The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler's Foreign Soldiers

Description

When Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa with his attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Wehrmacht deployed 600,000 troops to the Eastern Front. Their numbers were later swelled by a range of foreign volunteers so that, at the height of World War II, astonishingly one in three men fighting for the Germans in the East was not a native German. Hitler's declaration of the "struggle against Bolshevism" reverberated throughout all of Europe - among convinced fascists as well as among non-Russian eastern Europeans seeking to regain their independence from the USSR. Many of these volunteers subsequently became involved in the atrocities of the Wehrmacht and the SS. Vilified by Hitler for their supposed failures, condemned and forgotten by their homelands for treason and collaboration, their involvement in the war has been largely ignored or swept aside by historians. Rolf-Dieter Müller here offers a fascinating new perspective on a little-known aspect of World War II. Contents List of Illustrations List of Maps List of Abbreviations Preface Introduction: Operation Barbarossa and Its Consequences PART I - THE ALLIES Introduction 1. Finland 2. Hungary 3. Romania 4. Italy 5. Slovakia 6. Croatia PART II - THE VOLUNTEERS FROM NEUTRAL AND OCCUPIED TERRITORIES Introduction 7. Spain 8. France 9. Belgium 10. The Netherlands 11. Denmark 12. Norway PART III - THE EASTERN EUROPEAN NATIONS IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST STALINISM Introduction 13. Estonia 14. Latvia 15. Lithuania 16. Poland 17. Byelorussia 18. Ukraine 19. Russia 20. The Caucasus Concluding Remarks Notes Bibliography Index