asian volunteers in wehrmacht

[Panzermahn]

what do u guys think about this? does any book written about asian volunteers in the WEhrmacht and Waffen-SS? this photos are from my friend, Alvin's wbesite in

http://www.geocities.com/alvinlee_81/WarPics1.html


can anyone identified the men in this pictures? My friend Alvin Lee told me that they are Chinese-Turkestanis serving the Turkestan legion of the Wehrmacht? what do u all think?

[Marcus]

Panzermahn,

Try "The East Came West: Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist Volunteers in the German Armed Forces 1941 - 1945" or "Forgotten legions: Obscure combat formations of the Waffen-SS", both by Antonio J. Munoz.

btw. the photos don't show up as Geocities don't allow remotelinking.

/Marcus

[Octavianus]

Ave Panzermann!

During the advance into Austria in 1938 there was among the officers of the Gebirgsjäger Regiment No. 98, a Leutnant Wego Chiang, son of the Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. The regiment was part of the 1. Gebirgs-Division.

In case if you have not been told that yet:-)

So you're from Ipoh, Malaya.... Can a man still see any remaints of the British fasco at the Slim River from January 1942?? ))

Gratia,
Octavianus

[Lehr Division]

not suprisingly after knowing how much germany help china ecnonmically and militaryily.

[sylvieK4]

I heard that the son of Red Chinese leader, Zho Enlai, served in the Heer, as well. Does anyone have more information about that?

[Panzermahn]

Octavianus,

Thanks for your info about the son of Chiang Kai Shek serving in German Army...I don't know about that...What happened to him during WW2..Yeah, the battle of Kampar and Slim River in the state of Perak, Malaysia...was famous because eventhough the Japs suffered higher casualties than the British, the Brits are forced to retreat..

But i don't have any interest in the Asian Theater of WW2...i only prefer the European Theater of WW2 especially Eastern Front..

Do u know any info about Tibetans serving in the Wehrmacht? coz i remember in Cornelius Ryan's book The Last Battle, he mentioned that he was in presence of US Army interrogators who interrogate 2 soldiers in German uniform but couldn't understand their language..Eventually they were sent to Britain and it was finally known that they were Tibetan sheperds who were press-ganged into Red Army and then were captured by the Germans and press gang into the Wehrmacht..

[Panzermahn]

Can anyone identified which unit these Turkestan men are from? i cant see properly their identification especially the 2 men behind and the men on the left

all this pictures are from my friend's Alvin website


http://www.geocities.com/alvinlee_81/WarPics6.html

[Panzermahn]

how about this koreans, chinese and the japanese in the wehrmacht? can anyone identified this men and what is their fate?

all picture are from


http://www.geocities.com/alvinlee_81

[Graf von Dracula]

One Question....

In the second image posted I appreciate that three of thew soldiers do not wear the Geramn eagle on the breastm but wear a substitute emblem that was created to be usea by the Oriental Volunteers (A winged diamond with the swastika inside). But one of the volunteers wears a full german uniform, with the eagle oin the breast.

Anybody knows what's the reason of it.

Thanks for such an interesting topic and best regards!

[Panzermahn]

Graf,

it shows that the Wehrmacht was truly the world's first United Nations Force whether literally or metaphorically..

i am also interested know whether there is south american nationals and south pacific nationals serving in the wehrmacht..

[sylvieK4]

Don't forget the Roman Legions and the armies of Alexander the Great before them. Napoleon did a great deal of absorbing non-French into the French forces, too, and not just as foot soldiers. I believe he had a few non-French "Marshals of France". Armies of Empire.

[sylvieK4]

I posted this question in a similar thread, but I will ask it here too:

As we have seen above, there were apparently men from both China and Japan serving in the German military during the Second World War. This, of course, is interesting, in light of the tensions between China and Japan at the time. Does anyone know if any Chinese and Japanese served side-by-side while in German service?

[Panzermahn]

sorry, but i hope i can answer u that...but i cant..i hope some members of this forum can help us on this subject...

Is Mark Yeager the author of Riding East, Allegeimene-SS, Waffen SS Commanders; Kruger to Zimmermann??

Is there any other famous authors in this Third Reich Forum like Alfred De Zayas, Werner Haupt, Franz Kurowski...etc

[Octavianus]

Ave amici,

>I heard that the son of Red Chinese leader, Zho Enlai, served in >the Heer, as well. Does anyone have more information about >that?

I have never heard of this. Most likely this is just one of numerous rumours that never had any basis to built on. Most likely, and that is my own opinion, which could be wrong, are these people mistaken Zho Enlai's son with Chiang Kai Shek's son, who in fact served in German 1st Mountain Division as Lieutenant during the Occupation of Austria in 1938.
I also have some second doubts the Germans would allow Zho Enlai's son to serve in their armed forces, at least not with the pedigree he had, a father being one of the top Chinese communists. Than again you never know.... I am skeptical about that, but if anyone can provide any additional information on this subject, I would surely be much grateful to him.


Panzermann:
>Do u know any info about Tibetans serving in the Wehrmacht? >coz i remember in Cornelius Ryan's book The Last Battle, he >mentioned that he was in presence of US Army interrogators who >interrogate 2 soldiers in German uniform but couldn't understand >their language..Eventually they were sent to Britain and it was >finally known that they were Tibetan sheperds who were >press-ganged into Red Army and then were captured by the >Germans and press gang into the Wehrmacht.

I personally have never heard about any Tibetians (at least not on a basis of a national unit) in Wehrmacht, but your story here can be true. The problem is that Soviet Union in 1940 was a vaste country, and Stalin and his secret police NKVD made several moves before the war which drastically changed the ethnical map of Soviet Union. For example, many Caucasian tribes from Caucas were re-settled deep into USSR, the Korean minority living along Russo-Korean-Chinese border was re-settled to Siberia, and there you will find today in Irkutsk many people with Polish and Baltic rootes, whose ancestors were either deported there or forcibly re-settled by Stalin regime. This was Stalin's way to secure the borders, as he had a great fear that in case of an enemy attack on his empire the local minorities along the border could collborate with the enemy, what was for example of the main reasons why Koreans living along the Korean (Japanese)-Soviet border were moved inland.

Thus it is theoretically and to be honest also practically possible that a small group of people who had Tibetian rootes find themselves from this or that reason on the territory of Soviet Union in 1941 and were dragged into Soviet armed forces, then captured and finally setting down in German army, only to face the capture by Western Allies. How to check this, to find their names and what was their destiny is beyond me, sorry.

>Can anyone identified which unit these Turkestan men are from? i >cant see properly their identification especially the 2 men behind >and the men on the left all this pictures are from my friend's Alvin >website

I think it is almost impossible to identify whoch unit does this men come from, as there is no distinct sign either this be insignia or any badge which would help us to indetify which unit does this men come from. It is known, however, that the Germans assembled the volunteers from Soviet Central Asia under two names (groups) only: the first group was called the "Caucausians" and as the name already indicates composed of Caucasian volunteers, id est Georgians, Armenians, Chechens, Azerbaijans etc.; and the second group was called the "Turkomans" and was made up of all Asians whose tribes lived from the Volga to the remotest heart of the Asia steppes.

The men we can see on photos belonged to the Turkoman Legion, formed in December 1941, which eventually raised 26 combat battalions. They left for the front in several waves after enjoying some training exercise in Poland during 1941-1944:

The first wave to become operational was:
450th Turkestan Battalion
452nd Turkestan Battalion
Both battalions left Poland in spring 1942.

Second wave was sent to the front in autumn 1942:
781st Turkestan Battalion
782nd Turkestan Battalion
783rd Turkestan battalion
784th Turkestan Battalion
In addition, two battalions of the Georgian Legion, two battalions of the North Caucasian Legion, two battalions of the Azerbaijan Legion and two battalions of the Armenian Legion faced the same destiny.

The third wave left training areas in Poland in spring 1943:
785th Turkestan Battalion
786th Turkestan Battalion
787th Turkestan Battalion
788th Turkestan Battalion
789th Turkestan Battalion
Several other battalions of the Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijan and the Volga Tartar Legion also left for the front.

The fourth wave left for the front in te second half of 1943:
790th Turkestan Battalion
791st Turkestan Battalion
792nd Turkestan Battalion

At the end of 1943 the Kommando der Ostlegionen in Polen was dissolved, having formed 14 Turkestani, 8 Azerbaijani, 7 North Caucasian, 8 Georgian, 9 Armenian and 7 Volga Tartar battalions; altogether some 50,000 troops were sent to the front.

Meanwhile, another large unit of Asiatic volunteers have been formed within the ranks of the German armed forces: The 162nd German Infanterie Division under Generaleleutnant Dr. Niedermeyer, a well known German pre-war expert in Central Asia, was ordered to turn his unit into "Asiatic division".

In May 1943, the well-known 162nd German-Turkoman Infanterie Division was formed, largely made up by Turkoman, but also from other nationalities. The division kept its German headquarters staff and training personnel, while its soldiers were drawn from the former depot battalions of the Ostlegionen. The following battalions were in the course of training when in May 1943 the 162nd Infantry Division was once more transformed into combat formation, ready for front line duties:
Turkestan Legion: I/71, I/79, I/129, I/375, I/113
Armenian Legion: III/73
Georgian Legion: III/9, II/125
Azerbaijani Legion: I/50

Note that the majority of the battalions trained by 162nd Division staff did not receive numbers in the same sequence as those battalions formed in Poland between 1941-1943, but instead the number of a battalion of a German regiment to which the unit was posted.

The division saw some heavy fighting in October Offensive against the partisans in Slovenia and was later transferred to Italy, where it performed numerous anti-partisan activities against Italian partisans in Northern Italy until the end of the war. Apparently at only two occasions they briefly skirmished with American-British troops. Unimpressively, but also too little to give here any more definite rating of their performance against Allied army.

In addition, the Asians also served in the so-called "Boller Brigade", made up of four Reinforced Turkoman Labour Battalions and one depot battalion, totalling some 20,000 men, which performed all kinds of auxiliary duties in the rear.

On one of the photo the three men on the left are wearing, that is if I am not mistaken, a rarely-photographed breast badge which replaced the Hoheitsabzeichen for Eastern troops: a swastika in a diamond supported by stylised wings.

>am also interested know whether there is south american >nationals and south pacific nationals serving in the wehrmacht..

There must have been some nationals from South America that served in Wehrmacht and the Brandenburg Division, but merely as individuals, and a such hard to track down. As far South Pacific nationals are concerned, there were probably some some people who were of mixed origin and that later served in the German army. After WWI, around 20,000 Germans returned from their former colonies, and although a small number of them were allowed to return back after the war, a substantial number of them stayed in Germany. There were some Germans who lived with their Samoan or Guinean wifes in Germany and whose sons most likely have served in German army, but as I said earlier, this were individual cases, and as such are hard to track down. There existed a SAMOAN NATIONALSOCIALIST PARTY opn Samoa Island between January 1934 - April 1939. On 15th January 1934, Mr. Alfred Matthes, a German planter married with a Tongan wife and living in Western Samoa, was authorized to establish a branch of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) there by NSDAP District Leader E.W. Bohle. The branch however had some problems obtaining a racial purity since one member was married to a Jewish woman and two others had Samoan wifes. In September 1939, when New Zealand entered the war, the New Zealand police on the island quickly rounded up the German population and confined it to a Somes Island, a small island in Wellington Harbour that has served its purpose as a POW camp already during World War I, when some Germans from Samoa and even some Turkish war prisoners were kept there.
A document that was found in Germany after the war proved that twelve Western Samoans had an official NSDAP membership card. Ten of them emigrated to New Zealand after the war.

>As we have seen above, there were apparently men from both >China and Japan serving in the German military during the >Second World War. This, of course, is interesting, in light of the >tensions between China and Japan at the time. Does anyone >know if any Chinese and Japanese served side-by-side while in >German service?

I doubt if Chinese and Japanese volunteers (most likely we are talking here about young students or maybe even military cadets from China and Japan or other people from these two countries that found themselves trapped when the war broke up and all lines of communications were in disorder) ever served side-by-side while in German service. As I said, they joined the Wehrmacht merely as individuals, and were as such most likely attached to serve as individuals to various units, like Leutnant Wego Chiang did in the 1. Gebirgs-Division, or served in various propaganda detachments to bolster the morale and as such rarely see any combat action. Even if a Japanese and Chinese volunteer ever met I doubt there was much tension between them, since German army did not tolerate any such conflicts and both men were most likely aware of this, so they rather greeted each other by shaking hands and went on a glass of Schnaps or Bier, than to argue about things that were happening some thousand miles away.

Panzermann:
>What happened to him during WW2..Yeah, the battle of Kampar >and Slim River in the state of Perak, Malaysia...was famous >because eventhough the Japs suffered higher casualties than the >British, the Brits are forced to retreat..

Do you have in Malaysia any good books about this battle? I am especially interested in the first days of the campaign, the Matador operation and the capture of Northern Malaya, Perak, Perlis and Alor Setar. If you have any interesting photos of this campaign and can spare it, I would be very much delighted if you could send me any, despite you not sharing my interest in the Pacific Theatre. Please. I would also asked you if you could look up, that is if you CAN, for any data about Royal Thai Order of Battle for December 1941 (especially which Thai units confronted the Japanese at Singora, Pattani and Prachuap Khirikhan and which faced the British-Indian force when it crossed the Malaya-Thai border in the early moring hours of December 8th 1941), which I am so anxiously looking for almost two years! You living in Malaysia are much closer to Thailand than I have ever been, he-he...

I hope my answers helped you in any way.

Gratia,

Octavianus

[Marcus]

Octavianus,

Thanks for another excellent post.

/Marcus