Dissonance:
On the German side, there was Finland, Hungary, and Rumania as well as the puppet state of Slovakia. Hungary and Rumania both provided the largest armies, but were the least capable. From the beginning of the fighting Rumania performed horribly. During their siege of Odessa in 1941 which lasted 73 days they launched 4 failed attempts to assault the city, suffering 93,000 casualties. To add insult to injury the Soviets were able to evacuate most of their forces by sea, and after their ‘victory’ at Odessa the Romanians had to be pulled from the line for reinforcement, reorganization and retraining.
Bulgaria was also a German ally, but in a rather unique position. They sided with the Axis to invade Greece and Yugoslavia, and made a formal declaration of war against the USA to make Hitler happy, but they never declared war on the USSR. When the Red Army crashed through Rumania and was barreling towards the Bulgarian border Bulgaria made attempts to try to appease the USSR by proclaiming their neutrality and announcing that they were interning any German troops crossing the border. The USSR was having none of that bullshit and demanded that Bulgaria declare war on Germany. To make the point clear, they declared war on Bulgaria. Facing the reality of the situation, Bulgaria quickly surrendered and declared war on Germany.
There were also a lot of volunteers from conquered nations that served with the Germans in the ‘crusade against Bolshevism.’ Spain, while neutral, allowed a volunteer division, the Blue division given the number 250th Infantry by the Germans to be raised to serve on the Eastern Front. Most foreign units eventually wound up under the purview of the Waffen SS, the list of Waffen SS Divisions in Wiki lists the primary makeup of the personnel under Origin. Contrary to popular perception, the SS wasn’t formed primarily from tall, blonde haired blue eyes Aryans. It was in the beginning when it was small, but by the end of the war it had ballooned to ~900,000 men including those of ‘inferior stock’ under Nazi ideology and even those considered untermenschen by their twisted ideology such as Slavic peoples.
More a footnote than anything else, there were even British former POWs who served in the SS as the Britisches Freikorps . The total who served was 59, with a maximum of 27 at any one time. After the war their leader, John Amery plead guilty to high treason and was hung.
Good info. Two other groups of interest:
Spain: never formally at war, Franco sent the “Blue Legion” to fight in Russia-these guys were volunteers. I haven’t ever read about their fate.
I believe that there was a special muslim division in the SS (how this squared with Himmler’s racial stuff I do not understand). Where these guys fought I don’t know.