(Mirror.)

On April 23, 1940 no more than two weeks after the [Fascist] invasion of Denmark and Norway, Himmler ordered the establishment of a Waffen SS unit which was to include volunteers from these two countries: The SS Standarte Nordland. The recruitment of Scandinavians to Nordland was designed to overcome the strict limits imposed on the growth of the Waffen SS by the Wehrmacht. The Wehrmacht had established a near‐monopoly on recruiting in Germany, forcing the Waffen SS to look outside Germany in its search for manpower.

In the end around 13,000 Danish citizens volunteered for [Fascist] armed service during the Second World War, some 7,000 of whom enlisted. The vast majority — around 12,000 — volunteered for the Waffen SS and the organization admitted around 6,000. The greater part of these Danes served in three different formations: Frikorps Danmark (The Danish Legion), SS Division Wiking and, after the disbandment of the so‐called legions in 1943, in SS Division Nordland. Approximately 1,500 Danish volunteers hailed from the German minority in southern Jutland and served mainly in the Division Totenkopf and to some extent in the 1st SS Brigade.

(Emphasis added, because nobody can excuse these anticommunists by saying that somebody ‘forced’ them to serve.)

Up until June 1941 recruitment did not make serious progress, but the [Axis] assault on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 made hitherto politically sceptical groups potential volunteers. The anticommunist theme now became dominant in recruitment propaganda designed to appeal to right‐wing nationalist groups who were not necessarily [Fascists].

Furthermore, physical requirements for volunteers diminished in subsequent years, as the engagement at the eastern front took a heavy toll in human lives. Right‐wing nationalist, but non‐Nazi groups were encouraged to enlist on the grounds that the war against the Soviet Union was a crusade to “protect Europe against Bolshevism”.

[…]

With 1,200 men Frikorps Danmark was sent to Demyansk south of Novgorod in May 1942. In less than three months the corps experienced the loss of close to 350 men who were either killed or wounded.¹⁰ After a one‐month refreshment and propaganda leave in Denmark the corps returned to the front in November 1941. Originally, Frikorps Danmark was supposed to join 1st SS Brigade in Byelorussia in its indiscriminate killing of civilians in areas associated with Soviet partisans.¹¹

However, due to the deteriorating situation at the front both the 1st SS Brigade and the Frikorps were instead sent to frontline duty at the Russian town of Nevel, some 400 kilometers west of Moscow. In the spring of 1943 — as a consequence of further losses and inadequate reinforcements — the corps was down to 633 men and was withdrawn from the frontline.¹²

[…]

Naturally education of the rank and file was on a different level but incorporated nonetheless an endless number of ideological elements, from ordinary lectures in Weltanschauung to bayonet practice on Jewish‐looking cardboard figures.²⁶ Correspondence also illustrates how several Danish volunteers identified with [Fascist] values.

But whereas it is easily shown how many Danish volunteers became radical anti‐Semites and otherwise ideologically inflamed, it is less easy to document the extent to which the Danish Waffen SS soldiers were involved in criminal actions against civilians and enemy POWs. Unfortunately, only a limited number of official documents related to the Waffen SS field units in question (such as war diaries and orders‐of‐the‐day) are available today. […] Nevertheless we can document a number of incidents.

During Frikorps Danmark’s first frontline engagement in the so‐called Demyansk pocket near Lake Illmen in northwest Russia, a trooper tells his diary that a [Soviet] POW was shot by a Danish Waffen SS volunteer, apparently because he stole cigarettes from the troops.²⁸ The diary also mentions that a [Soviet] boy soldier around 12 was sentenced to death because he attempted to escape a prison camp.

Furthermore, evidence from different sources suggests that in a specific attack that included most of Frikorps Danmark a number of Russian POWs were shot in retaliation for the death of Frikorps commander von Schalburg. Von Schalburg was killed during the early phase of the assault and this apparently enraged the Danes. A Danish officer wrote home, “no prisoners were taken that day”.²⁹

One especially brutal description, concerning the killing of a civilian Jew, also dates from the Demyansk period. It is one of the very few clear‐cut illustrations of how ideology and war crimes could be directly related. Thus another diary‐writing soldier notes the following:

A Jew in a greasy Kafkan walks up to beg some bread, a couple of comrades get a hold of him and drag him behind a building and a moment later he comes to an end. There isn’t any room for Jews in the new Europe, they’ve brought too much misery to the European people.³⁰

After the disbandment of the Frikorps Danmark the men were transferred to the newly established Division Nordland and sent to Yugoslavia during the fall of 1943. Here they became involved in a very brutal fight with local partisans. On at least one occasion Danes from “Regiment Danmark” burned down an entire village from which shots had been fired, and despite finding no adult men there they apparently killed the inhabitants.³¹

The Danish officer Per Sørensen relates a story that might be addressing the same situation or perhaps one like it. In a letter that escaped censorship by travelling with a colleague to his parents, he brags about having killed 200 “reds” without suffering a single casualty.³²

[…]

Another Dane, the doctor Carl Værnet, was among the doctors in [Axis] service who conducted medical experiments on inmates in the camps. During autumn 1944 in the Buchenwald concentration camp Værnet implanted an artificial “sexual gland” in 15 homosexual or effeminate male inmates in order “to cure them” from their “wrong” sexuality. The experiments were authorized by Himmler personally.

Though some of the prisoners submitted to Værnets “treatment” died, Værnet managed to avoid a post‐war trial, despite undergoing short internment and investigation by the Danish authorities.³⁹

(Emphasis added in all cases. As always, the examples included in this excerpt were by no means the only ones from which to choose.)

Events that happened today (October 2):

1847: Paul von Hindenburg, conservative who helped promote the NSDAP to institutional power, was born.
1935: Benito Mussolini announced amid a large gathering of ministers, state secretaries and specially selected foreign dignitaries that war with Ethiopia was imminent.
1938: Alexandru Averescu, profascist Romanian, dropped dead.
1944: The Wehrmacht terminated the Warsaw Uprising.