Like most things in life, World War 2 can’t simply be painted over in black and white.
Not all Germans were Nazi’s and not all Nazi’s were German. In the midst of all the chaos and
destruction of World War 2, there are naturally many oddities that we don’t often hear about and
are mostly overshadowed by the macro scale of things during that time and the black and white
picture many people like to paint for themselves. In this weeks Front episode however, we’ll be
wiping that canvas clean and adding in a couple of grey strokes, and specifically, we’ll be taking a
look at Hitler’s foreign SS units, where they came from, why they fought, and their ultimate fate.
A propaganda staple for the Nazi Party, the elite 5th Panzer SS Division Wiking,
was as the name suggests, made up primarily of Nordic peoples from Scandinavia. Although these
men weren’t ethnically German, the volunteers were eargerly absorbed by Nazi Germany and touted
as a pride of the SS, with propaganda minister Goebles hoping to show his citizens that even
unaffiliated Nordic supermen were willing to volunteer for the noble cause of Nazism.
Well, these die-hard anti-communist nords did more than just meekly volunteer for the cause,
but being an SS division, the brigade naturally committed many atrocities,
including the mass slaughtering of Ukranian Civilians, Partisans and Jews when the Viking
volunteers were sent to the Eastern Front in 1941. To add to the infamy of this unit,
notorious SS Doctor Josef Mengele served directly with the division in its early campaigns,
performing his role as a combat medic and receiving an iron cross for saving 2 wounded
men from a burning tank. As history writes however, this medic himself was wounded and
was absorbed into the Concentration camp system, where he continued his work as a
sadistic Doctor performing vile experiments on the inmate population at Auschwitz.
Capitalising on the absolute political, religious and ethnic destabilisation of
the Balkan region of Europe during the 20th century, the Nazi’s figured it would be a
great idea to play into this during World War 2 and formed a SS made up almost entirely from
Bosnian Muslims, called the 13th Waffen SS Mountain Division. Formed in 1943,
this SS unit took an oath to both Adolf Hitler and the Croation facist leader Ante Pavelić,
who by himself, warrants an entire other video for the atrocities he perpetrated behind the scenes.
With that being said, this Muslim SS division were themselves bad enough, fighting in 8 different
campaigns around the Balkans and becoming infamous for their heavy handed treatment local Serbian and
Jewish civilian populations. The unit committed an untold number of war crimes that go mostly
unknown due to Germany’s prolificness in World War 2, but were still not wholly immune from the swift
hand of Justice in the end. Most of the unit shed their uniforms and deserted in 1945 when they were
sent to Eastern Front, however 38 officers were eventually captured after the war and ultimately
10 were executed for their part in committing the war crimes during their tenure in the Balkans.
Spain was probably the most politically fearful country in World War 2. Headed by the dictator
Francisco Franco, he decided it was best to lurk in the shadows and in the grey areas of the war
and not openly declare Spain as fascist, as he did not want to aggravate his neighbours
and open Spain up to an extremely bloody war with England and her allies. Despite this,
Franco was still willing to help out his fascist friend in Germany and allowed the Wehrmacht to
set up recruitment depots in the large cities, also encouraging Spaniards to join the Germans.
Over 40,000 Spanish and a number of Portreguese ended up initially joining Wehrmacht 250th
Infantry or Blue Division where they were sent to the east. They then proceeded to win Hitler’s
adoration on the Russian front by holding their line despite MASSIVE casualties. Hitler referred
to them as equal to the best German divisions he had and greatly respected their courage in battle.
In 1943 however, Franco eventually caved into political pressure and recalled what was left of
the Spanish fighting force. Thousands ultimately refused to return, and were drafted as the
101st SS Spanish Volunteer company into the 28th Volunteer Grenadier Division Wallonien and later
into the 11th SS division where these fascist Spaniards would fight all the way to the surrender
of Germany, with many being captured by the Russians and some not returning home until 1954.
Russian History is a beast of its own, and there’s no doubt that there were many marginalised Russian
groups such as the White army and those affected by Stalin’s Great Terror in 1936 to 1938. One
of the results of such a divided society was the formation of SS SturmBrigade RONA headed
by Russian anti-communist Bronislav Kaminski. Although the organisational structure of this
unit was an absolute mess and the Nazi’s didn’t really know what to do with them,
they eventually found a place for them in German security operations around the Baltic states,
where, like many SS units, they committed numerous atrocities against the civilian populous.
The unit never became an official division, because on the day Himmler was going to
sign them in, the Warsaw uprising began, and they were never committed. They were however,
still sent to Warsaw, where they continued to commit war crimes in the name of Nazi Germany, but
German high command eventually got sick of them, and executed their leader, Bronislav Kaminski,
whilst drafting the remnants of the unofficial SS division into the Russian Liberation Army,
which was a Corps sized army made up completely of Russians sent in to fight with the Axis on
the Eastern Front. Many of its leaders were tortured and hung when caught by the Red army.
Equipped with a burning desire to expunge the British from their homeland, the Tiger
legion or simply Indian Legion adopted the classic stance of the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Made
up of Prisoners of war as well as 3000 Indian expats living in the Third Reich at the time,
Infantry Regiment 950 later known as the Indian Volunteer Legion of the Waffen SS
was proposed to spearhead an Axis invasion of Western India through Afghanistan by way of the
Persian Gulf. After the Axis’ heavy defeats at the caucuses by the Soviet Union however,
this initial plan was largely abandoned, and the infantry regiment was transferred to the SS where
it fought in the desperate defence of Germany and her surrounding territories in the great
retreat from advancing allied forces. The unit was ultimately disbanded, and surviving members
were sent back to India, where many faced trial for treason by British authorities.
Although not many in number, volunteers from the Commonwealth did indeed exist in World War 2,
primarily under the remote direction of pro-Nazi British Fascist John Amery. Known
as the British Free Corps, the original idea was to persuade allied prisoners
of war to the Nazi cause and use them for propaganda to showcase how even the Western
allies saw the Soviets as a threat. Nazi high command did indeed go through with this plan,
even though the unit never reached more than 27 men in strength despite numerous
recruitment drives under Amery, all of which were complete failures.
The unit still went ahead as a fighting force however, and the limited number of men who joined,
including a couple of Canadians and a couple of New-Zealanders were drafted
in a Nordic SS volunteer Division and saw action against the Soviets. After the war,
one Canadian and one New Zealand soldier claimed they had only joined the corps to wreck it and
gather intelligence and ultimately the surviving soldiers of the corps got off lightly, with
the exception of the director of the British Free Corps project, John Amery,
who was hanged in December of 1945 by the British for the charge of High Treason.