WI: Hitler Arms Captured Soviet POWs

76154.jpg


In the first few months of Operation Barbarossa, the German Heer were able to inflict devastating encirclements upon Red Army.
I believe the Kiev pocket alone resulted in approx. 600,000 red army soldiers captured.

That being said, the Nazi's, who saw them as sub-human Slavs, ended up starving the majority of them during the implementation of the Hunger Plan.

But what if German officials decided instead to arm them as a White Russian army reborn?

Note, I know they actually did this IOTL in 1943-1944 but by then the war was already lost.

Say they did this after the first bunch of encirclements in 1941 and continued to do so up to Operation Typhoon (Battle of Moscow).

What would be the short-term/long-term effects? Was mass re-armament of soviet pows even possible?
 
Last edited:
Early on in 1941 & much of 1942 there is the same underlying problem of logistics. Even with captured material Germany was unable to supply its ground forces deep inside Russia & Urkraine. Rapid conversion of former Soviet soldiers is not practical. A few small demonstration units could be formed, but until the summer of 1942 ther is no advantage. Even then the pay off is small. ie: It prove impossible to refit the entire Wehrmacht in the east & only Army Group South was brought to full strength. The other two AG remained at roughly 2/3 of their starting combat power.
 
Aside from the logistical problems, this requires Nazis who are not Nazis. Why would they do this? They're winning. "Haha, the Slavic Communist Untermenschen are being vanquished by the glorious Aryan Herrenvolk! Look at how many of them were so easily captured! Surely we'll be in Moscow any day now and the whole rotten structure will collapse, leading to the creation of an eternal German Realm with its eastern border on the Ural! Didn't we always know the Judeo-Bolshevik Russians could never hope to stand up to us?" Killing all Russians was the primary goal of the Nazi state, enlisting them in the army is just a waste of time from that point of view: they'll be dead soon enough.

As you pointed out, they only started doing this seriously when they started losing, and the idea of Lebensraum in the east started seem to like just a dream instead of an imminent reality.
 
Osttruppen

Was there not "Ost Troops" in Normandy?

I recall seeing a picture of 'Korean' soldiers 'captured' on D-Day

They had been captured and pressed into service by the Japanese Army, then captured and pressed into service by the Russian Army, Captured again by the German Army only to be Captured by the Americans (Basically they didn't really fight).

Google fu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostlegionen
 
Was there not "Ost Troops" in Normandy?

I recall seeing a picture of 'Korean' soldiers 'captured' on D-Day

They had been captured and pressed into service by the Japanese Army, then captured and pressed into service by the Russian Army, Captured again by the German Army only to be Captured by the Americans (Basically they didn't really fight).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostlegionen

Of course the army, heck even the SS conscripted Ost troops for various things including combat.

One of the recient trials dealt with a Red Army soldier conscripted into being an SS camp guard.

Making it policy to do it on a much larger scale would require a leadership not so drunk on victory disease as it was in 41 and 42.
 
Aside from the logistical problems, this requires Nazis who are not Nazis. Why would they do this? They're winning. "Haha, the Slavic Communist Untermenschen are being vanquished by the glorious Aryan Herrenvolk! Look at how many of them were so easily captured! Surely we'll be in Moscow any day now and the whole rotten structure will collapse, leading to the creation of an eternal German Realm with its eastern border on the Ural! Didn't we always know the Judeo-Bolshevik Russians could never hope to stand up to us?" Killing all Russians was the primary goal of the Nazi state, enlisting them in the army is just a waste of time from that point of view: they'll be dead soon enough.

As you pointed out, they only started doing this seriously when they started losing, and the idea of Lebensraum in the east started seem to like just a dream instead of an imminent reality.

Exactly. Nazi's who arm Soviet POW's and use them as some kind of White Army 2: Electric Boogaloo are not OTL's Nazi's, having them do this would not be in their character. On top of that, why the hell would the POW's comply? I'd imagine they'd smile, nod, accept the weapons, shoot their captors, and either head for the Soviet lines or get the hell out of dodge. What reason would they have to fight for the country that captured them in the first place?
 
Exactly. Nazi's who arm Soviet POW's and use them as some kind of White Army 2: Electric Boogaloo are not OTL's Nazi's, having them do this would not be in their character. On top of that, why the hell would the POW's comply? I'd imagine they'd smile, nod, accept the weapons, shoot their captors, and either head for the Soviet lines or get the hell out of dodge. What reason would they have to fight for the country that captured them in the first place?
There were actually Ostruppen, but they were notoriously unreliable. Often they did desert, revolt, or go on a looting spree against the locals. Keep in mind that the Russian Liberation Army revolted in Prague at the end of the war.
 
There were actually Ostruppen, but they were notoriously unreliable. Often they did desert, revolt, or go on a looting spree against the locals. Keep in mind that the Russian Liberation Army revolted in Prague at the end of the war.

As I understand it, the Ostruppen were a mix of conscripts and volunteers from the zones occupied by the Wehrmacht, and there's a big difference between that and rearming the men you've just captured and ordering them to fight against their countrymen. The Russian Liberation Army is a good baseline, they saw three days of combat at the very end of the war, retreated, and then revolted at their first opportunity, and that army had a decent mix of White Russian emigres to balance out the POW's.
 
As I understand it, the Ostruppen were a mix of conscripts and volunteers from the zones occupied by the Wehrmacht, and there's a big difference between that and rearming the men you've just captured and ordering them to fight against their countrymen. The Russian Liberation Army is a good baseline, they saw three days of combat at the very end of the war, retreated, and then revolted at their first opportunity, and that army had a decent mix of White Russian emigres to balance out the POW's.
The Ostruppen were both from the occupied zones and the POW camps. For instance the Armenian Legion was recruited from the camps. Keep in mind that for the POWs the choice was essentially join or die, since the German treated captured Soviets so badly that 57% of all those captured (and the percentage is much higher if we look just at those captured in 1941) died. In addition POWs were also used at the death camps to herd Jews into the gas chambers or guard slave laborers.
 
It is an interesting idea to arm soviet pows.
Hard to see the National socialist doing it.
To do it Germany would need to limit its advances in the first year to give some chance for the logists to be able to feed and arm the pows.
They would have need to plan in advance for this and have much better logistics.
A more limited German advance might have given the Germans a better chance of keeping their own army supplied too.
Given how badly equiped german allies like the Rumanian's were it is hard to see the german being able to turn over much equipment to soviet Pows.
The German army itself needed to used a lot of captured arms .
 
Last edited:
Recruiting from Red Army PoW started on a very very small scale in 1941. Mostly for intelligence purposes. In 1942 there was a bit more, expanding to translators & "Helpers" attached to the German combat units. Larger scale establishment of units of former Red Army soldiers came in 1943. This paralled earlier efforts at units like the French Charlemagne Division, or Belgian, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish regiments. The proliferation of all these & other SS formations paralled the shift to a full war economy & resolving a few of the worst logistics problems.
 

shiftygiant

Gone Fishin'
I feel strange for reading this as What If a pair of sentient Arms working for Hitler captured Soviets.

Hitler sent a lot of captured/volunteer troops West, hence Czech, Georgian and a few Soviet Soldiers being fought during the battle to reclaim France and the lowlands. Him being paranoid about them turning and stabbing him in the back I guess. It's not impossible, it's just Hitler was waging war of annihilation against the Slavs.
 
Some people might say, "Well, how do you feed all these people" but feeding 1,000,000 extra Europeans for a year isn't going to sink Germany. They were able to feed the rest of Europe, and let's be honest, the starving our of Jews and such was a policy of intentional genocide in the beginning, not the result of imminent mega crisis, though indeed a crisis was brewing. After all, employing a million Russians to fight keeps half a million German men in the farms and factories, so ultimately food and production is not the issue.

The main issue, as others have pointed out, why not rather arm Germans instead of Russians. They are more reliable. Plus, the whole victory disease thing.


One thing I can imagine is if we have ASB "unstupid" Nazis, is if they thought they were doing really well, they might intentionally raise up a "White Russian Army" as a means of hunting down Communists and causing problems in Siberia. So, victory disease might have led to serious plans to use these Russians so that way some Germans can really "be home for Christmas" when Germany "wins the war" before the winter.

Then, with the disaster in the winter, all of the sudden the Germans have this relatively large contingent of soldiers which they will need for entirely different reasons.

The result is that they are used as Ostlioggen were OTL. That means, static fortress troops in the west, fighting partisans, and the like. It frees up quite a bit of Germans to fight in Russia, and there would be earlier Waffen SS conscription of Ukrainians and such.

So, obviously it is not a war winner (the moment the US enters Germany loses, if the US never enters Germany wins). However, it would essentially give Germany a net gain of half a million men over the course of the war. So, it buys them maybe six months, long enough for A-bombs to drop.

THe most interesting butterfly is that it totally changes the German occupation of the East. It is not necessarily going to be less cruel. Russians can be very adept at being excessively cruel to other Russians and ethnic Slavs in the USSR. However, German policy would likely be much more political, with the purposeful balancing of Kulaks and such with the WHite Russian army behind them versus everyone else. Then, when the Red Army comes back, like Ukraine there will be a good deal of the USSR fighting their own partisans behind enemy lines.
 
What reason would they have to fight for the country that captured them in the first place?

I suppose for the money. Being a mercenary is hardly anything new, and conscripting men from captured territories that don't like you isn't new either. The read army conscripted over a million Ukrainians and Balts that hated the Russians more than the Germans and forced them into the fight simply because they can.

So, if you got a bunch of POWs and you give them the option in 41, instead of 43-44 when the war was lost, of join and eat or not join and starve, you will get a good amount to join and they would adequately fill the roll of fortress troops, cooks, occupation forces, and holocaust collaborators.
 
I imagine it will turn into a hideous debacle when most of them revolt at the first opportunity, desert on mass, or become bandits behind the lines. It's not like they have a good record with these kinds of conscripted eastern forces.
 
I suppose for the money. Being a mercenary is hardly anything new, and conscripting men from captured territories that don't like you isn't new either. The read army conscripted over a million Ukrainians and Balts that hated the Russians more than the Germans and forced them into the fight simply because they can.

So, if you got a bunch of POWs and you give them the option in 41, instead of 43-44 when the war was lost, of join and eat or not join and starve, you will get a good amount to join and they would adequately fill the roll of fortress troops, cooks, occupation forces, and holocaust collaborators.
Except units that were recruited in 1941 and 1942 (such as the Kaminski Brigade, the Druhzina Brigade, and the Armenian Legion) did fairly poorly. They were poorly motivated, undisciplined, and didn't fight well.
 
Last edited:
Stalin's War Against His Own Troops
The Tragic Fate of Soviet Prisoners of War in German Captivity

By Yuri Teplyakov

http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/Teplyakov.html
The site you linked to (the Institute of Historical Review) denies the Holocaust. In addition this is inaccurate. Hitler had no intention of treating Soviet POWs well. In fact, as part of the Hunger Plan, the Nazis planned to starve the Soviet prisoners to death. They also built giant camps that were little more than open fields, and let prisoners die in the elements. And that's not even getting into all of the Soviet POWs who were gassed (in fact Zyklon B was first tested on Soviet POWs).
 
Except units that were recruited in 1941 and 1942 (such as the Kaminski Brigade, the Druhzina Brigade, and the Armenian Legion) did fairly poorly. They were poorly motivated, undisciplined, and didn't fight well.

I wasn't arguing that these men would be crack, front line troops. I said they would fill the role of warm bodies as fortress troops, partisan fighters, cooks, and the like.
 
Why?

The assumption seems to be that the German invasion was to replace the Russian Bolshevik State with a Russian non Bolshevik state. It was not it was to annex large parts of Russia to the German State to provide the lebensraum needed to secure the future of the German Race. This requires the elimination of the majority of the urban population, of the Ukraine in particular.

Up until winter 41 things appear to be going well and as said the German logs requirements are such that feeding the POW is not feasible. Seriously as soon as the front stabilises and Germans eat out the local foodstocks they start experiencing hunger, pushing food in for millions of POW just stops the advance.

The earliest point at which Germany would realistically consider arming Russian POW would be winter 41/42. By January 2.8 million Russian POW are dead of starvation, exposure, execution. There are no POW to recruit.


As it was its not until after Stalingrad that there were serious organised attempts to recruit soldiers at a national level. The HiWi’s are recruited locally into units much earlier doing the cooking and trench digging (1/6 of 6th army at Stalingrad were HiWi according to some estimates) and Schutzmannschaft were organised from summer 41 as police/rear area troops.

But this is local and semi armed and at least initially from the Baltic states rather than Russian ( or white Russian or Ukrainian). Even the later Ost Batallion tended to recruited in larger numbers from soviet minority groups, but apart from the Baltic states these are not really reached until 42.


Some fought quite heroically 2nd Russian SS Grenadier Division for example ok they fought so well they were renamed 13th demi Brigade of the Legion Etrangere but it counts.
 
Top