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

by Rolf-Dieter Müller

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.

Genres: History, World War II, Military Fiction, Nonfiction, Military History, War, Germany

287 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

Rolf-Dieter Müller is a German military historian and political scientist, who has served as Scientific Director of the German Armed Forces Military History Research Office since 1999. Rolf-Dieter Müller is also a former professor of military history at Humboldt University.
Müller, in cooperation with German journalist Rudibert Kunz, is known for being the first historian to write about the use of chemical weapons in the Rif War in a 1990 book titled Giftgas Gegen Abd El Krim: Deutschland, Spanien und der Gaskrieg in Spanisch-Marokko, 1922-1927.
Müller was one of the lead researchers on the seminal work Germany and the Second World War.

Reviews

[Monty Milne · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good description of the non-Germans who fought for Hitler on the Eastern Front. The author makes clear that without their contribution the Germans could not have achieved what they did. Almost one-third of those who fought for Hitler were non-German. If it were not for the suicidal stupidity of Nazi racial and occupation policies, a million or more additional soldiers could easily have been found. This book seems generally fair minded and balanced (though it was a little startling to read about German-Polish co-operation - admittedly mostly theoretical and mostly pre-war - in the light of the genocidal policies against the Polish people which were actually pursued). It is not a comfortable read (some especially harrowing text - and photographs - showing Latvian participation in atrocities against Jewish fellow-citizens, for example). I found it especially fascinating because while reading it I met up with a Spanish friend who told me about his grandfather's experiences on the Leningrad front with the Division Azul (he survived, but was badly frostbitten).

[Sean Smart · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good military history book listing all the foreign troops fighting on the Eastern Front against the USSR for their various reasons. Well explained and very detailed/comprehensive.

[Andre · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was quite dissappointed by this book, because I basically knew so much of it's topics and content already, but there wasn't actually anything qualitatively new for me.
Sure, occasionally there was some interesting stuff. One example would be that it is so ironic that not only was Hitler a big obstacle to recruiting non-Germans as so many of the army wanted, but the more they needed those people the more did idiological barriers erode, And on the other side, the partisans in the occupied territories killed more countrymen than German soldiers because for Stalin they were mostly a means to control the population. In addition, thousands of sovjet citizens fled with the germans west to flee from Stalinism.
However, on the other hand there were problems, like the chapter on Finnland being not memorable, like at all and it was pretty bland. Hungary pretty much the same and I knew so much of it already. Only the information of Jews as workers for the hungarian army was unexpected to me and there wasn't much on that topic. Apart from things like that, the book is pretty damn uninteresting. Afterwards, I really don't know anything substantive so far that I didn't know already, including Hitler blaming the foreign troops first and the Wehrmacht and SS becoming more lenient the more troops they needed.
And the dullness of the book continzed when it went on to Romania and the entire section on the allied Axis powers was just incredibly superfluous to me. So, I skipped the rest and went straight to the chapter on volunteers from the occupied and neutral countries, in hope that it will be a better experience. It wasn't really.
Considered how fascist Spain and Portugal were, I would have thought there would be more volunteers. Anyway, these shorter entries were a bit better of a reading experience but I was still tempted to put this book down. Even these chapters had only small nuggets like French volunteers in the battle for Berlin, which were the only highlights for me, and so I skipped the rest as it was so dull and boring, it was a complete waste of my time and so I went to the eastern european section. Sadly, there wasn't much substance in the rest either. Mostly something about recruitment and troop movements and not much else. Nothing really about motivations or wider politics. The latter part has some stuff about how Germany abandoned the racist recruitment politics in 1944 because of pure necessity but that was it.
I mostly regret wasting my time with this. Luckily, I skipped a lot of it or my regrets would have been worse.

[JD · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very interesting book about non-German units fighting on the Eastern Front against the Soviets during World War 2. As the book states, 1 in 3 soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front were non-German and there could have been more had it not been for Nazi ideology. The author delves into political and ideological decisions made by these allies and volunteers to join the German cause by fighting alongside them and the difficulties for the Nazi regime to manage all these different groups. Especially interesting is the look at the eastern volunteers from the former Soviet side and what motivated them to help the Germans.

[Johan Dahlbäck · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ämnet hade potential, men författaren gör inget bra jobb. Det olyckliga valet att skriva om de icke-tyska trupperna land för land leder till att det saknas analys och röd tråd. Ett mycket intressantare upplägg hade varit tematiska kapitel som rekrytering, förbandstyper eller varianter på relationen till Tyskland. Då hade mönster och samband kunnat visas på ett helt annat sätt.

Det blir värre av att fakta radas på fakta och stycket efter stycke är precis likadant upplagt. Om boken var längre hade jag inte orkat igenom den.

[Kevin Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was saddened to read about what happened to most of the people who survive the war, but fought on the losing side. That so many would fight against their own country or for another country for an idea is really saying something about the times that were then and how we should never forget. I don't want the human race to go through that experience again. Eastern Europe has a very sad and long history of war and this was just another in the set. May we never see another such as this one was. Overall I found the book informative and easy to read.

[Riet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dit boek gaat over de vrijwilligers, die meevochten in het duitse leger. en dan vrijwilligers uit andere landen dan Duitsland. Dat waren er best veel, uit zeer verschillende landen. niet allemaal even vrijwillig, maar veel wel. Per land wordt het behandeld. Ook Nederland komt aan bod, maar dat is grotendeels wel bekend. Op zich een interessant onderwerp, maar ik vind het boek matig geschreven.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent and concise look at the foreign soldiers that fought for the Nazis on the Eastern Front.

[Anton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enlightening and informative without being too heavy a read. I've previously read Müller's "Hitler's War in the East" which I found to be a chore, but I just breezed through this one. It's a depressing book about a depressing time, though highly recommended for the interested as no understanding of the German-Soviet war can be close to complete without being informed about the massive efforts and suffering (mostly suffering) by non-German forces and populations.

The overall take-away from this book is that the Nazis had a pretty good shot at beating the Commies, if only they hadn't been such fucking nazis about the whole affair. C'est la vie.

[Matthew Griffiths · Rating 4 out of 5]

a brief but very much worthwhile study of the role of non german nations on the Eastern Front in WW2/Great Patriotic War. This book is an important account that demonstrates how much of Hitlers campaign in the East was predicated on the support of other European nations and certainly how these forces combined helped to make this particular theatre of the the war such a violent one. for the role this book plays in documenting the far more complicated nature of the conflict than is commonly accepted it is definitely worth reading.

[E. Kahn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't actually get past the introduction. I really wanted to read this, but the writer went full Black Book of Communism.

Never go full Black Book of Communism.