WWII: The :Other" Belligerents?

[Dissonance]

@ralph124c

Good info. Two other groups of interest:

1. 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.
2. 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.

1. The Blue Legion was formed from the 250th Blue division when Franco ordered the division back home in early 1944. About 3,000 Spaniards refused to go and were formed into the Blue Legion, remaining on the Eastern Front.
2. All the racial nonsense went out the window as the size of the SS expanded. The elite SS panzer and panzergrenadier divisions remained largely German/Germanic, but the foreign divisions, which by the end of the war substantially outnumbered the ‘German’ SS divisions consisted of everything from Estonians to Hungarians to Russians. Remember Slavs were only just above Jews as far as the Nazis were concerned. The ‘Muslim’ division was the Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st_Croatian) was only about 1/2 Bosnian Muslims, the other 1/2 were Croatians. The SS was equal opportunity when it came to raising troops in the Balkans for anti-partisan duty, aside from the 13th Mountain they also raised 21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg (1st Albanian) and 23rd Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Kama (2nd Croatian).