Did any Germans switch sides?

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#1

I was reading an article about the French who served in the Waffen SS, Charlemagne Brigade, later Division.

There was a few lines ( unfortunately short on detail) about their exploits on the Eastern Front in 1945.

It seems they clashed with a Soviet unit comprised of former German POWs who were serving with the Red Army.

So, if this is true, we have the bizarre situation of French troops ( In German uniform) fighting German troops (in Russian uniform).

I have found a few references to senior German Officers switching sides, and being used for propaganda purposes, but nothing on German soldiers actually fighting for the Russians. One would imagine the Soviets would be reluctant to let Germans anywhere near the front in case they crossed the line back to their own side.

Can anyone shed any more light on this?

#2

French Wehrmacht

#3

Unfortunalty no.

#4

This is a interesting history of two pilots that were shot down, recluted by the soviets, but returned at his unit aniway.

http://www.elknet.pl/acestory/zuzwin/zuzwin.htm

#5

There were a number of mostly Marxist Germans that fought on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War…

Many would go on to serve in intelligence and special operations units of the Allies…

#6

Very interesting… Pretending to turn on your former country… only to rejoin and fight again! :slight_smile: I like that… Very smart!

#7

Fighting for Nazis and then going back to fight for them wasn’t that smart.

#8

What are you trying to say man? He’s a GERMAN soldier… its only natural for him to want to go back and fight with his comrades.

I’m sure if it was Americans in the place of the the 2 German pilots… they’d do the same thing if they could.

#9

At least they didn’t arrest you and put you in a forced labour camp if you were captured then returned, like the Russians did.

#10

Just pointing out that their choice wasn’t that smart.

Man of Stoat, not all Soviet POWs were sentenced to labor camps. About 10% were because they surrendered intentionally and/or collaborated. The rest went to infirmary camps.

My knowledge of Germans switching to the Soviet side is of German spies working for the USSR and a Wehrmacht deserter, forget his name though, who deserted just before Operation Barbarossa.

#11

Russian POWs who escaped from captivity were almost always treated as spies. The logic was thus: “how could you possibly have escaped without German help? What was your mission? Confess, spy! The organs of the party are never wrong!”

#12

Although not all Russian POWs were sent to prison Camps, they were certainly watched for most of the rest of their lives and were only allowed to have certain jobs.

#13

The communist anti-Nazi Germans were based in moscow and their organisation was called “Free Germany” (Frei Deutchesland) most of the German POW in soviet hands join the “Free officer commity” a anti-Nazi organisations, I know of several German communists who served is the Red Army but they probably didn’t have a specific “German” unit, some of the German POW in soviet later became officers in the NVA.

#14

According to rather ecently released documents, there were about 10,000 Germans and Austrians (refugees who escaped to the UK before the begin of the war) fighting with all branches of the British forces. Many German communists escaped to Russia and fought in the Red Army. The 13th Demibrigade of the French Foreign Legion, which joined the Free French consisted mostly of republican veterans of the Spanish civil war, many of them from the International Brigades.
Other German and Austrian (as well as Italian) refugees managed to escape to the US (though it was rather difficult due to American immigration rules and required a lot of money, therefore the UK was often the first choice) and returned with the US forces.

On the other hand there were French, Dutch, Scandinavians etc. fighting as volunteers for the Germans.

In a way WW2 was rather an ideologicakl civil war on global scale than an oldfashioned war (like WW1) for reasons of national expansion.

Jan

#15

Strange Bedfellows
The OSS and the London “Free Germans”
Jonathan S. Gould

Editor’s Note: The opening of the files of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the end of the Cold War have enabled scholars to add new perspective to our understanding of World War II intelligence operations. Two decades ago, Joseph Persico’s Piercing the Reich used some of the declassified records to tell the story of the OSS’s daring infiltration of agents into Nazi Germany in the closing months of the war. One of the OSS officers who ran those operations, the late Joseph Gould, left a memoir that now adds texture and impact to Persico’s account and subsequent scholarship. The author of this article, Gould’s son Jonathan, has combined his father’s memories with the published literature—and with a startling twist from behind the Iron Curtain.

Following the Allied landing at Normandy in June 1944, the OSS dispatched over 200 spies into Nazi Germany. The London office of the Secret Intelligence Branch (SI), under the leadership of the late CIA director William J. Casey, organized and dispatched over 100 missions from September 1944 through April 1945.1 Agents recruited from the ranks of church dissidents, Spanish civil war veterans, political refugees, and underground labor groups throughout occupied Europe gathered military intelligence critically important to the advance of the Allied armies, leading to the surrender of Germany on 8 May 1945.

This article focuses on one set of those missions, manned by seven exiled German trade unionists, and the relationship between the agents and the OSS officer who recruited and trained them. That officer— Army Lt. Joseph Gould—was the author’s father. This article is dedicated to his memory and to the courage and sacrifice of these seven silent soldiers of the German resistance, who have gone largely unrecognized…

The Rest Here

#16

Found several cases of Wehrmacht/SS soldiers switching sides:

  1. The 999th Rehabilitation Battalion composed of reportably rehabilitated German political prisoners was sent to Greece in 1944. The majority of the unit switched sides and fought against their countrymen with the Greek guerillas for the rest of the war.

  2. The Druzhina SS Brigade, which was made up of Russians, killed all of its German personnal in 1943 and deserted back to the Russians. It became the ‘1st Anti-Fascist Partisan Brigade’. The Germans made massive efforts to track down and completely destroy all the men in this unit.

  3. The 102nd and 118th Battalions of the 30th Waffen SS deserted en masse and joined the FFI (Forces Francaises de l’Interieur) in 1944. The men were mostly Ukranians, and were protected from being shipped back to the USSR at the end of the war by being all inducted into the 13th Demi-Brigade of the French Foreign Legion. Many of the Ukranians went on to die in the jungles of Indochina fighting with the Foreign Legion.

#17

Interesting find…

Many of the Ukranians went on to die in the jungles of Indochina fighting with the Foreign Legion.

As did many German ex-SS and Wehrmacht…

#18

Some of the “Volksdeustche” ( german origin born outside the country) captured in the bridgehead of Normandy agree also to fight against his former comrades in arms.