On both sides of the front. five countries that fought for both the USSR and the Third Reich
Of the German troops concentrated on June 22, 1941 on the German-Soviet border, 20% were the troops of Hitler's European allies
The Great Patriotic War began seventy years ago. The date is as tragic as it is majestic. For all peoples of the former Soviet Union. But for Europe, excuse me, it is shameful. And I am by no means blasphemy. Judge for yourself.
In July 2009, in Vilnius, the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly adopted a resolution “Reuniting a Divided Europe: Promoting Human Rights and Civil Liberties in the OSCE Region in the 21st Century”. There is in this document, timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, the words stunning in their cynicism: "... in the twentieth century, European countries experienced two powerful totalitarian regimes, Nazi and Stalinist ..." If you follow this logic of MEPs, it turns out that Hitler and Stalin together attacked Europe. They forgot, you see, gentlemen, that there was also the Anschluss of 1938 - the annexation of Austria to Germany, after which Austria was gone, Ostmark appeared in its place. Dear gentlemen, do not remember that by the treacherous Munich agreement (conspiracy) of 1938, Europe gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler to be torn apart. Apparently, the fact that Poland was defeated in 18 days, and only then Soviet troops were brought into its eastern regions, fell out of the mass consciousness of Europeans completely, France fell 14 days later (capitulated, note this strange coincidence, 22 June 1940), and Hitler's entire European campaign took six weeks.
And by that time, the Third Reich was not only Germany. It also officially included Austria, the Sudetenland, the "Baltic corridor" captured from Poland, Poznan and Upper Silesia, as well as Luxembourg, Lorraine and Alsace, and Upper Corinthia cut off from Yugoslavia. Germany's allies included Norway, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Spain, which allowed Hitler to form an additional 59 divisions during the war years, including 20 SS, 23 separate brigades, several separate regiments, legions and battalions.
The Fuehrer believed that on 25 August his troops would march victoriously across Moscow, as planned by the Barbarossa plan. (Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, we note, was a participant in the Third Crusade, during which he drowned in the river. Symbolically, however!)
In June 1941, the last and decisive crusade also began, designed to finally crown the triumph of Western civilization. The dream of Pope Pius XI came true, who back in February 1930 called for a united campaign against the USSR, and in 1933 concluded a concordat (agreement) with Nazi Germany. The era of the millennial struggle was to be replaced by the era of millennial European domination. Hitler's defeat proved to be the collapse of the centuries-old strategy of the West. And the West to this day cannot forgive itself for the largest civilizational failure in history. This, first of all, is evidenced by the very fact of the adoption of the OSCE PA resolution, which Europe, having equated the Soviet Union with Nazi Germany, assigns the same responsibility for unleashing the Second World War on both states. With open cynicism, trying, thus, to relieve themselves, first of all, of responsibility for the Great European War. Even despite the fact that on September 1, 2009 in Gdansk, German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared to the whole world: "We recognize that Germany attacked Poland, unleashed World War II and caused incredible suffering," sounded: "Die Russen kommen" ("The Russians are coming").
Yes, calm down, finally, no one comes to you with a sword, and is not going to go. It was you who came to us 70 years ago as uninvited guests in almost a full European composition. Finland allocated 16 divisions and 3 brigades for the war with the USSR, Romania - 13 divisions and 9 brigades, Hungary - 4 brigades. In total - 29 divisions and 16 brigades of the allied forces.
And when a little later the Italian and Slovak contingents joined the Germans, then by the end of July 41, the troops of Germany's allies made up almost 30% of the fascist forces.
Even in the victorious April 1945, the allied Red Army formations - Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Czechoslovak, French - accounted for only 12% of the number of Soviet troops operating at the front.
In total, 5.5 million people, 47.2 thousand guns and mortars, 4.3 thousand tanks and about 5 thousand combat aircraft were concentrated in the eastern grouping of troops of fascist Germany and its allies. The Wehrmacht also had captured tanks from Czechoslovakia and France. The armies of Italy, Hungary, Romania, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia took part in the war against the Soviet Union. The Bulgarian army was involved in the occupation of Greece and Yugoslavia; there were no ground units on the Eastern Front. Large military contingents of France, Poland, Belgium, Albania and other countries fought against the USSR. The anti-Hitler coalition was also opposed by the collaborationist states - Vichy France (capital of Vichy, the puppet regime of Pétain), Norway (Quisling regime), the Netherlands (Mussert regime), Slovakia (pro-fascist Tiso regime). Thus, participation in the "march to the East" was practically institutionalized.
Together, so to speak, with the official allies of Germany in the war against the USSR, the subjects of those countries that did not officially fight with the USSR and even, strange as it may seem, were also our allies. The above-mentioned "Legion of French Volunteers", numbering over six thousand people, went to the Eastern Front in August 1941.
In addition to the French, as part of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, separate battalions of the Dutch, Norwegians and Danes fought with the Red Army. Although Spain was not officially at war with the Soviet Union, there was a Spanish Blue Division on the Eastern Front from October 1941 to late 1943. 47 thousand people passed through the division on rotation, four thousand of them died, more than one and a half thousand were taken prisoner. The "Blue Division" was located, mainly, under the besieged Leningrad.
The question of besieged Leningrad has long had to be raised separately, and at a level not lower than the UN. In its controversial resolution, the OSCE noted the "uniqueness of the Holocaust." But an act of genocide was actually committed against the Leningraders.
In Leningrad, 700,000 people died of starvation alone. The city was blocked by the troops of Germany, Spain, Italy, Finland. Their crime is that they did not provide the population with humanitarian corridors for the delivery of food and for the exit of civilians from the besieged city, which entailed colossal casualties.
Europe is obviously impressed only by the Katyn graves of Polish officers, but not by the Leningrad graves of old men, women and children.
And if we continue the conversation about "crimes against humanity", which are emphasized in the European resolution, then it must be said about the attitude towards prisoners of war. In Soviet captivity, in addition to the Germans, there were 1.1 million citizens of European countries, among them - 500 thousand Hungarians, almost 157 thousand Austrians, 70 thousand Czechs and Slovaks, 60 thousand Poles, about 50 thousand Italians, 23 thousand French, 50 thousand Spaniards. There were also Dutch, Finns, Norwegians, Danes, Belgians and others. In our camps, 14.9% of all captured Nazis died. In the German - 58% of the captured Red Army soldiers, 2.6% of the French and 4% of the Americans and the British.
It is believed that millions of Soviet soldiers died in captivity because Stalin did not sign the Geneva Convention governing the humane treatment of prisoners. But Germany signed it and was obliged to abide by it. The signature of the USSR did not matter. The Nazis simply did not consider the Russians to be people. The conclusion is clearly not in favor of Europe. Especially when, say, France lost more than 600,000 troops in the war killed and wounded (Arthur Banks, A World Atlas of Military History, B.C. Urlanis, Wars and population of Europe ",
"History of the Second World War 1939-1945", v. 3.): 84 thousand died in hostilities while defending the national territory, 20 thousand - in the Resistance. And where were the remaining 500 thousand French citizens killed and wounded, on what German fronts? The question is purely rhetorical. A very similar situation with Poland, Belgium and other "active fighters against fascism." By the way, the weapons that Germany captured in the occupied countries were enough to form 200 divisions. Why is it the Europeans, who today put the Stalinist and Hitlerite regimes on the same level, but did not arm themselves and oppose both dictators at once? Or - at least against one? Instead, the European countries silently assumed the costs of maintaining the German occupation forces on their territories. France, for example, since the summer of 1940 has allocated 20 million German marks daily, and since the fall of 1942 - 25 million each. These funds were more than enough not only to provide the German troops with everything they needed, but also for the war. against the USSR. European countries supplied fascist Germany with more than 80 billion marks, of which 35 billion were given by France.
And it was not in the Wehrmacht, I emphasize, that the most ideological non-German participants in the war were concentrated. There were significantly more of them in the SS.
In 1943-1944. seven new SS divisions appeared: an Albanian mountain rifle division, a Hungarian cavalry division and two infantry divisions, two Croatian mountain rifle divisions, and the 14th SS Grenadier Division Galicia formed in Western Ukraine. The Dutch, the Belgians, the Danes and the British were also considered by the Germans to be peoples of Germanic origin. In the second half of 1943, the so-called German formations of the SS troops consisted of the divisions "Netherlands", "Landstorm of the Netherlands", "Nordland", "Langermak", "Wallonia". The 29th SS Infantry Division (Italian), the 31st SS Infantry Division "Bohemia and Moravia" (from Czech volunteers, mainly Volksdeutsch), the 33rd SS Infantry Division "Charlemagne" (from French volunteers). On the number and nationality of "Germanic" volunteers in the SS troops as of January 31, 1944, the following data are available (people): Norwegians - 5,878, Danes - 7,006, Dutch - 18,473, Flemings - 6,033, Walloons - 2,812, Swedes - 601, Swiss - 1,584, French - 3,480, British - 432, Irish - 115, Scots - 107. Total: 46521 people, that is, a full-blooded army corps. The last soldier to receive the Knight's Cross for bravery on April 29, 1945 in the Reich Chancellery was the French SS volunteer Eugene Valo, and the French SS battalion from the Charlemagne division defended the Reichstag when the Germans had already fled from there (Russian Spetsnaz, No. 07 (58) , July 2001). During the war years, the German Wehrmacht and the SS troops added over 1.8 million people from among the citizens of European states and nationalities.
Let us remind those who today, restoring the "national memory", overnight lost their historical memory, one curious detail. The criminal nature of the SS organization as a whole was recognized by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal: “The SS was used for purposes that are criminal and include the persecution and extermination of Jews, atrocities and murders in concentration camps, excesses committed in the administration of the occupied territories, the implementation of the program of the use of slave labor, cruel treatment of prisoners of war and their murder ... "The Tribunal included members of the Waffen-SS and members of any kind of police service in the SS, emphasizing that" it is impossible to single out any part of the SS that would not take part in this criminal activity. " ... And today, before the eyes of the whole of Europe, in the Baltics, in Ukraine, the fascists and their modern remnants are being glorified. There is, it is clear, for what and for what.
The entire European economy, from Norway to France and Czechoslovakia, worked for the fascist war machine. Even neutral countries, such as Sweden and Switzerland, provided assistance to Nazi Germany, some with iron ore, steel, others with money, precision instruments, etc. The Swedes also supplied bearings and rare earths to Germany. German military orders were carried out by all large, technically advanced enterprises in Europe. Suffice it to say that only the Czech Škoda factories in the year before the attack on Poland produced as much war production as the entire British war industry. The entire European potential was thrown into the war against the USSR, whose potential by formal economic standards was about four times less (and decreased by about half in the first six months of the war).
One English historian correctly wrote that it was then that "Europe became an economic whole." So, shouldn't she recognize today what is called in fact Hitler as the first president of the European Union (posthumously)?
But that's not all. Germany received significant aid through intermediaries from the United States and Latin America. The Rockefeller oil corporation Standard Oil, for example, sold Hitler gasoline and lubricants worth $ 20 million through the German IG Farbenindustry concern alone. One Venezuelan branch of Standard Oil sent 13 thousand tons of oil to Germany every month, which the powerful chemical industry of the Reich immediately processed into gasoline. Until the middle of 1944, the tanker fleet of "neutral" Spain worked almost exclusively for the needs of the Wehrmacht, supplying it with American "black gold", formally intended for Madrid. It got to the point that German submarines, refueling with American fuel directly from Spanish tankers, immediately went to sink American transports carrying weapons for the USSR.
The matter was not limited to fuel. The Germans received from overseas tungsten, synthetic rubber, parts and spare parts for the automotive industry, which the Fuhrer supplied his great friend, Mr. Henry Ford Sr. It is known that the Wehrmacht sold 30% of the tires manufactured at the Ford factories, and only in the fall of 1942, the Ford branch in Switzerland repaired two thousand German trucks. As for the total volume of Ford-Rockefeller deliveries to Germany, there is still no complete information: a commercial secret, they say. But the information leaked out is quite enough to understand that trade with Berlin was no less intensive than with Moscow. The profits that the Americans have received are measured in numbers of a truly astronomical order. However, as practice has shown, the sworn friends also helped the Soviet Union not at a loss to their pocket.
Lend-Lease was not free. We paid for everything in gold, caviar, fur. In addition, already in the 70s, the USSR undertook to gradually pay the United States $ 722 million. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia took over the Lend-Lease debt, making the last installment in 2001.
According to State Duma deputy, MGIMO professor Vladimir Medinsky, in 1940 there were eight million unemployed in America, in 1942 - not a single one. Medinsky also quotes a very curious statement by the University of Kansas history professor Wilson: "The spread of overeating was one of the signs of a noticeable rise in the American standard of living during the war." And in a short commentary, he aptly notes: since then, the Americans have been the fattest nation on the planet, and they begin to lose weight a little, somewhere a war immediately begins. Is it in North Africa and the Middle East now?
The blitzkrieg, however, did not work out. It was not possible to defeat the Soviet Union either. Moreover, from 190 to 266 of the most efficient divisions of the fascist bloc acted against the Red Army in different periods of the war. Note that the Anglo-American troops in North Africa were opposed by 9 to 20 divisions, in Italy up to 26, in Western Europe after June 1944 - from 56 to 75 divisions. On the Soviet-German front, the German armed forces suffered more than 73% of the losses.
The Red Army defeated 507 German fascist divisions and 100 divisions of its allies, almost 3.5 times more than the allies on all fronts of World War II.
The bulk of the Wehrmacht's military equipment was destroyed here: more than 75% of aircraft (over 70 thousand), up to 75% of tanks and assault guns (about 50 thousand), 74% of artillery pieces (167 thousand), etc. On the eastern front the fighting was carried out with the greatest intensity. Out of 1,418 days of the war, 1,320 active battles were fought. On the North African front, respectively, out of 1,068 - 309; Italian from 663 - 49. Spatial scope was: along the front 4 - 6 thousand km, which is four times more than the North African, Italian and Western European fronts combined. In terms of its scale and strategic importance, the four-year battle on the Soviet-German front became the main component of the Second World War, since the main burden of the struggle against the German-fascist aggression fell to the lot of our country.
The Soviet people made the greatest sacrifice on the altar of Victory. The USSR lost 26.6 million people, tens of millions were injured and maimed, the birth rate fell sharply, the living standard of the population dropped significantly. The national economy suffered enormous damage. The cost of damage amounted to 679 billion rubles. 1710 cities and towns, more than 70 thousand villages, more than six million buildings, 32 thousand enterprises, 65 thousand km of railways were destroyed and burned down. The war devastated the treasury, led to a number of negative consequences in the economy, demography, psychology, morality, which together amounted to incredibly large indirect costs of the war.
The given figure - 679 billion rubles, alas, does not exhaust all the losses of the USSR. Only during the period of the Patriotic War the underproduced, therefore, wasted by the national economy in the occupied regions of the USSR: 307 million tons of coal, 72 billion kWh of electricity, 38 million tons of steel, 136 thousand tons of aluminum, 58 thousand tractors, 90 thousand tons of coal metal-cutting machines, 63 million centners of sugar, 11 billion poods of grain, 1,922 million centners of potatoes, 68 million centners of meat and 567 million centners of milk. These colossal quantities of goods would have been produced even if production had remained at the 1940 level. But the rate of growth was steadily increasing.
No country in its entire history has had such losses. By May 1945, a huge territory in the west of the USSR lay in ruins. The enemy deprived of their homes 25 million people. The material damage caused to the country by the war was equal to almost 30% of the national wealth. For comparison: in the UK - 0.9%, in the USA - 0.4%.
When was it for us to build that very democracy, for the absence of which Europe constantly reproaches us, and even according to the model strictly set by it? Here - I would live!
Europe, it seems, has begun to slowly begin to see clearly. For some time now, there has been a discussion in Austrian society about who Austria was during the war years - the first victim or the first collaborator. And recently, the authorities in the Austrian capital announced plans to create a memorial in honor of soldiers who deserted from Hitler's army. Well, what a war they had - such are their heroes nowadays. Over one and a half million Austrians - every fourth! - served in the Nazi army. Of the 35 divisions formed at Ostmark, 17 operated against the USSR. And after that the Austrians still dare to argue: shouldn't they declare themselves victims of fascism? What refined hypocrisy! Quite typical, by the way, for the current European "fighters" against totalitarianism. Nevertheless, even such crafty discussions do not take place in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Finland, former allies of Germany, or in the Czech Republic, Poland, the Baltic countries, which produced weapons for the Third Reich and supplied them with their workers and soldiers. Apparently, the heirs who were afraid of Hitler also lack courage.
On May 1, 2011, the Simon Wiesenthal Center released a list of nine countries in which the acts of Nazi criminals during World War II are not investigated due to expiration of a statute of limitations or "ideological restrictions." In addition to Austria, which gave the world Adolf Hitler, it also includes Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Norway, neutral Sweden and even Canada, which fought on the side of the anti-Hitler coalition. It should be included in this list and Ukraine, where veterans of the SS "Galicia" division and Bandera warriors OUN-UPA are honored.
It is noteworthy that the Balts fought on the side of Germany as much as on the side of the USSR, in other words, for these republics the Soviet-German war was, among other things, also a civil war.
In the German army, mainly in the SS troops, there were about 100 thousand Latvians, 36 thousand Lithuanians and 10 thousand Estonians. Therefore, today it is difficult to get rid of the thought that among the representatives of the current ruling stratum of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia there are many political heirs of that part of the elite of their countries, which in the early 40s of the last century advocated going over to the side of Germany. In the end, the Germans repressed mainly Jews, Poles and Russians, and the ethnic Balts, loyal to the New Order, eked out a relatively quiet existence. The Nazis were in no hurry to initiate them into their plans, according to which, according to one of the "Fuhrer" SS Konrad Mayer, from among the Baltic population in the places of their current residence, over 50% of Estonians, up to 50% of Latvians and up to 15% of Lithuanians could be left and Germanized ... The rest of the Balts, as well as 80-85% of the Poles, were to be evicted "to a certain region of Western Siberia." Poles, by the way, lost six out of 35 million of the country's population. If it were not for the Red Army, many who are now demanding compensation from Russia for the "Soviet occupation" would have experienced the Nazi slogans: "To each his own" and "Work makes him free", as it was written on the gates of the concentration camps.
In 1944-1945. The Soviet Union fulfilled its liberation mission by eliminating fascist rule in Europe. About seven million Soviet soldiers took part in the liberation of 10 European countries. Almost a million people gave their lives for their freedom. Without the Red Army and its immense sacrifices, the liberation of Europe from the cruel yoke of Nazism would have been impossible. But Europe demands repentance from Russia. Allegedly, following the example of the Germans, although no one heard the German repentance and is unlikely to ever hear. And what do the post-war generations repent of before the world? Everyone must forgive his sins himself, otherwise it turns out not in a Christian way. After all, Europe was founded and grew up on the Christian faith, although it has forgotten this main value too. Only she and, above all, she herself is guilty of unleashing the most destructive and bloody war in the history of mankind. And the Soviet Union is the only force in the world that in 1941 stopped the victorious march of Nazi Germany. Europe would, eerily democratic and civilized, fall on its knees before Russia in deep remorse. But it is Russia that she wants to see kneeling. And today it is quite legitimate to put the question like this: maybe Europe did not want liberation at all?
History has repeatedly taught us that we should not harbor illusions about “grateful humanity”. Today, the most clearly visible is not so much the ideological as the geopolitical focus of the OSCE resolution. The international status of the Russian Federation still rests on the succession from the USSR. It is based on two still unshakable substances - a place in the world club of nuclear powers and the position of one of the five members of the UN Security Council with a veto right. And this status is a consequence of the Victory of the USSR in the Second World War. The resolution is aimed at undermining the legitimacy of Russia's status in the world. Western anti-communism was replaced by openly gregarious Russophobia.
And with good reason I will dare to call the resolution "Reunification of a divided Europe: the promotion of human rights and civil liberties in the OSCE region in the XXI century" - the Vilnius Agreement.
It does not in any way unite, but, on the contrary, divides the reunited Europe, as in its time divided the continent and the Munich Agreement: on the one hand, again the West, and on the other side, again Russia. In such an incredible way, nowadays two sad 70-years are intertwined. Striving, it would seem, into the future, Europe is actually sinking into the past, into the post-Versailles world order, which gave birth to both Hitler and the Second World War. And against whom are you going to fight this time, gentlemen Europeans?
Valery Panov
Especially for the Centenary
According to some, during the Great Patriotic War, a million Soviet citizens went to fight under the tricolor flag. Sometimes it is even said about two million Russians who fought against the Bolshevik regime, but here, probably, 700 thousand emigrants are also counted. These figures are cited for a reason - they are an argument to the assertion that the Great Patriotic War is the essence of the Second Civil War of the Russian people against the hated Stalin. What can I say here?
If it really happened that a million Russians stood up under the tricolor banners and fought for life and death against the Red Army for a free Russia, shoulder to shoulder with their German allies, then we would have had no choice but to admit that yes, The Great Patriotic War really became the Second Civil War for the Russian people. But was it really so?
In order to figure out whether this is so or not, several questions should be answered: how many were there, who were they, how did they get into the service, how and with whom did they fight and what moved them?
The cooperation of Soviet citizens with the occupiers took place in different forms, both in terms of the degree of voluntariness and the degree of involvement in the armed struggle - from the Baltic SS volunteers who fiercely fought near Narva to the "Ostarbeiters" who were forcibly hijacked to Germany. I believe that even the most stubborn anti-Stalinists will not be able to enroll in the ranks of fighters against the Bolshevik regime without twisting their hearts. Usually, these ranks include those who received rations from the German military or police department, or held in their hands what was received from the hands of the Germans or the pro-German local government.
That is, to the maximum potential fighters against the Bolsheviks get:
foreign military units of the Wehrmacht and SS;
eastern security battalions;
construction parts of the Wehrmacht;
auxiliary personnel of the Wehrmacht, they are also "our Ivans" or Hiwi (Hilfswilliger: "volunteers");
auxiliary police units ("noise" - Schutzmannshaften);
border guard;
"Air defense assistants" mobilized to Germany through youth organizations;
HOW MANY THEM WERE THERE?
We will probably never know the exact numbers, since no one really counted them, but some estimates are available to us. A bottom estimate can be obtained from the archives of the former NKVD - by March 1946, 283,000 "Vlasovites" and other uniformed collaborators were transferred to the authorities. The upper estimate can probably be taken from the works of Drobyazko, which serve as the main source of figures for the advocates of the Second Civilian version. According to his calculations (the method of which, unfortunately, he does not disclose), the following passed through the Wehrmacht, SS and various pro-German military and police formations during the war years:
250,000 Ukrainians
70,000 Belarusians
70,000 Cossacks
150,000 Latvians
90,000 Estonians
50,000 Lithuanians
70,000 Central Asians
12,000 Volga Tatars
10,000 Crimean Tatars
7,000 Kalmyks
40,000 Azerbaijanis
25,000 Georgians
20,000 Armenians
30,000 North Caucasian peoples
Since the total number of all former Soviet citizens wearing German and pro-German uniforms is estimated at 1.2 million, the share of Russians (excluding the Cossacks) remains about 310,000 people. There are, of course, other calculations that give a smaller total number, but let's not be trifling, we will take the upper estimate of Drobyazko as the basis for further reasoning.
Who were they?
Hiwi and the construction battalion soldiers are hard to count as civil war fighters. Of course, their work freed German soldiers for the front, but this applies to the same extent to the "Ostarbeiters". Sometimes hiwi received weapons and fought alongside the Germans, but such cases are described in the unit's combat logs more as a curiosity than as a mass phenomenon. It is interesting to count how many of those who actually held weapons in their hands.
The number of hiwi at the end of the war Drobyazko gives about 675,000, if we add construction parts and take into account the loss during the war, then I think we will not be much mistaken, assuming that this category covers about 700-750,000 people out of a total of 1.2 million. This is consistent and with a share of non-combatants among the Caucasian peoples, in the calculation presented by the headquarters of the eastern troops at the end of the war. According to it, out of a total of 102,000 Caucasians who passed through the Wehrmacht and the SS, 55,000 served in the legions, the Luftwaffe and the SS and 47,000 in the hiwi and construction units. It should be borne in mind that the proportion of Caucasians enrolled in combat units was higher than the proportion of the Slavs.
So, of the 1.2 million who wore the German uniform, only 450-500 thousand did it, holding a weapon in their hands. Let's now try to calculate the layout of the really combat units of the Eastern peoples.
There were 75 Asian battalions (Caucasians, Turks and Tatars) formed (80,000 people). Including 10 Crimean police battalions (8,700), Kalmyks and special units, there are approximately 110,000 "fighting" Asians out of a total of 215,000. It quite beats with the layout separately for Caucasians.
The Baltic states endowed the Germans with 93 police battalions (later partly brought into regiments), a total of 33,000 people. In addition, 12 border regiments (30,000) were formed, partly staffed by police battalions, then three SS divisions (15, 19 and 20) and two volunteer regiments were created, through which about 70,000 people probably passed. Police and border regiments and battalions were partly directed to form them. Taking into account the absorption of some parts by others, in total about 100,000 Balts passed through the warheads.
In Belarus, 20 police battalions (5,000) were formed, of which 9 were considered Ukrainian. After the introduction of mobilization in March 1944, the police battalions became part of the army of the Belarusian Central Rada. In total, the Belarusian Regional Defense (BKA) had 34 battalions, 20,000 people. Having retreated in 1944 together with the German troops, these battalions were consolidated into the Siegling SS Brigade. Then, on the basis of the brigade, with the addition of Ukrainian "policemen", the remnants of the Kaminsky brigade and even the Cossacks, the 30th SS division was deployed, which was later used to staff the 1st Vlasov division.
Galicia was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was viewed as potentially German territory. It was separated from the Ukraine, incorporated into the Reich, as part of the Governor-General of Warsaw, and put in a queue for Germanization. On the territory of Galicia, 10 police battalions (5,000) were formed, and subsequently the recruitment of volunteers for the SS troops was announced. It is believed that 70,000 volunteers came to the recruiting sites, but that was not needed. As a result, one SS division (14th) and five police regiments were formed. Police regiments were disbanded as needed and sent to replenish the division. Galicia's full contribution to the victory over Stalinism can be estimated at 30,000 people.
In the rest of Ukraine, 53 police battalions (25,000) were formed. It is known that a small part of them became part of the 30th SS Division, the fate of the rest is unknown to me. After the formation in March 1945 of the Ukrainian analogue of the KONR - the Ukrainian National Committee - the Galician 14th SS Division was renamed the 1st Ukrainian and the formation of the 2nd began. It was formed from volunteers of Ukrainian nationality recruited from various auxiliary formations, recruited about 2,000 people.
About 90 guard "ostbatalions" were formed from Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians, through which about 80,000 people passed, including the "Russian National People's Army", which was reorganized into five guard battalions. From other Russian military formations, one can recall the 3,000th 1st Russian National SS Brigade Gil (Rodionov), which went over to the side of the partisans, the approximately 6,000th "Russian National Army" Smyslovsky and the army of Kaminsky ("Russian Liberation People's Army"), which arose as a self-defense force of the so-called. Lokot Republic. The maximum estimates of the number of people who passed through the army of Kaminsky reach 20,000. After 1943, Kaminsky's troops retreated with the German army and in 1944 an attempt was made to reorganize them into the 29th SS Division. For a number of reasons, the reorganization was canceled, and the personnel were transferred to the 30th SS Division for replenishment. In early 1945, the armed forces of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (Vlasov army) were created. The first division of the army is formed from the "Ostbatalions" and the remnants of the 30th SS division. The second division is formed from the "Ostbatalions", and partly from the volunteer prisoners of war. The number of Vlasovites before the end of the war is estimated at 40,000, of which about 30,000 were former SS and Ostbatalons. In total, about 120,000 Russians fought in the Wehrmacht and SS with weapons in their hands at different times.
The Cossacks, according to Drobyazko's calculations, fielded 70,000 people, let's accept this figure.
HOW DO THEY GET INTO THE SERVICE?
Initially, the eastern units were staffed with volunteers from among the prisoners of war and the local population. Since the summer of 1942, the principle of recruiting the local population has changed from voluntary to voluntary-compulsory - an alternative to voluntary admission to the police is forced hijacking to Germany, "ostarbeiter". By the fall of 1942, a blatant coercion had already begun. Drobyazko, in his dissertation, talks about the raids on men in the Shepetovka area: those caught were offered a choice between joining the police or sending them to a camp. In 1943, compulsory military service was introduced in various "self-defense" forces of the Ostland Reichskommissariat. In the Baltic states, SS and border guard units were recruited through mobilization from 1943.
HOW AND WITH WHOM DID THEY FIGHT?
Initially, the Slavic eastern parts were created to carry out security services. In this capacity, they were supposed to replace the Wehrmacht security battalions, which were sucked out of the rear zone like a vacuum cleaner by the needs of the front. At first, the soldiers of the Ostbatalions guarded warehouses and railways, but as the situation became more complicated, they began to be involved in anti-partisan operations. The involvement of the Ostbatalions in the fight against the partisans contributed to their decay. If in 1942 the number of "Ostbatalonniks" who went over to the side of the partisans was relatively small (although this year the Germans were forced to disband the RNNA due to mass movements), then in 1943 14 thousand fled to the partisans (and this is very, very quite a few, with an average number of eastern parts in 1943 about 65,000 people). The Germans did not have any forces to observe the further decomposition of the Ostbatalions, and in October 1943 the remaining eastern units were sent to France and Denmark (disarming 5-6 thousand volunteers as unreliable). There they were included as 3 or 4 battalions in the regiments of the German divisions.
Slavic eastern battalions, with rare exceptions, were not used in battles on the eastern front. In contrast, a significant number of Asian Ostbatalions were involved in the first line of the advancing German troops during the battle for the Caucasus. The results of the battles were contradictory - some showed themselves well, others, on the contrary, were infected with deserter sentiments and gave a large percentage of defectors. By the beginning of 1944, most of the Asian battalions were also on the Western Wall. Those who remained in the East were consolidated into the East Turkic and Caucasian SS formations and were involved in the suppression of the Warsaw and Slovak uprisings.
In total, by the time of the Allied invasion in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, 72 Slavic, Asian and Cossack battalions with a total strength of about 70 thousand were assembled. In general, and in general, the Ostbatalions showed themselves poorly in battles with the allies (with some exceptions). Of the almost 8.5 thousand irrecoverable losses, 8 thousand were missing, that is, most of them were deserters and defectors. After that, the remaining battalions were disarmed and involved in fortification work on the Siegfried Line. Subsequently, they were used to form parts of the Vlasov army.
In 1943, the Cossack units were also withdrawn from the east. The most combat-ready formation of the German Cossack troops - formed in the summer of 1943, the 1st Cossack Division of von Panwitz went to Yugoslavia to deal with Tito's partisans. There they gradually gathered all the Cossacks, deploying the division into a corps. The division took part in the battles on the Eastern Front in 1945, fighting mainly against the Bulgarians.
The Baltic states gave the largest number of troops to the front - in addition to three SS divisions, individual police regiments and battalions took part in the battles. The 20th Estonian SS division was defeated near Narva, but later rebuilt and managed to take part in the last battles of the war. The Latvian 15th and 19th SS divisions in the summer of 1944 came under attack from the Red Army and could not withstand the blow. Large scale desertions and loss of combat capability have been reported. As a result, the 15th division, having transferred its most reliable composition to the 19th, was withdrawn to the rear for use in the construction of fortifications. The second time it was used in battles in January 1945, in East Prussia, after which it was again withdrawn to the rear. She managed to surrender to the Americans. The 19th remained until the end of the war in Courland.
Belarusian policemen and freshly mobilized in the BKA in 1944 were assembled in the 30th SS division. After being formed, the division was transferred to France in September 1944, where it took part in battles with the allies. It suffered heavy losses, mainly from desertion. The Belarusians ran across to the allies in batches and continued the war in the Polish units. In December, the division was disbanded, and the remaining personnel were transferred to staffing the 1st Vlasov division.
The Galician 14th SS Division barely sniffing the gunpowder, was encircled near Brody and almost completely destroyed. Although she was quickly restored, she no longer took part in the battles at the front. One of her regiments was involved in suppressing the Slovak uprising, after which she went to Yugoslavia to fight the Pratizans of Tito. Since it is not far from Yugoslavia to Austria, the division managed to surrender to the British.
The Armed Forces of the KONR were formed in early 1945. Although the 1st division of the Vlasovites was staffed almost entirely by veteran punishers, many of whom had already visited the front, Vlasov soared Hitler's brains, demanding more time for preparation. In the end, the division still managed to push out to the Oder front, where it took part in one attack against Soviet troops on April 13. The very next day, the division commander, Major General Bunyachenko, ignoring the protests of his German immediate superior, withdrew the division from the front and went to join the rest of Vlasov's army to the Czech Republic. The Vlasov army fought the second battle against its ally, attacking German troops in Prague on May 5.
WHAT DID THEY DRIVE?
The driving motives were completely different.
Firstly, among the eastern troops, one can distinguish national separatists who fought for the creation of their own national state, or at least a privileged province of the Reich. These include the Balts, Asian legionnaires and Galicians. The creation of units of this kind has a long tradition - remember at least the Czechoslovak Corps or the Polish Legion in the First World War. These would fight against the central government, no matter who was sitting in Moscow - the tsar, the general secretary or the popularly elected president.
Secondly, there were ideological and stubborn opponents of the regime. These include the Cossacks (although in part their motives were national-separatist), part of the personnel of the Ostbatalions, a significant part of the officer corps of the KONR troops.
Thirdly, one can name opportunists who relied on the winner, those who joined the Reich during the Wehrmacht victories, but fled to the partisans after the defeat at Kursk and continued to flee as soon as possible. These probably constituted a significant part of the remnant battalions and local police. There were some on the other side of the front, as can be seen from the change in the number of defectors to the Germans in 1942-44:
1942 79,769
1943 26,108
1944 9,207
Fourthly, these were people who hoped to break out of the camp and, at a convenient opportunity, go to their own. How many of them were - it's hard to say, but sometimes it was recruited for a whole battalion.
AND WHAT DO YOU MAKE IN THE TOTAL?
And the result is a picture that is not at all similar to those painted by the ardent anti-communists. Instead of one (or even two) million Russians, rallying under the tricolor flag in the fight against the hateful Stalinist regime, there is a very motley (and clearly not finishing up to a million) company of the Balts, Asians, Galicians and Slavs who fought each for their own. And mostly not with the Stalinist regime, but with partisans (and not only Russians, but also with Yugoslav, Slovak, French, Polish), Western allies, and even with the Germans in general. Doesn't sound like a civil war, does it? Well, except perhaps to call these words the fight of the partisans against the policemen, but the policemen fought not under a tricolor flag, but with a swastika on their sleeve.
For the sake of justice, it should be noted that until the end of 1944, until the formation of the KONR and its armed forces, the Germans did not provide an opportunity for Russian anti-communists to fight for the national idea, for Russia without communists. It can be assumed that if they had allowed this earlier, "under the tricolor flag" more people would have rallied, especially since there were still plenty of opponents of the Bolsheviks in the country. But this "would" and besides, the grandmother said in two. And in reality, no "millions under the tricolor flag" were observed.
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WHO AND IN WHAT QUANTITY OF THE PEOPLES OF THE USSR WERE ON THE SIDE OF Fascist Germany Our opponents (and for me - enemies) on that front line in Novorossia, in spite of our identification with genetic traitors - Bandera, cite some crazy figures about a million, otherwise and two Russians who fought on the side of the Germans. Some agree that this number of the Russian population of the USSR fought in the Vlasov army alone. Follow the materials in the group. The topic below will be continued. I will display data on those who collaborated with the Nazis as a percentage of the number of peoples mentioned below, according to the 1939 census. Very interesting data are obtained. And for the Ukrainians as well. Almost ahead of the rest. And they were far ahead of the Russians in terms of the number of traitors. They were 3 times ahead. The vaunted Cossacks were also among the leaders among the traitors. In vain, Kolya Kozitsyn crucifies that they have always stood guard over the people. More often people were sold, or robbed, as in Novorosiya now. Kazan Tatars were pleased, in the last place in the number of collaborators. This was a revelation for me. But the Krymchaks are among the leaders, the Ukrainians are far behind, with 4.6%, compared with the Ukrainians, with 0.9% of the population in 1939. Here I did not expect anything else. I know how massively they surrendered to the Germans in the Patriotic War. They were not evicted from Crimea for their pretty eyes. Russians, by the way, were 0.3% collaborating with the Germans. Sad descendants of Bandera and Shukhevych. And now on the topic of who and how sold the Motherland. And for how many pieces of silver. Rallying even about the two million Russians who fought against the Bolshevik regime (in essence, against their own people), there are probably 700 thousand emigrants who count. Despite the fact that not all of them were ethnic Russians. These figures are cited for a reason - they are an argument to the assertion that the Great Patriotic War is the essence of the Second Civil War of the Russian people against the hated Stalin. What can I say here? If it really happened that a million Russians stood up under the tricolor banners and fought for life and death against the Red Army for a free Russia, shoulder to shoulder with their German allies, then we would have had no choice but to admit that yes, The Great Patriotic War really became the Second Civil War for the Russian people. But was it really so? In order to figure out whether this is so or not, several questions should be answered: how many were there, who were they, how did they get into the service, how and with whom did they fight and what moved them? WHOM TO COUNT? The cooperation of Soviet citizens with the occupiers took place in different forms, both in terms of the degree of voluntariness and the degree of involvement in the armed struggle - from the Baltic SS volunteers who fiercely fought near Narva to the "Ostarbeiters" who were forcibly hijacked to Germany. I believe that even the most stubborn anti-Stalinists will not be able to enroll in the ranks of fighters against the Bolshevik regime without twisting their hearts. Usually, these ranks include those who received rations from the German military or police department, or held weapons received from the hands of the Germans or pro-German local government. That is, to the maximum potential fighters against the Bolsheviks are: foreign military units of the Wehrmacht and the SS; eastern security battalions; construction parts of the Wehrmacht; auxiliary personnel of the Wehrmacht, they are also "our Ivans" or Hiwi (Hilfswilliger: "volunteers"); auxiliary police units ("noise" - Schutzmannshaften); border guard; "Air defense assistants" mobilized to Germany through youth organizations HOW MANY THEM THERE WERE? We will probably never know the exact numbers, since no one really counted them, but some estimates are available to us. A bottom estimate can be obtained from the archives of the former NKVD - by March 1946, 283,000 "Vlasovites" and other uniformed collaborators were transferred to the authorities. The upper estimate can probably be taken from the works of Drobyazko, which serve as the main source of figures for the advocates of the Second Civilian version. According to his calculations (the method of which he, unfortunately, does not disclose), through the Wehrmacht, SS and various pro-German military and police formations during the war years passed: 250,000 Ukrainians 70,000 Belarusians 70,000 Cossacks 150,000 Latvians 90,000 Estonians 50,000 Lithuanians 70,000 Central Asians 12,000 Volga Tatars 10,000 Crimean Tatars 7,000 Kalmyks 40,000 Azerbaijanis 25,000 Georgians 20,000 Armenians 30,000 North Caucasian peoples 310,000 people. There are, of course, other calculations that give a smaller total number, but let's not waste time on trifles, we will take Drobyazko's upper estimate as a basis for further reasoning. Who were they? Hiwi and the construction battalion soldiers are hard to count as civil war fighters. Of course, their work freed German soldiers for the front, but this applies to the same extent to the "Ostarbeiters". Sometimes hiwi received weapons and fought alongside the Germans, but such cases are described in the unit's combat logs more as a curiosity than as a mass phenomenon. It is interesting to count how many of those who actually held weapons in their hands. The number of hiwi at the end of the war Drobyazko gives about 675,000, if we add construction parts and take into account the loss during the war, then I think we will not be much mistaken, assuming that this category covers about 700-750,000 people out of a total of 1.2 million. This is consistent and with a share of non-combatants among the Caucasian peoples, according to the calculation presented by the headquarters of the eastern troops at the end of the war. According to it, out of a total of 102,000 Caucasians who passed through the Wehrmacht and the SS, 55,000 served in the legions, the Luftwaffe and the SS and 47,000 in the hiwi and construction units. It should be borne in mind that the proportion of Caucasians enrolled in combat units was higher than the proportion of the Slavs. So, of the 1.2 million who wore the German uniform, only 450-500 thousand did it, holding a weapon in their hands. Let's now try to calculate the layout of the really combat units of the Eastern peoples. There were 75 Asian battalions (Caucasians, Turks and Tatars) formed (80,000 people). Including 10 Crimean police battalions (8,700), Kalmyks and special units, there are approximately 110,000 "fighting" Asians out of a total of 215,000. It quite beats with the layout separately for Caucasians. The Baltic states endowed the Germans with 93 police battalions (later partly brought into regiments), a total of 33,000 people. In addition, 12 border regiments (30,000) were formed, partly staffed by police battalions, then three SS divisions (15, 19 and 20) and two volunteer regiments were created, through which about 70,000 people probably passed. Police and border regiments and battalions were partly directed to form them. Taking into account the absorption of some parts by others, in total about 100,000 Balts passed through the warheads. In Belarus, 20 police battalions (5,000) were formed, of which 9 were considered Ukrainian. After the introduction of mobilization in March 1944, the police battalions became part of the army of the Belarusian Central Rada. In total, the Belarusian Regional Defense (BKA) had 34 battalions, 20,000 people. Having retreated in 1944 together with the German troops, these battalions were consolidated into the Siegling SS Brigade. Then, on the basis of the brigade, with the addition of Ukrainian "policemen", the remnants of the Kaminsky brigade and even the Cossacks, the 30th SS division was deployed, which was later used to staff the 1st Vlasov division. Galicia was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and was viewed as potentially German territory. It was separated from the Ukraine, incorporated into the Reich, as part of the Governor-General of Warsaw, and put in a queue for Germanization. On the territory of Galicia, 10 police battalions (5,000) were formed, and subsequently the recruitment of volunteers for the SS troops was announced. It is believed that 70,000 volunteers came to the recruiting sites, but that was not needed. As a result, one SS division (14th) and five police regiments were formed. Police regiments were disbanded as needed and sent to replenish the division. Galicia's full contribution to the victory over Stalinism can be estimated at 30,000 people. In the rest of Ukraine, 53 police battalions (25,000) were formed. It is known that a small part of them became part of the 30th SS Division, the fate of the rest is unknown to me. After the formation in March 1945 of the Ukrainian analogue of KONR - the Ukrainian National Committee - the Galician 14th SS Division was renamed into the 1st Ukrainian and the formation of the 2nd began. It was formed from volunteers of Ukrainian nationality recruited from various auxiliary formations, recruited about 2,000 people. About 90 guard "ostbatalions" were formed from Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians, through which about 80,000 people passed, including the "Russian National People's Army", which was reorganized into five guard battalions. Among other Russian military formations, one can recall the 3,000th 1st Russian National SS Brigade Gil (Rodionov), which went over to the side of the partisans, the approximately 6,000th “Russian National Army” of Smyslovsky and the army of Kaminsky (“Russian Liberation People's Army”), which arose as a self-defense force of the so-called. Lokot Republic. The maximum estimates of the number of people who passed through the army of Kaminsky reach 20,000. After 1943, Kaminsky's troops retreated with the German army and in 1944 an attempt was made to reorganize them into the 29th SS Division. For a number of reasons, the reorganization was canceled, and the personnel were transferred to the 30th SS Division for replenishment. In early 1945, the armed forces of the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (Vlasov army) were created. The first division of the army is formed from the "Ostbatalions" and the remnants of the 30th SS division. The second division is formed from the "Ostbatalions", and partly from the volunteer prisoners of war. The number of Vlasovites before the end of the war is estimated at 40,000, of which about 30,000 were former SS and Ostbatalons. In total, about 120,000 Russians fought in the Wehrmacht and SS with weapons in their hands at different times. The Cossacks, according to Drobyazko's calculations, fielded 70,000 people, let's accept this figure. HOW DO THEY GET INTO THE SERVICE? Initially, the eastern units were staffed with volunteers from among the prisoners of war and the local population. Since the summer of 1942, the principle of recruiting the local population has changed from voluntary to voluntary-compulsory - an alternative to voluntary admission to the police is forced hijacking to Germany, "ostarbeiter". By the fall of 1942, a blatant coercion had already begun. Drobyazko, in his dissertation, talks about the raids on men in the Shepetovka area: those caught were offered a choice between joining the police or sending them to a camp. In 1943, compulsory military service was introduced in various "self-defense" forces of the Ostland Reichskommissariat. In the Baltic states, SS and border guard units were recruited through mobilization from 1943. HOW AND WITH WHOM DID THEY FIGHT? Initially, the Slavic eastern parts were created to carry out security services. In this capacity, they were supposed to replace the Wehrmacht security battalions, which were sucked out of the rear zone like a vacuum cleaner by the needs of the front. At first, the soldiers of the Ostbatalions guarded warehouses and railways, but as the situation became more complicated, they began to be involved in anti-partisan operations. The involvement of the Ostbatalions in the fight against the partisans contributed to their decay. If in 1942 the number of "Ostbatalonniks" who went over to the side of the partisans was relatively small (although this year the Germans were forced to disband the RNNA due to mass movements), then in 1943 14 thousand fled to the partisans (and this is very, very quite a few, with an average number of eastern parts in 1943 about 65,000 people). The Germans did not have any forces to observe the further decomposition of the Ostbatalions, and in October 1943 the remaining eastern units were sent to France and Denmark (disarming 5-6 thousand volunteers as unreliable). There they were included as 3 or 4 battalions in the regiments of the German divisions. Slavic eastern battalions, with rare exceptions, were not used in battles on the eastern front. In contrast, a significant number of Asian Ostbatalions were involved in the first line of the advancing German troops during the battle for the Caucasus. The results of the battles were contradictory - some showed themselves well, others, on the contrary, were infected with deserter sentiments and gave a large percentage of defectors. By the beginning of 1944, most of the Asian battalions were also on the Western Wall. Those who remained in the East were consolidated into the East Turkic and Caucasian SS formations and were involved in the suppression of the Warsaw and Slovak uprisings. In total, by the time of the Allied invasion in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, 72 Slavic, Asian and Cossack battalions had been assembled with a total strength of about 70 thousand people. In general, and in general, the Ostbatalions showed themselves poorly in battles with the allies (with some exceptions). Of the almost 8.5 thousand irrecoverable losses, 8 thousand were missing, that is, most of them were deserters and defectors. After that, the remaining battalions were disarmed and involved in fortification work on the Siegfried Line. Subsequently, they were used to form parts of the Vlasov army. In 1943, the Cossack units were also withdrawn from the east. The most combat-ready formation of the German Cossack troops - formed in the summer of 1943, the 1st Cossack Division of von Panwitz went to Yugoslavia to deal with Tito's partisans. There they gradually gathered all the Cossacks, deploying the division into a corps. The division took part in the battles on the Eastern Front in 1945, fighting mainly against the Bulgarians. The Baltic states gave the largest number of troops to the front - in addition to three SS divisions, individual police regiments and battalions took part in the battles. The 20th Estonian SS division was defeated near Narva, but later restored and managed to take part in the last battles of the war. The Latvian 15th and 19th SS divisions in the summer of 1944 came under attack from the Red Army and could not withstand the blow. Large scale desertions and loss of combat capability have been reported. As a result, the 15th division, having transferred its most reliable composition to the 19th, was withdrawn to the rear for use in the construction of fortifications. The second time it was used in battles in January 1945, in East Prussia, after which it was again withdrawn to the rear. She managed to surrender to the Americans. The 19th remained until the end of the war in Courland. Belarusian policemen and freshly mobilized in the BKA in 1944 were assembled in the 30th SS division. After being formed, the division was transferred to France in September 1944, where it took part in battles with the allies. It suffered heavy losses, mainly from desertion. The Belarusians ran across to the allies in batches and continued the war in the Polish units. In December, the division was disbanded, and the remaining personnel were transferred to staffing the 1st Vlasov division. The Galician 14th SS Division barely sniffing the gunpowder, was encircled near Brody and almost completely destroyed. Although she was quickly restored, she no longer took part in the battles at the front. One of her regiments was involved in suppressing the Slovak uprising, after which she went to Yugoslavia to fight Tito's partisans. Since it is not far from Yugoslavia to Austria, the division managed to surrender to the British. The Armed Forces of the KONR were formed in early 1945. Although the 1st division of the Vlasovites was staffed almost entirely by veteran punishers, many of whom had already visited the front, Vlasov soared Hitler's brains, demanding more time for preparation. In the end, the division still managed to push out to the Oder front, where it took part in one attack against Soviet troops on April 13. The very next day, the division commander, Major General Bunyachenko, ignoring the protests of his German immediate superior, withdrew the division from the front and went to join the rest of Vlasov's army to the Czech Republic. The Vlasov army fought the second battle against its ally, attacking German troops in Prague on May 5. WHAT DID THEY DRIVE? The driving motives were completely different. Firstly, among the eastern troops, one can distinguish national separatists who fought for the creation of their own national state, or at least a privileged province of the Reich. These include the Balts, Asian legionnaires and Galicians. The creation of units of this kind has a long tradition - remember at least the Czechoslovak Corps or the Polish Legion in the First World War. These would fight against the central government, no matter who was sitting in Moscow - the tsar, the general secretary or the popularly elected president. Secondly, there were ideological and stubborn opponents of the regime. These include the Cossacks (although in part their motives were national-separatist), part of the personnel of the Ostbatalions, a significant part of the officer corps of the KONR troops. Thirdly, one can name opportunists who relied on a winner, those who joined the Reich during the Wehrmacht victories, but fled to the partisans after the defeat at Kursk and continued to flee as soon as possible. These probably constituted a significant part of the remnant battalions and local police. There were some on the other side of the front, as can be seen from the change in the number of defectors to the Germans in 1942-44: 1942 - 79769 people 1943 - 26108 people 1944 - 9207 people Fourthly, these were people who hoped to escape from the camp and at a convenient opportunities to go to yours. How many of them were - it's hard to say, but sometimes it was recruited for a whole battalion. And, finally, the fifth category - people who would rather survive. This is where the bulk of the hiwi and construction workers get, who received much more nutritious rations in this quality than in the camp. AND WHAT DO YOU MAKE IN THE TOTAL? And the result is a completely different picture from what is painted by ardent anti-communists. Instead of one (or even two) million Russians, rallying under the tricolor flag in the fight against the hateful Stalinist regime, there is a very motley (and clearly not finishing up to a million) company of the Balts, Asians, Galicians and Slavs who fought each for their own. And mostly not with the Stalinist regime, but with the partisans (moreover, not only Russians, but also with Yugoslav, Slovak, French, Polish), Western allies, and even with the Germans in general. Doesn't sound like a civil war, does it? Well, except perhaps to call these words the struggle of the partisans with the policemen, but the policemen fought not under the tricolor flag, but with a swastika on their sleeve. For the sake of justice, it should be noted that until the end of 1944, until the formation of the KONR and its armed forces, the Germans did not provide an opportunity for Russian anti-communists to fight for the national idea, for Russia without communists. It can be assumed that if they had allowed it earlier, "under the tricolor flag" more people would have rallied, especially since there were still plenty of opponents of the Bolsheviks in the country. But this "would" and besides - even the grandmother said in two. And in real history, no "millions under the tricolor flag" were observed. List of sources 1. S.I.Drobyazko Eastern formations in the Wehrmacht (dissertation) 2. S. Drobyazko, A. Karashchuk Russian Liberation Army 3. S. Drobyazko, A. Karashchuk Eastern volunteers in the Wehrmacht, police and SS 4. S. Drobyazko, A. Karashchuk Eastern legions and Cossack units in the Wehrmacht 5. OV Romanko Muslim legions in the Second World War 6. J. Hoffmann History of the Vlasov army 7. VK Shtrik-Shtrikfeldt Against Stalin and Hitler 8. N. M.Konyaev Vlasov. Two faces of the general.
All of Europe fought against us
The very first strategic counteroffensive of Soviet troops in the Great Patriotic War revealed a very unpleasant circumstance for the USSR. Among the enemy troops captured near Moscow, there were many military units France, Poland, Holland, Finland, Austria, Norway and other countries. Imprints of almost all major European firms were found on captured military equipment and shells. In general, as it was possible to assume and as it was thought in the Soviet Union, that European proletarians would never go with arms to the state of workers and peasants, that they would sabotage the production of weapons for Hitler.
But exactly the opposite happened. A very characteristic find was made by our soldiers after the liberation of the Moscow region in the area of the historic Borodino field - next to the French cemetery in 1812, they discovered fresh graves of Napoleon's descendants. The Soviet 32nd Red Banner Infantry Division of Colonel V.I. Polosukhin, whose fighters could not even imagine that they were opposed "French allies".
A more or less complete picture of this battle was revealed only after the Victory. Chief of Staff of the 4th German Army G. Blumentritt published a memoir in which he wrote:
“The four battalions of French volunteers that were part of the 4th Army turned out to be less resilient. At Borodin, Field Marshal von Kluge addressed them with a speech, recalling how in the days of Napoleon the French and Germans fought here side by side against a common enemy - Russia. The next day, the French boldly went into battle, but, unfortunately, could not withstand either a powerful enemy attack, or a severe frost and snowstorm. They have never had to endure such tests before. The French legion was defeated, suffering heavy losses from enemy fire. A few days later he was withdrawn to the rear and sent to the West ... "
Here is an interesting archival document - a list of prisoners of war who surrendered to Soviet troops during the war. Let us remind you that a prisoner of war is one who fights in uniform with a weapon in his hands.
Hitler accepts the Wehrmacht parade, 1940 (megabook.ru)
So, Germans – 2 389 560, Hungarians – 513 767, Romanians – 187 370, austrians – 156 682, Czechs and slovaks – 69 977, Poles – 60 280, Italians – 48 957, French people – 23 136, croats – 21 822, Moldovans – 14 129, Jews – 10 173, Dutch – 4 729, finns – 2 377, Belgians – 2 010, Luxembourgers – 1652, Danes – 457, spaniards – 452, gypsies – 383, Norse – 101, Swedes – 72.
And these are only those who survived and were captured. In reality, much more Europeans fought against us.
The ancient Roman senator Cato the Elder went down in history by the fact that any of his public statements on any topic necessarily ended with the words: Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam, which literally means: "Otherwise, I believe that Carthage must be destroyed." (Carthage is a city-state hostile to Rome.) I am not ready to completely become like Senator Cato, but I will use any reason to once again mention: in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, the USSR, with the initial strength 190 million... people who fought not with 80 million of the then Germans. The Soviet Union fought practically with all of Europe, the number of which (with the exception of England allied to us and partisan Serbia not surrendering to the Germans) was about 400 million... Human.
During the Great Patriotic War, overcoats in the USSR were donned by 34,476.7 thousand people, i.e. 17,8% population. And Germany has mobilized into its armed forces as much 21% from the population. It would seem that the Germans in their military efforts have strained more than the USSR. But in the Red Army, women served in large numbers, both voluntarily and by conscription. There were a lot of purely female units and subunits (anti-aircraft, aviation, etc.). In a period of desperate situation, the State Defense Committee made a decision (which remained, however, on paper) to create female rifle formations, in which men would only be heavy artillery loaders.
And among the Germans, even at the time of their agony, women not only did not serve in the army, but there were very few of them in production. Why is that? Because in the USSR there was one man for every three women, while in Germany it was the other way around? No, that's not the point. In order to fight, you need not only soldiers, but also weapons with food. And for their production, men are also needed, who cannot be replaced by women or teenagers. Therefore, the USSR was forced send women to the front instead of men.
The Germans did not have such a problem: all of Europe provided them with weapons and food. The French not only handed over all their tanks to the Germans, but also produced a huge amount of military equipment for them - from cars to optical rangefinders.
Czechs with only one firm Skoda produced more weapons than the entire pre-war Great Britain, built the entire fleet of German armored personnel carriers, a huge number of tanks, aircraft, small arms, artillery and ammunition.
Poles built airplanes Polish Jews in Auschwitz they produced explosives, synthetic gasoline and rubber to kill Soviet citizens; the Swedes mined ore and supplied the Germans with components for military equipment (for example, bearings), the Norwegians supplied the Nazis with seafood, the Danes - with butter ... In short, all Europe tried as best they could.
And she tried not only on the labor front. Only the elite troops of Nazi Germany - the SS troops - accepted into their ranks 400 thousand... "Blond beasts" from other countries, and in total they entered the Nazi army from all over Europe 1800 thousand. volunteers, having formed 59 divisions, 23 brigades and several national regiments and legions.
The most elite of these divisions did not have numbers, but their own names indicating national origin: Valonia, Galicia, Bohemia and Moravia, Viking, Denemark, Gembez, Langemark, Nordland "," Netherlands "," Charlemagne "and others.
Europeans served as volunteers not only in national, but also in German divisions. So, say, an elite German division "Great Germany"... It would seem that, if only because of the name, it should have been completed only by the Germans. However, the French who served in it Guy Sayer recalls that on the eve of the Battle of Kursk, there were 9 Germans in his infantry squad of 11 people, and besides him, the Czech also had a poor understanding of German. And all this besides the official allies of Germany, whose armies burned and plundered the Soviet Union shoulder to shoulder - Italians, Romanian, Hungarians, Finns, Croats, Slovaks, besides Bulgarians, who at that time burned and plundered partisan Serbia. Even officially neutral spaniards sent their "Blue Division" to Leningrad!
In order to assess the ethnic composition of all the European bastard, which, in the hope of an easy prey, climbed up to kill Soviet and Russian people, I will give a table of that part of foreign volunteers who guessed to surrender to us in time:
Germans – 2 389 560, Hungarians – 513 767, Romanians – 187 370, austrians – 156 682, Czechs and slovaks – 69 977, Poles – 60 280, Italians – 48 957, French people – 23 136, croats – 21 822, Moldovans – 14 129, Jews – 10 173, Dutch – 4 729, finns – 2 377, Belgians – 2 010, Luxembourgers – 1652, Danes – 457, spaniards – 452, gypsies – 383, Norse – 101, Swedes – 72.
This table, first published in late 1990, should be repeated for the following reasons. After the accession of "democracy" on the territory of the USSR, the table is continuously "improved" in terms of "enlarging the lines". As a result, in "serious" books by "professional historians" on the theme of war, for example, in the statistical collection "Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century" or in the reference book "The World of Russian History", the data of this table are distorted. Some of the nationalities have disappeared from it.
Jews disappeared in the first place, which, as you can see from the original table, served Hitler as much as the Finns and the Dutch combined. And I, for example, do not see why we should throw out Jewish couplets from this Hitler song.
By the way, Poles today are trying to alienate Jews from the post of “the main sufferers of the Second World War,” and there are more of them on the lists of prisoners than Italians who officially and actually fought with us.
Indeed, the table presented does not reflect the true quantitative and national composition of the prisoners. First of all, it does not represent at all our domestic scum who, either because of acquired idiocy, or because of cowardice and cowardice, served the Germans - from Bandera to Vlasov.
By the way, they were punished very easily. It's good if the Vlasovite fell into the hands of the front-line soldiers as prisoners. Then he most often got what he deserved. But the traitors contrived to surrender to the rear units, disguised themselves in civilian clothes, pretended to be Germans when surrendering, etc. In this case, the Soviet court literally almost stroked them on the head.
At one time, domestic anti-Sovietists published collections of their memoirs abroad. One of them describes the judicial "sufferings" of a Vlasovite who defended Berlin: disguised himself ... to the captive Soviet soldiers ... introduced himself as a Frenchman and thus got to the military tribunal. And then reading his boasting is insulting: “They gave me five years of distant camps - and that was lucky. Hastily - they considered it a worker-peasant petty. The soldiers, captured with weapons, and the officers were sculpted a ten. " While being escorted to the camp, he fled to the West.
Five years for the murder of Soviet people and treason! What kind of punishment is this ?! Well, at least 20, so that the mental wounds of widows and orphans healed and it was not so offensive to look at these vile hari ...
For the same reason, they are not included in the lists of prisoners of war. Crimean Tatars who stormed Sevastopol for Manstein, Kalmyks etc.
Not listed Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, who had their own national divisions as part of the Nazi troops, but were considered Soviet citizens and served in this connection their scanty terms in the camps of the GULAG, and not in the camps of the GUPVI. (The GULAG - the main department of the camps - was engaged in keeping criminals, and the GUPVI - the main department for prisoners of war and internees - for prisoners.) Meanwhile, even the GUPVI did not get all the prisoners, since this department counted only those who ended up in the rear camps. from the front-line shipping points.
Estonian Wehrmacht legionnaires fought against the USSR with particular fury (ookaboo.com)
But since 1943, national divisions of Poles, Czechs, Romanians began to form in the USSR to fight the Germans. And the prisoners of these nationalities were sent not to the GUPVI, but immediately to the points of recruitment of such formations - they fought together with the Germans, let them fight against them too! Such, by the way, there were 600 thousand... Even de Gaulle was sent to his army 1500 French.
Before the start of the war with the USSR Hitler appealed to the Europeans to crusade against Bolshevism... Here is how they responded to it (data for June - October 1941, which does not take into account the huge military contingents Of Italy, Hungary, Romania and other allies of Hitler). From Spanish volunteers ( 18000 people) in the Wehrmacht, the 250th Infantry Division was formed. In July, the personnel took the oath of allegiance to Hitler and left for the Soviet-German front. During September-October 1941 from French volunteers (approximately 3000 people), the 638th Infantry Regiment was formed. In October, the regiment was sent to Smolensk, and then to Moscow. From Belgians in July 1941, the 373rd Valona Battalion was formed (approximately 850 people), transferred to the subordination of the 97th Infantry Division of the 17th Army of the Wehrmacht.
From Croatian Volunteers formed the 369th Infantry Regiment of the Wehrmacht and the Croatian Legion as part of the Italian troops. About 2000 Swedes volunteered for Finland. Of these, about 850 people participated in the hostilities near Hanko, as part of the Swedish volunteer battalion.
By the end of June 1941 294 Norwegian have already served in the SS Nordland regiment. After the outbreak of war with the USSR, a volunteer legion "Norway" ( 1200 Human). After taking the oath to Hitler, he was sent to Leningrad. By the end of June 1941, the Viking SS division had 216 Danes... After the outbreak of war with the USSR, the Danish "Volunteer Corps" began to form.
Our Polish comrades... Immediately after the end of the German-Polish war, the Polish nationalist Vladislav Gizbert-Studnitsky came up with the idea of creating a Polish army fighting on the side of Germany. He developed a project for building a Polish 12-15 million pro-German state. Gizbert-Studnicki proposed a plan for sending Polish troops to the eastern front. Later the idea of a Polish-German alliance and 35 thousandth Polish army supported by the organization "Sword and Plow", associated with the "Home Army".
In the first months of the war against the USSR, Polish soldiers in the fascist army had the so-called status HiWi (volunteers). Later, Hitler gave special permission to serve the Poles in the Wehrmacht. After that, the use of the name was categorically prohibited for the Poles. HiWi, because the Nazis treated them as full-fledged soldiers. Any Pole between the ages of 16 and 50 could become a volunteer; it was only necessary to undergo a preliminary medical examination.
The Poles were called upon, along with other European nations, to stand up "to defend Western civilization from Soviet barbarism." Here is a quote from a fascist leaflet in Polish: “The German armed forces are leading the decisive struggle to defend Europe against Bolshevism. Any honest assistant in this fight will be greeted as a comrade-in-arms ... "
The text of the oath of the Polish soldiers read: "I swear before God by this sacred oath that in the fight for the future of Europe in the ranks of the German Wehrmacht I will be absolutely obedient to the Supreme Commander Adolf Hitler, and as a brave soldier I am ready to devote my strength at any time to fulfill this oath ..."
It is striking that even the strictest guardian of the Aryan gene pool Himmler allowed to form units from Poles SS... The first swallow was the Waffen-SS Goral Legion. Gorals are an ethnic group within the Polish nation. In 1942, the Nazis convened a Goral Committee in Zakopane. Was appointed "Goralenführer" Vaclav Krzheptowski.
He and his inner circle made a number of trips to cities and villages, calling them to fight against the worst enemy of civilization - Judeo-Bolshevism. It was decided to create a Goralian Waffen-SS volunteer legion, adapted for operations in mountainous terrain. Krzheptovsky managed to collect 410 mountaineers. But after a medical examination in the SS, there remained 300 Human.
Another Polish SS Legion was formed in mid-July 1944. It was joined by 1500 volunteers of Polish nationality. In October the legion was based in Rzechow, in December near Tomaszów. In January 1945, the legion was divided into two groups (1st Lieutenant Machnik, 2nd Lieutenant Errling) and sent to participate in anti-partisan operations in the Tucholsky forests. In February, both groups were destroyed by the Soviet army.
President of the Academy of Military Sciences, General of the Army Makhmut Gareev gave the following assessment of the participation of a number of European countries in the fight against fascism: During the war, the whole of Europe fought against us. Three hundred and fifty million people, regardless of whether they fought with weapons in their hands, or stood at the bench, producing weapons for the Wehrmacht, doing one thing.
During the Second World War, 20 thousand members of the French Resistance were killed. And 200 thousand Frenchmen fought against us. We also took 60 thousand Poles prisoner. 2 million European volunteers fought for Hitler against the USSR.
In this regard, the invitation of the military personnel of a number of countries looks at least strange. NATO take part in the parade on Red Square in honor of the 65th anniversary of the Great Victory, - said Colonel Yuri Rubtsov, a member of the International Association of Historians of the Second World War, professor at the Military Humanitarian Academy. - This insults the memory of our defenders of the Fatherland, who died at the hands of numerous "Hitler's European friends".
Useful conclusion
During the Second World War against the Soviet Union, which had an initial population of just over 190 million... people, a European coalition of more than 400 million... people, and when we were not Russians, but Soviet citizens, we destroyed this coalition.
All of Europe fought against us a
More detailed and a variety of information about the events taking place in Russia, Ukraine and other countries of our beautiful planet, can be obtained at Internet Conferences constantly held on the site"Keys of Knowledge". All Conferences are open and completely free... We invite all those waking up and interested ...
A Soviet soldier left to fight for his native land, and in the end he cleared the whole world of the Nazis
The further this day goes, the larger the gaps in the memory of descendants become. The voices of madmen who are trying to convince the whole world that the contribution of the USSR to the victory over fascism is minimal are heard louder and louder. Keeping silent about the fact that practically all of Europe diligently contributed to the strengthening of the Nazi army, and not to its defeat.
Countries occupied by Hitler have always made themselves known as victims. Like, evil invaders came, what could we do against them? It was impossible to fight. They were forced to work on pain of death, starved and tortured. However, in reality it turns out that in the West, under the Germans, everything was not so bad. It was our troops, retreating, blowing up industrial enterprises so that the enemy would not get it. Partisans and residents of the territories occupied by the fascists staged sabotage and sabotage. In most occupied European countries, workers worked hard, getting paid and drinking beer after work.
Everything for the front, everything for the victory
In 1938, the balance of power in the German and Czechoslovak armies was comparable. Moreover, the Czechs were technically well equipped: they provided 40 percent of world trade and military equipment, and their tanks were the best in Europe. And this country surrenders to Hitler without a single squeak. In addition to trophies, Germany gets at its disposal well-known factories: Skoda, CKD, Poldi, Zbroevka. And docile Czechs begin to work diligently for the Nazis. Small arms, armored vehicles, self-propelled guns, Czech-made aircraft make up at least a quarter of all weapons of the fascist army. Plus cars, ammunition and parts for V-2 missiles.
Life under occupation on the territory of the USSR ... (photo by privetsochi.ru)
Without the Czech military industry and Czech tanks, we would not have had four tank divisions, which would have made an attack on the Soviet Union impossible, ”admitted Lieutenant Colonel of the Wehrmacht's tank forces Helmut Ritgen.
The shops of the arms factories did not stand up until May 5, 1945. And during the whole war, not a single attempt at sabotage or sabotage! On the contrary, the designers are modernizing weapons and fighting with their Austrian colleagues for the right to develop and introduce an all-terrain tractor designed for the impenetrable Russian forests and swamps. And why not try, if the owner is satisfied, and to those who work well, he gives out products at higher rates.
“The Czechs gave us all the necessary information about their tanks,” recalled German engineer Lieutenant Colonel Icken with gratitude. - Czech officers were confident that their vehicles fully meet the needs of the Wehrmacht. And we have never had to face acts of sabotage or any kind of resistance.
... and in France it was strikingly different (in the photo there is a poster of the exhibition of photographs "Parisians in occupation")
In the German war, only guns are in the price
Equipped with French flamethrower tanks, the fascist company distinguished itself in the capture of Sevastopol. Armored vehicles, howitzers, mortars, anti-tank guns, ammunition were regularly supplied to the Wehrmacht from French factories. The largest howitzer was produced here: shells weighing 1654 kg, fired from it, crumbled the quarters of Leningrad. About 10,000 tanks, self-propelled guns and basic vehicles for their creation were supplied to Hitler by France and the Czech Republic. The allies of the Third Reich - Italy and Hungary gave half as much.
Industry and the economy continued to work rhythmically, trucks for the Wehrmacht rolled off the assembly line at Renault enterprises without interruption, ”said Otto Reile, assistant to the head of German military intelligence. - The French, without any coercion, produced products for our military industry in large volumes and without reclamations.
The "frames" assembled in the Czech Republic and France hovered over our positions, indicating to the enemy artillerymen where it was better to aim. It was very difficult to shoot them down.
French aircraft engines were installed on the German anti-tank attack aircraft "Henschel-129" and on the transport aircraft "Messerschmitt-323", which lifted seven times more cargo into the sky than any other, it even transported armored cars. 750 of 894 two-corps artillery spotters "Focke-Wulf-189" - the famous "frames" that caused a lot of trouble for our troops - left the assembly lines of factories in Bordeaux and Prague. The Peugeot and Citroen factories also worked for the Hitlerite army: then the French car industry was more powerful than the German one. Its products accounted for a fifth of the fleet of the Hitlerite army.
Yes, there was a Resistance movement in the country. However, the heroism of the underground is somewhat lost against the background of the scale with which France provided assistance to the invaders. We have heard a lot about the 72 hero pilots from the Normandie-Niemen aviation regiment. And almost nothing about the 200,000 French volunteers who fought on Hitler's side.
Almost 20,000 volunteers from Spain, which formally observed neutrality, fought on the side of Hitler. A medal was made especially for them, which the veterans continued to wear after the war.
Helped as much as they could
The Fuhrer received 10,000 units of armored vehicles, 9,000 aircraft, 17,000 aircraft engines, 12,000 artillery installations, 350,000 trucks from little Austria. By virtue of their industrial capacities, the factories of Poland, Holland, Denmark, Norway regularly supplied their products.
Strategic raw materials, weapons, materials, equipment - a united Europe provided the Nazis with everything they needed. Including human resources: about 2 million people volunteered for the Nazi army. And often such warriors were distinguished by greater cruelty than the Germans.
There are several sorties in my memory when they flew to the rear to bomb, ”recalled Boris Rapoport, who was navigator of the Po-2 night bomber during the war. - In the summer of 1944, militants of the Polish Home Army massacred our hospital in the city of Minsk-Mazowiecki, killing 200 wounded and all personnel. After the attack, the Poles took refuge in the forest. So we were attracted to bomb this ill-fated forest.
In total, according to experts, 350 million people fought against the USSR. It doesn't matter if they fought with weapons in their hands or worked hard in mines and factories.
In 1945, hardly anyone would dare to downplay the role of our army in the victory over Nazism.
To whom the war, and to whom the mother is dear
The banks of neutral Switzerland held the finances of the Nazi government, as well as gold bars - 75 percent of the captured gold. Including melted down from the teeth torn from the victims of concentration camps and the jewelry removed from them. The Swiss insurance companies also made a profit: until 1944 they issued 206,000 insurance policies in Germany. Business also did not lag behind: high-precision devices, telephones, walkie-talkies, watches were supplied to the fascists regularly. And the gas for use in concentration camps came from the laboratories of the chemical company Ciba (in 1996 it became part of the well-known pharmaceutical giant Novartis). Those captives who did not end up in the gas chambers could end up in Swiss factories. One of the companies that used slave labor is the now well-known Nestlé.
However, there were also noble people in Switzerland. For example, Red Cross doctors who volunteered to go to the battlefields. But they only helped the wounded of one side - not ours. Although the country welcomed 60,000 civilians who fled from Germany and Austria, 20,000 Jews were extradited to the Nazis and subsequently exterminated in concentration camps.
And the trial of the underground workers from Geneva, who collaborated with the members of the French Resistance, looks absolutely stunning. They received a term, albeit conditional, for "violation of neutrality"! However, there were no complaints about the neighbor of one of the heroes, who reported them to the Nazis.
Sweden, which also declared neutrality in World War II, supplied Germany with iron ore and steel: a third of German ammunition and weapons were made from Swedish raw materials. In the period 1941 - 1943. it provided its territory for the transit of Nazi troops, weapons and cargo. And the Swedish king Gustav V in a personal letter thanked Hitler in October 1941 for the defeat of Bolshevism.
Just a fact
* A third of Japanese schoolchildren are sure that the Soviet Union dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
French Kiss
While Russian women plowed the land, harnessing instead of cattle, Parisian women appeased the Nazis.
The occupation did not become a time of hardship and hardship for the inhabitants of Paris. Judging by the photographs of those years, they felt quite comfortable. The secular life in the capital of France continued to seethe. Despite the Nazi flags hung on government offices, and crowds of people forced to wear yellow stars on their clothes.
French researcher Patrick Boisseau in his book "1940 - 1945. The Erotic Years" describes the "horizontal cooperation" of Parisians with the Germans. The Hitlerite army, having occupied the city, requisitioned all brothels for their own needs. But this is not surprising, but the fact that French women lined up to serve the invaders. Eager to please their clients, they learned German and dyed their hair black for an exciting contrast to the blond Aryans. They created home comfort for the military, cut off from the home. In gratitude, the command allowed employees and visitors to brothels not to comply with the curfew.
With the arrival of the Germans, the number of brothel employees increased sixfold
The payment for visiting elite brothels, where Hermann Goering, for example, visited, was comparable to the weekly salary of a high-ranking official. Somewhere there were besieged Leningrad, concentration camps with gas chambers, pain, hunger, death. And here, loving French women served the Nazi leadership with champagne in old glasses, the freshest cakes on silver trays, and delighted the ear with classical music pieces. And with tears they saw off their clients to the Eastern Front.
These were the best years of my life, - recalled the manager of one of the elite brothels, Madame Fabienne Jamet, the times when half the world was drowned in blood. - I have never had such a fun and carefree time. The nights during the occupation were fantastic!
