Reverse Vlasov Army after Stalingrad

Hmmm, just watched an episode of APOCALPYSE on nat-Geo- covering the 1942-43 period- incl Stalingrad, where it was commented that von Paulus & many of his 6th Army soldiers who'd surrendered at Stalingrad were embittered with hitler for not adequately supporting em, which led to their defeat, & they just wanted to go home. Now, is there any way that, instead of OTL shipping these defeated foes to Siberia, Stalin could've capitalised on such anti-Hitler sentiments by forming his own version of a German liberation army, with von paulus as its CO- thereby mirroring the Nazis' formation of RONA under Andrei Vlasov ?
 
To a limited extent, they did this historically. There were the so-called 'Seydlitz-Truppen' (Seydlitz-troops), named after General Walther von Seydlitz-Kurzbach, who offered to the Soviets to raise a German anti-Hitler army. Althought this offer was at first turned down by the Soviets, some of these troops were indeed raised and fought near the very end of the war against the troops of Nazi Germany. This Wikipedia article on the National Committee for a Free Germany
(Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland) claims that they used German uniforms and tried to pretend to be regular German troops.
 
if Stalin could ignore some of his paranoia he might try it but i doubt it could work. the socialists and communists of Germany had been driven far far underground the previous 10 years and there just weren't many of them in the army even in the rank and file. they might not like hiter, they might not like how he ran the war effort and want him out of power... but to take up arms against your fellow countryman is not in the German mindset they are just far too orderly for civil war.
 
if Stalin could ignore some of his paranoia he might try it but i doubt it could work.
Up to mid-1944 USSR lacked what was by far the biggest area of employment for Russian collaborationist units on German service - occupied foreign territory, where collabortionist troops could be used to maintain orders (Vlasovites didn't enter frontline service until mid-1984). And even after Summer of 1944 it would be extremely unwise to use some kind of collabortionist German force to maintain order in, let's say, Poland or Bulgaria. So, there's just no market to employ armed German units on Soviet side of the Eastern Front. Speaking about hiwi (volunteer unarmed helpers), there's very little research in this area, but Soviet war memoirs are sprinkled with references to German PoWs working as equipment maintenance specialists in air force, tank units, artillery, and other areas where services of good techns were in demand. Most likely, there were thousands of them.

On the flip side, Soviet Union did have a huge workforce problem in economic and infrastructure recovery, and that's where thousands of POWs were employed. And, condition-wise, it ranged from pretty tough POW camps to more or less "labour army" setups, when German lived in unguarded barracks and worked in construction, lumber industry and stuff like this under command of their own officers.
 
An actual army is a good idea fro Propaganda but in real life it's unwise and unpredictable as the RLA showed in the last days of the war in Europe.

However sprinkling collaborationist troops into the regular army might work.
 
Up to mid-1944 USSR lacked what was by far the biggest area of employment for Russian collaborationist units on German service - occupied foreign territory, where collabortionist troops could be used to maintain orders (Vlasovites didn't enter frontline service until mid-1984). And even after Summer of 1944 it would be extremely unwise to use some kind of collabortionist German force to maintain order in, let's say, Poland or Bulgaria. So, there's just no market to employ armed German units on Soviet side of the Eastern Front. Speaking about hiwi (volunteer unarmed helpers), there's very little research in this area, but Soviet war memoirs are sprinkled with references to German PoWs working as equipment maintenance specialists in air force, tank units, artillery, and other areas where services of good techns were in demand. Most likely, there were thousands of them.

On the flip side, Soviet Union did have a huge workforce problem in economic and infrastructure recovery, and that's where thousands of POWs were employed. And, condition-wise, it ranged from pretty tough POW camps to more or less "labour army" setups, when German lived in unguarded barracks and worked in construction, lumber industry and stuff like this under command of their own officers.

Damn, I knew my history books were wrong. WWII really lasted a long time. ;)
 
Well i pity the troops that would fight in the collaboration army. The Soviets would probably use them as suicide units. If you look at the other nations that joined the soviets when Germany was losing it seems that the military actions they were giving were pointless and just for having them bleed as much as possible.
 
If you look at the other nations that joined the soviets when Germany was losing it seems that the military actions they were giving were pointless and just for having them bleed as much as possible.
Well, Soviet vets always had opposite opinion. Most of them believed that majority of Eastern European units were "show troops", kept on quieter stretches of frontline and generally spared most dangerous assignments, which were left for regular Soviet troops. I'd say that truth is, most likely, somewhere in the middle. Sometimes it made more sense to use those foreign guys as political propaganda tool, as opposed to actual fighting force, sometimes they were given assignments as dangerous and deadly as Red Army. However, I believe there were very few occasions when those troops were given suicidal missions to spare Red Army units.

BTW, despite all this Polish-Baltic brouhaha of today, both Poles and Latvians did fight well and honourably aganist Nazi hordes (it was particularly complicated for Latvians, as the nation gave almost equal number of fighting men to both Nazi and Red Army, so, from time to time, it was like a civil war between Red Latvian regiments and Latvian Waffen SS units).
 
Well, Soviet vets always had opposite opinion. Most of them believed that majority of Eastern European units were "show troops", kept on quieter stretches of frontline and generally spared most dangerous assignments, which were left for regular Soviet troops. I'd say that truth is, most likely, somewhere in the middle. Sometimes it made more sense to use those foreign guys as political propaganda tool, as opposed to actual fighting force, sometimes they were given assignments as dangerous and deadly as Red Army. However, I believe there were very few occasions when those troops were given suicidal missions to spare Red Army units.
Maybe, your probably right eastern front isnt really my area of knowledge, but Finland did have to fight Germany while demobilizing at the same time, and i read that Romania and Bulgaria had to send their troops on probably not suicidal but pointless missions just so that after the war there is less resistance to soviet rule.
 
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