At its core, Nazism was hostile to other nations and races, yet when it came to welcoming allies and volunteers – even to their most ideologically pure units – the German military were commendably open-minded. The SS were responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the war. They were ultra-Nazis and supplied the personnel who ran the concentration camps. Yet even this bulwark of the racial ideology of the Nazis became an international force to an extent. Soon, there were volunteers from many countries – Britain, Belgium, Finland, France, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands – serving in their own SS regiments. As the doctrine of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ took hold there were even Slavs from Ukraine, Kosovo Albanians, Arabs, Tatars and Indonesian Asians. These units often exploited long-standing hatreds – anti-British Empire Indian nationalists joined up and Bosnian Muslims who hated the Serbs had their own legion – at the expense of the supposed racial purity of the German cause.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 20:05:43 +0000
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