Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler inspecting troops of the 14th Waffen-SS Division "Galicia" (composed of Ukrainian volunteers) in 1943. Many non-German formations fought under German command in WWII, often for reasons other than Nazi ideology.
Introduction
During the Second World War, tens of thousands of non-Germans joined military formations aligned with Nazi Germany. These included units like the 14th Waffen-SS “Galicia” Division (comprised of Ukrainians), the Latvian and Estonian Legions in the Waffen-SS, the regular armies of Axis-aligned states such as the Croatian Home Guard and Slovak army, and even volunteer legions from Western Europe (e.g. Flemish, Walloon, Dutch, Danish, and others). A common misconception is that volunteers from a particular nation—most notably Ukrainians—were uniquely complicit or motivated by Nazi ideology. In reality, foreign recruits served under the German flag for a variety of complex reasons, typically to oppose Soviet domination, safeguard their nation’s identity, or pursue hopes of independence, rather than to support Nazi genocidal aims. This article provides a comparative overview of these formations, examining their motivations, activities, and postwar fates. The evidence shows that *Ukrainians were one among many peoples who made the tragic choice to fight alongside Germany as an “enemy of my enemy” alliance of convenience, and that in most cases there is little or no evidence of these foreign volunteers’ involvement in Holocaust atrocities or ideological crimes. Historical context and Cold War politics heavily shaped their reputations, and understanding this nuance is crucial to inform current debates that often single out Ukrainians without proper context.
The 14th Waffen-SS “Galicia” Division (Ukrainian)
One of the most discussed units is the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Galician), formed in 1943 from Ukrainian volunteers in Galicia (western Ukraine). At the time, Ukraine was caught between two totalitarian powers—Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s USSR—and many Ukrainians saw an opportunity in the German invasion to strike back at the hated Soviet regime. Postwar testimonies and studies show that the predominant motivation for Ukrainian volunteers in the Galician Division was not Nazi ideology, but the hope of eventually forming a core of a Ukrainian national army to achieve an independent Ukraine. The division’s volunteers, mostly young men from Ukrainian Catholic communities, believed that by fighting the Soviet Red Army they were fighting for Ukraine’s future, even if under German command. This outlook was encouraged by Ukrainian nationalist leaders; for example, the underground Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) at times sent people to enlist in the division to acquire training and weapons for the broader anti-Soviet struggle. Many others volunteered simply to escape dire conditions under Soviet and Nazi rule or to avoid conscription into forced labor – especially as the war situation worsened in 1944, some late joiners had “very little interest in the Ukrainian national cause”, seeking instead to improve personal circumstances. In short, for most Ukrainian recruits the aim was to resist Soviet domination and possibly attain statehood, not to promote Nazism.
It is important to note that the Galician Division, though part of the Waffen-SS, was largely engaged in regular combat against Soviet forces and partisan units, not in carrying out the Holocaust. By the time it was formed in 1943, the mass murder of Jews in Ukraine and Poland had mostly been carried out by German Einsatzkommandos and local auxiliary police; the Galician Division itself was deployed to front-line battles (such as Brody in 1944) and anti-Soviet partisan actions. There is little evidence that its rank-and-file were involved in Nazi war crimes or any ideologically driven genocide. Decades after the war, Western governments scrutinized the unit’s record. Notably, a Canadian commission (the Deschênes Inquiry of 1985–87) investigated war criminals in Canada and looked at the Ukrainian Waffen-SS veterans. Its final report concluded that the 14th SS “Galicia” Division as a whole should not be indicted for any collective war crimes – a finding that, while controversial in some circles, underscored that mere membership in the division was not proof of atrocities. Modern scholarship acknowledges some incidents (such as allegations of involvement by elements of the division’s 4th regiment in anti-partisan reprisals in Poland), but no courts have ever convicted any Galician Division member for specific war crimes. In fact, no evidence of the division’s participation in the Holocaust has been documented, and Western officials noted that it was formed well after the last mass shootings of Jews in that region. At the war’s end, approximately 8,000–10,000 Galician Division soldiers surrendered to British forces rather than the Soviets. The British, and later Canadian and UK authorities, vetted these POWs and ultimately decided not to class them as war criminals, allowing them to emigrate. A postwar Allied tribunal (the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg) had even explicitly excepted non-German Waffen-SS conscripts from “criminal organization” charges, provided they hadn’t personally committed crimes. This exception applied to most Ukrainian, Latvian, and other involuntary members of the Waffen-SS.
The postwar fate of the Ukrainian SS men was deeply entwined with Cold War politics. In the Soviet Union, they were denounced wholesale as “traitors” and “Nazi collaborators,” and any who fell into Soviet hands faced execution or gulag. Meanwhile, in the West and among the Ukrainian diaspora (for example, in Canada), veterans of the division largely lived peaceful lives, sometimes even honored in their communities as anti-communist veterans. Soviet propaganda persistently painted the entire unit as a gang of Nazi war criminals, part of a broader effort to discredit Ukrainian aspirations. In reality, as this historical overview shows, Ukrainians in the Galician Division were far from unique – their experience paralleled that of many other European peoples who, for their own reasons, fought under the German flag against the Soviet Union rather than out of devotion to Hitler.
The Baltic Legions: Latvians and Estonians in German Service
Ukrainians were not the only stateless nation that sent soldiers into the Waffen-SS. In the Baltic states, Latvia and Estonia, a very similar dynamic unfolded. These countries had been independent until 1940, when they were forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union. The brutal Soviet occupation of 1940–41 (with mass deportations and killings) was fresh in mind when Germany invaded the USSR and drove the Red Army out of the Baltics in 1941. Although Nazi rule brought its own share of oppression, many Latvians and Estonians considered the return of the Soviets an even greater threat to their nation’s survival. Thus, when Germany later began recruiting local men for its military, significant numbers were reluctantly drawn in—some voluntarily, many via conscription.
In Latvia, the Germans formed the Latvian Legion in 1943, comprising two Waffen-SS divisions (the 15th and 19th). Initially, some Latvians volunteered, but soon the occupying authorities resorted to conscription. Young Latvian men were given stark choices: join the Waffen-SS Legion, serve in German labor units, or be sent to concentration camps. By one estimate, only 15–20% of Latvian Legionnaires were true volunteers – the vast majority were draftees pressed into service. For these men, enlistment was rarely about endorsing Nazi ideology. Rather, they were motivated by a desperate desire to defend their homeland from a second Soviet invasion, or simply coerced by a lack of alternatives. The Latvian Legion fought on the Eastern Front, principally against the Red Army (for example, on the Leningrad front, in Courland, and even in the final Battle of Berlin). Crucially, Latvian Legion units were frontline combat troops and were not implicated in the Holocaust in Latvia, which had mostly occurred in 1941–42 before the Legion’s creation. In fact, the Legion was formed about a year after the last major mass murders of Jews on Latvian soil, and it had no role in running concentration camps. As Latvian historians have pointed out, “Latvian soldiers did not take part in any slaughter of civilians, they fought against the Soviet military… There has never been a court case in which a member of the Latvian Legion was accused of war crimes committed in the context of the Legion.”. This aligns with the postwar Allied view: at Nuremberg, the tribunal declared the SS a criminal organization but explicitly exempted those members who were conscripted and had committed no crimes – a clause that covered the Baltic Waffen-SS draftees.
After the war, Western authorities treated Latvian Legion veterans not as criminals but as displaced persons, and many made new lives in exile. In Soviet Latvia, however, any former Legionnaire faced harsh punishment or exile if caught. To this day, the memory of the Latvian Legion is controversial: Latvians honor them as patriots who resisted the Soviets, whereas Russian officials and some others (repeating Soviet-era rhetoric) accuse them of glorifying Nazism. The historical evidence strongly indicates that Latvian Legionnaires were largely motivated by anti-Soviet sentiment and the hope of preserving Latvia, not by a commitment to Nazi genocide. Indeed, contemporary Russian propaganda attacks on Latvia often recycle the old Soviet claims, ignoring the fact that the Latvian Legion was established as a beleaguered nation’s response to an existential threat rather than as an expression of fascist chauvinism.
Estonia had a parallel experience. The 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Division (1st Estonian) was formed in 1944, built partly from earlier Estonian SS units and draftees. Like in Latvia, the German authorities in Estonia imposed conscription once manpower ran low – thousands of Estonians were mobilized in early 1944 when the Red Army approached the Estonian border. The remarkable aspect in Estonia was the role of the underground Estonian political leadership: even the exiled last Prime Minister, Jüri Uluots, reluctantly encouraged Estonian men to mobilize under German auspices at that late stage, calculating that armed Estonian units might defend the country from the returning Soviets and perhaps form the basis for renewed independence (should Germany falter). This call led to tens of thousands of additional “volunteers” – in truth, men volunteering to protect Estonia from a second Soviet occupation, not to serve Hitler. As a result, the Estonian Waffen-SS division swelled with recruits whose loyalty was to Estonia. They fought ferociously in 1944 (for example, at the Battle of Narva and in the defense of the Tannenberg Line) to stall the Soviet advance.
Postwar developments in Estonian collective memory underscore the true motivations of these soldiers. After decades of Soviet rule (where any Estonian who fought for Germany was vilified as a “fascist traitor”), Estonia’s restored independence in the 1990s brought a reassessment. The official narrative now distinguishes sharply between fighting for Nazi ideology and fighting for one’s nation under desperate circumstances. Estonian Waffen-SS veterans are no longer seen simply as “Nazi collaborators” but are regarded by many Estonians as freedom fighters who “did not fight for Nazi ideology, but fought for Estonian independence and against the return of the Soviet regime.” This view recognizes that most Estonian men in German uniform had no allegiance to Nazism; rather, they were caught in a tragic dilemma between two totalitarian powers. Like their Latvian counterparts, the Estonian SS men were not charged with war crimes by the Allies, and no evidence ties the Estonian division to Holocaust crimes. Their struggle is remembered as a doomed fight for Estonia’s freedom, not Hitler’s cause – a fact acknowledged even in the way modern Estonia commemorates WWII as a “war where Estonians were victims in the hands of two occupying regimes,” and where those who wore either German or Soviet uniforms are mourned equally as pawns of greater powers.
Allies of Convenience: Croatia and Slovakia
Not all foreign formations in the German war effort were part of the Waffen-SS; some were the national armies of countries allied with Germany. Two such cases are the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and the Slovak Republic, both client states of the Third Reich. While the regimes in these countries (led by Ante Pavelić in Croatia and Jozef Tiso in Slovakia) willingly cooperated with Nazi Germany – and indeed implemented some of their own repressive and racist policies – the average soldiers in their armies often had quite different motivations and levels of commitment.
Croatia (NDH): After Hitler dismembered Yugoslavia in April 1941, a puppet Independent State of Croatia was proclaimed by the ultranationalist Ustaša movement. For some Croats, this new state was the realization of a long-held dream of national independence from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. However, the NDH’s alignment with the Axis and its brutal policies (including genocidal persecution of Serbs, Jews, and Roma under the Ustaša) quickly disillusioned large segments of the population. The Croatian Home Guard (Domobranstvo) was the regular army of the NDH, tasked primarily with fighting Tito’s Communist Partisans and defending the state. Many Home Guard soldiers were conscripts or former Yugoslav army personnel. Far from being ideologically zealous Ustaša, they were often unenthusiastic and poorly motivated. Historical analyses note that the Croatian Home Guard “failed to play a significant role during the war” largely due to “poor motivation, frequent desertion, [and] sympathy for the partisans,” as well as rivalry with the Ustaša militia. This indicates that a considerable number of Croatian soldiers did not truly believe in the Axis cause; some covertly aided the Partisans or switched sides when possible. In 1944, entire Home Guard units began defecting to the Partisans, and even high-ranking officers plotted to break with the Germans (the Lorković–Vokić conspiracy).
The split in Croatian loyalties was dramatically illustrated by an event in September 1943: in the town of Villefranche-de-Rouergue in occupied France, a group of Croatian and Bosnian Muslim recruits (forcibly conscripted into the German 13th SS “Handschar” Division) mutinied and attempted to join the French Resistance. They seized weapons, killed several German officers, and declared their intent to fight “for freedom” before the revolt was suppressed. This uprising – significant enough that it was later honored as the first town liberated from Nazi rule in France – shows that even within an SS unit, these conscripts’ sympathies might lie far from Nazi ideals. Many Croatians simply did not want to die for Hitler. By late 1944, as the Partisans gained the upper hand, a large number of Croats concluded their “alliance of convenience” with Germany had run its course, and they sought to save Croatia from ruin by swapping sides or surrendering. In summary, while the Ustaša regime was undeniably a perpetrator of terrible crimes (e.g., the Jasenovac concentration camp where tens of thousands were murdered), the ordinary Croatian soldier’s experience was often one of coercion, disillusionment, and divided loyalties. They had joined the Axis war largely to achieve Croatian statehood and to fight Yugoslav communists, not out of devotion to Nazi racial doctrines. Indeed, many were “appalled by the German-Italian occupation … and by the Ustasha reign of terror,” which led them to join the anti-Fascist resistance in significant numbers. This nuanced reality is often lost when Croatians are simplistically labeled as “Nazi collaborators.”
Slovakia: The Slovak Republic (1939–1945) was another Axis client state, born when Nazi Germany forced Czechoslovakia to break apart. Slovakia under President Jozef Tiso was essentially a one-party fascist state aligned with Hitler, but again, its reasons were rooted in nationalism and anti-communism more than in Nazism per se. Slovaks had long resented Czech dominance in the Czechoslovak federation and yearned for autonomy. Hitler offered Tiso a deal: proclaim independence under German “protection,” or see Slovakia partitioned by its neighbors. Tiso chose the former, resulting in a Slovak state that allied with Germany out of geopolitical necessity and Slovak nationalist aspirations. The new Slovak Army participated in Germany’s campaigns – it joined the invasion of Poland in 1939 and later sent a token force to aid the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. The motivation for these deployments was largely political, aimed at proving loyalty to Hitler to secure Slovakia’s independence and recover disputed territories, as well as ideological in the sense of fighting “godless Communism,” which the Catholic-conservative Tiso regime vehemently opposed. However, the commitment of Slovak troops to the Nazi cause was tenuous. By 1943–44, as Germany faltered, resistance grew within Slovakia. In August 1944, Slovak patriots – including elements of the army – launched the Slovak National Uprising against the pro-Nazi government and the German occupying forces. Although the uprising was crushed, it demonstrated that a large portion of the Slovak population (and military) never fully accepted being Hitler’s pawn, and when the tide turned they attempted to switch sides. Thus, Slovak soldiers who fought alongside the Wehrmacht in 1941 were fighting largely out of obligation and anti-Soviet sentiment; a few years later those same soldiers took up arms against the Germans.
It must be acknowledged that the Slovak government did participate in Nazi crimes to an extent – for example, it collaborated in deporting Slovakia’s Jews to Auschwitz. But these actions were driven by the extremist leadership, not the ordinary draftee in the Slovak Army. The typical Slovak conscript’s experience was marked by ambivalence: loyalty to their new state and Church, fear/hatred of Bolshevism, but also lack of enthusiasm for German domination. Like Croatia, Slovakia was an ally “of convenience” for Germany, and when that convenience wore thin, many Slovaks rebelled. After the war, the Czechoslovak authorities (now communist-dominated) punished many collaborators, but the broader Western historical assessment does not categorize all Slovak soldiers as war criminals. They are seen as a people who, like others in Eastern Europe, were caught between Nazi Germany and the USSR and tried to navigate a path that would preserve their nation – tragically, a path that led some to wear German uniforms.
Western European Volunteers in the Waffen-SS
Beyond Eastern Europe, Nazi Germany also recruited volunteers from Western and Northern Europe. These came from countries that Germany occupied (like France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway) as well as neutral or Axis-allied countries (Spain sent a division to the Wehrmacht; some Swedes and Swiss even volunteered individually). Often organized into national legions or incorporated into Waffen-SS divisions, these volunteers provide yet more evidence that foreign recruitment was a widespread phenomenon and generally driven by the war on Bolshevism rather than the Holocaust.
German propaganda eagerly portrayed these recruits as part of a “European crusade against communism.” After Germany invaded the USSR in 1941, Nazi recruiters in Western Europe emphasized the fight against “Jewish Bolshevism” as a common cause uniting Germans and other Europeans. Posters and propaganda in multiple languages called on Europeans to defend “Christian Europe” from the Red menace. For example, a Dutch Waffen-SS recruiting poster bore the slogan “Europa Ontwaakt!” (“Europe arises!”) and urged Dutchmen to join the SS Standarte ‘Westland’ in battle against Bolshevism. Another in French advertised the “Légion des Volontaires Français contre le Bolchévisme” (Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism). These messages resonated with certain segments of society. Many of the first Western volunteers did come from pre-war fascist or ultra-nationalist movements – for instance, Belgian Rexists, Dutch Nationaal-Socialists, French collaborationists – who were ideologically primed to ally with Hitler. Léon Degrelle, the Belgian Walloon fascist leader, is a case in point: he raised a Walloon volunteer brigade, later joined the Waffen-SS himself, and unabashedly stated that his men shed blood to “guarantee the future of our [Belgian] nation in a rescued Europe,” believing Hitler would reward them with national autonomy. Degrelle was a true believer in Hitler, but such zeal was not typical of all volunteers.
Studies of Western European SS volunteers have found that motives were frequently more pragmatic or personal than ideological. A psychological study of Dutch Waffen-SS recruits found that their primary motivations mirrored those of men who join any military adventures: “adventure, boredom, money, or trouble with family or the law”. Many young men saw joining the German war effort as a way to escape home or gain experiences, especially in the early victorious years. Heinrich Himmler’s chief recruiter, Gottlob Berger, himself admitted, “We will never be able to prevent men from joining who are neither National Socialists nor idealists, and instead take this step for more materialistic reasons.”. This was certainly true for some Western volunteers who had no deep Nazi conviction but found themselves in uniform for more mundane reasons. There was also an element of coercion or social pressure in occupied countries – for example, unemployed former soldiers or police were encouraged to enlist to fight the Soviet “enemy of Europe” when their own national armies were disbanded.
Critically, Western European Waffen-SS units were deployed almost exclusively to the Eastern Front, where they fought the Red Army (and sometimes partisan groups in occupied lands). They were not tasked with running concentration camps or rounding up Jews from their home countries – those tasks were handled by other entities (Gestapo, local militia, etc.). Thus, while some atrocities on the Eastern Front did involve Waffen-SS divisions, the foreign volunteer contingents were usually regular combat troops. There is scant evidence, for instance, that the Flemish or Scandinavian SS volunteers engaged in systematic war crimes. One notable exception was the SS “Wallonien” Brigade under Degrelle, which fought brutally on the Eastern Front (e.g., in the horrific fighting around Cherkassy in Ukraine), but even in that context the brutality was of the conventional war variety, not genocide. By and large, Western volunteers did not participate in the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews – indeed, their presence was sometimes used by German propagandists to claim the Waffen-SS was a “European army” fighting for a common cause, rather than an instrument of racial annihilation.
After the war, most Western European volunteers faced consequences in their home countries for having served the enemy. Some, like French or Belgian volunteers, were tried for treason or had their citizenship revoked (Degrelle, for example, was sentenced to death in absentia in Belgium, though he escaped to Spain). However, these judgments were about the act of collaboration, not specific war crimes. There were virtually no cases of Western European SS men being prosecuted for participation in atrocities against civilians (with a few individual exceptions). This further underscores that their crimes were political (treason), not genocidal. In time, some societies forgave or forgot: e.g., by the 1970s, many former volunteers in Western Europe lived quietly, their wartime choice seen as a regrettable mistake by a minority enticed by extremist ideology or anti-communist fervor. Importantly, Western Europe’s own far-right narratives sometimes tried to rehabilitate these men as anti-communist soldiers – calling them, as postwar apologias did, “crusaders against Bolshevism, even an early NATO”. While that comparison is certainly strained, it highlights again that the framing of their service was opposition to Soviet communism rather than active support for Nazism’s genocidal agenda.
Postwar Legacies and Cold War Politics
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, all of these foreign units and volunteers had to reckon with the victors’ justice and the court of public opinion. How they were treated – and remembered – often depended less on what they had actually done during the war, and more on the geopolitics of the emerging Cold War.
In the Western Allied zones, there was a tendency to differentiate between hardcore Nazi perpetrators and those who had simply been soldiers fighting the Soviets. Western authorities, preoccupied with the new threat of Soviet expansion, were often lenient with the latter group. For example, as noted, the British and Americans did not extradite the Baltic and Galician SS men (considering many of them technically not Soviet citizens or judging them low-risk), and eventually allowed them to resettle. Some ex-volunteers were even quietly utilized in anti-Soviet intelligence and propaganda efforts. The Ukrainian, Baltic, Croatian, and other East European diasporas in countries like Canada, the U.S., the UK, and Australia grew after the war partly because veterans of these units and their families emigrated there. These communities fiercely maintained that their fighters were freedom fighters or patriots who had opposed Soviet domination, not war criminals. In Canada in the 1980s, this tension surfaced during the Deschênes Commission inquiry into war criminals. Soviet-supplied allegations of “thousands of Nazis” hiding in Canada created friction between Jewish groups seeking justice and Eastern European émigré groups defending their wartime record. The commission ended up confirming that yes, some war criminals had entered Canada, but it also dismissed the idea of collective guilt for units like the Ukrainian 14th Division. This finding was later criticized by some, but it echoed the Allied legal approach since Nuremberg – punishing individuals for specific crimes, not entire national units.
Meanwhile, in the Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc, a very different narrative was enforced. The Soviets, as victors and victims of Nazism, understandably harshly punished collaborators. Unfortunately, they did so with a broad brush. In Soviet propaganda and historiography, any person or group that had aligned with the Germans – regardless of motive – was labeled “fascist.” This served a political purpose: it delegitimized any anti-Soviet nationalist cause by tarring it as having been on Hitler’s side. During the Stalin era, thousands of returned POWs (including those who had been Red Army soldiers but surrendered early) were sent to labor camps as “traitors.” Specific ethnic groups were collective targets too – for example, Crimean Tatars and Chechens were deported en masse for alleged collaboration. Soviet publications and education presented World War II (the “Great Patriotic War”) as a saga of heroic Soviet peoples versus the absolute evil of fascism, with no room for nuance about why someone might have worn a German uniform. In Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, the narrative denied that these nations had any legitimate grievances in 1941; instead, those who fought the Soviets with Germany were damned as Nazi accomplices pure and simple. Soviet historians often inflated or fabricated claims to smear these groups – as seen in a 2004 Russian Foreign Ministry memo that repeated Soviet-era falsehoods about the Latvian Legion’s involvement in war crimes. Cold War propaganda made “Nazi collaborator” a potent slur to undermine anti-Soviet dissent. Anyone advocating for Baltic independence or Ukrainian rights could be discredited by pointing to the participation of their countrymen in the Waffen-SS. This tactic was very effective; it fostered a lasting association in the public mind between, say, Ukrainian nationalism and Nazism (an association regrettably resurfacing in some contemporary discourse).
The result is that even today, controversies rage over monuments, memorials, and ceremonies. In Latvia, annual commemorations of the Latvian Legion (on March 16) draw protests and international criticism, with opponents calling it a glorification of Nazism and supporters insisting it honors Latvia’s war dead who fought for their country’s freedom. In Estonia, the government’s stance has been to condemn Nazism while also asserting the right to remember those who fought against the Soviet re-occupation – a delicate balance that Moscow rejects. In Ukraine, the legacy of units like the Galician Division and nationalist partisans (UPA) is hotly debated: within Ukraine and the diaspora, many view them (especially the UPA) as fighters for independence against both Hitler and Stalin, whereas Russian propaganda and some Western commentators focus only on their temporary alliance with Germany. This came to a head with incidents such as the misstep in the Canadian Parliament in 2023, where a Ukrainian-Canadian veteran of the Galician Division was lauded as a hero of Ukraine – prompting outrage once his SS past was publicized. The incident became a propaganda field day for the Kremlin, which used it to reinforce the narrative that Ukrainians today are “Nazi sympathizers.” The deeper context – that this 98-year-old veteran likely saw himself as fighting for Ukraine and had never been charged with any crime – was largely lost in the uproar. Historical nuance often falls victim to political point-scoring.
It bears repeating that foreign volunteers in German units varied widely in ideology and culpability. Some individuals without doubt committed atrocities (for example, members of local police battalions that aided the Nazis, or Ustaša militia executing civilians). Those should be condemned and, if alive, prosecuted. But entire formations like the Latvian Legion or the Ukrainian 14th Division cannot be assumed to be criminal organizations – a point recognized by Allied judges and independent historians. As one Latvian study bluntly put it, “No community can be judged on the basis of what individuals have done.”. Many who fought in German uniform did so with totally different aims and maintained a separation (at least in their own minds) from Nazi ideology and the Holocaust.
Conclusion
The story of foreign volunteers and conscripts in German-aligned units during World War II is a tapestry of tragedies and ironies. Ukrainians, Latvians, Estonians, Croatians, Slovaks, Russians, and even French or Dutch – all found themselves making excruciating choices in an environment where their homelands’ survival seemed to hang in the balance. Ukrainians were emphatically not alone, nor uniquely culpable, in this regard. They were one of many peoples who, faced with the specter of Soviet domination, temporarily aligned with Nazi Germany out of desperation, patriotism, anti-communist ideology, or simply coercion. As we have seen, the 14th Waffen-SS Galician Division’s formation was driven by the hope of Ukrainian independence, much like the Latvian and Estonian Legions were driven by hopes to protect their nations from Stalin. The Croatian Home Guard fought not to implement the Final Solution, but to secure a Croatian state (however flawed) and fight Tito’s Partisans – and many lacked any real commitment to fascism. The Slovak Army marched East primarily to ensure Hitler’s backing of Slovakia’s sovereignty and due to anti-Bolshevik sentiment, not out of hatred for Jews. Vlasov’s Russians turned their guns on their former comrades because Stalin’s regime had brutalized them, and they saw an alliance with Germany as the only escape. Western European volunteers flocked to the Waffen-SS under the banner of a “European crusade against communism,” some dreaming of a new united Europe free of Stalin, others simply seeking adventure.
None of this absolves the Nazi regime, which cynically exploited these aspirations and was ultimately responsible for the war of aggression and genocide. But it does paint a more human – and tragic – picture of those caught in the gears. Most of these foreign units had little or nothing to do with the Holocaust or Nazi genocidal policy, and postwar evaluations often confirmed that (for example, no collective guilt was found for the Ukrainian Division or the Baltic Legions). Their fight was, in their minds, “against Bolshevism” or for national survival, rather than for Nazism. The Cold War further distorted their image: Soviet propaganda cast all of them as monsters to be reviled, whereas Western anti-communists sometimes cast them as saintly freedom fighters. The truth lies in between. They were neither heroes nor demons by default, but individuals in extreme circumstances – some noble, some ignoble, many just trying to stay alive or protect their families.
As policymakers, historians, and the public discuss these sensitive historical issues today, especially in the context of Russian-Ukrainian tensions and information wars, it is vital to apply careful, scholarly nuance. Simplistic labels of “Nazi collaborators” obscure the reality that World War II’s allegiances were not always black-and-white moral choices, especially in Eastern Europe. Each case – be it a Ukrainian SS volunteer, a Latvian conscript, or a Russian ROA soldier – needs to be understood against the backdrop of what they were fighting for (or against). Context does not excuse any war crimes that did occur, but it does explain why they chose the paths they did. Ultimately, placing Ukrainians in the wider panorama of foreign volunteers makes clear that they were part of a broader pattern, not an anomaly. To single out Ukrainians for Waffen-SS service without mentioning Latvians, Estonians, or the 1.2 million Soviets who did the same is not only unfair – it is historically false. A balanced view, grounded in documented evidence, acknowledges the ugly facts of collaboration and the understandable motivations behind it. Only with such a balanced historical perspective can we move beyond propaganda and toward a genuine understanding of how and why these tragic alliances of convenience happened in the Second World War.