Wehrmacht soldiers in other wars...

[Mannet]

There is quite a lot about ex-Waffen SS / Wehrmacht soldiers that were in French Foreign Legion in Indochina, but fought they also during other confliclts, like Algerian or Suesian crisis ?

[Tinhat]

Egypt employed an number of German after the war for a number of reasons including combat veterans.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/sund ... r-die.html

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Mannet,

Apparently according to Bernard Fall in Street without Joy: Indochina at War, 1946-54. (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole. 1961), there were not very many ex-Waffen-SS in the French Foreign Legion.

Cheers,

Sid.

[CC2986]

Many years ago (early 80's) I was in a bar in southern Germany with some friends and met some veterans of the Wiking division and had a few beers with them. They all carried a badge or ribbon with the division name on it and most of them had served long careers in the Foreign Legion after ww2.

[Hans1906]

Here the "Nachlass" from a former german member of the "Fremdenlegion" in the 1950s.

Frankreich, Nachlass Fremdenlegion Orden, Ausweis, ca. 100 Fotos
Link: https://www.kpemig.de/Frankreich-Nachla ... -100-Fotos

Maybe helpful for your query.


Hans

[sandeepmukherjee196]

theres a very gtood book on a unit in the french indo china war(vietnam) who was mostly formed from ss and fj soldiers very very good book so good in fact i cant remember the name!!!
when i remember il post the name!

There is a very long, predictable and outlandish account too .. of a make believe German unit in Vietnam, serving with the French.. Gory and corny.

Cheers
Sandeep

[sandeepmukherjee196]

Hello,

concerning the topic of former Wehrmacht and Axis soldiers who joined the armed forces of other countries after World War II, I remembered the book from the German author Hartmut Schauer “US Green Berets - Soldaten aus dem Dunkel” which was published in the Motorbuchverlag in Stuttgart in 2000.
In his book Schauer mentioned the story of a former Wehrmacht tanker of the Panzerregiment 33/ 9th Panzerdivision who later became a Staff Sergeant of the US Army Special Forces (“Green Berets”).

Martin Urich – From the Panzertruppe to the Green Berets

Martin Urich was a so called Volksdeutscher whose family had originally came from the South-German region of Swabia and had settled in Yugoslavia, which was at that time part of the Austrian-Hungarian Danube monarchy.

In 1941 Martin Urich came to Vienna via Croatia and was drafted for service in the Wehrmacht. Due to his rather short stature the doctor proposed service in the Panzertruppe. At the first of July 1941 he got his draft-papers for Panzer-Ersatz-Abteilung 4 where he was trained as a tank-gunner. In may 1942 he was send to Panzerregiment 33 where he served in the beginning of his service there in the Pionierzug of the II. Abteilung of Panzerregiment 33. After his promotion to the rank of a private, he served as a loader (Ladeschütze) in the command tank of Abteilungskommandeur Major Gerhard Willing, who in 1943 lead the heavy tank battalion 506 which was equipped with Tiger and King Tiger tanks.

Urich fought with his unit in the battle of Kursk and was awarded the Panzersturmabzeichen and later on the Panzersturmabzeichen in Silver for 25 days ongoing battles. Although Hartmut Schauer doesn’t mention it in his book explicitly, it seems that Martin Urich was transferred from Panzerregiment 33 to the heavy tank battalion 506. I came to this conclusion because Schauer mentioned that Martin Urich’s unit had received the Tiger and later the Kingtiger tank, that his tank was hit by an Russian assault-gun in the area of Lemberg and that he fought against the American airborne division in the Netherlands and that he became a POW in the Ruhr pocket which fits totally with the area of operations of heavy tank battalion 506 and in addition it was the III. Abteilung of Panzerregiment 33 which was transformed into the heavy tank battalion 506.
While he was an American POW as a citizen of Yugoslavia he was send to the Tito partisans. At the end of 1946 he fled together with a comrade via Hungary to the Austrian-occupied Zone where he got his de-commission papers by US occupation forces and traveled to Stuttgart/ Swabia where the 24-year old Urich was reunited with his father.

In summer 1951 he read a newspaper article about the offer for 12.000 citizens of now communist countries to enlist for five years in the US armed forces and to get the chance to become a US citizen after their service for the USA (the so called “Lodge act” named after the future US ambassador in South-Vietnam Henry Cabot Lodge). Urich passed all examinations and was in 1952 in the Sonthofen barracks sworn in into US service. After a three months language course he was transferred to the Fort Knox Armor School. Although he hoped to can go on with his tanker profession maybe due to his language skills and knowledge about Eastern and South-Eastern Europe he was after a short period of time send to Fort Bragg to the newly formed US Army Special Forces (later famous as the Green Berets). After the parachute training course in Ft. Benning his sub-unit of the 10th Special Forces Group was send to Flint barracks in Bad Tölz, the former SS-Junkerschule.

In Bad Tölz he married a German girl. He had spend 19 of his 20 service-years within the Green Berets. During this tenure he also served in Vietnam which was according to his own opinion in comparison to his experiences in WW II not that hard. There is also a hint that Urich possibly served a stint within the SF-Detachment in Berlin, which was later brought to attention by the book of James Stejskal “Special Forces Berlin: Clandestine Cold War Operations of the Us Army's Elite, 1956-1990”, but I’m not sure about this possibility.
1972 Martin Urich retired as a Staff-Sergeant and lived in the USA.

The link below offers good information about the immigrants of Europe who join the ranks of the US armed forces and especially the Green Berets. Here you can also find some pictures of Martin Urich.

https://arsof-history.org/articles/v5n2 ... age_3.html

Best regards

Robert

Thanks. Fascinating and authentic. Opens up avenues for further research.

Cheers
Sandeep

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Guys,

It is not uncommon for soldiers of the defeated side to hire out their last remaining asset, their expertise.

However, what is particularly interesting about this thread is how vanishingly small was the proportion of the approximately 18 million members of the Wehrmacht who apparently wanted to repeat their experiences in WWII voluntarily.

After WWI former German soldiers seem to have been rather more prominent abroad, (such as in Freikorps in the Baltic States, or military advisers to the Bolivians during the Chaco War), than they were after WWII.

Cheers,

Sid.

[Hans1906]

A documentation in this context, unfortunately only available in German language:

"They are driven by their own history: adventurers, unemployed, army veterans. For a fee, they let themselves be recruited to fight as mercenaries in the crisis areas of the world."

The video on YouTube:

Mythos Söldner / Myth mercenary


No comment on my part.


Hans

[Hans1906]

In this context, I would like to mention the 1992 documentary "Warheads" by the german director Romuald Karmakar.

War as a profession, war as a drug: In 1989/1992 Romuald Karmakar shot "Warheads". The main characters of this documentary are the legionnaire Günter Aschenbrenner and the British mercenary Karl. Aschenbrenner joins the French Foreign Legion in 1958. He becomes a paratrooper and in the course of his twenty years of service reaches the highest rank of non-commissioned officer. Operations in the Algerian War were followed by operations in Chad, Djibouti, the Republic of Central Africa, Kolwezi, as well as overseas missions to Muroroa Atoll and French Guiana. In 1979, he accepted a new assignment with a German company in Africa. Karl is from Liverpool and has been a mercenary for 15 years. He has been in West Africa, Suriname and Sudan. In December 1991, he is at a new assignment site: Gospic, Croatia.

Link: Warheads https://www.romuald-karmakar.de/film/warheads

Probably the "best" documentary on the subject of mercenaries I have ever seen...

Romuald Karmakar https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romuald_Karmakar

All of Karmakar's works are exceptional, excellent, highly engaging, and often disturbing, and equally great.


Hans

[Hans1906]

Another book about german soldiers fighting in the french foreign legion:

Ernst F. Löhndorff

Afrika weint
Roman
Lizenzausgabe für Weltbild Verlag GmbH, Augsburg
Printed in Germany

Link: https://www.zvab.com/servlet/SearchResu ... -ats-_-all

My copy probably a later reprint from the 1970s/1980s, given to me for free.
(I was not aware about the former editions, sorry)


Hans

[Edward L. Hsiao]

I know that Rolf Steiner is still living. Born in 1933,he is 90 years of age.

Edward L. Hsiao

[COmentator]

One case on record.....Killed in Vietnam
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauri_T%C3%B6rni

As for members of the SS In French Foreign Legions
One case comes to mind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliahu_Itzkovitz