While Stalin strove to crush Hitler’s forces and those of his Axis allies, he also moved to ensure his own security at home. His totalitarian Communist regime was not universally popular, particularly in Ukraine and amongst the other non-Russian members of the Soviet Empire. Operation Barbarossa had opened many old wounds from the days of the Revolution and the Civil War. Many Soviet citizens saw the invading Germans as potential liberators and it has been estimated that as many as 1.5 million men assisted Hitler’s war effort: the equivalent of three whole army groups. The Germans recruited auxiliaries, general service personnel and Eastern Troops (or Osttruppen), mainly non-Russians, Balts, Ukrainians, Cossacks and Central Asians. The Cossacks, in particular, proved some of Hitler’s most loyal volunteers.
While the Soviet Union was made up of many diverse peoples and races, in 1941 the dominant groups were the Slavic Russians, Byelorussians and Ukrainians. Notably, the 10th Reserve Army, which was created to help defend Moscow after the Nazi invasion, was 90 per cent Russian; the only other significant group were the Ukrainians, who made up about 4 per cent. Neither nationality was considered worthy of serving in the Wehrmacht.
However, the defection of Russian General Andrei A. Vlasov was a great embarrassment to Khrushchev, as he had selected Vlasov to command the 37th Army created to defend Kiev. In his defence, Khrushchev liked to point out that Stalin had even considered putting Vlasov in command of the Stalingrad Front!
Vlasov was from a new generation of Soviet commanders who showed great skill and personal courage in the face of the Wehrmacht. Nonetheless, he was sickened by the culture of brutality and corruption that surrounded Stalin and prevailed in the Red Army. In his memoirs, Khrushchev recalled the betrayal with faux puzzlement:
Naturally the Vlasov affair was a bitter pill to swallow – for me as well as Stalin. It was difficult to understand how one man who displayed such devotion, bravery, and skill and who had earned such respect, could betray his country. Vlasov must have had a very unstable character to let himself be recruited as an agent by the Germans. He was supposed to be a Communist … In civilian life he’d been a teacher. Apparently he wasn’t a bad fellow. […] Of course it’s possible he was just following mercenary motives when he became a soldier.1
Vlasov was a Civil War veteran who had risen through the ranks to become a divisional, corps and then army commander. He was no doubt bitter about how his 2nd Shock Army had been abandoned in June 1942 following the failed attempt to relieve Leningrad. This event precipitated his capture. Vlasov and the other officers who defected with him all feared the power and influence the NKVD exerted over the Red Army.
Hitler was chronically short of manpower during the Second World War, something that cost him dearly. Even at the end, German military industry churned out more armaments than the German armed forces could deploy. Hitler was to recruit more than 3 million foreign troops to help prop up the Nazi cause, particularly on the Eastern Front. By 1940, victorious Germany had already begun raising police and volunteer units all over occupied Europe. Most of these forces were indistinguishable from the Germans, except for the national arms shields on their uniforms.
Hitler received varying support from over fifteen European states, with tens of thousands of foreign nationals volunteering to fight within the ranks of the Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS. Most volunteers allied themselves with Hitler, either out of nationalist self-interest or from a desire to fight Soviet Communism. Some units were to prove more reliable than others and when things started to go badly for Hitler the politically reliable volunteers were absorbed into the Nazi elite Waffen-SS, forming their own weak national divisions.
German rear-area Sicherungsdivision (security divisions) were rapidly authorised to raise squadrons of Cossacks, and in April 1942 Hitler expanded this programme. On the Eastern Front, the Germans used so-called Cossack sections attached to regular German divisions to conduct brutal anti-partisan and rear suppression operations. In fact, many were Ukrainians and Russians, but as Hitler would not tolerate Slavs in German uniform they were designated ‘Cossacks’ for political convenience. Only Kononow’s Cossack Unit was allowed to operate independently in Byelorussia with Army Group Centre. Although, in 1942, Regiment Von Jungschutz was committed in Army Group South’s Atschikulak region, and Regiment Platow (raised in November 1942) was committed to the Caucasus.
Field Marshal von Manstein, commander of Army Group Don during the Stalingrad campaign, selected Novocherkassk, the old Don Cossack capital, as his headquarters. There, von Manstein was guarded by Don Cossacks and his aide-de-camp recalled that they stuck out their chests and stood to attention as if for ‘His Imperial Majesty the Tsar himself’. During their counter-attacks, the Soviet North Caucasus Front, including the 5th Don Cavalry Corps, pushed the German Army Group A back northward toward Rostov and Novocherkassk.
At Novogroduk in Byelorussia, former Red Army Major Timofey Domanov took command of a 10,000-strong Cossack militia supporting the Germans. There, he was joined by numbers of White Russian émigrés, including former Don Cossack leader General Peter Krasnov and former Kuban Cossack leader, General Vyacheslav Namenko. This force, however, was little more than a paramilitary defence corps.
Although Hitler had a well-defined racial hatred for Russian Slavs and was determined to crush their nationalism, native Russians still ended up being recruited into the Wehrmacht. This was done on a rather ad hoc basis, which led to a number of uncentralised ‘armies’ that included Cossack troops. The brigade-strength Russian National Liberation Army (Russkaia Osvoboditelnania Norodnaia Armiia – RONA) was formed in 1942 and included Ukrainian Cossacks in its ranks. It is better known as the infamous Kaminski Brigade, which was later designated the 29th SS Grenadier Division, totalling about 6,000 men. Likewise, Russians of brigade strength formed the 30th SS Grenadier Division, which was used in France for security duties.
Also raised in 1942 was the short-lived Russian Peoples National Army (Russkaia Natsionalnaia Norodnaia Armiia – RNNA), again only of brigade strength. By 1943 the title Russian Liberation Army (Russkaia Osvoditelnaina Armiia – ROA) was used to cover all the disparate Eastern volunteers. It was never really an army in any true sense, and was opposed by the non-Russians who had no desire to support Russian hegemony.
Vlasov, who was captured in 1942, hoped to raise a large national force to fight alongside the Wehrmacht against the Red Army. It was he who emerged as the ROA’s leader. Vlasov inaugurated the Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (Komitat Osvobozhniia Narodov Rosso – KONR) in Prague on 14 November 1944. KONR dreamed of a Russian Army of twenty-five divisions encompassing the 650,000 Russian troops in German service, but only two were formed. Both the KONR and the SS coveted Pannwitz’s Cossacks. However, the German Army would not hand over either the ROA or their Russian auxiliary battalions
Vlasov ended up with just two weak divisions, an air corps with no planes and the German Kalmyk Cavalry Corps. Only the 600th Panzergrenadier Division was brought up to strength, while the 605th Panzergrenadier Division ended up containing the remains of the hated Kaminski RONA brigade. Also, the Russian Defence Corps (Russisches Schutzkorps Serbien – RSS), which was incorporated into the German Army in 1942, was ordered to wear ROA arm shields three years later.
Ukraine hoped it would gain independence by helping Hitler’s war machine, and about 180,000 Ukrainians served the Wehrmacht. In late 1942, some 70,000 Ukrainians were recruited into the German Schuma (Police), with 35,000 serving in seventy-one Schuma battalions, which included some Cossack forces, conducting anti-partisan duties. A year later, Ukraine supplied 30,000 men to form the 14th SS Grenadier Division.
The Ukrainian Liberation Army (Ukrainske Vyzvolne Viysko – UVV) was little more than a German propaganda tool, while two Ukrainian divisions numbering 40,000 men were designated the Ukrainian National Army (UNA) in 1945, but it was never effective. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (Ukrains’ka Povstans’ka Armiia – UPA), created in 1944 and numbering perhaps 20,000–30,000 men, fought both the Red Army and the Wehrmacht.
Intelligence chief, Colonel Gehlen was well placed to appreciate the necessity of relying on foreign volunteers:
As we could not replace all our losses rapidly and increasing demands were being made on our manpower, our commanders recruited Russians, Ukrainians and other nationalities, as auxiliaries for various types of duty: voluntarily they acted as drivers, ammunition carriers, cooks, interpreters and the like. […] By mid-1943 there were about 320,000, of which a large number were actually fighting alongside our troops; the 18th Army alone had 47,000.2
In 1941 German-Soviet ‘volunteers’ basically fell into two categories – Hiwis or Hilfswillige (auxiliary volunteers) and Osttruppen (Eastern Troops) – who were integrated in formed units into the German forces for rear-area security. Major von Loringhoven recalled, ‘In my battalion, several dozens of Russian prisoners worked as cooks or truck drivers. These hiwis were treated like German soldiers and received the same rations.’3 The bulk of these ‘volunteers’ were Balts, Caucasians, Cossacks and Ukrainians.
Hitler also encouraged the nationalist feelings of the Soviet Asian population, because they were outside his sphere of planned occupation, and the Germans also raised Ostlegionen (Eastern Legions) which, along with supporting services, totalled at least 175,000 men. The Asians supplied auxiliary services such as the 20,000-strong Boller Brigade and 10,000-strong Construction Battalions.
Throughout the war, Hitler remained very reluctant to organise national armies from former Red Army personnel, even though the potential existed. Gehlen noted:
As a result of the work of these various officers, of Vlasov’s own work and of the initiative of our front-line commanders in the east, by early 1943 we had between 130,000 and 150,000 ‘eastern troops,’ organised into 176 battalions and thirty-eight independent companies. At that time, as a result of a policy decision higher up, there was no amalgamation of these into larger formations.4
By 1943 the Osttruppen were 427,000 strong, the equivalent of thirty German divisions. Furthermore, the Luftwaffe may have recruited up to 300,000 Soviets. On the whole, Soviet volunteers wore German uniforms with varying national arm shields. In total, 650,000 former Soviet subjects served in Nazi uniform. The Osttruppen, however, were never really trusted. Hitler deliberately avoided unification and many were sent to Western Europe. This proved to be a blow to their morale, as they had volunteered to fight Stalin’s Communism not the democracies of Britain and America.
In comparison to other Eastern Front allies, the Cossack, Russian and Ukrainian volunteers pale into insignificance. It is notable that, even excluding security forces, over 3 million Europeans and non-Europeans volunteered to serve Hitler. Overall, however, these foreign volunteers made little decisive contribution to the German war effort. In particular, the collapse of the Romanian, Italian and Hungarian armies north-west of Stalingrad spelt the beginning of the end for Germany on the Eastern Front. This, in turn, spelt the end of Cossack, Russian and Ukrainian aspirations to see an end to Soviet control.
Even the Italians on the Eastern Front had their own small Cossack force. Italy’s contribution to Hitler’s war against Russia, despite Mussolini’s desire to share in the glory, was ill-fated and embarrassing. The 60,000-strong Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia (Corpo Spedizione Italiano in Russia – CSIR) suffered from numerous inadequacies, particularly in leadership and equipment. By 1942, a second corps had been despatched, creating the 229,005-strong Italian 8th Army. The latter formed a voluntary Cossack squadron at Millerovo in September 1942, expanding it to battalion strength to become the Gruppo Autonomo Cosacchi Savoia (GACS). The Italian forces collapsed in December 1942 while defending the Don Front, north of Stalingrad, and were sent back to Italy. The GACS also withdrew into Italy and was eventually absorbed by the German Cossack units at Tolmezzo.
At the end of the Second World War, a heartrending scene took place in British-administered Austria when 50,000 Cossacks and their families were handed over to the Red Army. They had been serving the Waffen-SS in Yugoslavia and the Wehrmacht in Italy. Despite their pleas, they and their kin were sent back home to face the brutality of the Gulag or firing squad.
Cossacks were some of the most feared and respected of all Hitler’s Soviet allies. When Barbarossa was launched, 100,000 Cossacks were serving the Red Army. Immortalised by the likes of Mikhail Sholokhov’s And Quiet Flows the Don and Leo Tolstoy’s The Cossacks and the Raid, the Cossacks have a long and proud martial tradition. They also have a long and chequered relationship with Moscow, which makes their prominent betrayal during the Second World War much easier to comprehend. Furthermore, the Cossacks had long memories. In particular, bitter memories of Soviet collectivisation and Stalin’s Great Purge of the Red Army during the 1930s, in which the new-founded Cossack Corps was disbanded and their lands appropriated.
During the Russian Revolution and subsequent Civil War, the Don, Kuban and Terek Cossacks established their own anti-Bolshevik governments. The Ural and Orenburg Cossacks also turned against Moscow. A commander of the Transbaikal Cossacks even ruled eastern Siberia with Japanese assistance. This independence was short-lived, as by 1920 the pro-tsarist White forces had collapsed. The Cossacks were not officially forgiven for their adherence to the tsarist cause until the late 1930s when Cossack units began to appear in the Red Army, and they were subsequently to fall victim to Stalinist paranoia.
In 1935, Georgi Zhukov and his 4th Cavalry Division was transferred from the 3rd Cavalry Corps to the newly formed 6th Cossack Corps. The following year, the division was renamed the 4th Don Cossack Division and all its men adopted Cossack uniforms. Regularly involved in military manoeuvres, Zhukov recalled, ‘It was invariably well prepared and always earned praise from the higher command’.5
Zhukov was appointed commander of the 3rd Cavalry Corps in 1937, but was then offered the 6th Cossack Corps. He accepted because it included his 4th Don Cossacks as well as the 6th Chongar Cossack Division, which Zhukov had fought alongside during the Civil War. Zhukov showered the corps in praise, ‘In combat readiness the 6th Cossack Corps was better than any other unit’.6 Within a year Zhukov, destined for greater things, was deputy commander of the Byelorussian Military District and in 1940 was appointed commander of the Kiev Special Military District. He does not recount the fate of the Cossack Corps, a victim of Stalin’s Red Army Purge.
Just before the outbreak of the Second World War, Stalin’s attention had been drawn to the Don Cossacks when they revolted north of Rostov at Shakhty, declaring an independent republic in early 1941. It was short-lived once Stalin’s internal security force, the NKVD, arrived on the scene. After the initial German advance into the Soviet Union, about 70,000 Don Cossacks deserted the Red Army, probably spurred on by events at Shakhty and the Great Purge. This must have been particularly galling for Zhukov. In August 1941, a whole Soviet Cossack regiment under Major Kononow defected to become the Wehrmacht’s 5th Don Cossack Regiment.
In September 1942, General Helmuth von Pannwitz, a German cavalry officer, began to explore the possibility of raising an independent Cossack division. Eventually he was to organise a Cossack Corps of 52,000 men, with a further 18,000 serving as militia under General Domanov. Appointed commander of Cossack units, Pannwitz resettled the Cossack families first in Poland at Mielau (Mlawa) and then to northern Italy at Tolmezzo, in Friuli.
By April 1943 Pannwitz had gathered von Jungschutz and Lehman regiments from Army Group South, and the Kononow and Wolff regiments from Army Group Centre. On being moved to Poland, they were formed into the 1st Cossack Division, consisting of two brigades. Pannwitz increased his men’s morale and esteem by allowing them to wear their traditional clothing. In fact, Pannwitz was so popular that he was elected Feldataman, a post traditionally held by the tsar.
A year later, the division was disappointed to find that it was not to fight Stalin’s Red Army, but Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia. The two brigades then formed the nucleus of the 1st and 2nd Cossack Divisions, which became the 14th Cossack Corps (it was re-designated the 15th SS Cossack Cavalry Corps at the end of 1944, although there was no actual physical reorganisation). There were already Russians serving the Germans in Yugoslavia. In Serbia in 1941, White Russian exiles raised the Russian Defence Corps (Russisches Schutzkorps Serbien – RSS) to help fight Tito’s Communist partisans. By 1944, it numbered 11,197 strong, but was relegated to guard duties.
The Cossack Corps was to be the largest within the Osttruppen and continued to expand. An unnumbered brigade of Cossack infantry, made up of two regiments with a number of other units, were reorganised around the 5th Don Cossack Regiment to create (on paper) the 3rd Cossack Division. In 1945, the 630th Infantry Regiment (Cossack) that had been sent to defend the Festung Europa, or Atlantic Wall, was added to the 3rd Division.
Hitler’s Cossack Cavalry Corps, however, was not destined for the huge battles of the Eastern Front. After being invaded by the Axis Powers, Yugoslavia was dismembered – the 55th Corps from the German 12th Army controlled Eastern Croatia and Serbia; while the Italian 2nd and 9th Armies occupied Western Yugoslavia. In July 1941, a revolt broke out in Montenegro, spreading to Slovenia, Bosnia and Serbia. The Germans launched a counter-attack, crushing the revolt by September. In mid-1942 they attacked Tito’s headquarters but he escaped; his forces were again attacked in 1943. Then, in September 1943, the battered Italian Army declared an armistice and about half of Yugoslavia was liberated, this forced the Wehrmacht to implement Operation Konstantin (Constantine), the full occupation of the Balkans and Greece.
Hitler’s 2nd Panzer Army, including the new 1st Cossack Division, faced the partisans. Kononow, who had been promoted to lieutenant colonel, was still serving with his 5th Don Cossack Cavalry Regiment. Upon arriving in Yugoslavia, the division went into action north-west of Belgrade and soon gained a reputation for brutality. Then, in November they were deployed north to Osijek, followed by Brod.
The Cossacks were involved in Operation Treibjagd (Driving Hunt) against the partisans and Operation Kugelblitz (Ball Lightning), launched in December 1943 against eastern Bosnia, western Serbia, Slovenia and the Adriatic Islands. The operation was designed to be a decisive stroke against the Communist partisans in the west and north-west. It lasted until February 1944 and drove the partisans back toward Bosnia, capturing Dalmatia and all the offshore Adriatic Islands except Vis. The new Cossack Corps was then redeployed to relieve the 11th SS Panzer Grenadier Division at Sisak in Croatia.
By 1944 the Germans were on the defensive and the corps was used to guard the Zagreb–Belgrade Railway, a vital link with Greece. The Germans did, however, launch one last offensive against Tito’s forces – Operation Herbstgewitter (Autumn Storm), directed against Bosnia. Field Marshal Maximilian Freihrr von Weichs’ Army Group F also conducted Operation Maibaum (May Pole) to cover Army Group E’s withdrawal from Greece. The partisans did all they could to hamper the Germans’ retreat, so that Soviet Marshal F.I. Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front could cut them off as he advanced through Romania and Bulgaria.
With the fall of Belgrade in October, Pannwitz’s Cossack Corps remained in Croatia to counter Soviet incursions. At last they found themselves fighting the Red Army. On 25 December 1944 the Cossacks successfully destroyed the Soviet 133rd Rifle Division’s bridgehead on the River Drava. Many of those taken prisoner joined them. Also during 1944, Domanov’s Cossack forces were withdrawn from the Eastern Front to Tolmezzo to fight Italian partisans. Another force of former Soviet POWs, the 162nd Turkoman Division, was also fighting on the front line in Italy with the Germans.
At the beginning of 1945, five divisions of Latvian, Estonian, Ukrainian and White Russians were established as Waffen-SS formations. The improvised Turkestan and Caucasus brigades had been absorbed into the SS and Heinrich Himmler had his eye on Pannwitz’s three Cossack divisions. Although the corps was renamed in 1944, it remained unchanged and was not redeployed. The SS simply became responsible for resupplying the corps. This was a paper transformation and the Cossacks were never looked upon as full members of the Waffen-SS.
The Cossacks gained a bad reputation in Poland, as well as Yugoslavia and Italy. An unknown number of Cossacks (the majority of them were probably Ukrainians) took part in the brutal suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Lieutenant General Reiner Stahel’s German garrison included 900 renegade Ukrainians, Cossacks and Turkomen former POWs.
German reinforcements despatched to Warsaw included SS-Brigadeführer Bratislav Kaminski’s RONA Brigade, part of the 29th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division – it numbered 1,585 Cossacks and Ukrainians. Kaminski, a Red Army deserter, governed Lokot Province in central Russia for the Germans from 1942–44, keeping it free from partisans. His brigade had contributed to the deaths of 7,000 partisans in 1944, during a series of brutal operations. In Poland, his unit was supported by SS-Oberführer Oskar Dirlewanger’s anti-partisan brigade (36th SS Division), some 2,500 strong. It included two battalions of 865 released criminals and three battalions of former Soviet POWs.
After the war, German officers involved at Warsaw laid the blame firmly on Kaminski and Dirlewanger. At the time, Kaminski was court-martialled and executed for his actions by his commanding officer, while his men were transferred to the KONR and the 30th SS (Russische Nr2) Division. Other accounts state that the SS dressed Kaminski’s death up as a Polish ambush, with his bullet-riddled car daubed in animal blood to conceal his fate from his unit’s officers.
The problem of Soviet collaboration was so great that the Red Army carried out major repressive operations against its own civilian population during the war. Stalin swiftly purged those who had collaborated with the Nazis, as Alexandr Solzhenitsyn recalled:
Within the overall wave of those from formerly occupied areas, there followed, one after another, the quick and compact wave of the nationalities which had transgressed:
1 In 1943, the Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, and Balkars.
2 In 1944, the Crimean Tartars.
They would not have been pushed out into eternal exile so energetically and swiftly had it not been that regular army units and military trucks were assigned to help the Organs [NKVD]. The military units gallantly surrounded the auls, or settlements, and within twenty-four hours, with the speed of a parachute attack, those who had nested there for centuries past found themselves removed.7
The Muslim populations of the North Caucasus and Lower Volga area suffered for their collaboration with Hitler after being liberated by the Red Army. As early as the end of 1943, Stalin ordered the deportation of the Muslim nations, who were arbitrarily accused of ‘collaboration with the occupying forces’. In November 1943, some 80,000 people, the entire Karachai population of Stavropol Krai, were forcibly deported to special settlements in Central Asia. In just four days at the end of December 1943, the Kalmyks were also herded into freight trains and moved to Siberia by the NKVD. By the end of the following year, the 5,000-strong German Kalmyk Cavalry Corps (mainly ex-Red Army soldiers) had withdrawn into Poland.
The same fate befell the Chechen, Ingush, Karabardin, Balkar and Crimean Tartars in 1944. The Tartars, in particular, represented the largest Muslim group in the European part of the Soviet Union and 35,000 of them served the Germans. After visiting the liberated Crimea, Alexander Werth noted, ‘The 500,000 Crimea Tartars were, before long, to be deported en masse – women, children and all – to “the east” for having collaborated with the Germans.’8 In total, about 1 million people were deported and over fifteen Red Army divisions were tied up during a crucial phase of the war, when they would have been better employed fighting the Germans rather than repressing largely defenceless civilians.
Even Russian exiles who were not Soviet citizens were not safe. ‘At the end of 1944, when our army entered the Balkans,’ says Solzhenitsyn, ‘and especially in 1945, when it reached central Europe, a wave of Russian émigrés flowed through the channels of the Gulag.’9
By March 1945, the 1st Cossack Division was still defending the Drava against Soviet attacks while the 2nd was engaging partisans in the Papuk Mountains. The last major German operations conducted in Yugoslavia were Waldrausch (Forest Fever) and Waldteufel (Forest Devil), but with the approaching Red Army the struggle against Tito was nearly over. There then followed a mad scramble as the Cossack Cavalry Corps, Cossack militia, the KONR, the RSS and most of the UNA sought desperately to surrender to the Western Allies rather than the Red Army. Even so, under the February 1945 Yalta Agreement the Western Allies had promised to surrender all Soviet collaborators in their area of responsibility – there were to be only three exceptions.
The Germans surrendered in Italy on 29 April 1945, leaving Allied military officials to deal with the vast Cossack encampment at Tolmezzo. The 162nd Turkoman Division surrendered near Padua and was repatriated by ship. Upon the approach of the British, Damanov and Krasnov retreated with their men to Lienz in Austria to surrender. They numbered approximately 24,000 Cossacks and 5,000 Caucasians. The Cossack Cavalry Corps also withdrew into Austria to Wolfsburg, 160km east of Lienz. The British duly handed both forces back to the Red Army in June. The first to be surrendered were Domanov, Krasnov and another White Cossack leader, Andrei Shukro. General Pannwitz nobly went with his men and was hanged on 16 January 1947, along with Domanov, Krasnov and Shukro.
Only the RSS, KONR Air Corps and UNA avoided repatriation. The Russians of the RSS were entirely White Russian émigrés (although technically Yugoslav citizens and therefore Tito’s responsibility) and the 4,500 who laid down their arms in Austria were set free. General Maitsev’s 8,000-strong KONR Air Corps would not give up until they were given a guarantee by the Americans, which was honoured (Maitsev himself was repatriated in 1946, as were 3,000 men from the 2nd KONR Division).
The UNA’s 1st Division ended the war in Austria (the 2nd was not so fortunate and found itself in Czechoslovakia). They were able to argue that their former Polish status made them exempt, and 10,000 men escaped. A group of Ukrainian deserters from the 14th SS Division and comrades of the 1st Division, along with some UPA troops, also made it to the American Zone of Germany and safety, as late as 1946–47. However, the salvation of these men was nothing compared to the 2 million Russians who were handed over, both during and after the war.
The fate of the Cossacks and the other volunteer units must be kept in perspective in the light of the huge logistical problems facing the Western Allies at the end of the war. For example, Field Marshal Montgomery observed:
In the area occupied by 21 Army Group [in north-western Europe] there were appalling civilian problems to be solved. Over one million civilian refugees had fled into the area before the advancing Russians. About one million German wounded were in hospital in the area, with no medical supplies. Over one and a half million unwounded German fighting men had surrendered to 21 Army Group on 5th May and were now prisoners of war, with all that that entailed.10
Concerning the problem of Soviet citizens, he went on to note:
In addition to these prisoners, we had over one million Displaced Persons, nearly all from the east. Some 400,000 of these were Russians and we could reasonably hope that Zhukov would take these off our hands. But the remaining 600,000 would probably remain with us for all time.11
Stalin was determined to punish all those who had betrayed the Soviet Union. Commenting on Vlasov, Stalin claimed he was ‘at very least a large obstacle on the road to victory over the German fascists’. In fact, Vlasov was considered such a threat that the NKVD even recruited a major from a penal colony to infiltrate the Vlasov movement with a view to eventually assassinating him. However, in his memoirs Marshal Zhukov recalled the decision on Vlasov’s fate, ‘It was decided to capture him alive to make him pay in full for his treason’.
In January 1945, Vlasov’s two KONR divisions had about 50,000 men under arms. At the end of the month, it was declared that they were the sole responsibility of the KONR and no longer formed part of the German Army, thereby leaving them to their fate. Presumably re-badging the Russian RSS security forces in Serbia signalled the same thing. The Waffen-SS had expected to be given control of Vlasov’s divisions, but in the closing months of the war they had more pressing matters to worry about. Colonel Gehlen was dismissive of Vlasov’s efforts:
Born of opportunism and despair, the Vlasov army was doomed to failure from the start. On 10 February 1945 the first and only two Russian infantry divisions, numbers 600 and 605, were formally handed over to Lieutenant General Vlasov by General Köstring, who had succeeded Hellmich as General of the Volunteer units.12
Ironically, the 600th Division, numbering about 20,000 men with a few of Kaminski’s tanks under Vlasov and General Bunichenko, ended up fighting the SS alongside the Czech insurgents in Prague in May 1945. Ultimately though, they found themselves disowned by both sides and then had to fight their way out of the city alongside the SS. General Zverev, commanding the 605th Division, was captured by the Soviets, although some of his men reached the Americans.
Upon surrendering to the Americans, the 600th Division was handed back to the Soviets on 13 May 1945. Reportedly, the Soviets hanged large numbers of them there and then. The Americans surrendered Vlasov and his staff two days later. Marshal Zhukov recalls:
Vlasov was captured while riding in a car in the retreating column. Hidden under a heap of bundles and covered with a blanket, he pretended to be a sick soldier. But he was given away by his own bodyguards. Later Vlasov and his associates were tried by Military Tribunal and executed.13
Radio Moscow announced the execution of Vlasov, Bunichenko and ten others on 12 August 1946. Vlasov had paid in full for his treason.
The Dirlewanger Brigade was in Hungary by 1945. When the 8th Panzer Division, north of Budapest, failed to stop the Soviet advance the brigade fled. The survivors surrendered to the Red Army on 29 April 1945, and when the Soviets discovered their identity they massacred the lot. Dirlewanger died of unspecified causes while under arrest in June 1945.
The Red Army also found the Kalmyk Cavalry Corps, now part of the KONR, reorganising at Neuhammer. Those who were not shot or hanged were sent to join their compatriots in Siberia.
Stalin’s vengeance on those who had betrayed the Soviet Union was predictable immediate death, or the slow death of the Gulag. Solzhenitsyn says:
All during 1945 and 1946 a big wave of genuine, at-long-last, enemies of the Soviet government flowed into the [Gulag] Archipelago. (These were the Vlasov men, the Krasnov Cossacks, and Muslims from the national units created under Hitler.) Some of them had acted out of conviction; others had been merely involuntary participants.
Along with them were seized not less than one million fugitives from the Soviet government – civilians of all ages and of both sexes who had been fortunate enough to find shelter on Allied territory, but who in 1946–1947 were perfidiously returned by the Allied authorities into Soviet hands.14
Stalin cared little about the fate of Pannwitz and Domanov’s Cossacks or Vlasov, Kaminski and Dirlewanger’s renegade Russians, or indeed the myriad of other units who had signed their own death warrants by serving the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. The Cossacks proved better than the Germans in their allotted anti-partisan role as their sturdy horses were ideal in the Balkan Mountains. When the Soviets and Bulgarians finally advanced into Yugoslavia, the Cossacks were used in a conventional role and were able to fight the Soviets with some distinction.
Hitler’s most flamboyant Soviet volunteers were undoubtedly the Don, Kuban, Siberian and Terek Cossacks, of whom well over 80,000 served Nazi Germany. Driven by nationalism, monarchism and a desire to resist Stalin’s Communist State, these men gained a tough reputation in Italy, Poland, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, but at the end of the war they and their families paid a terrible price for their collaboration. When the British Army surrendered them up it seemed a tragic end to such a colourful formation, but in the eyes of the Soviet Union they were traitors. While the Cossacks proved to be some of the most loyal and skilled of the foreign fighters, they also inflicted some of the most appalling atrocities of the Second World War. However, those who stayed loyal to the Russians were no better.
Overall, the ‘Cossacks’ most important contribution to Hitler’s war effort was that they freed large numbers of the Wehrmacht from auxiliary and police duties, which helped lengthen the war. As a people, Zhukov bore the Cossacks no malice, recollecting in his memoirs, ‘Though more than 30 years have passed … I still retain the warmest recollections of the command personnel, and men of the K.Ye. Voroshilov 4th Don Cossack Division.’15 Stalin undoubtedly thought otherwise.
As a postscript to this sad tale, in 1996 the Russian Main Public Prosecutor reportedly rehabilitated Pannwitz. During his trial, he had been accused of shooting five Soviet partisans. The Public Prosecutor asserted that a Croatian court of justice had passed the death sentence and that there was no proof that Pannwitz or his troops had conducted war crimes against Soviet troops or civilians. No mention was made of the Yugoslavs, Italians or Poles who had died at the hands of Hitler’s Cossacks.