the German army during World War two was seen as one of the most effective combat
forces that the world had yet seen however as war drags on the lack of
manpower in the state starts to affect the armies and people are drafted in the
service there are once considered unfit for the army for one reason or another
in Germany's case they created the Volks from a militia group to draft citizens
in late 1944 however since the start of Operation Barbarossa the Germans
recruited into their armies local Russians from the occupied territories
in some numbers this force was given a name and they played a role in the
Eastern theater in this episode we will be looking at the so called
Russian Liberation Army
in pretty much any war men would be recruited into the army
from the occupied civilian population to some degree and with the German
occupation of Russian territory this was no exception Russian volunteers who
enlisted into the German army wore a particular patch showing that they were
of the so-called Liberation Army however they were known as heavies to the other
men this didn't actually mean much at first
outside of a collective term for all Russians within the German army and
almost all of them would engage in non-combat duties acting as drivers
stretcher bearers runners or security forces it was estimated that around 1/6
of the German 6th army strength at Stalingrad was of these Russian Haley's
Hitler was willing to let this Liberation Army be spread in propaganda
so long as no standard unit was actually formed due to this some Red Army
soldiers surrendered or defected in hopes of joining an army that did not
actually exist many they were part of this army were Soviet prisoners of war
who volunteered to serve under German command just to get out of prisoner
camps as they had a greater chance of loving on the outside in this war than
inside that camp this wasn't the only organization fulfilling the same purpose
though the russian liberation movement was based along much the same factors
however it was largely made up of whitewashin emigrants and various
anti-communist Russian individuals this army consisted of around 8,000 men under
the command of former Red Army General Andrey Vlasov a man who defected after
being captured during the siege of leningrad his men would act as a
security force for the occupied regions which were supposed to be supplied up to
the standard of regular army units but due to the fear of disloyalty
they were always kept under quit around another half dozen major
German allied Russian units would be formed during the war again largely
acting as security forces but some of them would even engage on the front
lines of combat as well Vlasov had been trying to get German
High Command to allow him to create a large Russian army loyal to Germany to
aid in their fight against the Soviets however irrespective of his plays by
mid-1943 several hundred thousand X Soviets were serving in the German
forces either as heavies or in eastern volunteer units this latter group was
normally acting in a security role of the occupied territory where they
constituted a major part of the German effort to counter the activity of Soviet
partisans the Germans were however always concerned about the reliability
and following the German defeats in 1943 the reliability of these groups would
instead become a liability as increased assertions and mutiny started to occur
so to solve this problem a large section of these Eastern units were transferred
away from their homeland and sent to the Western Front where it was assumed that
the men would behave better as they were no longer connected to their homes and
while some did prove to be effective units in the Western Front many others
simply surrender the first chance they had to the Allied powers the Russian
Liberation Army did not officially exist as a combat unit until autumn of 1944
after heinrich himmler persuaded a very reluctant hitler to allow the formation
of ten russian army divisions on November the 14th of 1944 Vlasov would
go to prague and read aloud the prague manifesto before his men this document
stated the purposes of the battle against stalin and spelled out 14 points
which this army was fighting for and it was essentially anti-semitic
anteye Stalin writer ik several armed groups who have been fighting already
submitted themselves to this new army such as the Russian cores of general
bore Stefan the battle group of white general torque low and the Cossacks of
Ottoman von pond vets although the turn of events prevented
them from ever being incorporated into the army directly or even being able to
be used by losses however other army groups led by such individuals like
general Kyoto Krasnov and several Ukrainian groups refuses submit
themselves to Vlasov and they denounced him publicly these Ukrainian units would
eventually create their own national army within Germany which would be
dubbed the Ukrainian national army this force was meant to encompass the 220 odd
thousand Ukrainians that were within the whole of the German army but when it was
created in March of 1945 only around 50,000 are wrapped into it and they
fractured off and surrendered to various allied commands across Europe by
February of 1945 only one division that being the 600th Washington Infantry was
fully organized under the command of general sergei bounine shankha a second
division was incomplete when he was sent off to fight and a third division was
formed but only on paper and it didn't actually have men attached to it men of
the second division did see action on the front line they fought against the
Soviets at the Auto River on April the 11th of 1945 in an attempt to see how
effective these men would be under their own strength
they performed relatively fairly holding off the Soviets for three days before
needing to retreat in the face of superior numbers
Vlasov now in command of this large army had other plans though when he gained
control over the Liberation Army in February of 1945 he consolidated his men
into one group and March them south in effort to concentrate all Russian
anti-communist forces that would be loyal to him as an army he reasoned they
could all surrender to the Allies unfavorable terms which would mean that
there would be no reparation to the Soviet Union where he knew that both him
and his men would face death Vlasov sent several secret delegates to the Western
Allies hoping that they would sympathize with their goals and potentially use his
army in an inevitable future war with the USSR as if anyone was thinking of
attacking the Soviets or anything during the march south the first
division of the RL a aided the Czech partisans in the Prague uprising against
the German occupation and the uprising started on May the 5th of 1945 philosoph
was initially reluctant to agree to this move but ultimately did not resist
general Blaine Schenk owes decision to fight against the Germans his men
managed to fend off waves of SS attacks within Prague itself largely thanks to
the heavy weaponry that the division was equipped with and they managed to keep
most of Prague from being destroyed the Liberation Army needed to move the next
day post-liberation though as the council in Prague was largely loyal to
communists who would have turned the army over to the Soviets as they
approached the army would move south and they would surrender to General Patton
of the u.s. Third Army who was just to the south of Prague they were unwilling
to harbor members of the RL a though fearing that he would heavily worsen
tensions with the USSR over a thousand men from this group were handed over to
the Soviets in 1946 with the loss of and the number of other ranking members of
the Liberation Army that were tried and hanged as traitors to the Soviet Union