HITLER'S SWEDES: A History of the Swedish Volunteers in the Waffen SS

1-207800

Sweden was neutral during WWII, but thousands of Swedes wanted to participate in the war -- the largest group was in Finland, where over 10,000 Swedes applied to fight against the Red Army. Another much smaller group of some 180-200 men, which saw action against the Soviets, enlisted as SS volunteers.

While the Danish and Norwegian SS volunteers are fairly well known today, their Swedish counterparts remain more unknown. Still, they saw action on both the Eastern Front and NW Europe, and participated in some of the bloodiest clashes: the initial stages of Operation Barbarossa, the winter of 1941/42, the battles of Kursk, Arnhem, Normandy, Narva, the Warsaw uprising, the Cherkassy and Kurland pockets and, finally, the end in Berlin.

Compared to many other groups of volunteers, there was never an official recruitment drive in Sweden. Those who wanted to recruit themselves often had to make their way to the occupied countries -- a fact that makes those Swedes who joined the SS volunteers in the truest sense.

As such, this book is as much a history about the units, which the Swedes served in, as it is a story about the individuals themselves. It also asks, who were they? What motivated them? What did they experience and how did their service end? Includes 160 b/w photos and color maps.