Born in 1914, Otto Weidinger enlisted in the SS-Verfügungstruppe in April 1934. His first assignment was as a camp guard at the Dachau concentration camp. With the SS Division Das Reich, he participated in the invasion of Poland and in the Battle of the Netherlands. During Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, he served on the divisional staff. In 1943, Weidinger was posted to the SS Regiment "Germania" and took part in the Battle of Kursk. In April 1944, Weidinger was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross. He was promoted to command of the 4th SS Panzer-Grenadier Regiment "Der Führer" stationed in Normandy coastline. He fought with the division throughout the war, his final operation was covering the evacuation of 'Volksdeutche' from Prague in the War's final days. When World War II ended, Weidinger was held at the Dachau internment camp administered by the US Army. In August 1947, he was transferred to French custody, where he was charged with war crimes and stood trial in 1951. Weidinger was acquitted by a military court in Bordeaux in June 1951. At the trial of the perpetrators of the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre in Bordeaux in January 1953, Weidinger was a witness for the defense.
Post-war apologia
From 1967 to 1982, Weidinger wrote the history of Regiment "Der Führer" and a multi-volume history of "Das Reich" published by the right-wing, which was owned by HIAG, a Waffen-SS lobby group. The narrative was extensive and strove for a so-called official representation of the division's history, backed by maps and operational orders. "No less than 5 volumes and well over 2,000 pages were devoted to the doings of the 2nd Panzer DivisionDas Reich", writes the military historian S.P. MacKenzie. Munin Verlag's expressed aim was to publish the "war narratives" of former Waffen-SS members, and their titles did not go through the rigorous fact-checking processes common in traditional historical works; they were revisionist accounts unedited by professional historians and presented the former Waffen-SS members' version of events. The Das Reich divisional history, like other HIAG publications, focused on the positive, "heroic" side of National Socialism. The French author, who studied the Oradour massacre, notes the tendentious nature of Weidinger's narrative: it provided a sanitized version of history without any references to war crimes. In 1984, Weidinger self-published a revisionist account of the Tulle massacre, Tulle and Oradour. A German-French tragedy. Re-issued after his death, by the right-wing Nation und Europa, it was subsequently banned in France.
