RUSSIAN NATIONALS IN GERMAN SERVICE

Baltic Cossack Poland PoW ROA SS Ukraine Waffen-SS 62 Min Read

It is truly ironic that the most numerous units of foreign nationals raised by the Germans during World War II came from among the “sub-human” Slavs of the Soviet Union. Faced with waging war in a country of vast distances and infested with enemy partisans, the Germans had no choice but to recruit Russians to ease the strain on their…

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PoW SS 5 Min Read

ANDREI ANDREYEVICH VLASOV, (1901–1946) – Short Biography

Soviet army general who would head the German-sponsored Russian Liberation Army. Born on 16 December 1901 in Chepukhimo, Nizhni-Novgorod Province, Russia (now Kursk Oblast), Andrei Vlasov fought in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. In 1928, he attended a course in infantry tactics in Moscow, and two years…

PoW SS Ukraine 2 Min Read

UWW

The UVV armlet In spring 1943 the Ukrainians who served in Wehrmacht and in some of the Schutzmannschaft Bataillonen were put together into Ukrainian Liberation Army (UVV). The former ‘hiwi’, some UPA members, volunteers from Eastern Ukraine, 200 persons from Vlasov Officers’ school in Saubersdorf and Soviet prisoners of war…

PoW SS Ukraine 5 Min Read

WWII SOVIET WAR LOSSES

The Soviet experience of warfare was very different from that of its Allies, Britain and the United States. Large in territory and population, the Soviet Union was poorer than the other two by a wide margin in productivity and income. It was Soviet territory that Hitler wanted for his empire,…

PoW SS 5 Min Read

VLASOV MOVEMENT

CATHERINE ANDREYEV The Vlasov Movement (Vlasovskoye Dvizhenie), or Russian Liberation Movement, designates the attempt by Soviet citizens in German hands during World War II to create an anti-Stalinist army, nominally led by Lieutenant-General Andrei Andreyevich Vlasov (1900–1946), to overthrow Stalin. Vlasov gave his name to the movement and died for…

PoW SS 6 Min Read

TODT ORGANIZATION

One of the most important specialized organizations of the Third Reich, the Todt Organization (OT), named after its director, Fritz Todt, was used for the construction of military and related sites, especially in occupied Europe. Labor service “volunteers” and private construction firms were first used by the OT in the…

PoW SS 3 Min Read

SLAVE LABOURERS AND SABOTAGE

Spontaneous and organized forms of disguised labor struggle must be distinguished from such individual acts of resistance. They required maximum cover, absolute reliability, technical ingenuity, and an orientation beyond the immediate situation. Sabotage was aimed not at husbanding physical energies but at harming the adversary, whether for reasons of personal…

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RUSSIAN NATIONALS IN GERMAN SERVICE

It is truly ironic that the most numerous units of foreign nationals raised by the…

1942- One Last Opportunity: The German Experience with Indigenous Security Forces

Bronislav Kaminski, leader of the RONA. by Major Bob E. Willis Jr. U.S. Army  …

OSTARBEITER (EASTERN WORKERS)

“Ostarbeiter” (eastern workers) were mostly eastern European women brought to Germany for forced labor. They…

HIWIS [1]

The German prisoner of war camps, containing millions of Soviet prisoners, were a potential source…