Collaboration in the German-occupied Soviet Union

Military collaboration – wrote Alex Alexiev – took place in truly unprecedented numbers suggesting that, more often than not, the Germans were perceived at first as the lesser of two evils compared to the USSR by the non-Russian citizens of the Soviet Union.

[5] In the autumn of 1941, Field Marshal von Bock had sent to Hitler's Headquarters a detailed project for the organization of a Liberation Army of some 200,000 Russian volunteers, and for the formation of a local government in the province of Smolensk.

[6]The Russian Liberation People's Army (Русская освободительная национальная армия, РОНА; in Latin, RONA), later reformed as SS Sturmbrigade "RONA" and nicknamed the "Kaminski Brigade" after its commander, SS-Brigadefuhrer Bronislav Kaminski, was a collaborationist force originally formed from a Nazi-led militia unit in the "Lokot Republic" (Lokot Autonomy), a small puppet regime set up by the Germans to see if a Russian puppet government would be reliable.

Kaminski and the leader of the government and the founder of National Socialist Labor Party of Russia, Konstantin Voskoboinik, killed by partisans in 1942, formed a unit that had a strength of 10,000—15,000.

The reasons are thought to be his unit's war crimes and/or now that Heinrich Himmler supported the Russian Liberation Army of General Andrey Vlasov, he wanted to eliminate a potential rival.