Wehrmacht foreign volunteers and conscripts information
Andrey Vlasov and General Zhilenkov (center) of the Russian Liberation Army meeting with Joseph Goebbels (February 1945).Soldier of the Free Arabian Legion in Greece, September 1943.
Among the approximately one million foreign volunteers and conscripts who served in the Wehrmacht during World War II were ethnic Belgians, Czechs, Dutch, Finns, Danes, French, Hungarians, Norwegians, Poles,[1] Portuguese, Swedes,[2] Swiss along with people from Great Britain, Ireland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Balkans.[3] At least 47,000 Spaniards served in the Blue Division.[4]
Some estimates state anywhere between 600,000 and 1,400,000 Soviet citizens (Russians and other non-Russian ethnic minorities) joined the Wehrmacht forces as Hiwis (or Hilfswillige).[5] The Ukrainian collaborationist forces were composed of an estimated number of 180,000 volunteers serving with units scattered all over Europe.[6] Russian émigrés and defectors from the Soviet Union formed the Russian Liberation Army or fought as Hilfswillige within German units of the Wehrmacht primarily on the Eastern Front.[7] Non-Russians from the Soviet Union formed the Ostlegionen (literally "Eastern Legions"). The East Legions comprized a total of 175,000 personnel.[8] These units were all commanded by General Ernst August Köstring (1876−1953).[9] A lower estimate for the total number of foreign volunteers that served in the entire German armed forces (including the Waffen SS) is 350,000.[10]
These units were often under the command of German officers and some published their own propaganda newssheets.
^Ryszard Kaczmarek: Polacy w Wehrmachcie. Wydawnictwo Literackie, Kraków 2010. ISBN 978-83-08-04488-9
^Wangel, Carl-Axel (1982). Sveriges militära beredskap 1939-1945 (in Swedish). Stockholm: Militärhistoriska Förlaget. ISBN 978-91-85266-20-3.
^Grasmeder, Elizabeth M.F. "Leaning on Legionnaires: Why Modern States Recruit Foreign Soldiers". International Security. Retrieved 30 July 2021.
^"Spain's Nazi volunteers defend their right to recognition - and German pensions". The Daily Telegraph. 30 November 2015.
^Audrey L. Alstadt (2013). "The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity under Russian Rule". p. 187. ISBN 9780817991838
^Carlos Caballero Jurado (1983). Foreign Volunteers of the Wehrmacht 1941–45. Translated by Alfredo Campello, David List. Osprey. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-85045-524-3.
^M. V. Nazarov, The Mission of the Russian Emigration, Moscow: Rodnik, 1994. ISBN 5-86231-172-6[page needed]
^"Slaughter on the Eastern Front: Hitler and Stalin's War 1941-1945" Appendix 3
^Dermot Bradley, Karl-Friedrich Hildebrand, Markus Rövekamp: Die Generale des Heeres 1921–1945. Band 7: Knabe–Luz. Biblio Verlag, Bissendorf 2004, ISBN 3-7648-2902-8.
^"SS: Hitler's Foreign Divisions" description
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