The Normandy landing was the key battle of the Second World War, and the British and American Allied countries gathered nearly three million soldiers to cross the English Channel to Normandy, France, and successfully broke the defensive front deployed here by the Nazi German army, and the decline of the Allies with Nazi Germany as the core was more obvious. Many people say that the Allies were able to win the Normandy landings because they adopted the tactics of the sea of men, fighting with several times more troops than the Germans, but in fact, the Normandy landings themselves were a battle without suspense, because the German troops stationed here were not only not superior in number of soldiers, but also far from the quality. Surprisingly, after the battle, the Allies gleefully counted the prisoners of war and found that most of the first Nazi Germans captured were Eastern faces. What's going on? Why were there yellow-skinned Asian soldiers in the ranks of the Nazi German army? What tragic experiences did they have in World War II?
Normandy landings
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Video link: After the Normandy landings, a number of Asian soldiers were found among German prisoners of war, and the biggest scandal of World War II was revealed.
During the Second World War, Nazi Germany not only blatantly waged war, but also trumpeted racial theory, claiming that the Aryan nation to which the Germans belonged was the noblest being in the world, and killing the Jewish people whose appearance and characteristics were completely opposite. Logically, Nazi Germany pays attention to racial hierarchy, looks down on black-haired and yellow-skinned Asians, and will not allow each other to be with themselves, but the fact is that in the Nazi military camps during World War II, there were many Eastern faces that they considered to be "inferior peoples", and the total number even reached 500,000 at the most, and they also had a unified name, that is, Nazi Germany's "Eastern Army", also known as "Eastern Battalion".
Why the Oriental Battalion appeared, in fact, is also the choice of the Nazi German army, the Early World War II Nazi German Army was invincible on the European battlefield, using its own mobile and flexible modern armored units to sweep through many countries, but since the confrontation with the world power Soviet Union, the advantages of the German army have been reduced day by day, the victory and defeat can not be distinguished for a time, the front line is getting longer and longer, and the troops are fighting less and less. This is not a good omen, in order to solve the problem of insufficient troops, to ensure that the combat tasks on both the east and the west can be effectively carried out, the Nazi German army began to recruit soldiers in the East, of course, these people must not be entrusted with heavy responsibilities, or want to make full use of the human resources of other countries, for their own soldiers as a shield.
The Eastern Camp, which is undergoing training
The Normandy landings took place at 6 o'clock on 6 June 1944, which is said to have been deliberately chosen by the Allies and is the longest day of the year. This statement is also possible, after all, there is a battle plan for the beach landings that the Allies have studied for several years, and have also conducted related military exercises before. As early as the winter of 1941, when the German army attacked Moscow, the Soviet leadership began to consult with the front-line commanders of Britain, France and other countries, asking them to find a suitable opportunity as soon as possible to open a second battlefield in Europe and reduce the pressure on themselves. However, at that time, the United States had not yet officially entered the war, and Britain and France and other countries had already suffered the blows of the Nazi German army, and felt that their strength was not good, so they delayed again and again, and the plan was not officially launched. The following year, the United States officially joined the World War II war because of Japan's provocation, but war broke out in the Pacific region and North Africa, and Britain and the United States were too busy to take care of themselves, and once again left the Soviet Union's request behind and concentrated on defending their colonies.
Later, when the war situation finally stabilized, and the urging of the Soviet leadership became more and more urgent every day, the Allies began to concentrate on the opening of a second battlefield. The Allies moved frequently, and the Nazi Germans were naturally not completely unaware, but they mistakenly placed the landing defense in Calais instead of Normandy. Moreover, for the Nazi German army at this time, the problem of insufficient troops was already very obvious, and the two-front operation was difficult to sustain, because the war on the eastern front was tight, and the war situation was more important, so the German leaders who could only take care of one end focused all their attention on the eastern front, the materials and reinforcements were sent to the east, and the troops guarding the western front battlefield could not be divided at all, and could only ask for more blessings. There was no way, the German army in charge of the defense of the western front could only do everything possible to replenish the troops, and the Eastern Army came into being.
German leadership
The person who organized this legion was the famous "Desert Fox" Rommel, who was a famous general emerging from Nazi Germany during the Second World War, but this excellent military man did not keep his brilliant record, and after the poor operation in the North African battlefield, he was promoted to field marshal by Marshal Hitler with a mustache, and also received a freshly baked combat task - responsible for the acceptance of coastal defense projects on the Western Front. It seems that he has been promoted and received a light errand that is about to be completed, but those who know the situation behind it know that Hitler is dissatisfied with Rommel, and he has been demoted to the battlefield of the Western Front.
Moreover, the management of the defense project in the western front is not an easy task, because there are no sufficient resources and manpower, the defense project here is very good, only a few kilometers is a fortress, and there is no crossfire point between each other, which makes Rommel very headache. Rommel mobilized his soldiers to cut wood in the local forest, barely built some fortifications on the beach, and then began to solve the problem of insufficient troops. He recruited surrendered soldiers from the camps, including captured Soviet soldiers and volunteers from countries such as Mongolia, Korea, and India, who formed an army that was the predecessor of the Eastern Battalion. Rommel knew that these men had neither a fighting belief nor combat experience, so he pulled them together and built fortifications, which was equivalent to a different kind of laborer.
The Germans trained the soldiers of the Eastern Battalion
However, Rommel's approach quickly spread among the Nazi German army, seeing that the situation on the battlefield was becoming more and more chaotic, and its own army was quickly dispersed after entering the vast Territory of the Soviet Union, the Nazi German army realized the need to add some "cannon fodder", so it began to add foreign personnel to the German armed forces, and the Eastern Army officially appeared. The Nazi German Army's Eastern Legion consisted of the following categories: the largest category was prisoners of war, which were the most popular among the Soviets, partly because many people could not bear the torture of hunger and disease in the prisoner-of-war camps and chose to surrender, on the other hand, because the Soviet Union at that time greatly despised the existence of prisoners of war, believing that once captured by the enemy army, they should immediately end their lives and serve their country, otherwise they were traitors to the country, and even if they fled back to the Soviet Union, they would face punishment. Under the pressure of this environment, many Soviet prisoners of war chose to cooperate with their former enemies, the Nazi German army.
There is also a category of people who are dissatisfied with the Soviet Union, Britain and the United States and other Allied countries, including Ukraine, Belarus and some countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus, who believe that they were forced to participate in the Second World War, that the Soviet Union and other countries invaded their own territories, that they were eager to achieve national independence, and that the fighting between Germany and the Soviet Union gave them hope, because they also voluntarily joined the army of Nazi Germany. For example, after landing in Normandy, the U.S. army once found a Korean in the German prisoners of war, and his original army was sent by Japan to support Germany, because the Korean Peninsula during World War II was a Japanese colony, so there were many Koreans and Koreans in the Japanese army, and finally they entered the Eastern Army of the Nazi German Army by mistake, and they have been following the tide.
Army of the East
All in all, the personnel structure of the Eastern Legion is very complex, the motivations for joining are also different, the Nazi Wehrmacht created it, but did not reuse it, there is no clear specific military establishment here, and all soldiers have only a general title: members of the Eastern Battalion. They were engaged in a variety of guard duties, doing construction, machinery, logistics, transportation, burial of corpses, and so on, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, but most of the time they were auxiliary forces in the Nazi Wehrmacht.
In fact, in the beginning, the Germans also gave the Eastern Legion a chance to perform, after all, there were some aspirants among them, but unfortunately there were too few useful and useless, and the Germans overestimated the ability of the Eastern Battalion. In July 1943, the Eastern Battalion was sent to the front for the first time to serve as a patrol of the outer defense line, but before they could fight, they escaped and collapsed without a fight, causing the Nazi German army to lose the opportunity to fight and finally return in defeat. Hitler, as the supreme commander of the army, was furious and expressed why he had to form so many useless Eastern armies, ordered the disarming of all the Eastern battalions and sent them all to Europe for hard labor.
Soldiers of the Eastern Legion
However, in the end, they were persuaded by their subordinates, who said that the hasty disarming of so many armed forces might cause a backlash, and now that the troops are insufficient, even if they are transferred to the rear to perform simple tasks, they can also reduce the combat pressure of the regular troops. Hitler felt that this was also reasonable, so he divided the Army Corps into two, part of which was transferred to the Western Front for defensive tasks and fortifications, and partly to Italy and other areas to clean up the battlefield. It can be said that although the number of the Eastern Legion was huge, it did not actually bring much help to the Nazi German army.
The soldiers of the Eastern Battalion on the Western Front were captured by the Allies after the Normandy landings, and what awaited them was not a good outcome, after all, for the Soviet Union they were traitors to the state, and they had to be severely punished, most of them were executed, and a small number were sentenced to prison terms, and sent to Siberia or other difficult areas for heavy labor reform.