Armenische Legion

The Armenian Legion (Armenische Legion; Հայկական լեգիոն Haykakan legion) was the name given to the 812th Armenian Battalion, which was a foreign unit of the Germany Army Wehrmacht in Nazi Germany during World War II, composed largely of Armenians POW's of the Red Army, under the leadership of Drastamat Kanayan. Their established aim was the restoration of Armenia’s independence from the Soviet Union.

The Armenian and Georgian battalions were ultimately sent to the Netherlands as a result of Adolf Hitler's distrust for them, and due further to low morale and poor training, many of them deserted, defected or revolted. The legion, like other Turkic and Caucasian forces formed by the Germans, has been described by one military historian as "poorly armed, trained, and motivated," and was "unreliable and next to useless." The Israeli scholar Yair Auron has noted that Turkish nationalist efforts to thwart recognition of the Armenian Genocide have resulted in the dissemination of various Turkish propaganda publications in regards to the Armenian Legion aimed at portraying Armenians in negative light.

Background
The majority of the soldiers in the legion were former Soviet Red Army POWs, who had opted to fight for German forces rather than face the genocidal conditions of the Nazi POW camps. Some Berlin-based representatives of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF, Dashnaks), though repudiated by the official party organs, made an agreement with the Nazis in 1942 to support the Germans against the Soviet Union.

A number of veterans of Armenians who had escaped to the US after World War I came back to Europe and created the Armenian Legion. General Drastamat "Dro" Kanayan (a one-time leader of the Democratic Republic of Armenia ) led the legion, and fought on the Eastern front. French genocide scholar Yves Ternon, who has studied the battalion, suggested that while there were no "substantial" fascistic inclinations among the Armenians in general, Kanayan was an exception; Ternon characterized "Dro" as possessive of substantial "fascist deviation."

Size
According to Joris Versteeg, the total number of Armenians serving in the German armed forces during the war was 33,000: 14,000 were placed in field battalions, while 7,000 were placed in logistic and non-combat units. Ailsby puts the number at 11,600.

Activities
The short-lived Democratic Republic of Armenia established in 1918 in the Southern Caucasus by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (The Dashnaks) was conquered by the Russian Bolsheviks in 1920, and ceased to exist. During World War II, some of the Dashnaks tried to counter Turkish propaganda which falsely portrayed Armenians as a Semitic people close to the Jews to ensure their genocidal destruction should Soviet Armenia fall under Nazi rule. To fight Turkey's anti-Armenian politicking, the Dashnaks entered into negotiations with Berlin, and reluctantly agreed to participate in the formation of the legion.

The legion participated in the occupation of the Crimean Peninsula and the Caucasus.

Several Jewish soldiers serving in the Red Army and captured as POWs were saved by some of the Armenians in the Legion. Josef Moisevich Kogan, a Jewish Red Army soldier captured by German forces, noted the help he received by an Armenian doctor in the 812th when he was sneaked into the battalion itself and later escaped with the help of Dutch underground resistance members. Other instances included Jews being sent inside the battalion to evade detection by the Nazis. Hans Houterman reported that a battalion in Holland where the legion was stationed even revolted.

Toulon, Southern France, 1944
One part of the Armenian Legion formed the 4th Battalion of the 918th Grenadier Regiment, 242 Infanterie-Division, one of the few Eastern Legion units to be given German insignia after March 18, 1944. The battalion was destroyed in the defense of Toulon. At the end of the war, the remaining members in the battalion surrendered to the Western Allied forces. If not detained by them, they were turned over to Soviet authorities who, under an order enacted by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, were sent to camps in Siberia as punishment for surrendering to Axis forces and "allowing themselves to be captured," a fate suffered by nearly all of the former Soviet prisoners of the war.

Nazi perspective
Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler's Minister of the Occupied Territories, declared that the Armenians were Indo-European, or Aryans, and thus they were immediately subject to conscription. According to Versteeg, however, "Although Armenians officially were considered 'Aryans', the notion of them being 'Levantine traders', similar to the Jews, was deep-seated in Nazi circles, and racial 'purists' along with Hitler himself were prone to look upon the Armenians as 'non-Aryans.'"

Hitler himself expressed his doubts on the Armenian and other Soviet battalions. Speaking about military units from Soviet peoples, Hitler said: "I don't know about these Georgians. They do not belong to the Turkic peoples...I consider only the moslims [sic] to be reliable...All others I deem unreliable. For the time being I consider the formation of these battalions of purely Caucasian peoples very risky, while I don't see any danger in the establishment of purely Moslim units...In spite of all declarations from Rosenberg and the military, I don't trust the Armenians either."