Soviet Voulunteers for the German army

Russian Volunteers in the German Wehrmacht in WWII

 

Interesting Topic, did not have the time to read through this whole article, but I recently read something about Soviet Soldiers in the Wehrmacht.
As far as I know they were feirce fighters, because they knew what was waiting for them if they got captured or even released. Many Russian POWs died after they got freed by the Soviets. Most of them hoped for a better life after German victory and the chance to go back to their early life.

 

Ive got several original photos showing Russians still in their uniforms, lugging ammo and such up to the front to their new masters. These men were called Hiwis. If you ask Ray nice enough, he might repost a few of those photos. ;-))

 

The ones captured by the Allies were usually separated from German and Austrian PoWs. It wasn't always possible though; one British camp in 1945 had 25 nationalities held there.

 

it all depends which point of view you pick:

-For Stalin their countries were soviet satelites and those volunteers traitors. -
For the Germans they were "freedom" fighters and Hiwis.
-For the nationals of those countries, whether occupied by the Germans or not, they were independence war patriots.
In fact many were former pows who were driven by nothing else than survival and the perpective of having bread on a daily basis. many of them were sent to the west in case they changed their minds. Tatars terrorised the civilians in Bretagne riding their little horses.

Russian Liberation Army - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Ukrainian) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stalin didn't do very well obviously....................

 

He got his revenge in 1945 when he caught and executed many of those former volunteers

 

One has to wonder, considering the number of non-Germans who fought/served for Hitler what might have been acomplished had the Nazi's not been so.....Nazi.

 

1) most of these units had little military value
2)if there were more volunteers ,how could the Germans supply and equip them
3)I doubt that ,with an other occupation policy,there would be more volunteers:there was a(wide-spread?) disaffection and hostility towards communism,but,that would not mean that all those who were hostile to the regime would volunteer to fight against communism:as always,most people have one policy only :to survive . In France,most people were hostile to the Germans,but only a small minority joined the resistance .

 

Fair enough, still even if you do not put more bodies into uniforms, what about all the time, manpower and reasources spent on anti-partisan efforts. The Western Allies never had to deploy entire armies to suppress their rear areas. Nazi racial/economic policies fueled much of the partisan resistance. The Order Battalians/Einzstazgruppen create the organized resistance, which then requires more troops to supress, which inturn fuels more resistance. A never ending cycle.

G.I.Ivan in the summer of 1941 did not much care for the Soviet goverment until he learned that Nazi ideology was much worse than Communist ideology, then he began to care a whole lot more. If the Nazi's could have held their natural tendencies in check until the war was won than it is not impossible that Stalin's troops might have done to him, what the Tsar's did to the Romanov's.

 

There were many Russians who fought for the other side. I think most of them were there to escape the life in POW Camps. Others were fighting to free Russia from Stalin. Almost all were not stationed on the Russian front and took part in anti-partisan operations in Central Europe.

Over 300,000 served with Luftwaffe. They were with Flak units defending Germany from Allied Bombing Campaign.

Apparently Putin’s father was with Vlasov’s army. He fought to put down Warsaw uprising. After the battle for Warsaw, SS court marshaled and shot a couple of Russian Liberation Army Commanders for brutality against civilian population. I can only guess what kind of a psychopath you have to be in order for SS to convict you for crimes against Civilians.

 

Thier was also a group of Soviet pilots in the luftwaffe flying ME262s.

 

They were the only non-Geramns to fly ME262 in combat.

 

They would've got...nothing.

If you count Hiwis, the total numbers who supported the German war effort ran into hundreds of thousands , but this only tells one side of the story. The other side is the number of partisans who formed resistance movements within the occupied zones long before the central government thought to harness such efforts. Just in the Ukraine, where the population had PLENTY of reason to hate the Soviets and Stalin (somewhere around 6,000,000 +/-) partisan numbers exceeded 100,000. More than one hundred thousand volunteer fighters supporting the government in a region where Stalin et al STARVED six million people to death. That is not the profile of a populous waiting to revolt afainst the Soviet state.

Across the USSR the total number of partisans dwarf the 200k (Mostly Baltic nationals) who decided to ''support'' the Reich. For every volunteer to support the Germans (and BTW, get far more, and better, food for themselves and their families while everyone else starved to death) there were at least two or three who volunteered to live in the forests and eat pine needles so they could oppose the invader.

The fable often spread around, is that the vast majority of Soviet peoples hated the government enough to betray the Rodina. They didn't, as the almost unbelievable sacrifices of the Soviet people demonstrated. Had the various subject peoples been as disaffected as some, including, it would seem, you imagine, the Germans would have been able to walk into Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Sevastopol, Kiev, and every other city. There were not enough NKVD, NKGB, and GRU troops to prevent a mass uprising if the desire was there in ANY of the cities across the war zone. It simply wasn't.

Even in Leningrad (a city where the loyalty of the population was deeply questioned by the Communist Party), where the suffering was beyond description, the civilian population was supportive of the war effort even as some segments of the populous began to eat the dead (several hundred cases of cannibalism were documented in NKVD records). If you are in a circumstance where you are eating wallpaper (or worse) and the populous still supports the war effort in overwhelming numbers, the desire to revolt simply or turn traitor isn't there.

Hitler thought the Soviet peoples would revolt. He was wrong, as were all others who believed the same, not because the people loved the Communist Party (they didn't), but because they loved the Motherland with all their heart and soul.

 

With respect the point of my post was to show that Nazi racial policies made it easy for people to choose to resist, making the task for Germany that much more difficult. Most civilians would choose to stay on the sidelines rather than risk their lives unless given a reason to.

 

Well the fundamental nature of the Nazi regime would stipulate against giving ''sub-humans'' even the pretence of being treated as anything but helots. Unless you replace the Nazi’s you'll see mass partisan uprisings, but in that case without Nazi's, WW2 as a whole would be void too.

Still even non-Nazi German invaders would face major problems. As most, say Ukrainians could remember the last German-installed government from 1918, and would not have fond memories. It's one thing to gain ''independence'' or ''freedom from Stalinism'', and another to have it installed by an invader at gunpoint. Especially this particular invader.

 

Hm,if I am not wrong,your first sentence "Nazi racial plicies made it easy for people to resist" contradicts your second sentence"most civilians would choose to stay on the sidelines ".
You also are giving to much importance on the role of the civilians living in the occupied territories :
1)even if a lot of civilians were willing to risk their lives by aiding the Germans ,the Germans would find their aid neglectable .
2)only a minority of the civilians living in the occupied territories were joining the partisans,and,their role in the defeat of Germany is much,much,......overestimated .
The Gemans never were defeated by a popular insurrection,or by the partisans .

 

Russian civilian cooperation in resource extraction or the lack thereof in the occupied territories might be a more important question.