Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
During World War II, a total of about 13.6 million volunteers and conscripts served in the German Army. Only 17 months after Adolf Hitler announced the German rearmament programme in 1935, the army reached its projected goal of 36 divisions. During the autumn of 1937, two more corps were formed.
During World War II, the German military had thousands of its members executed, often for the most trivial violations of discipline. [75] In World War I, the German Army had executed only 48 of its soldiers; in World War II between 13,000 and 15,000 German soldiers were executed for violations of military code. [76]
Prior to World War II, the Wehrmacht strove to remain a purely ethnic German force; as such, minorities within and outside of Germany, such as the Czechs in annexed Czechoslovakia, were exempted from military service after Hitler's takeover in 1938. Foreign volunteers were generally not accepted in the German armed forces prior to 1941. [47]
These units were all commanded by General Ernst August Köstring (1876−1953). [9] A lower estimate for the total number of foreign volunteers that served in the entire German armed forces (including the Waffen SS) is 350,000. [10] These units were often under the command of German officers and some published their own propaganda newssheets.
The Reich Labour Service (Reichsarbeitsdienst; RAD) was a major paramilitary organization established in Nazi Germany as an agency to help mitigate the effects of unemployment on the German economy, militarise the workforce and indoctrinate it with Nazi ideology. It was the official state labour service, divided into separate sections for men ...
The SS command of Auschwitz concentration camp refers to those units, commands, and agencies of the German SS which operated and administered during World War II.Due to its large size and key role in the Nazi genocide program, the Auschwitz concentration camp encompassed personnel from several different branches of the SS, some of which held overlapping and shared areas of responsibility.
The Brandenburgers (German: Brandenburger) were members of Nazi Germany's Wehrmacht special forces unit during World War II. [1] Originally, the unit was formed by and operated as an extension of the military's intelligence and counter-espionage organ, the Abwehr. Members of this unit took part in seizing operationally important targets by way ...
It grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions during World War II, serving alongside the Heer (army), while never formally being a part of it. [5] Adolf Hitler did not want the Waffen-SS integrated into either the army or the state police. Instead it was to remain an independent force of military-trained men at the disposal of the Führer ...