Defections accelerated from the summer of 1943 onwards, as military units belonging to the penal 999th Light Afrika Division were transferred to Greece.

The formal forming of the AKFD took place on August 10, 1944, as a German-language "Appeal to all German soldiers in Greece" was published in the EAM newspaper Eleftheri Ellada (Ελεύθερη Ελλάδα) to actively fight against Hitler's Wehrmacht.

The AKFD was headed by the central committee, consisting of the political director, Falk Harnack, Gerhard Reinhardt, who was responsible for organizational matters, and other members (Willi Schrade, Paul Fritz, Erich Klose, Hans Schüller, Franz Oberweger, Wilhelm Hansen, Robert Hermann, Rudolf Schiller and others), mostly defectors from the XXI Fortress Infantry Battalion of the penal 999th Light Afrika Division, who later became commanders of the company units (Hundertschaft) that were formed.

They were to be made up of the German soldiers already fighting at ELAS and were to be further strengthened by prisoners of war and defectors of Wehrmacht who had been converted to the cause by propaganda.

Reinhardt organised the following units: Kurt Adam was to travel to the Peloponnese in Tropaia, Arcadia, to work with the 3rd ELAS division in order to organize approximately 60 German anti-fascists in AKFD companies in the south parts of Greece, in Peloponnese, in late August 1944.