"BLUE DIVISION" ON THE EASTERN FRONT

The German army during the Second World War is often stereotyped to an ordinary person: tall "Aryans" are walking along dusty roads, their hair is disheveled, their sleeves are rolled up, all have MP-40s. The image, frankly, is far from reality (unless you take heavy infantry marches). The army was different, and above all, in its composition. Until now, little attention has been paid to the fact that practically all Western European nationalities were noted on the Soviet-German front and in the German army.

There is a subtle moment of motivation here: unlike a considerable part of Soviet citizens who went to German formations from prisoner of war camps, Western volunteers often did not face a choice: “Death in a Stalag or put on a German uniform.” In their case, the circumstances that influenced the decision-making were not as cruel as in the case of the peoples of the USSR, and the final framework of choice was freer.

Each of these Western formations had its own unique history and composition. The contingent of replenishment of the legions was heterogeneous: for various reasons - although ideology often played a decisive role - these people joined the war against the Soviet Union. Their ideological part believed that in this way they “bring good” to their country, when in fact they fought for Germany. They wore, as it were, a field grey, which equalized everyone, moreover, each tried to emphasize his national character. All this greatly distinguishes them from the usual German conscript soldier.

At the same time, it would be wrong to say that all of Europe fought against the USSR. Do not forget that the countries of Europe, which gave national recruits to create foreign legions within the Wehrmacht and SS troops, were occupied. Almost everywhere the administration was recruited from the local ultra-right, the "fifth column", as they would say now. Of course, they pursued a pro-German policy, so this can hardly be compared with the choice of a state free or almost free from external influence (otherwise we would be talking about Germany's allies). They were collaborators.

There are, however, also exceptions. Not everywhere sat the German administration and local Nazis in their purest form. Two examples are often given. The first is Denmark, where, despite the occupation of the country, the Social Democrats, led by Thorvald Stauning, remained in power, and not the local Nazis with their leader Fritz Clausen.

The second example is Spain. The country was not occupied, the Franco government was in power, shortly before the start of World War II, it won its own Civil War. Formally, Spain remained a neutral country throughout the years of WWII. De facto, the 250th Wehrmacht Infantry Division became a symbol of Spanish participation in the grandiose conflict.

Franco, having given his consent to the official recruitment of volunteers, killed several birds with one stone. Firstly, he returned the "debt" to Hitler for the Condor Legion and help during the Spanish Civil War.

Secondly, the division was a kind of way to “let off steam”: in Spain there were radical ultra-right circles, Falangists, by the standards of which Franco was quite moderate. They wanted to fight, demanded a full-fledged entry into the war on the side of Germany. So this could be called such a “Solomonic decision”: violent heads are “removed” from the country, their pressure on the state is weakened.

Thirdly, the undoubted dislike for the communists after the Civil War and its horrors was within the Spanish society itself: it was not for nothing that the recruitment began under the slogan “Russia is to blame!” (¡Rusia es culpable!). According to Foreign Minister Suner, she was to blame for the Civil War and the casualties among the Spanish people.

In this material, we will not describe the history of this compound. We will tell you about some of the curious facts that the Spaniards remember, about the very national character and what distinguished them from the Germans.

The division is better known as "Blue". In reality, this color difference is not so obvious in European languages: azul in Spanish (pronounced "azul", not "azul") is both blue and blue; the same with blaue in German and blue in English. The Russian emigrants who served in its composition called it both "Blue" and "Blue" in their memoirs. However, the shirts of the Falangists, from which the division got its name, were blue, not light blue. Therefore, in our opinion, it is more correct to call the division "Blue".

One of the main differences was the perception of the ongoing war. As was said, there were enough ideological people, some of whom had specific combat experience: whether they were Falangists or just Spanish anti-communists, the memories of the Civil War were very fresh, because only two years had passed. Therefore, the outbreak of war and the creation of the division were perceived as a kind of continuation of the events of 1936-1939.

The second difference was a very specific attitude towards military discipline. The Spanish legionnaires cleaned their guns little and had a bad attitude towards guard duty. They often did not greet the officers passing by, unfastened the hook and the top button on the tunic (so that the blue Falangist shirt could be seen). They especially liked to put their hands in their pockets and walk like that. The wounded Spaniards often left the hospitals and went for a walk in the city, without having any permission to do so. All this irritated and infuriated the Germans. The Spaniards also became famous for their unrestrained behavior in a hop: the battles between German submariners and Spanish legionnaires in the bars of Königsberg gained fame.

In general, a regular scuffle was a normal way to resolve issues: according to eyewitnesses, officers and sergeants beat soldiers, and soldiers beat whoever they could, including the Germans.

The main difference was the explosive national character, which knew no boundaries at all. The Spaniards were noisy, naughty and yelled all the time for any reason, violently experiencing any emotion. They were wasteful and did not take care of the things they had. All this was different for the Germans, who thought that you always had to comply with the rules. The Spaniards, apparently, believed that the rules - a floating thing. In the winter of 1942, in a Spanish battalion, a gunsmith officer discovered that the MG-34 machine guns were not working well and “fixed” them by cutting off part of the return spring. Some time later, a German inspection followed, which discovered the Spanish "innovations" and demanded that the Spaniard be tried for deliberate sabotage. The Spanish command, despite the protests of the Germans, awarded the officer for resourcefulness and initiative.

The latter was noted by other eyewitnesses of the events. Lidia Osipova, who kept a diary while living in the occupation, saw the Spaniards when she worked for them as a laundress: “The Spaniards destroyed all our ideas about them as a proud, beautiful, noble people, etc. No operas. Small, fidgety, like monkeys, dirty and thieving, like gypsies. But very good-natured, kind and sincere. All German "kralechki" immediately spread from the Germans to the Spaniards. And the Spaniards also show great tenderness and affection for Russian girls. There is hatred between them and the Germans, which is now still fueled by rivalry among women. She also wrote that they had no sense of self-preservation: a case is described when the Spanish soldiers ran to the place where the shells lay down just to watch them fall and explode.

Some Spaniards did not like to duck during shelling, considering it cowardly. Sometimes this dislike manifested itself in an unwillingness to dig trenches and trenches, a kind of bravado associated with the notion that "the Spanish soldier dies standing on his feet, not hiding." Again, a big difference with the Germans: they believed that it was necessary to show exactly as much courage as necessary to achieve a result, to comply with the rules. The Spaniards believed that war is a matter where you need to show masculinity, and nothing more.

As the veterans themselves recalled, rising to the attack, they sometimes shouted “Otro toro”, which means “New Bull”, a call coming from bullfighting when it is clear that the bull will die soon and it is time to bring out a new one. There was another case: the Spanish unit was under heavy artillery fire for two hours, suffering heavy losses. The commander demanded to send him more grenades, but upon arrival it turned out that the grenades were useless - they did not have fuses. The ammunition had already been spent by that time, so the Spanish officer ordered snowballs to be thrown at the advancing Russians, which were supposed to act like stones.

One of the most important episodes of Spanish combat activity at the front was the battles in the winter of 1943. From mid-January, the legionnaires participated in reinforcing German units that repulsed the attacks of the Soviet forces advancing as part of Operation Iskra. At the end of January, the battalion of the 250th division fought along with the Germans south of Ladoga: in a week, the personnel was reduced from 500 to 30 people. However, the hardest battles were ahead. On February 10, the blow of the advancing Soviet units hit the right flank of the division, near Krasny Bor. This was the first phase of Operation Polaris that had begun. The Spaniards were able to hold out, although they suffered heavy losses: 1,000 killed, 200 captured, 1,500 wounded.

Another curious side of the history of the Spanish division was that several dozen Russian emigrants served in it. The situation was not atypical, because such personnel were in almost all Western European legions of the Wehrmacht and even the Waffen-SS, but the case of Spain is the most remote, because there were not very many Russian emigrants in this hot country. As elsewhere, these people were different, but a considerable part of them went to the division out of conviction, believing that this was another opportunity to fight the Bolsheviks - after all, most of these emigrants were veterans of the Civil War in Spain, and some also fought in Belaya army. They served mainly as interpreters, and after the war they expressed different opinions about what they witnessed at the front, as well as about their choice.

In July 1943, the US ambassador in Madrid put forward Franco a demand that the 250th division be withdrawn from the front: despite the formal "neutrality" of Spain, it was obvious to the Western allies, and not only to them, what was happening in the Soviet-German front. The division was withdrawn from the front in October 1943 and returned to Spain. A small part of the especially fanatical Spaniards remained in the form of the Blue Legion, but they were also removed from the front in the spring of 1944. Further, only the most stubborn made their way into the SS, the last of them fought in the ruins of Berlin, but that's another story.

In post-war Spain, the division was treated more or less calmly (compared to other countries, it was completely calm), since the government was the same. In the Spanish army, this extensive experience of fighting in an atypical environment for the Spaniards, in conditions of cold, extreme remoteness from the country itself, etc. studied and understood. Works were written that dealt with certain pages of the history of the division. Many officers went on to serve in the army and rose to very high positions: on their slats, next to the Spanish medals, Iron Crosses were visible, and on the sleeve some continued to wear the Spanish flag, as a distinctive badge, similar to that which was sewn on German uniforms. According to Spanish experts, the best book on the treatment of frostbite available in the 1940s and 1950s was written by a military doctor of the 250th division. Some cities still have a Blue Division street to this day.

Perhaps it is precisely with this calmer attitude towards the fact of participating in the war on the side of Germany that a lot has been written about the Blue Division: the first works began to appear back in the 1950s, today there are about a hundred memoirs alone. The process of study continues to this day, although the best book (even according to the Spaniards) about the combat path of the division was written by two American professors and was published in 1979. Bracketing a small group of specialists, Hispanists and military-historical reenactors, in Russia the combat path of this unusual formation of the Wehrmacht is still little known.

In total, 45,500 people passed through the division during the war years. 4954 were killed (of which 979 went missing during the Battle of Krasny Bor), 8700 were wounded, 2137 became amputees, 1600 received frostbite, 372 were captured, 7800 fell ill.

Speaking of the Great Patriotic War, Nazi Germany is usually remembered as an enemy of the USSR. Some will also name Finland, Italy, Romania, Hungary. And only the most advanced are mentioned other foreign military units. As part of the Wehrmacht and the SS, Albanians, Belgians, Bulgarians, Danes, Dutch, Norwegians, Poles, French and many others fought against our homeland. There was even an Indian SS legion. Our story will be about the 250th division of the Spanish volunteers, better known as the Blue Division.

blue division

Somersaults of Spanish politics

On June 24, 1941, Spanish Foreign Minister (and son-in-law of Franco) Serrano Suñer delivered a speech "Russia is guilty!". He said that Russia is responsible for the civil war of 1936-1939, for the fact that it went on for so long, but that ... in short, it is to blame for everything! And now I have to answer for everything. At the end of his speech, Suner announced the formation of a volunteer division to fight the hated Bolshevism and called on all Spanish patriots to join it.
Since 1939, Hitler has been trying to draw Franco into the fighting on his side. But the general was smarter than the corporal and, under all sorts of pretexts, shied away from the honor shown to him. However, it was difficult to resist the pressure of the Fuhrer: he constantly reminded what invaluable support Germany provided to Spain with weapons, equipment, military advisers and specialists during the civil war, and not only hinted, but insistently demanded "return the favor."
Not wanting to be drawn into a full-scale war, Franco found a way out in volunteer formations: it seems that Germany is helping, but at the same time, in the eyes of the world community, Spain remains a neutral country. Such a cunning policy allowed him not only to safely survive the Second World War, but also to die a natural death in 1975 in his bed, and not in the executioner's noose or on prison bunk beds.

Volunteers

Immediately after Sunyer's speech, the registration of volunteers began, which turned out to be much more than required. I even had to conduct a selection, and not everyone who wanted to go to fight in Russia received such a right.
The first to enter the division in orderly rows were the Spanish fascists, members of the Phalanx, who did not fight and did not shoot at the civilian. They openly called Franco not radical enough and demanded that Spain enter the war on the side of Germany. Caudillo was immensely glad to float this explosive contingent to distant Russia.
When the euphoria of the first months of the crushing victories of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front passed, the number of Falangists who wanted to go to Russia began to decline sharply. And yet the division will never experience a shortage of volunteers. Only now people will be brought to the division for completely different reasons.

Avengers, careerists and penalty boxers

Speech of the Minister of Foreign Affairs "Russia is guilty!" for many was not an empty phrase. “I was at school that day. When I returned, I no longer had a home or a family: a plane flew in, dropped a bomb, and at the age of 14 I was left an orphan. The plane was Soviet-made, and the pilot was probably Soviet too. In 1941, I was 17. Although they took me to the division from the age of 21, I forged documents and went to Russia to take revenge, ”one of its veterans spoke about the reasons that forced him to enroll in the Blue Division. And there were many. They went to avenge the dead father, brothers, sisters. It was called "returning the courtesy call."
In addition to the phalangists and the "avengers", pragmatists were enrolled in the division, hoping that it would be easier for the hero who returned from the war to make a career in the army and in the civil service (and many of them subsequently really rose to high ranks).
They went to fight just for money. Service in the division was seen by such volunteers as a dangerous, hard, but well-paid job that would help save their families from starvation. The soldiers of the division were paid a very good salary, plus the Germans also paid them extra.
Volunteers and former Republicans signed up. Many of them were kept in POW camps, which bore little resemblance to sanatoriums. Came recruiters offered to “wash away their shameful past”, rehabilitate themselves and return to their families through service in Russia. Some agreed.
On July 13, 1941, the division departed Madrid for Germany. An orchestra was playing, the platform was filled with mourners. In Germany, the volunteers received German weapons, were equipped with Wehrmacht uniforms and became known as the 250th Infantry Division of the Spanish Volunteers.
After five weeks of combat training, the soldiers were loaded into wagons, and the train moved east. In Poland, the train stopped, and then the volunteers marched on foot. A few weeks later, the 250th division arrived near Veliky Novgorod and occupied the sector of the front allotted to it. And then the Germans saw what kind of “happiness” had fallen on them.

Specific contingent

The proud Spaniards shocked the Germans with their disregard for all orders and discipline itself as such. First of all, the Falangists refused to hand over their uniform blue shirts and pulled the Wehrmacht's military tunics right on them. Now the Spaniard could easily be recognized by the blue collar thrown over the gray-green uniform. That is why the division received the unofficial name "blue".
Further - more: it turned out that the Spaniards have a habit of tucking their pants into socks and walking in slippers. This view terrified any German sergeant major. The officers said indignantly that the Spaniards were discrediting the image of a Wehrmacht soldier with their appearance. The Germans soon learned that the Spaniards considered cleaning weapons a waste of time, and that sentries went to the post in order to sleep.
Attempts to turn to the division commander with a request to bring his subordinates to order were unsuccessful - General Munoz Grandes himself was a Spaniard. When, in September 1941, he received an order to halt his division's offensive, otherwise it might be surrounded, the general proudly declared that the order did not meet the standards of Spanish honor, and refused to comply with it.
It is not surprising that the Germans treated the Spaniards with contempt, a common joke was that the Spaniards were prevented from playing the guitar by a rifle. The Spaniards reciprocated the Germans, and fights between them were commonplace, sometimes even reaching shooting.
During the division's foot march across Poland, several Spaniards dressed in civilian clothes and went AWOL. They were stopped by a German patrol. The comrades who found out about this went to the guardhouse and demanded that the detainees be handed over. The Germans, amazed by such impudence, refused. Then the Spaniards opened fire and fired until the Germans handed over the "prisoners".
But what simply struck the Germans was the exorbitant craving of the Spaniards for theft, more like kleptomania. And it would be fine if the Spaniards stole from the local population, but they did not consider it shameful to rob a German ally, which was quite understandable: well, what can you take from a Russian peasant? But the Germans - there is something to profit from.
One after another, reports fell on the table of the German command: the Spaniards stole a camp toilet and put it on firewood, robbed German nurses, raided a German wagon and took away the suitcases of officers who arrived from France.
The commanders of the German units standing next to the Blue Division tearfully asked the command to replace the Spaniards with the most neglected part, but from Germany, whose soldiers know what discipline is. But to the requests of his officers, the chief of the general staff of the Wehrmacht, Halder, could only answer: "If you see a German soldier unshaven, with an unbuttoned tunic and drunk, do not rush to arrest him - most likely, this is a Spanish hero." Alas, the summer of 1941 was left far behind, and every German division was out of number.

Spaniards and local people

Against the background of the Germans, the Spaniards left a better memory, if I may say so about the invaders. If the Germans simply took everything they considered necessary, then the Spaniards preferred theft to open robbery, which meant some kind of respect for the local population.
But the scale of the theft was simply amazing. If a German could indifferently pass by (“I have no worse at home”), then in poor Spain, literally everything was in short supply, therefore, in the Novgorod villages, where the soldiers of the Blue Division initially lodged, any thing that was not tightly tied or nailed , disappeared without a trace.
In the summer of 1942, the "Blue Division" was transferred to Leningrad, and the Spaniards walked like locusts through the storerooms of the Pushkin and Pavlovsk museums. They pulled out paintings, icons, tapestries, furniture and even individual stone trinkets. “Gypsies and thieves,” survivors of the occupation recalled about them. “They stole all the boots, they stole all the warm clothes.”
At the same time, shooting a Russian boy for no reason or throwing a grenade into the house - the Spaniards did not practice this, and the German orders on the attitude towards the local population were openly ignored, establishing almost friendly relations with the inhabitants. The Spaniards helped dig gardens, looked after the girls, married them, getting married in churches according to the Orthodox rite, and the Spanish son-in-law did not come to the family as a beggar, but brought with him a horse or a cow (which he stole in a neighboring village). The situation is simply unthinkable for a German soldier.
And yet they were enemies. It was a completely combat-ready division, four infantry and one artillery regiment (18,000 people). The Spaniards participated in the blockade of Leningrad and steadfastly held their sector of the front, they were fearless soldiers. The unit could lose up to 50% of its personnel, but the remaining 50% continued to fight.
Hand-to-hand fights, which the Germans were terrified of, were met with enthusiasm by the Spaniards. When the Russians with bayonets at the ready went on the attack, the proud hidalgos did not shoot back, but took out their Navaja knives, rose from the trenches and walked towards them.
In February - April 1943, the Soviet command decided to carry out Operation Polar Star near Leningrad in order to completely remove the blockade from the city. They decided to deliver the main blow near Krasny Bor in the area occupied not by the Germans, but by their allies, hoping that they were less resistant on the defensive. At Stalingrad, the Romanians and Italians, indeed, quickly broke down under the pressure of the Soviet troops, but the Spaniards turned out to be much stronger.
The Blue Division, having taken the blow, did not run. For two weeks of fighting, the fighters of the 55th Army of the Leningrad Front were able to advance only 4-5 km. The task assigned to the Soviet troops was not achieved, and Leningrad had to remain in the blockade for another year.
After Stalingrad and Kursk, General Franco had no doubts about the final outcome of the war, he urgently remembered the neutral status of Spain and on October 20, 1943 decided to return the division home and disband it. On October 29, the first echelon with the fighters of the Blue Division arrived in Spain. An orchestra was playing on the platform, but there were much fewer people who met them than those who saw them off in 1941.
Not everyone returned. The most fanatical remained to fight in the newly formed "Blue Legion" (3000 people), which lasted until March 1944. The last three Spanish companies in the SS troops in April 1945 defended the Reich Chancellery.

Novgorod, 1998

Taking into account several rotations, 46-47,000 people passed through the Blue Division. About 5,000 remained in the Russian land. In 1998, a site for soldiers of the 250th division was opened at the German cemetery in Veliky Novgorod. Spanish and Soviet veterans who fought here came to the opening.
The program included the laying of wreaths at the Eternal Flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. A guard of honor, Spanish and Russian flags met the veterans at the memorial. And then the head of the Spanish delegation announced that the Spaniards would not lay a wreath until they brought the Soviet flag: “We fought with the Soviet Union. We have always admired the courage of the Soviet soldier. And so we demand here the red banner, under which an unknown Soviet soldier fought and died. The Spanish journalist Miguel Bas, who works in Moscow, finished translating to the enthusiastic cries of Soviet veterans. And they brought a red banner.
And in the evening, the former soldiers, who had once shot at each other, drank vodka, hugged and cried.

A friend of Carlos's grandfather died - Abuelo Rafa, grandfather Rafael. He died well, eleven days before his 90th birthday, went to bed and did not wake up. Until the last day, the old man was nimble, cheerful, without signs of weakness, loved to travel, see the world, last year he even flew to China and was pleased when he returned, like a child. He was once a Francoist, and he remained one, often grumbled that under the Generalissimo they lived, although they were poorer, but there was more order and love, he hated gays and electric candles in churches, and liked to talk about life.

In particular, about how he fought in Russia, as part of the Division Azule, that he saw how he was wounded somewhere near Leningrad, which is why he survived, and his beloved sidekick Pablo remained there, in Russia. Oddly enough, he loved Russia very much, but he stupidly hated the Germans and always cursed when he ran into them in a cafe where he liked to drink light beer and watch football. Once, about a year and a half ago, when it came to the war, he took out of the chest a large, as it is called here, "road" navaja, almost a dagger, only folding, and showed me four notches on the handle, explaining "Este es la guerra esto son alemanos Solo alemanos!" - "This is a war, these are the Germans. Only the Germans." And then he explained that they often exchanged fire with the Russians, but from afar, so he doesn’t know if there is their blood on him, but he cut four Germans, and one even to death, thank God that the guys covered.

And when I asked why, I explained: they were goats (in Spain they also call bad people a goat), they considered themselves superior to the Spaniards, and even offended Russian girls.

And I managed to tell a lot of things that make me look at some things a little differently than I used to. And now here, sent a link to an interesting material. Tomorrow I'll ask Carlos, suddenly in one of the photos there is a young grandfather Rafa. And as for sidekick Pablo, there is no one to ask ...

History of the Blue Division

It is strange that no one has yet thought of making a film about the "División Azul" - the 250th division of the Spanish volunteers, which fought against the Soviet Union on the side of the Nazis and got its name from the color of the shirts of the Falangists.

The history of this Spanish formation is worthy of a film adaptation due to the atypical behavior of its soldiers, which markedly distinguished them from the Germans and German allies. As an illustration, I will cite some formal facts, the testimonies of defectors and the testimony of a Russian resident of occupied Pavlovsk.

The short chronology is as follows. In 1941-42, the "Blue Division" opposed the Volkhov Front and fought near Novgorod, in 1943 - on the Leningrad Front. For the entire time of its existence until October 1943, according to some sources, 40 thousand people passed through its ranks, according to others - about 55 thousand. The personnel was constantly updated, keeping the strength of the compound at the level of approximately 20 thousand people.

A separate word deserves an assessment of losses. German sources speak of 14.5 thousand total losses of the division. However, its commander - General Emilio Esteban-Infantes - in the book "Blue Division. Volunteers on the Eastern Front" gives the following figures of losses: 14,000 on the Volkhov front and 32,000 on the Leningrad front. These data correspond to the information that was reflected in the documents collected in the Soviet archives: 27 marching battalions, 1200-1300 people each, arrived to replenish the units of the division throughout the war. This means that in total 33-35 thousand soldiers and officers were sent from Spain to replenish the division. During the initial formation of the connection, it had 19,148 people. After the division was removed from the front, 8 thousand soldiers and officers returned to Spain, 2500 people remained in the legion. Based on this information, the losses of the division should have been about 42 thousand people. Some discrepancy with the information of General Esteban-Infantes can be explained by the fact that some of the wounded returned to duty.

Formally, Spain remained neutral and did not declare war on the USSR.

The personnel included only part of the regular military, a significant part consisted of veterans of the civil war or members of the Falangist militia. The division had a Spanish structure and an entirely Spanish command.

The division did not take the German oath of allegiance to the Fuhrer, but its modified edition - allegiance to the fight against communism.

Nazis and fanatics did not prevail among the personnel, the motivation of the volunteers was very diverse: from those who wanted to avenge the Soviet participation in the Civil War (1936-39) to the poor and unemployed who went to the front in the hope of providing for the lives of their relatives.

Already after the first acquaintance of the Germans with the newly formed Spanish units, they had doubts about the political "reliability" of the personnel and there was a suspicion that there were many Republicans in the ranks of the division, hiding from the persecution of the Francoists. So in September 1941, the headquarters of the 250th division received an order: “Our secret information service claims that there are people in the division who had the most extreme political views in the past and were on trial. Some joined the division for the purpose of sabotage, others joined the division in order to avoid trial and punishment for their crimes committed in our last campaign.

Subsequent events showed that the Germans' suspicions were justified: almost immediately after arriving at the front, voluntary surrender became commonplace. One of the commissars of the Northwestern Front in November 1941 notes that the Spanish defectors "are very unhappy that they are considered ordinary prisoners of war and kept with the Germans."

By rail, the Spaniards traveled only to Germany, where they underwent a month-long training. Further east, they, unlike the Germans, walked on foot - marching battalions. Already in Poland, the special attitude of the Spaniards to discipline was manifested. Several soldiers went AWOL in civilian clothes and were detained by the Gestapo - because of their swarthy appearance, they looked like Jews. The comrades freed their people after a shootout. “One of the defectors reported: the 17th marching battalion became famous for the fact that half of the soldiers who arrived in its composition fled: many fled to the rear, some to the Russians. On the way from Germany, 160 people deserted from the 19th battalion.

Despite the peculiar attitude to discipline, the Spaniards showed themselves to be brave and desperate soldiers in the battles on the outskirts of Leningrad - during the attempt of the Soviet troops to break through the encirclement in the first months of 1943 (the second after the defeat of the 1st shock army in the winter of 1941-42 .). Then the forces of the Red Army, supported by massive artillery and air raids, broke through the German defenses; the stability of the front was threatened. First, one battalion of the 269th regiment was sent to the Mga region, and in February, the entire Blue Division.

“According to the defector, the blow inflicted by the Soviet troops (55th Army) on February 10 in the Krasny Bor region made a depressing impression on the Spaniards. A prisoner of war, taken prisoner on March 3, said that "the last battles were the strongest test for the Spaniards, they suffered colossal losses, entire battalions were destroyed." These battles, according to the prisoner, had a severe effect on the mood of even the Falangist soldiers, who had previously fanatically believed in the strength of Germany. As a result of the fighting on the Kolpinsky sector of the front, the 262nd regiment, which suffered especially heavy losses, was removed from the front line and assigned to staffing.

However, the Spaniards completed the task and, at the cost of huge losses, stopped the Soviet troops. If not for the brutal resistance of the Blue Division, the blockade of Leningrad would have been lifted exactly a year earlier.

- “Prisoners of war of the 269th Infantry Regiment, taken at the Lovkovo site on December 27, 1941, showed that 50-60 people remained in the companies instead of 150, there are frostbite. Prisoners of the same 269th Infantry Regiment, taken at the Krasny Udarnik sector, showed that there were only 30-50 people in the companies. In the 3rd battalion of the 263rd regiment, 60-80 people remained in the companies, in the 2nd battalion of the 262nd regiment - up to 80 people. And only in a few units of the 250th division, according to the testimony of prisoners of war, there were 100 people left - in the 9th, 10th and 14th companies of the 2nd battalion of the 269th regiment, in the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 263rd regiment . Almost always in the testimonies of prisoners it was about frostbite.

On the part of the Germans, the attitude towards the Spaniards was contemptuous. According to the Germans, in the Blue Division, each soldier fought with a guitar in one hand and a rifle in the other: the guitar interfered with shooting, and the rifle prevented playing. At one of the feasts, Hitler remarked: “The Spaniards appear to the soldiers as a gang of loafers. They view the rifle as a tool that cannot be cleaned under any circumstances. Sentry they exist only in principle. They don’t go out to posts, and if they do, it’s only to sleep.”

Many defectors and prisoners of war claimed that anti-German sentiment was very strong in the division. Thus, a soldier of the 269th regiment said that “at the end of December 1942, he and several of his comrades witnessed how a German captain, the head of the economy, severely beat the Spaniard-Falangist Bermudos because, having come to the bathhouse, he entered the locker room , but did not want to wait on the street: the Germans were washing in the bathhouse at that time. According to another defector, when German soldiers meet Spanish soldiers, a fight is started, sometimes even without any reason.

The gradual evolution of views, even among those who were considered the “support” of the Francoist regime, is evidenced by the book of the former member of the National Junta of the Falange, Dionisio Ridruejo, “Letters to Spain”: “For me, the years 1940-1941 were the most controversial, heartbreaking and critical in my life .. To my happiness, my eyes were opened - I volunteered to fight in Russia. I left Spain a hard-nosed interventionist, burdened with every possible nationalistic prejudice. I was convinced that fascism was destined to become the most expedient model for Europe, that the Soviet revolution was an "arch-enemy" that must be destroyed or at least forced to capitulate. The Russian campaign played a positive role in my life. Not only did I no longer have hatred, but I experienced an ever-growing feeling of affection for the people and the Russian land. Many of my comrades experienced the same feelings as I did. As subsequent recollections of Spanish veterans showed, most of them repented for their participation in the war against the Soviet Union.

During Soviet shelling, several shells hit the central dome of the Hagia Sophia in Veliky Novgorod, and the cross began to fall to the ground. Spanish sappers saved the cross, restored it during the war, and it was sent to Spain. In the seventies, during the life of Franco, the cross stood at the Engineering Academy.

Having learned about another beaten Russian girl, the Spaniards began to beat all the Germans they came across along the way.

The Germans implicitly obey every order, whatever it may be. The Spaniards always strive to disobey an order, whatever it may be. The Germans "ferboten" offend the Spaniards. And outwardly they treat them kindly, although they hate them passionately. The Spaniards, on the other hand, slaughter the Germans every Saturday night after drinking their weekly ration of wine. Sometimes in the daytime, when sober, they beat the Germans with a mortal battle. The Germans are only defending themselves.

The Spaniards buried a girl killed by a shell. The coffin was carried in their arms and everyone sobbed. They robbed the entire greenhouse, which the Germans had set up. There was no scuffle.

If a German rides on a cart, then you will never see children on it. If a Spaniard is driving, then he is not visible behind the children. And all these Jose and Pepe walk the streets, hung with children.

Spaniards travel 35 kilometers from Pavlovsk for groceries every week. And everyone knows what they got for this week. If it's lemons, then the truck's exhaust pipe is stuffed with lemons and lemons stick out in every possible and impossible place. If apples - the same happens with apples and everything else.

The Germans are brave insofar as they are ordered by the Führer to be brave. The Spaniards have absolutely no sense of self-preservation. They knock out over 50% of the composition of any part from them, the remaining 50% continue to go into battle with songs. We have seen this with our own eyes.

Pozharskaya S.P., The Spanish "Blue Division" on the Soviet-German front // Crusade against Russia. - M.: Yauza, 2005. (link)
unknown blockade. In 2 volumes. - St. Petersburg: Neva, 2002 (link)

Therefore, it is surprising that the story of the Blue Division has not yet been filmed. There is nothing in it that Spain could be ashamed of - its soldiers behaved like people and are quite worthy of memory and sympathy, unlike the scum from the German troops and their Romanian, Finnish, Hungarian, Latvian, Norwegian and other allies from all over Europe. In addition, the Spaniards, unlike the rest, more than paid for their guilt with tens of thousands of lives - only one in five returned home.

But this will not happen as long as Europe is dominated by blind suppression of the Nazi past in half with equalization of guilt among all participants in the massacre, as evidenced by the public reaction to the recent statements of Lars von Trier. It's a pity. The story of the Spanish soldiers could become a dramatic confession of the participation of this people in the war, the analogue of which 10 years ago was the impressive film Butterfly Language, dedicated to the Civil War.

Most historians and authors writing on historical topics, talking about the blockade of Leningrad, blame the death of hundreds of thousands of defenders of the city and its civilians exclusively on the German side. For some reason, they do not take into account that the Germans surrounded Leningrad only from the south, and Finnish troops occupied positions from the north. Without belittling the crimes of Germany, one should not forget that in addition to the citizens of the Third Reich, numerous volunteers from European countries who went to the East as "new crusaders" also took part in holding the city in the suffocating iron ring of the blockade.

La "Division azul"

"Spain intends to send one legion of 15,000 men to Russia." Franz Halder, War diary, June 29, 1941, Sunday, 8th day of the war.

After the end of the bloody Civil War on April 1, 1939, with the victory of General Franco, a semi-fascist dictatorship was established in Spain. Spanish nationalists considered all local left-wing agents of the USSR, and the military assistance provided by the Soviet Union to the republican government aroused burning hatred in their hearts.

The news that Germany had started a war against Soviet Russia caused an unprecedented stir in Spain among local nationalists. The cautious caudillo was afraid to speak directly on the side of the Axis countries. The internal situation of Spain in the early 40s was unstable. At least half of the country's population did not like the dictator; by June 1941, there were up to 2 million political prisoners in prisons - the ideological enemies of the regime. In addition, problems could begin with the Western allies, especially with England and the countries of Latin America. Finally, the government of the Third Reich, having weighed all the pros and cons, also preferred to see Spain as an officially neutral country.
On June 22, 1941, Spanish Foreign Minister Serrano Suner informed the German ambassador in Madrid, Ebehard von Storer, that Spain welcomed the attack on the USSR and was ready to provide volunteer assistance. On June 24, 1941, Adolf Hitler accepted this offer. Dozens of recruiting centers were opened throughout Spain, attracting thousands of volunteers. The number of people wishing to fight the hated Bolsheviks exceeded the expected 40 times, which is why on July 2, 1941, recruiting centers were forced to curtail their activities. Most of the volunteers were Civil War veterans, members of the HONS movement (Falange Espanola de las Juntas de Ofensiva National Sindicalista), who arrived at the recruiting stations in their traditional uniform - blue shirts and red berets. From the color of their shirts came the unofficial name of the Spanish Volunteer Division - "Blue Division" (German name "Blau", Spanish - "Azul").

Rice. Seeing the Spanish volunteers to the war with Russia

On July 13, 1941, the first echelon with volunteers went to Germany, a day later the commander of the freshly formed formation, General Muñoz Grandes (Agustín Muñoz Grandes) and his headquarters flew there. By July 20, all Spanish volunteers were assembled in Bavaria at the Grafenwöhr training camp. There, the Spaniards underwent the necessary medical examination, they were given the standard field uniform of the Wehrmacht (feldgrau). From ordinary infantry divisions, the Spaniards were now distinguished only by a special sign on the sleeve above the elbow. Connoisseurs of fascist heraldry depicted a shield on the division badge, the middle of the shield was cut by a horizontal yellow stripe on a red background. It depicted a four-pointed black cross and five crossed arrows pointing up - the symbol of the phalanx. From above, all this intricate structure was crowned with the inscription "Spain".

On July 25, the division received a German nomenclature number and became the 250th Wehrmacht infantry division of standard equipment, consisting of three regiments of three battalions each. The division also included an artillery regiment, which included one heavy artillery division, an anti-tank division, reconnaissance and reserve battalions, several communications companies, doctors, military police and ... veterinarians. The fact is that the Germans, feeling the need for vehicles, originally got out of the delicate situation of equipping the Spaniards with rolling stock. The German staff officers simply transferred all units of the division to horse-drawn traction. Horses in the amount of 5610 heads were captured during the operation of the Wehrmacht in Yugoslavia. This circumstance initially caused a lot of anecdotal situations: the animals did not understand commands either in German or in Spanish.

Soldiers of the Blue Division

The total strength of the division was 18,693 people - 641 officers, 2,272 non-commissioned officers and 15,780 lower ranks. On July 31, 1941, the Spanish volunteers swore allegiance to Hitler. The training of the division in combat according to German regulations was easy, most of the soldiers had a wealth of experience in the battles of the civil war, and therefore by August 20 it was announced that the unit was ready to be sent to the front.

Rice. Spanish infantry under fire

And on August 29, the Spanish battalions moved east on foot. Ahead lay the broken roads of Lithuania, Belarus and Russia. After a 40-day march, the Spaniards finally reached Vitebsk. The Wehrmacht command at first intended to use the division in the central sectors of the front, but the situation required an urgent transfer of troops to Army Group North, near Leningrad.

On October 4, 1941, the Blue Division arrived at the front at the Novgorod-Teremets section, where it immediately underwent its first test - an attack by Russian infantry. At the same time, for the first time in the combat reports of the Soviet troops, a message slipped about the appearance at the front of the Spaniards under the command of General Munoz Grandes. It also stated that the division was manned by young people aged 20-25, most of them ideological Falangists, who fought very bravely. On October 16, German troops went on the offensive in the Volkhov-Tikhvin direction. The German units managed to break through the defenses at the junction of the 4th and 52nd armies. In the Soviet front-line report of October 25, it was reported that "the Spanish division, having captured the villages of Shevelevo, Sitno, Dubrovka, Nikitino, Otensky Posad, is still holding them."

In November 1941, severe frosts hit, down to -30. The heat-loving inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula had a hard time - quite a few soldiers received frostbite. On December 4, 1941, Soviet troops launched a counterattack on the positions of the 250th Infantry Division. The Spaniards, who had settled in the frozen trenches, stubbornly defended their lines. The Red Army managed to surround part of the 269th regiment, it came to hand-to-hand combat. Moreover, as the Soviet commanders pointed out in operational reports, the Spaniards, unlike the Germans, were not afraid of bayonet attacks, and they themselves willingly imposed close combat on the enemy. By December 7, the fighting in the area of ​​​​Otensky Posad had subsided, the units of the Soviet troops that had broken through were driven back. This victory cost the Spaniards dearly, for example, only the 2nd battalion of the 269th regiment lost 580 people: 120 killed, 440 wounded and frostbitten, 20 missing.

Rice. Spaniards on the Eastern Front. Winter 1941-1942

At the end of December, the Red Army launched another offensive, the Blue Division was again subjected to a massive blow. “In the reports of the 52nd Army of December 24, 25 and 27, it was reported that units of the 250th Spanish Infantry Division, leaving Shevelevo, were defending in their former grouping on the western bank of the Volkhov River in the Yamno-Yerunovo-Staraya Bystritsa section and were stubbornly resisting the advance of our units, repeatedly turning into counterattacks ”- this is how General I.I. recalled these events. Fedyuninsky in his book Raised on Alarm. Despite the staunch resistance of the enemy, the troops of the 52nd Army broke through the defenses and pushed the Spaniards back several tens of kilometers. The following fact speaks of the fierceness of the fighting: from the combined ski company of 206 people formed by the command of the Blue Division in the first days of January 1942, only 12 fighters remained in the ranks by the middle of the month. The dispassionate pages of the archive of the USSR Ministry of Defense, dedicated to the interrogation of prisoners of the 250th division, also confirm the high losses among the Spaniards. For example, they say that “at the beginning of 1942, 30-50 people remained in the companies of the 269th infantry regiment, instead of the prescribed 150. In the 3rd battalion of the 263rd regiment, 60-80 people remained in the companies, in total 2- m battalion of the 262nd regiment - up to 80 people. Always in the testimony of prisoners we are talking about frostbite.

Having retreated to the western bank of the Volkhov River, and having received another replenishment with marching battalions regularly arriving from Spain, the soldiers of the Blue Division took up defense. However, they failed to sit quietly in warm dugouts. On January 7, the troops of the Volkhov Front struck a new blow. In the intelligence report of the headquarters of the 225th division of the 52nd army from January 18-28, it is noted that "the 263rd and 262nd regiments of the 250th division, relying on defense units, stubbornly resist the actions of our units." The intensity of the battles was great: according to the headquarters of the 52nd Army, the losses of the regiments of the Spanish division reached 100-150 people daily and by the beginning of April 1942 amounted to 8000 people. Despite this, the Germans treated their allies with coolness. Adolf Hitler, in his Table Talk on January 5, 1942, remarked: “To German soldiers, the Spaniards appear to be a gang of loafers. They view the rifle as a tool that cannot be cleaned under any circumstances. Sentry they exist only in principle. They do not go out to posts, and if they appear there, it is only to sleep. When the Russians launch an offensive, the locals have to wake them up.” Let's leave these idle conjectures on the conscience of the possessed Fuhrer. The German command of the 18th Army believed that the "Blue Division" withstood the hardest tests of the winter of 41-42 with honor.

Since May 1942, the division fought in the area of ​​the so-called "Volkhov cauldron", and at the end of June they participated in the most difficult battles for the Small and Big Zamoshye, in the place of the breakthrough of the units of the 305th Rifle Division of the Red Army. “... In front of the front of the 305th Rifle Division in the area of ​​​​Bolshoye Zamoshye, units of the 250th Spanish division approached, and the Flanders and Netherlands legions were regrouping ... Our units, exhausted from previous battles, lacking shells, and some units lacking ammunition, having no food, continued to provide stubborn resistance to the enemy ... Over 1000 enemy soldiers and officers were destroyed and 17 tanks were knocked out ... ”- says an extract from the report of the chief of staff of the Volkhov Front dated June 25-26, 1942“ On the operation to withdraw the 2nd Shock armies from the encirclement.

Member of those battles, Major A.S. Dobrov, the former commander of the 5th Battery of the 830th Artillery Regiment of the 305th Infantry Division, recalled this as follows: “... after a massive air and artillery raid, the enemy attacked the right the flank of the 305th SD was the military town of Muravii, but was completely defeated and went on the defensive. More than 200 fascists were surrounded in Maly Zamoshye. They were supplied with food and ammunition, which were dropped by parachute from aircraft. Sometimes, at the behest of the wind, we got something.” On June 27, 1942, the last combat-ready units of the 2nd Shock Army were destroyed, the Volkhov Cauldron was liquidated, the war on this sector of the front moved into a positional stage.

On August 20, 1942, the German command begins to withdraw the battered regiments and battalions of the Blue Division to the rear for rest and reorganization. On August 26, the remnants of the division were transferred to the area of ​​\u200b\u200bSiverskaya, Susanino, Vyritsa, Bolshoye Lisino, where the long-awaited replenishment arrived from Spain. Compared to the original contingent of the division, consisting of ideological opponents of communism, the newly arrived marching companies were a strange conglomeration of staunch Falangists, petty criminals, adventurers, adventurers and just random people. There were also curious motives for joining the Blue Division. So one prisoner of war from the 269th regiment said that he went to war to annoy his mother, another motivated his act by disagreements with his wife. Many recruited for career reasons: they were promised a two-rank promotion for service in Russia, while others were driven to this act by mercenary interests. For example, as S.P. Pozharskaya in her article “The Spanish Blue Division on the Soviet-German Front”: “each soldier of the Blue Division received 60 Reichsmarks per month, they were paid a lump sum of 100 pesetas, the families of military personnel in Spain received 8 pesetas a day” . It should be noted that this was very good money for that time, given that in Madrid the daily earnings of a skilled construction worker was 9 pesetas, a baker - 10 pesetas, the owner of a small shop - 10-20 pesetas per day.

Starting from September 10, 1942, the Spanish 250th division made a systematic replacement of the 121st German infantry division in positions near Leningrad. From the operational order for the 250th division, it follows that the border of the defended sector from the east was the Kolpino-Tosno railway, from the west - the settlement of Babolovo. So the "Blue Division" took its place in the blockade ring, occupying a 29-kilometer section of the front.

General Emilio Esteban Infantes.

On December 13, 1942, General Munoz Grandes was replaced by another famous Spanish general, Civil War veteran Emilio Esteban Infantes. The newly-minted commander got the division with shaky discipline, which was caused both by heavy losses and extreme fatigue of veterans from the war, and by the poor quality of the incoming reinforcements. Discord reigned in the regiments, sergeants and officers regularly beat soldiers, due to the almost unpunished theft of quartermasters and officers, ordinary soldiers often did not receive the food they were supposed to, there was almost no regular communication with Spain, letters went for three to four months, they almost did not see newspapers six months. The energetic general, using his authority, managed to bring the unit entrusted to him into relative order. And, as it turned out, on time: on the morning of January 12, 1943, the troops of the Volkhov and Leningrad fronts, with the support of the Baltic Fleet, launched an offensive in order to break the blockade. By the morning of January 18, a critical situation had developed for the Germans, and the commander of the 18th German Army, Colonel-General Lindemann, was forced to advance reserves taken from other sectors of the front to meet the attacking Soviet troops. The command of the Blue Division allocated a battalion of the 269th regiment, consisting of the most disciplined and persistent soldiers, for the transfer to the Mga area (working village No. 6). The Red Army successfully demonstrated all its increased power against them: by January 28, out of a battalion of 800 people, only 28 fighters remained in the ranks.

Rice. Cemetery of soldiers of the 250th Spanish division of the Wehrmacht

On February 10, the turn came for the rest of La Division Azul to receive its own. According to German data, against the defensive positions of the 250th division, which numbered 5,608 people with 24 guns, the 55th Army concentrated 33,000 soldiers, 150 tanks and self-propelled guns, and several artillery regiments. After massive artillery preparation, the Soviet troops went on the offensive in order to capture the settlement of Krasny Bor, the key to the entire line of German defense. The fierceness of the battles reached its highest limit. As an eyewitness of those battles testifies, ".. the Spaniards fought steadfastly with daggers, shovels, hand grenades ..". In just a day, the 250th division lost 75% of its personnel, or 3,645 people.

The command of the "Blue Division" sent all the reserves to the front, including the reserve battalion and rear units, but this did not save the situation - Krasny Bor was abandoned. At the end of February 1943, the remnants of the division took part in the battles in the Kolpinsky sector, and after March 19, when the front stabilized, the Spanish volunteers occupied the trenches for a long time and began a tedious positional war, periodically throwing reconnaissance groups into the nearest rear of the Soviet troops. The last battle of units of the 250th Spanish division on the Soviet-German front took place on October 4, 1943, east of the city of Pushkin, when Soviet troops conducted an unsuccessful reconnaissance in force in the sector of the 269th regiment.

In October 1943, under pressure from the Western Allies, General Franco officially withdrew the Spanish Volunteer Division from the front. The withdrawal of Spanish troops began on October 12, by rail, the soldiers were sent to Germany in the city of Hof, for subsequent departure to their homeland. However, knowing that this would complicate Spanish-German relations, the caudillo turned a blind eye to the fact that almost half of the personnel did not return home. Some soldiers succumbed to the frantic propaganda of the Falangists, others were left by order. On November 20, 1943, the Spanish Volunteer Legion (Legiun Azul) was officially formed in Yamburg. The former chief of staff of the Blue Division, Colonel Antonio Garcia Navarro, was appointed commander of the newly-minted legion. As part of the legion, 2 rifle battalions (Banderas) were formed under the command of majors Ibarro and Garcia, and a major with a sonorous surname Virgil led the technical and auxiliary mixed battalions. The number of this military unit consisted of 2133 people. The legion took part in anti-partisan actions near Narva for several weeks, and at the end of December 1943 was transferred to the east, where it entered under the name of the 450th Grenadier Regiment into the 121st Infantry Division of the Wehrmacht, stationed in the area of ​​the Lyuban station.

Rice. "In the frozen trenches near Leningrad"

On December 25, 1943, a flurry of fire fell on the positions of the 121st division - the Red Army went on the offensive. Within a few hours, Legiun Azul was literally wiped off the face of the earth. On January 26, the miserable remnants of the regiment fought for Tosno, then for Luga. In mid-February 1944, the few remaining Spaniards were transferred to Estonia. In mid-March, Franco, in an ultimatum form, demanded that Germany return Spanish citizens to their homeland. On April 12, the Blue Legion was officially disbanded.

In total, during the participation of Spanish units in the hostilities on the Eastern Front, about 55,000 people passed through their ranks. The exact number of killed, wounded, missing and captured Spaniards in 1941-43 is unknown. According to German data, the losses of the 250th Infantry Division amounted to 12,726 people, of which 3,943 were killed (including 153 officers), 8,446 were wounded, and 326 were missing. The personal archive of General Franco contains data on total losses of 12,737 people, of which 6,286 were killed. Western sources give a loss figure of 4,954 killed and 8,700 wounded. According to the documents of the GUVPI (Main Directorate for Prisoners of War and Internees) of the USSR, 452 Spaniards voluntarily surrendered and were taken prisoner in battle.

Both commanders of the 250th Division were awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves, two Spaniards were awarded the Gold Crosses, 138 military personnel received the Iron Cross I class, 2,359 the Iron Cross II class, another 2,216 soldiers earned the Spanish Military Crosses with swords (War Merit Crosses with Swords).

Unlike many other foreigners in the service of Germany, the Spaniards were absolutely sure that they were going not to enslave, but to liberate Russia from the Bolshevik yoke. They called their opponents not "Russians", but "Reds". The Spaniards of the "Blue Division" were the Europe from which the opponents of the Soviet system expected "delivery from Stalin's tyranny." It seems that the soldiers of the 250th Infantry Division were the only occupiers who simultaneously coexisted with intransigence towards the enemy at the front and a relatively good-natured attitude towards civilians.

Den Norske Legion

On November 30, 1939, war broke out between Finland and the USSR. Thousands of detachments of foreign volunteers joined the ranks of the Finnish army. Norwegian volunteers in the amount of 600 people arrived in the country of Suomi in December 1939, and after a short training took part in the hostilities. After the end of the "Winter War" in March 1940, the inhabitants of the country of the fjords went to their homeland, where they were greeted as national heroes. In Europe, at that time, the war was already in full swing, and in April 1940 it was the turn of the Norwegians to experience the blow of the iron fist of the Wehrmacht. As a result of the operation "Teaching on the Weser", German troops occupied the southern and central part of Norway, ahead of the Anglo-French invasion by just a few days. On April 9, 1940, the pro-Nazi party National Unity (Nasjonal samling) officially came to power in the country, under the leadership of Vidkun Quisling, which had not previously had any political weight in the country.

After the German attack on the Soviet Union, the leaders of the National Unity party, as well as many famous Norwegians, such as the Nobel Prize-winning writer Knut Hamsun, proposed organizing a volunteer detachment to fight against the "Bolshevik hordes" following the example of the Norwegian Legion, which was part of the Finnish armed forces. forces during the Soviet-Finnish conflict.

On July 4, 1941, Quisling, in his radio address to the Norwegians, announced the creation of a volunteer unit that would be sent to Finland to fight the Bolsheviks. Recruitment centers were opened in all major cities in Norway, and the registration of volunteers began. In the first few days, about 300 people joined the legion, an impressive number for a small country. Initially, the Norwegian government expected to form a full-fledged military unit, consisting of 2 battalions under the code name "Gula" and "Frosta". The newly created units were sent to the Bjolsen Skole field camp in Norway, from where they were relocated via Kiel to the Fallenbostel training camp. There, on August 1, 1941, the formation of the Volunteer Legion Norway was officially announced. By this time, the personnel of the legion consisted of 751 people - 20 officers, 50 non-commissioned officers and 681 lower ranks. The first commander of this military unit was Major of the Norwegian Army Finn Hannibal Kjelstrup. Contrary to the insistent desire of the volunteers to fight as a separate military unit, they were included in the Waffen SS. The legionnaires were changed from Norwegian military uniforms into field uniforms of the SS troops. They were distinguished from ordinary SS men only by a special sleeve insignia, which is a variation of the St. Olaf Cross - the emblem of the Hird assault squads of the National Unity party. The sleeve emblem of the SS Volunteer Legion "Norway" was a round shield, framed by a silver border, with a silver cross on a gray (or, in rare cases, on a red) field, and crossed by two silver naked straight swords with points upwards parallel to the vertical beam of the cross.

On October 3, 1941, in Fallenbostel, in the presence of Vidkun Quisling, who arrived there, the first battalion took the oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. This battalion was named "Viken". He was solemnly presented with a battalion banner with a golden lion on a red background with St. Olaf's ax in its paws. At the beginning of 1942, the number of the legion reached 1218 people. It consisted of a headquarters, 3 rifle companies, an infantry gun company and an anti-tank company, as well as a reserve battalion stationed in Holmestrand. The legion also had a Lutheran pastor with the rank of Legions Hauptsturmführer. Insisting on the immediate dispatch of Norwegian volunteers to help Finland and seeing their unit as the backbone of the new Norwegian army, the commanders of the legion, Major Kelstrup and Jurgen Backen, caused constant irritation in the military-political leadership of Germany. Therefore, on December 15, 1941, they were replaced by Legions Sturmbannführer Arthur Quist, who was extremely loyal to the Reich.

Rice. Norwegian volunteers swear allegiance to Hitler

In February 1942, the Norwegian Legion was sent to a relatively calm section of the Leningrad Front, where it became part of the 22nd SS Motorized Brigade under the command of Police Lieutenant General Friedrich Jeckeln, which occupied the defense next to the 250th Spanish Infantry Division. In addition to the Norwegians, this SS "International Brigade" also included Latvian, Dutch and Flemish volunteers. In mid-March, the legionnaires replaced their SS colleagues from the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler division in positions near Leningrad. Most of the fortifications occupied by the legionnaires were built from a mixture of snow, logs, ice and earth. “Spring came, and all these structures began to melt and collapse. The dugouts were very cramped, and many of the tall Norwegian soldiers could not stand upright. Dirt flowed through the trenches in a stream, sentries had to stand at the post for 4-5 hours knee-deep in liquid from water, snow and mud, and then go to the constantly flooded dugouts for an hour, where they could not even dry themselves. This went on for several weeks, ”said the former legionnaire Bjorn Ostring. The Norwegians failed to dig full-fledged trenches and create a continuous line of defense in the lowland wetlands, however, with the help of Latvian volunteers, they managed to equip a number of strongholds on high ground.

Rice. The trenches of the Norwegian Legion flooded with melt water

In March-April, the legion participated in the battles in the Krasnoe Selo - Panovo region. The positional war alternated with sorties against the fortified dugouts of the Soviet troops. Despite all the tragedy of the war, there were also curious cases at the front. Once, as the aforementioned Ostring recalled, the Norwegians received a moral shock when they found a box of American stew in one of the captured Soviet fortifications. It turns out that despite what they were told by official propaganda, America really helps the Bolsheviks!

Unlike the neighboring Latvian SS men, who had a fierce hatred for the USSR and the Soviet people, the Norwegians were quite loyal to the prisoners, so defectors most often appeared on their defense sector. One of the passages between the fortifications was nicknamed by the legionnaires the “Ditch for the Defectors”.

Rice. Norwegian volunteers and defectors

In mid-May 1942, the legion fought in the Pulkovo area, and then was withdrawn to the rear. The anti-tank company was stationed in the town of Konstantinovka, other units - in Uritsk. In May, Vidkun Quisling and some other senior leaders of Norway visited the resting parts of the legion. On May 17, on the Day of the Norwegian Constitution, at the solemn construction of the Legion, awards were presented to distinguished soldiers and officers. About 25 volunteer soldiers handed over to the leader of Norway a petition that they did not want to fight under German command and demanded that part of them be transferred to Finland, but their statement was ignored.

In June 1942, the Norwegians returned to the front. Their return coincided with the start of a new Soviet offensive. Once, up to a battalion of Soviet infantry and several heavy tanks broke into the positions of the Latvian SS men. Unable to withstand the attack, the Latvians abandoned the trenches and began a disorderly retreat, which turned into a stampede. They were saved from total extermination by Scandinavian volunteers. The commander of the Norwegian anti-tank division did not lose his head and hastily transferred his guns and soldiers to the threatened area. Recently received 75 mm PAK-38 anti-tank guns, put forward for direct fire, proved to be very effective. All the tanks were knocked out, and the infantry, lying down under massive artillery fire, having suffered heavy losses, retreated. The fight was won.

On August 13, 1942, the Norwegians became part of the 2nd SS Infantry Brigade, staffed mainly by natives of Latvia. The number of the Legion by this period reached more than 1000 people. On September 3, a police company of 93 people arrived from Norway as a replenishment, formed from employees of the Norwegian police - ardent supporters of Nazism. She was commanded by SS Hauptsturmführer Jonas Lee, who received in his homeland for passing numerous death sentences to the Norwegian Resistance fighters and instantly carrying them out the nickname "a man with a pen and a pistol in one hand." The police company was repeatedly used on the territory of the Leningrad region in punitive expeditions against Soviet partisans.

Rice. Police company of the Norwegian Legion on the march

After the Red Army launched an operation to break the blockade, the Norwegians found themselves at the epicenter of the fighting. Together with the Spanish "Blue Division" in February 1943, in the area of ​​​​Krasny Bor, the Norwegian anti-tank division took part in the most difficult battles, which was completely defeated by the Soviet troops. For several days of fighting, the Norwegians lost only 43 people killed. By mid-February, the legionnaires remaining in the ranks in the amount of less than 700 people were withdrawn to the rear. On March 1, they were taken to Norway, where on April 6, 1943, they paraded through the center of Oslo.

On May 20, 1943, at the Grafenwöhr training ground in Germany, the Norwegian Legion was officially disbanded. The remaining legionnaires and the replenishment that arrived from Norway were sent to form the "Norway" regiment of the 11th SS Panzergrenadier Division "Nordland", but that's a completely different story.

During the stay of the Norwegians directly near Leningrad, the losses of the legion amounted to only 180 people killed. In total, during the Second World War, more than 15,000 Norwegians fought as part of various combat units of the Wehrmacht and SS troops, as well as police special units. On the Soviet-German front, 7,000 servicemen were involved, of which about 100 were captured, 20 officers and 678 soldiers were killed.

To be continued

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Spain Spain

250th Spanish Volunteer Division(German 250. Einheit spanischer Freiwilliger), traditionally known in Russian sources as blue division, but due to the absence of the names of shades of blue in some European languages, it is possible to read and how blue division(Spanish) Division Azul, German Blaue Division) - a division of Spanish volunteers who fought on the side of Germany during the Second World War. Nominally considered to be composed of members of the Spanish Falange, in reality the Blue Division was a mixture of regulars, Civil War veterans and members of the Falangist militia. It was drawn up according to the Spanish canons: four infantry regiments and one artillery.

Encyclopedic YouTube

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✪ Blue division. Spanish fascists in the USSR. Interview with B. Kovalev. Egor Yakovlev. Digital history.

✪ Blue division. History of the Spanish Volunteers WWII.avi

✪ PHI#1. Mikhail Polikarpov, Russian volunteer in the war in Yugoslavia

✪ Leningrad in blockade (old photos)

Subtitles

The emergence and features of the connection

Not wanting to openly drag Spain into the Second World War on the side of Hitler and at the same time striving to strengthen the Falange regime and ensure the country's security, Francisco Franco took the position of armed neutrality, providing Germany on the Eastern Front with a division of volunteers who wished to fight on the side of the Germans against the Soviet Union. De jure, Spain remained neutral, Germany was not an ally, and the USSR did not declare war. The division got its name from the blue shirts - the uniform of the Phalanx.

Volunteers had different motivations: from the desire to avenge loved ones who died in the Civil War to the desire to hide (for former Republicans, as a rule, they subsequently made up the bulk of defectors to the side of the Soviet army). There were people who sincerely wanted to redeem their Republican past. Many were guided by selfish considerations - the soldiers of the division received a decent salary for those times in Spain, plus a German salary (respectively 7.3 pesetas from the Spanish government and 8.48 pesetas from the German command per day).

The former chairman of the brotherhood of the division, a former fighter, spoke about his path to its ranks only in the same way as other Nazis did:

I didn't have any ideology. I lived quietly near Teruel, a Soviet-made plane flew in, dropped a Soviet bomb. And, most likely, the pilot was Soviet. All my family died. I repeat: I was 14 years old at that moment. By the time the war with the Soviet Union began, I was 17 years old. Of course I wanted revenge. And I went to Russia to return the courtesy call.

Even in Poland, a special attitude of the Spaniards towards discipline was manifested. Several soldiers went AWOL in civilian clothes and were detained by the Gestapo - because of their appearance they were mistaken for Jews. The comrades freed their people after a skirmish. The following fact also speaks of discipline in the division:

It was not uncommon for members of the division to defect to the Red Army, not least because of the rudeness of their own officers and poor food.

The end of the battle

Due to strong foreign political pressure, Francisco Franco on October 20 decided to withdraw the Blue Division from the front and disband the unit. Some of the Spaniards remained in the detachments of the German army voluntarily until the end of the war - the volunteer "Blue Legion" was created (English) Russian”, whose number was 2-3 thousand people. The Germans, not wanting to lose potential soldiers, opened wide propaganda regarding the entry of volunteers into the German Foreign Legion, which, unlike the Blue Division, was exclusively under German command. As a rule, they were all in the SS troops, who fought to the very end. In encircled Berlin, 7,000 Spaniards fought before the surrender.

Losses

• 4957 killed
• 8766 wounded
• 326 missing
• 372 captured (most returned to Spain in 1954).

General Emilio Esteban-Infantes, who commanded the Blue Division, in his book The Blue Division. Volunteers on the Eastern Front ”gives the following figures for the losses of the division: 14 thousand on the Volkhov front and 32 thousand on the Leningrad front (winter - spring 1943). In Karl Hofker's documentary "Blue Division Azul. The History of the Spanish Volunteers" provides the following data on the total losses of the Spanish volunteers on the Eastern Front out of "47,000 people, the total losses amounted to 3,600 dead, in addition 8,500 wounded, 7,800 sick with various diseases, also 1,600 people received frostbite and 321 people were captured" . At the same time, Karl Hofker estimates the losses of the Blue Division killed on the Volkhov Front at 1,400 people.

In Francoist Spain, the church and religion enjoyed great prestige. For example, during the Soviet shelling, several shells hit the central dome of the Church of St. Sophia in Veliky Novgorod, and the cross of the main dome began to fall to the ground. Spanish sappers saved the cross, restored it during the war, and it was sent to Spain. In the seventies, during the life of Franco, the cross stood at the Engineering Academy. Under it was an inscription that this cross is in storage in Spain and will return to Russia when the “godless Bolshevik regime” disappears (after the war, the Soviet government accused the Spaniards of robbery). The cross was returned in 2004, 1958. (German)

Gerald R. Kleinfeld and Lewis A. Tambs. Hitler's Spanish Legion: The Blue Division in Russia. Southern Illinois University Press (1979), 434 pages, ISBN 0-8093-0865-7 . (English)

Xavier Moreno Julia. La División Azul: Sangre española en Rusia, 1941-1945. Barcelona: Critica (2005). (Spanish)

Wayne H Bowen. Spaniards and Nazi Germany: Collaboration in the New Order. University of Missouri Press (2005), 250 pages, ISBN 0-8262-1300-6 . (English)

Antonio de Andrés y Andrés - Artilleria en la Division Azul

Eduardo Barrachina Juan - La Batalla del Lago Ilmen: División Azul

Carlos Caballero & Rafael Ibañez - Escritores en las trincheras: La División Azul en sus libros, publicaciones periódicas y filmografía (1941-1988)

Fernando J. Carrera Buil & Augusto Ferrer-Dalmau Nieto - Batallón Román: Historia fotográfica del II/269 Regimiento de la División Azul

Juan Chicharro Lamamié - Diario de un antitanquista en la Division Azul

Jesús Dolado Esteban (etc) - Revista de comisario: el cuerpo de Intervención Militar de la División Azul 1941-1944

Arturo Espinosa Poveda - Artillero 2º en la gloriosa Division Azul

Arturo Espinosa Poveda - ¡Teníamos razón! Cuando luchamos contra el comunismo Sovietico

Emilio Esteban-Infantes Martín - Blaue Division: Spaniens freiwillige an der Ostfront

Miguel Ezquerra

Ramiro Garcia de Ledesma - Encrucijada en la nieve: Un servicio de inteligencia desde la Division Azul

José García Hispán - La Guardia Civil en la Division Azul

César Ibáñez Cagna

Gerald R. Kleinfeld & Lewis A. Tambs - Hitler's Spanish Legion: The Blue Division in Russia

Vicente Linares - Más que unas memorias: Hasta Leningrado con la Division Azul

Torcuato Luca de Tena - Embajador en el infierno: Memorias del Capitán de la División Azul Teodoro Palacios

Xavier Moreno Julia - La División Azul: Sangre española en Rusia 1941-45

Juan José Negreira - Voluntarios baleares en la División Azul y Legion Azul (1941-1944)

Ricardo Recio

José Mª Sánchez Diana - Cabeza de Puente: Diario de un soldado de Hitler

John Scurr & Richard Hook - Germany's Spanish Volunteers 1941-45

Luis E. Togores - Muñoz Grandes: Héroe de Marruecos, general de la División Azul

Manuel Vázquez Enciso - Historia postal de la Division Azul

Enrique de la Vega - Arde la Nieve: Un relato historico sobre la Division Azul

Enrique de la Vega Viguera - Rusia no es culpable: Historia de la División Azul

José Viladot Fargas

Diaz de Villegas - La Division Azul en linea.