When the Nazis established what was in effect a foreign legion, why were these units, consisting of nationalities and groups such Ukrainians, Latvians and Bosnian Muslims, put in the SS, notorious for its obsession with race, instead of in the regular armed forces, the 'Wehrmacht'?

lanfranco

According to this site, bloomsby, it was largely a manpower issue and a need to fight Communist partisans in the east. By 1942 or so, Himmler was willing to accept any groups with a strong antipathy towards Communism: http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/waffen-ss.htm Sep 04 05, 1:58 PM

bloomsby

Many thanks. The 'Wehrmacht' could have done that itself, unless there was a regulation requiring all its members to be German citizens. Sep 04 05, 2:28 PM

lanfranco

You'd think, especially since the foreign recruits were not well trained; but I've given up trying to fathom Nazi logic. My guess is that the demands and problems of Operation Barbarossa, which had been keeping the Wehrmacht busy, had something to do with this. I recently read Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," and he commented that by 1942, there had been about 1.2 million Wehrmacht casualties on the eastern front. Sep 04 05, 3:21 PM

---grouch---

they were used in "cleansing" operations amongst their own people and manned several of the deathcamps Sep 05 05, 12:13 PM