Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts
[9] Following the Battle of France in 1940, Hitler authorised the enlistment of "people perceived to be of related stock", as Himmler put it, to expand the ranks.
[13] Not all members of the SS-Germanischen Leitstelle (SS-GL) or the RHSA stressed the nationalistic tenets of the Nazi state with respect to the war and occupation but instead looked to pan-Germanic ideas that included disempowering the political elites, while at the same time, integrating Germanic elements from other nations into the Reich on the basis of racial equality.
Against the Führer's wishes—who forbade using military units of so-called "racially inferior" persons—the SS added foreign recruits and used them to flexibly overcome manpower shortages.
[15] After Germany invaded the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa, recruits from France, Spain, Belgium, the territory of occupied Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Balkans were signed on.
[21] In addition, the German SS Division Wiking included recruits from Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Estonia throughout its history.
[26] Historian Martin Gutmann adds that some of the additional forces came from "Eastern and Southeastern Europe, including Muslim soldiers from the Balkans.
"[27] During the Nuremberg trials, the Waffen-SS was declared a criminal organisation for its major involvement in war crimes and for being an "integral part" of the SS.
[33][d] After the war, members of Baltic Waffen-SS units were considered separate and distinct in purpose, ideology and activities from the German SS by the Western Allies.
[34][e] During the 1946 Nuremberg trials, Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians who were drafted into the Waffen-SS were determined not to be criminals for having been "wedged between, and subject to, the dictates of two authoritarian regimes.
"[35] 11,000 Ukrainian members of the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician) fled westwards and surrendered to British troops in Italy.
3,000 of them were repatriated to the Soviet Union, with rest remaining in prisoner-of-war camps at Rimini as displaced persons; many became British or Canadian citizens after the war.
