The division also included French recruits from other German military and paramilitary formations and Miliciens who had fled ahead of the Allied Liberation of France (June–November 1944).

The Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (Légion des Volontaires Français contre le Bolchévisme, or LVF) was a unit of the German Army (Wehrmacht) formed shortly after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 by a coalition of small far-right political factions within Vichy France.

[3] It attracted around 3,000 applicants in German-occupied France, many of whom were existing members of the collaborationist paramilitary Milice or university students.

[4] The approximately 1,600 men of the Sturmbrigade were attached to the 18th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division Horst Wessel and sent to Galicia on the Eastern Front.

[9] The division was sent to fight the Red Army in Poland, but on 25 February it was attacked at Hammerstein (present-day Czarne) in Pomerania, by troops of the Soviet 1st Belorussian Front.

[10] On 23 April the Reich Chancellery in Berlin ordered Krukenberg to proceed to the capital with his men, who were reorganized as Assault Battalion (Sturmbataillon) Charlemagne.

As the car went past the column of men, Krukenberg and several other officers quickly stood at attention, recognising Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, who had just come from a private meeting with Count Folke Bernadotte at the Swedish consulate in Lübeck to offer surrender terms to the Western Allies.

The French SS troops arrived in Berlin on 24 April after a long detour to avoid advance columns of the Red Army.

Here fighting began, with Hitler Youth firing Panzerfausts at Soviet tanks belonging to advance guards near the Tempelhof Airport.

Supported by Tiger II tanks and the 11th SS Panzer Battalion, men of Charlemagne took part in a counterattack on the morning of 26 April in Neukölln.

Given that Neukölln was heavily penetrated by Soviet combat groups, Krukenberg prepared fallback positions for Sector C defenders around Hermannplatz.

[13] The Soviet advance into Berlin followed a pattern of massive shelling followed by assaults using house-clearing battle groups of about 80 men in each, with tank escorts and close artillery support.

The Soviets forces drove what was left of the battalion back to the vicinity of the Reich Aviation Ministry in the central government district under the command of SS-Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke.

[19] By the evening of 30 April, the French SS men serving under Fenet had destroyed another 21 Soviet tanks and used up a large number of the Panzerfaust reserves from the Reich Chancellery.

Reduced to approximately thirty troops, most French SS men surrendered near the Potsdamer rail station to the Red Army.

[22] Having escaped out of Berlin, Fenet with a small remainder of his unit surrendered to British forces at Bad Kleinen and Wismar.

Twelve of those turned over to French authorities by the U.S. Army were summarily executed on the orders of General Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque.