The short-lived Republic of Armenia, established in 1918, was occupied by the Russian Bolsheviks in 1920 and incorporated shortly after into the Soviet Union.

In 1942, in order to fight Turkey's anti-Armenian politicking, a number of Dashnaks entered into negotiations with Berlin, and reluctantly agreed to participate in the formation of a military legion.

[4] The majority of the soldiers in the 812th Battalion legion were drawn from the ranks of the Red Army, prisoners of war who had opted to fight for the German Army rather than face the brutal conditions of the Nazi POW camps,[5] though a number of Armenian veterans who had escaped to the United States after World War I also came back to Europe to join it.

[7] Through the span of active service, the 812th Battalion participated in the occupation of the Crimean Peninsula and the North Caucasus.

[8] At the end of the war, morale among the men in the unit began to collapse; many in the legion deserted or defected.

[1] Several Jewish Red Army POWs were saved by some of the Armenians in the Legion and there were several instances of Jews being sent to the battalion to evade detection by the Nazis.

"[12] Minister of the Occupied Territories and Racial Theorist Alfred Rosenberg declared that the Armenians were Indo-European, or Aryans, and thus they were immediately subject to conscription.