Just read My Memoirs by Alojz Voler. It is one Slovenian partisan's account which includes the escorting of Allied escapees PoWs on one leg of their flight to safety. Over 100 British, Australian, S African and Americans got away. It was the largest successful escape of PoWs in the West. Anyway, Alojz Voler was Slovenian by birth. German law proscribed enlistment of foreigners into the Wehrmacht, but the SS could recruit them. However, in Voler's case he and his friends were drafted into the Reich's Arbeitdienst before being drafted into the German Army. I know that Poles were similarly forced into the German Army too. So, if a conquered nation was incorporated into the Greater German Reich, it was OK to recruit them into the Army and if a nation was only an occupied (France, Lowlands, Baltic States, Ukrainians, Kazaks), they had to be recruited into the SS? Is that correct? Another monkey wrench. What of the Russians who entered the Wehrmacht and served in Normandy? A lot of Russia was occcupied, but as a nation never conquered. There's the famous image of the Korean who was drafted into the Japanese Army, the captured by the Soviets and had an unpleasant stay in Siberia and subsquently drafted into the Red Army, where he was captured by the Germans and then into the Wehrmacht before being liberated by the Americans? He went back to Korea post-war.
Koreans in Normandy Americans in German military? Wehrmacht foreign volunteers and conscripts - Wikipedia
Until 1941, the Nazis were still selective in this regard: ethnic Germans in occupied foreign countries joined the Wehrmacht; other foreigners could join the SS. When the situation became, well, "difficult," the norms quickly relaxed: the SS became a kind of foreign legion in which religious or ethnic considerations played little role. The Wehrmacht, for its part, set up "Russian" volunteer battalions, but they were mostly composed of Georgians, Chechens, Kazakhs, and so on. Then there were exotics such as the 1st Cossack Division, the Vlasov Army, or the Indian Legion, which usually had special status
Where the Germans incorporated regions into Germany - Austria, Bohemia, Moravia, Northern Poland (Wathegau), Eastern Belgium and Alsace, technically the local inhabitants could be treated as German - as long as they could pass as members of the master race and not slavs or jews, Whether they were thus treated depended on the regime of that Gau, and the needs of the armed forces. Guy Sager, from Alsace served in an army not SS unit. The Allied Polish Army recruited many of its numbers from German PW.
I wasn't aware of that. Some Italians were recruited as laborers in the US Army. Some Italians whose unit identity remained intact fought as a unit too.
The US did not want to have anything to do with the Army of the co-belligerent post 1943 armistice Italian Army. One brigade has a disastrous battle in Dec 1943 on Monte Lungo(?) near route 6 as part of the Fifth US Army. After this the US wanted nothing more to do with Italian soldiers. The British then took on support and training of the co-belligerent Italian Army. In typically British way the Italians were treated as any other native force and assigned British "advisers". By the end of 1944 the first Italian division sized Legions deployed with the Eighth Army. These were infantry formations with artillery provided by British field artillery surplus after the disbandment of 1st Armoured Division.
There is a story that when the Poles captured Monte Cassino they captured German paratroop wounded left in the ruins of the Abbey and some orderlies. One Fallscjhirmjaeger admitted that he was a Pole and was recruited on the spot, paradoxically as a replacement for losses that his unit had been responsible for inflicting. I don't have a source for this
Besides the Ostlegionen and SS units, most Heer divisions that served on the Eastern Front had hundreds of 'Hilfwillige', or Hiwis. They were often integrated into the TO&E of German units. They rarely served near the front, and were almost always employed in the logistics branch. On the Western Front they were less common, but still present in decent numbers.
Anthony Beevor's book 'Stalingrad' refers to Hilfwillge fighting in that battle; another book no longer on my bookshelves.
German infantry divisions in the east had Hiwis as part of their standard TO&E from as early as 1942 I think, serving in non-combat roles. I recommend Rutherford 'The German Army on the Eastern Front' as this has the most recent, and primary document based treatment of the subject. In the Mediterranean, French and Tunisian Arabs were recruited early in 1943, some Arabs also served with Sonderverband 287 I think. For whole formations, there is an older book called 'Hitler's Fremde Heere' which is worth digging out if you read German. On the whole, formations of other nationals weren't a big issue in the Heer, no matter how exciting they are. Somewhat more important as a ratio in the Waffen SS, where you have whole formations made up of Nazi-Scandinavians, Bosnian muslims, Ukrainian nationalists, Baltic nationalists (I think) etc.pp. In the Heer the full integration of foreigners into the German formations as a class (the Hiwis) and the treatment of people who really weren't German, as German, so they could be drafted into the Heer as individuals, was more important. All the best Andreas
Iam just reading a German book " Der Muslim und die Jüdin" by Ronan Steinke. The author also mentions Arabs and other Muslims being part of the Wehrmacht, e.g. Caukasian-Islamic Legion in January 1942
80 years ago on 10th February 1942 Heinrich Himmler authorizes the setup of a Waffen SS unit formed with Muslims from the Balkan
Looks like they were officially implemented into TO&Es as you said in March 1942, just from a brief look at wwiidaybyday.com. The most Hiwis I have seen allocated to a division is 2187 for 362. Infanterie-Division in February 44, in Italy. In reality the division only had 594 Hiwis, and the difference was made up by regular enlisted. It is a strangely high number nonetheless for a division which had only seen action in Italy.
There are higher numbers of authorized Hiwi's: 5.Gebirgs-Division was authorized to have 2,706 in November 1944 and the 7.Gebirgs-Division were authorized to have 2,724 in January 1945.
You'll find that from 1943 onwards Hiwi's were very often armed and as the war went on they were pressed into combat and combat units more and more as the rear area services were combed through for excess personel.
I forgot to check Gebirgs-Divisions. Makes sense since Gebirgs-Divisions had larger logistics elements.
