"… The Germans sent two submachine gunners to take positions behind our backs, and at a considerable distance from each other … I grinned sadly, remembering the propaganda stories about Soviet commissars holding soldiers at gunpoint."
- memoirs of an officer of the Italian Expeditionary Force, Eugenio Corti, who fought on the Eastern Front
"Relations with the Germans are bad", "the Germans treat us with contempt", "they call us offensive nicknames", "they mock us."
- from the letters of the Italian, Hungarian and Romanian soldiers during the Second World War.
Soviet soldiers examine the remaining unlisted "Iron Crosses" at the doorstep of the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, spring 1945.
Where the gentle sun and the warm Mediterranean Sea merge into a picture of serene everyday life, suddenly there was a crackle of German machine guns. These are soldiers of the Edelweiss mountain rifle division shooting their former allies on the island of Kefalonia. They punctually put Italians in a row of 8 people - and kill them point blank.
The "massacre of the Acqui division" became one of the largest mass shootings in history - in just one week in September 1943, 5000 captured Italian soldiers and officers were shot on the island.
“The Germans bypassed us, offering medical assistance to the wounded. When about 20 people crawled forward, a machine-gun salvo finished them off."
- from the memoirs of the chaplain Romualdo Formato, one of the few survivors of the massacre on the island of Kefalonia
The first to be shot was the commander of the Aqui division, a convinced fascist, General Antonio Gandin, who was awarded the Iron Cross for his exploits on the Eastern Front. Before his death, in his hearts, he threw the German award into the mud …
The former allies were not entitled to any honors - at first they fired at them from machine guns, then the calculating Germans felt sorry for wasting cartridges, and knives were used. The bodies of the killed officers were dumped on rafts, taken out to sea and blown up along with 20 living Italian soldiers who were on them.
Memorial to the killed Italians on the Greek island of Kefallinia.
Such fierce hatred towards their yesterday's allies can be easily explained: in September 1943, under the blows of Anglo-American troops in Italy, the Mussolini regime fell, the Germans immediately occupied part of the country and disarmed the Italian army.
Alas, the former allies and loyal vassals of the Third Reich did not receive any gratitude or at least a share of respect - mass executions of captured Italian servicemen took place everywhere: on the Greek islands of Kefalonia, Kos, in the Balkans, in Albania … The Italian garrison of the city of Lvov was shot in full force. On the territory of Poland, the Germans killed more than 20,000 Italian soldiers.
The Moor did his job. The Moor can go away.
“In the morning, cars arrived and stopped along the camp road. The Italians were pushed off the cars. They were ordered to lay down their weapons in the box and step aside. Then they were driven by the back of the death gorge and shot. There were also officers among the soldiers"
- from the memoirs of the prisoners of the Yaniv concentration camp, which was near Lviv
Part two. Romanians
The war, in the minds of these jackals, looked like a plunder of the population in the occupied territories. The Romanian army turned out to be completely incapable of combat - they came only to plunder what had not burned down or was not captured by the Germans, and at the same time to resolve their territorial issues at the expense of part of the lands of Ukraine.
It is not surprising that when the German army was firmly bogged down near Moscow, Japan declared war on Great Britain and the United States, and Great Britain, at the insistence of the USSR, declared war on Romania, Hungary and Finland, the nerves of the dictator Antonescu could not stand it (of course! under such a "batch"), and he made a statement that was poorly understandable from the point of view of logic:
“I am an ally of the Reich in the war against Russia. I am neutral in the conflict between Great Britain and Germany. I am on the side of the Americans against Japan."
- Ion Antonescu, December 7, 1941
The Germans themselves also did not create illusions about the seriousness and fighting qualities of their "allies" and treated the Romanian servicemen like cattle: they never trusted them important sections of the front, put up "barriers" behind them, and in case of trouble, ruthlessly let the Romanians into consumption.
Romanian and German officers crossing the river. Prut, 1941
Captured Romanians are a little shocked by the conditions of the Eastern Front
“The Germans have betrayed us. They took power over the Romanian troops and dispose of us as they want. In case of trouble, the Germans force the Romanians to expose their heads to the Russian bullets, while they themselves run away. At first we retreated with the Germans. When the Russians overtook our columns, some of the Romanian officers and soldiers tried to get into the trucks, but the Germans opened machine-gun fire. The Germans managed to leave by car, but we met many of them at the assembly point for prisoners of war a day later."
- from the revelations of the commanders of the 2nd and 3rd companies of the 12th battalion of the 3rd Romanian mountain rifle division, captains Lazorescu and Georgiou, captured in Crimea in 1944
Third story. Ukrainian nationalists
"We have always cooperated with the Germans, we want to cooperate with the Germans, we are still cooperating with the Germans, we will cooperate with you, and only in cooperation with Germany …"
What does this nonsense mean? The chapter "declension of verbs" in a non-Russian textbook on the Russian language?
No, this is not a textbook, but the most terrible historical document - an explanatory note to the German authorities from the Ukrainian nationalist Yaroslav Stetsko, who proclaimed the formation of the Ukrainian State in Lviv on June 30, 1941, headed by the "leader of the Ukrainian people" Stepan Bandera. From now on, the Ukrainian State, together with Great Germany, will establish a new world order everywhere!
I consider Moscow the main enemy of Ukraine. I consider it expedient to transfer to Ukraine the German methods of exterminating Jews (and then Stetsko's own hand: excluding their assimilation). What a good man!
Full of canine devotion, loyalty and adherence to the ideas of fascism, the letter was supposed to touch the stone hearts of the Teutonic knights. Stetsko and Bandera received a princely title and a "reign label"?
Here's to both of them! (A characteristic gesture of three fingers).
"Ukrainian Derzhava" existed for exactly six days - as long as the Germans were preoccupied with more important problems. On July 9, Stetsko was arrested by the Gestapo (Bandera was arrested a week earlier). The two clowns soon found themselves in Sachsenhausen.
Memorial plaque in honor of the 50th anniversary of the proclamation of the Ukrainian State on the central square of Lviv, opened on June 30, 1991
What angered the fascists by their faithful accomplices - the chairman of the government of the Ukrainian State Yaroslav Stetsko and the "leader of the Ukrainian people" Stepan Bandera? Why did the Germans so swiftly "drove" them both to a concentration camp, refusing a seemingly lucrative offer of cooperation?
The answer is simple: the Germans were not going to cooperate with the Untermensch. Only one thing was required from the "subhumans" - SUBMISSION. All kinds of free-thinking and attempts to realize oneself as an independent force were ruthlessly choked with a German boot.
Meister Brueckner turned his head to Reiband and said in disgust in German:
“Tell him that, by the authority of the Fuehrer, I am appointing him burgomaster.
Then Meister Brueckner, without looking, groped on the table a printed narrow bar of chocolate, without looking, broke off several solid squares from it and silently handed it to Statsenko.
“This is not a person, but an ideal,” Statsenko later told his wife.
- "Young Guard", Fadeev A. A.
“Auxiliary Peoples” must know their place. Quite a few idiots were seduced by the prospect of "driving German cars and drinking Bavarian beer." The only thing the collaborators and traitors were mistaken about is that the future German paradise was not intended for them. When the war is over, the "auxiliary peoples" will be exterminated and annihilated in the same way as it should have been with Germany's opponents.
It is not clear what the supporters of this point of view hope for. If the "liberators" had broken through the front and occupied the Caucasus, they would have installed such a "Der Ordnung" in the mountains that General Yermolov himself would have turned over in his grave.
Despite all the puppy loyalty of the collaborators and their atrocities towards their compatriots (Katyn), divisions recruited from the "racially inferior" were never put on a par with German units: they were forbidden to wear a double zig-rune in their right buttonhole. In many sources, statistics are found that more than half of the SS divisions consisted of soldiers of non-Aryan origin (Albanians, Belgians, French, Serbs, Balts, Ukrainians, Russian traitors, Cossacks and former White Guards). But this statement is not true. Unlike the truly Aryan SS divisions (for example, the famous SS-Panzer-Division "Totenkopf" - "Death's Head"), elite divisions formed from other nations were designated "der SS" - "subhuman" in the service of the SS (for example French 33. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS "Charlemagne" (französische Nr. 1).
- How did you scoundrels dare to put on a German uniform? - General Leclerc was brave in front of the captured soldiers of the division der SS "Charlemagne".
“Just as you, General, dared to wear an American one,” came the laconic answer.
The prisoners were immediately shot on the orders of the angry general.
In general, the French do not fight very well, but they know how to formulate their thoughts in a brilliant way. Not so long ago, at a reception at the French embassy, the diplomat was asked the question: why is there such a negative attitude towards Vichy people in France? (French puppet state that existed in the period 1940-45). After all, formally, supporters of Marshal Petain stopped the bloodshed and allowed to save the country from total plunder and destruction: as a result of the Second World War, France got off with minimal losses.
The Frenchman flushed and muttered resentfully: "They have ruined the spirit of the nation."
If the Germans won, we would all be driving Mercedes. Here on these "Mercedes"
The German troops were stained up to their ears in blood and smeared with mud all their accomplices and allies. The hour of reckoning came soon - the Germans themselves sent many of their "loyal friends" to the scraps. Someone was shot, falling into the hands of their now former compatriots. Someone fell in battle, like the Estonian sabotage group "Erna", driven into the swamps and destroyed by the NKVD special forces.
A special award was given to the Cossacks from the Cossack Camp and the 15th Cossack Cavalry Corps, who fought on the side of Nazi Germany. Realizing that the war was lost to smithereens, and their overlord in the form of a German swastika is now lying face down in the ruins of Berlin, the cunning Cossacks have developed a rescue plan - to escape from retaliation into the territory of the British occupation zone in East Tyrol with the aim of "honorable" surrender to the British.
On May 2, 1945, the Cossacks began crossing the Alps and by May 10 they arrived safely (apart from the skirmish with the Italian partisans) in the vicinity of Lienz. On May 18, British units descended into the valley. The Cossacks surrendered all the weapons they had and were assigned to several POW camps in the vicinity of Lienz.
But it turned out that the Anglo-Saxons have their own specific ideas about honor and dignity. Nobody was going to harbor obvious traitors.
On the morning of May 1, 1945, when the Cossacks gathered for the formation, the British unexpectedly appeared. The soldiers began to grab the unarmed people and force them into the trucks they had brought. Those who tried to resist were shot on the spot. The rest were taken away in an unknown direction.
A few hours later, a funeral procession of trucks with traitors crossed the checkpoint on the border of the Soviet zone of occupation.
The trial of the Cossack generals of the Wehrmacht took place within the walls of the Lefortovo prison behind closed doors from 15 to 16 January 1947. On January 16, at 15:15, the judges retired to pronounce the verdict. At 19:39, the verdict was announced:
"The military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced generals PN Krasnov, SN Krasnova, SG Shkuro, G. von Pannewitz to death for conducting armed struggle against the Soviet Union through the units they formed."
At 20:45 on the same day, the sentence was carried out.
