It has alway’s amazed me that about 2 million foreigner’s served in the German armed forces in WW 2,so many people are totally unaware of this fact.
Of course through out history many nation’s have used foreign troops in large numbers, its just interesting that Germany also employed what their doctine claimed were inferior races to serve in their armed forces.
Excuse me if this has posted earlier…
Here is a interesting site with that subject in mind.
The Germans were rather good at laundering people’s race to turn them into a more acceptable one. An awful lot of Russians suddenly found they were actually Cossacks for instance, because the Cossacks were an acceptably martial race to the Germans.
The German army was very good at promising what the other countries desired(especially with the Belgian Walloons and Flemish regarding their independence) or used foreign government and soldiers concern (and fear) of communism ( with the French notably).
I have heard of the british free korps before
Probably the funniest of the German “Foreign” units, it appears that at least 2/3 of them were working for British Intelligence, and most of the rest were using it as a rest camp from their normal PoW routine.
Did the Germans use them for “show”, or did they actually do any fighting against the Allies? Anyone know?
A couple of them (there were never more than 25-30 at the same time anyway IIRC) are supposed to have fought in the Battle of Berlin in the last days of the war.
Look here for more info:
http://ww2incolor.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4484
Oops, guess I should have looked around some!:oops:
Not to forget the “American Free Corps”. Its existence is doubtful though, also the existence of one of its alleged members “Peter Delaney” from Louisiana.
However it’s a fact that USAAF Lieutenant Martin James Monti stole an air craft and deserted to the germans in 1944. He was used as a propaganda radio speaker first (with little success as it’s told) and entered the SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers, a war correspondance unit, where he was kept like some sort of trophy. It’s not proven that he was part of the American Free Corps though. After the war (in 1949) he was convicted to 25 years in prison by a US court.