A European Anabasis
Western European Volunteers in the German Army and SS 1940-45
Author : Kenneth Estes
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Details
General - Pages : 210 | Images : 42 b/w photos, 8 maps
Paperback - Date of Publication : 15th May 2019 | Edition : Paperback Reprint | Size : 234mm x 156mm | ISBN : 9781911628354 | Helion Book Code : HEL1029
Hardback - Date of Publication : 15th February 2015 | Size : 234mm x 156mm | ISBN : 9781909384521 | Helion Book Code : HEL0409
eBook - ISBN : 9781912174256
Kenneth Estes studies the 100,000 West Europeans who fought against Russia as volunteers for the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. A retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, Estes shows tremendous knowledge of combat and writes gripping battlefield prose. Two-thirds of the West European volunteers came from Spain and the Netherlands, yet Estes demonstrates wide range and covers also Flemish, Walloon, French, Danish, and Norwegian combat units. Avoiding over-generalization, the author distinguishes carefully among the Danes and Flemings who fought competently with the SS-Wiking Division and later with Nordland, the courageous but poorly-armed Spanish, the ill-trained Dutch and French in Landstorm Nederland and SS-Charlemagne, and the Norwegians who after a first wave of enthusiasm held back altogether. Estes pulverizes the Nazi propaganda notion of a multinational European army defending 'Western civilization' against 'Bolshevism'. He shows that West Europeans, mainly of the urban working classes, volunteered from a mix of motives -adventure-seeking, ideology, hopes of personal advantage or material gain, a desire for better food, or a wish to escape a criminal record at home. He demonstrates that the best-performing foreign legions were trained and led by German officers and formed parts of larger SS units, and also that the Wehrmacht placed little value on foreign formations until its other manpower reserves ran out in 1944-45. This is a landmark work on a subject which has been much written about, but rarely understood or described as perceptively as in the pages of this book.
"There are lots of books about foreign volunteers in the Waffen-SS and not as many about the foreigners in the Wehrmacht. What makes A European Anabasis unusual is that it looks at both categories, and contains a lot of credible military analysis. A European Anabasis remains an essential study to better understand the complicated German use of foreign volunteers from Western Europe, and their actual military/political value." Lars Gyllenhaal Blog