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The Armenian Legion (Template:Lang-de) was the name given to the 812th Armenian Battalion which was a foreign unit comprised of several thousand men. It was conscripted into the German Wehrmacht during World War II.

Background

In general, majority of Armenians fought against Nazis during the World War II, as part of the Soviet army. However, some Berlin-based representatives of the ARF Dashnaktsutiun, though repudiated by the official party organs, made an agreement with the Nazis in 1942 to support the Germans against the Soviet Union .

General Drastamat (Dro) Kananyan (a one-time leader of the independent Armenia ) and Garegin Njdeh, who escaped to the U.S. after World War I came back to Europe and created the Armenian legion, which counted 200,000 people and fought on the Eastern front. The legion was trained by the SS officers and participated in the Nazi occupation of the Crimean Peninsula and the Caucasus .

The declaration made by Alfred Rosenberg of the Armenians being an Indo-European people came simultaneously with the conscription of the Armenians in Turkey, the Soviet Union and Western Europe, to destroy Turkey and the Soviet Union. The vision of an independent Armenia was revived. The expected prize was an Armenian state (in an expected new order) in a new world created by the Nazi-Germany .

Size

Leaders Kanayan and Garegin Njdeh counted the support of over 200,000 Armenians, the West German archives indicate that almost 18,000 Armenians were serving in the German armed forces during the war. The majority of these soldiers were former Soviet Red Army POWs, forced to fight for German forces rather than on their own choosing (See Ost battalions for more information). Besides the veterans of Armenian detachment units, who escaped to USA at the end of Armenian Genocide, came back to Europe to form the Armenian Legion. The battalion was lead by Armenian Drastamat "Dro" Kanayan. The legion was stationed in Axis-occupied Holland for a large duration of the war.

The long-termed struggle for liberation of Caucasus and the Caucasian people was addressed by the establishment of the Free Caucasus movement, which had been personally suggested and approved by Adolf Hitler.

Activities

Many Jewish soldiers serving in the Red Army and captured as POWs were saved by some of the Armenians in the Legion. Josef Moisevich Kogan, himself a Jewish Red Army soldier captured by German forces, noted the help he received by an Armenian doctor in the 812th when he was snuck into the battalion itself and later escaped with the help of Dutch underground resistance members. Other instances included Jews being sent inside the battlation to evade detection by the Nazis. Hans Houterman reported that a battalion in Holland where the legion was stationed revolted.

At the end of the war, remaining members in the battalion surrendered to the oncoming Western Allied forces. If not detained by them, they were turned over to Soviet authorities who, under an order enacted by Soviet leader Josef Stalin, were sent to Gulag camps in Siberia as punishment for surrendering to Axis forces and "allowing themselves to be captured"; a fate suffered by nearly all of the former Soviet prisoners of the war.

Perspective

Nazi Germany's leader at the time, Adolf Hitler, expressed his doubts on the Armenian and other Soviet battalions; remarking: "I don't know about these Georgians. They do not belong to the Turkic peoples...I consider only the Muslims to be reliable....All others I deem unreliable. For the time being I consider the formation of these battalions of purely Caucasian peoples very risky, while I don't see any danger in the establishment of purely Muslim units....In spite of all declarations from Rosenberg and the military, I don't trust the Armenians either". American historian Alexander Dallin notes that Armenian and Georgian battalions were later sent to the Netherlands as a result of Hitler's distrust for them, many of which deserted.

See also

• Armenian battalions

References

1. ^ R. G. Suny. "Soviet Armenia" in R. G. Hovannisian, The Armenian people from ancient to modern times, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 366-367, ISBN 0312101686
2. ^ Y. Auron. The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide, Transaction Publishers, p. 238, ISBN 076580834X
3. Auron. The Banality of Denial, p. 238
4. Ibid. p. 262
5. Yair Auron "The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide" page 238
6. Walker, Christopher J. Armenia: The Survival of a Nation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990 p. 357
7. - Freiwillige vom Kaukasus. A. Jeloschek, F. Richter, E. Schutte, J. Semler, L. S. Verlag, Graz-Stuttgart, 2003.
8. Auron. The Banality Of Denial. p. 262
9. Ibid. p.263
10. Houterman, Hans: Eastern Troops in Zeeland, Netherlands, 1943-1944. Bayside, NY: Axis Europa Books, 1997
11. Auron The Banality Of Denial. p. 263.
12. Dallin, Alexander. German Rule in Russia: 1941-1945. Octagon Books: 1990.

• Foreign volunteer units of the Wehrmacht
• Military of Armenia