, also known as the "Oriental Volunteer Army"
, the troops recruited by Germany on the Eastern Front are collectively referred to as "Oriental Soldiers", including soldiers who volunteered to join the German army from all over Eastern Europe, who wear German uniforms and are responsible for guarding German traffic. line, fighting against enemy partisans behind the German army and sometimes even defending some unimportant positions on the front line. These soldiers are usually organized in battalions and are rarely larger than that.
The eastern battalion was deployed and served in the regiment or division level of the German army. The original eastern battalion was established by German officers against the orders of their superiors. Most of the soldiers were from the non-Russian population, Baltic, Ukrainian, Caucasian. As well as the Cossacks, this method of conscription was quickly formalized and in 1941 the first Eastern battalions were formed in the center of the army and deployed in the rear of the military district. On December 15, 1942, the German Army established the Eastern Soldiers Monitoring Group to monitor the increasing saturation of mercenary soldiers. These Eastern battalions, deployed on the front or rear, were subordinate to the German army and had a separate Eastern Corps staff within the German Army Headquarters on the Eastern Front.
By the fall of 1943, opponents of the establishment of the Eastern Army tried to disband it, but the Eastern Soldiers Monitoring Group stated that dismantling the 427,000 Eastern soldiers, equivalent to 30 German divisions, would leave the German army facing a severe shortage of troops. For various political reasons, these soldiers were dispatched to occupied countries in Western and Southern Europe and were responsible for their defense there.
It is impossible to find out how many troops the Eastern Battalion has added to the German army, but even if they have a bad performance record, they still reduce a lot of burdens for the German army and their performance in security tasks is beyond doubt. According to a possibly incomplete list of the Germans in 1943, they already had 63 Eastern Battalions, 1 Eastern Regiment and 122 Eastern Companies in service with them. A 1945 American roster recorded as many as 180 Eastern battalions serving in the German army. Let's put the actual number aside. These Eastern soldiers who served in the German army greatly increased the German combat effectiveness and countermeasures. Guerrilla combat capability.
In the early days of Nazi Germany's war against the Soviet Union, Germany captured a large number of Soviet officers and soldiers. At first the Nazis did not even consider incorporating these "inferior nations" into the German army. But the fiasco of the German army under Moscow in the winter of 1941 heralded the collapse of the Nazi "Blitzkrieg" and the Third Reich's "Eastern Policy" changed accordingly. In January 1942, the Wehrmacht began planning to recruit volunteers from the Soviet minority to form the "Orient Corps", which was approved by Hitler. Soon a large number of "Eastern Corps" were formed, including 11 battalions of "Armenian Corps", 14 battalions of "Azerbaijan Corps", 14 battalions of "Georgian Corps", and 5 battalions of "Caucasian Muslim Corps". Azerbaijanis, Chechens, etc.), 34 battalions of "Turkestan Army" and 8 battalions of "Volga Tatar Army". On August 12, 1942, the German Army Group South captured Elista, the capital of the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic of the Soviet Union. German officers carried out anti-Soviet propaganda in this Kalmyk Mongolian settlement, and then the German army recruited 3,000 Kalmy. gram Mongolians.
However, the Germans were not at ease with the "Oriental Corps". They were worried that these troops would fight back in combat, so they were scattered and placed in various German troops in battalion units. Therefore, the top Nazis also collectively referred to these troops as "Oriental Battalions". ". By 1943, the German army had a total of 98 "Eastern battalions", of which 80 battalions fought on the Eastern Front and the Balkans, and 12 battalions were later transferred to France and Italy to resist possible Allied landings. Among them, the 162nd Infantry Division of the German Wehrmacht is an "outlier" in the German army. The division is also known as the "Turkestan Division". Many soldiers are from Central Asia. Photographs taken by the German Army's "Signal" magazine during World War II show that a large proportion of the yellow race was in this unit. However, the 162nd Infantry Division fought in Yugoslavia and Italy successively, and had never been to France.
The Allied invasion of Normandy first encountered the "Oriental Battalion"
Before the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, the 243rd and 709th coastal defense divisions of the Wehrmacht were assigned several "Eastern battalions". Taking the 709th Coastal Defense Division as an example, the 739th Grenadier Regiment under its jurisdiction has two "Oriental Battalions", and the other two "Oriental Battalions" are directly commanded by the division commander, Lieutenant General William von Schlieben. At that time, most of the German troops deployed in Normandy were "second-rate troops". Since there was no war on the Western Front, the elite troops of the 243rd Coastal Defense Division and the 709th Coastal Defense Division were often transferred to the Eastern Front. Shortly before the Allied landings, the 1st Battalion of the 739th Grenadier Regiment was transferred to the Eastern Front, leaving only two "Eastern Battalions" as the main force of the unit. Regardless of whether the "Oriental Battalion" is enthusiastic about fighting, but their combat experience is obviously insufficient. At the same time, because the "Oriental Battalion" is also responsible for building coastal fortifications, after several months of intensive work, the physical strength of the "Oriental Battalion" soldiers has declined. few.
According to the book "D-Day" by American historian Stephen Ambrose, two German soldiers of Korean origin were first captured by the Allies during the D-Day landings in Normandy. Soon more than 20 North Korean soldiers were captured on the Normandy battlefield, and the US military conducted special interrogation on them. It turned out that these North Koreans were first recruited by the Japanese army, and then captured by the Soviet army in the Battle of Japan-Su Nomonhan that broke out in 1939. After the ceasefire between Japan and the Soviet Union that year, most of the Japanese prisoners of war were repatriated, but the Soviet army detained the Koreans because the Soviet army believed that they were not "prisoners of war". Later, these North Koreans joined the Soviet Red Army, and when the Great Patriotic War broke out in the Soviet Union in 1941, they went to the front with large units. However, with the Soviet defeat in the early days of the war, they were captured by the Germans along with many other Soviet Red officers and soldiers. Because they could not bear the extremely harsh environment in the German prisoner of war camp, they were forced to join the German army again.
The "Oriental Battalion", a motley army, was quickly defeated and retreated under the three-dimensional attack of the landing Allied forces. The battle report of the 709th Coastal Defense Division showed that in the first 10 days alone, the division had suffered 4,000 casualties, and the remnants of the "Oriental Battalion" had to retreat to Cherbourg. On June 26, Lieutenant General Schlieben led 800 men, including the remnants of the "Oriental Battalion", to surrender to the US 9th Infantry Division. The situation of the 243rd Coastal Defense Division of the "Oriental Battalion" unit was also not good. Most of them were wiped out during the operation on the Corentin Peninsula in the Normandy region at the end of June.
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