page_title: Collaboration with the Axis Powers
section_title: Germany
hierarchical_section_title: Collaboration with the Axis Powers / Foreign volunteers / Germany
context_page_description: Within nations occupied by the Axis powers in World War II, some citizens and organizations, prompted by nationalism, ethnic hatred, anti-communism, antisemitism, opportunism, self-defense, or often a combination, knowingly collaborated with the Axis Powers. Some of these collaborators committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, or atrocities of the Holocaust.
  Collaboration has been defined as cooperation between elements of the population of a defeated state and representatives of a victorious power. Stanley Hoffmann subdivided collaboration into involuntary and voluntary. According to Hoffmann, collaborationism can be subdivided into "servile" and "ideological"; the former is deliberate service to an enemy, whereas the latter is deliberate advocacy of cooperation with a foreign force which is seen as a champion of desirable domestic transformations. In contrast, Bertram Gordon uses the terms "collaborator" and "collaborationist", respectively, in reference to non-ideological and ideological collaborations.
context_section_description: Although official Nazi policy barred non-Germans from joining the regular German army, the Wehrmacht, volunteers from most occupied countries and even a small number from some Commonwealth countries. were permitted to join the ranks of the Waffen-SS and the auxiliary police (Schutzmannschaft). Overall, nearly 600,000 Waffen-SS members were non-German, with some countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands contributing thousands of volunteers. Various collaborationalist parties in occupied France and the unoccupied Vichy zone assisted in establishing the Légion des volontaires français contre le bolchevisme (LVF). This volunteer army initially counted some 10,000 volunteers and would later become the 33rd Waffen-SS division, one of the first SS divisions composed mostly of foreigners.
  Following is a list of the 18 largest Waffen-SS divisions composed mostly or entirely of foreign volunteers (note that there were other foreign Waffen-SS divisions composed mostly of forced conscripts).
  
  
   
  Wiking
  Nordland
  1st Croatian
  1st Ukrainian
  1st Albanian
  Kama
   
   
  Nederland
  1st Hungarian
  2nd Hungarian
  1st Flemish
  Wallonien
  1st Russian
   
   
  1st Italian
  2nd Russian
  1st Belarussian
  3rd Hungarian
  33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French)
  Landstorm Nederland
   
  Apart from frontline units, volunteers also played an important role in the large Schutzmannschaft units in the German-occupied territories in Eastern Europe. After Operation Barbarossa recruitment of local forces began almost immediately mostly by initiative of Heinrich Himmler. These forces were not members of the regular armed forces and were not intended for frontline duty, but were instead used for rear echelon activities including maintaining the peace, fighting partisans, acting as police and organizing supplies for the front lines. In the later years of the war, these units numbered almost 200,000.
  By the end of World War II, 60% of the Waffen-SS was made up of non-German volunteers from occupied countries. The predominantly Scandinavian 11th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division Nordland division along with remnants of French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch volunteers were the last defenders of the Reichstag in Berlin.
  The Nuremberg Trials, in declaring the Waffen-SS a criminal organisation, explicitly excluded conscripts, who had committed no crimes. In 1950, The U.S. High Commission in Germany and the U.S. Displaced Persons Commission clarified the U.S. position on the Baltic Waffen-SS Units, considering them distinct from the German SS in purpose, ideology, activities and qualifications for membership.
caption: Deutsch-Arabische Legion (Arab volunteers), 1943
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