked to be retired from the Romanian army and moved to
Germany. Then he volunteered in the Waffen-SS, where he received the rank
of SS-Standartenfhrer and served as a supernumerary officer on the
Wiking divisional staff. He was eventually given command of the Westland
Regiment, where his performance attracted his Army superior, General von
Mackensen, who persuaded him to join the German Army and promised him
to lead a division. However, Himmler intervened, promoted Phleps to SS-
Gruppenfhrer and entrusted him to form and lead a new Waffen-SS
division, known later as 7.SS-Freiwilligen Gebirgs Division Prinz Eugen.
Like Phleps himself, the division consisted mainly of Volksdeutsche
volunteers from Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia. Organized as a mountain
division and armed with captured French, Czech and Yugoslav weapons,
Prinz Eugen served throughout the war in Yugoslavia conducting anti-
partisan operation with great brutality. Phleps himself was to be decorated
with the Knights Cross on 4 July 1943 for his leadership of the division and
subsequently promoted to SS-Obergruppenfhrer and got a command of the
V.SS-Gerbirgskorps.

The end of Artur Phleps, who entered the SS as a Romanian general, was as
ambiguous as his career. In September 1944, when most of the Hungarian
army commanders were on the point of surrendering to the Red Army, he
was flown from Montenegro to form a front in Transylvania, the home of his
boyhood. Two days after Phleps had left Budapest, Himmler ordered his
arrest. He had been accused by the SD of defeatism, but he never found:
Phleps was captured close to Arad by Soviet troops, on 21 September and
was summarily executed by his Soviet guards the very same day. His body
was never found but his Knights Cross and some of his uniform insignia
were eventually recovered and accepted as evidence of his death. On 24
November 1944, the Oak Leaves to the Knights Cross were posthumously
bestowed upon Artur Phleps. As a further honor, a mountain regiment of the
Prinz Eugen Division was named Artur Phleps and granted the privilege of
wearing a cuff band with his name.