Russian Corps
The movement began spontaneously at the outbreak of the Soviet-German War in June 1941. White Russian émigrés, who were veterans of the White movement, began seeking sympathetic ears in the German Armed Forces (the Wehrmacht) and trying to find a means of creating armed units that would be used on the Eastern Front, such as the Russian Corps. Meanwhile, some captured Soviet officers switched sides, including General Andrey Vlasov. The German propaganda department began exploiting the idea of a nonexistent Russian Liberation Army to encourage defections, printed up propaganda leaflets encouraging surrender and dropped them in Soviet zones.