La Legión Fantasma (Spanish Edition)

After determining that neither Garcia-Valdajos nor his bride had any Jewish ancestry, this permission was granted. Many of those who left home to enlist in the German army and Waffen-SS were very young, some still in their teens, who essentially ran away from home to sign up with the Germans, much to the consternation of the Franco regime. As Franco's ambassador in Berlin informed the Spanish Foreign Ministry, Berlin was unlikely to surrender precious laborers and soldiers to an increasingly unfriendly Madrid, especially as these were volunteers who in many cases did not want to return to Spain.

In any case, the Spanish government asserted, their numbers could not compare with those of Spaniards enlisting in the ranks of the Allies. The foreign minister did, however, admit knowledge of the many Spaniards who had joined the French Resistance or were fighting for the Allies in Northern Italy. Despite these enlistment on both sides, he declared that Spain would not deviate from its "strict neutrality.

As early as the spring of , the Spanish Foreign Ministry had confirmed reports from its European embassies that Spaniards were enlisting in German military and intelligence services. Often destitute, they told of service in the Balkans, France, and the Eastern Front. The Spanish Foreign Ministry also suspected that elements of the Falange were aiding Nazi recruitment efforts.

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In August one of the foreign minister's deputies sent a letter to Falangist secretary-general Jose Luis Arrese, asking if the party knew anything about a group of young falangistas allegedly preparing to leave Spain for France to join German occupation forces there. Franco may also have feared Allied retaliation. After the dissolution of the Blue Legion, Spaniards served in different units of the German armed forces. Most served in two companies the st and d of a unit in the Waffen-SS, the Spanische Freiwilligen Einheit Spanish Volunteer Unit , which recruited from Spanish workers in Germany, veterans of the Blue Division, and a few adventurers who had crossed illegally from Spain into German-held France.

The Belgian unit found it easy to recruit Spaniards from those already serving in Germany, as most Iberians found the Prussian discipline of the Wehrmacht too strict and humorless for their "Latin temperaments. Unlike other Spanish units, it gained a mixed reputation, with accusations of looting, rape, and plunder.

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Other Spaniards claimed to have served with Otto Skorzeny's commando unit in the Battle of the Bulge. Led by a German officer, this unit contained some men, mostly veterans of the Blue Division and the Spanish labor force in Germany. During the last half of August , these Spaniards fought doggedly until the defection of Romania on 27 August.

Turning their backs to the advancing Soviets, on 31 August what was left of the st began a slow retreat northwest. Fighting against attacks from both Soviet forces and Romanian guerrillas, deserted by the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS, the unit was caught between Soviet armies in Hungary and Romania. At the end of October, the few dozen survivors of the unit finally reached Austria. The st and its parallel unit, the d, were quartered together in Stockerau and Hollabrunn, north of Vienna.

All of these units also suffered from desertions, as individuals and small groups fled the front lines to seek what they hoped would be safety in the hands of the Allies or in the interior of Germany. He and his men previously had served German counterintelligence in France, fighting against Spanish exiles in the Resistance.

Apart from the dangers confronting these men, the Franco regime was concerned that they were still wearing the emblem of the Blue Division, a shield with the colors of the Spanish flag, and the word word "Espana" on their uniforms, an obvious and visible compromise of Spanish neutrality.

Legión – Tribus urbanas motorizadas

Franco ordered his diplomats remaining in Germany to dissuade Spanish workers from joining the Waffen-SS or German armed forces, but despite the dramatic changes in the European situation, as late as October some volunteers were still petitioning to be sent to work in Germany. Still under the direction of General Faupel, in early the Institute had taken over the publication of Enlace Liaison , a newspaper for Spanish workers in Germany published by the Spanish embassy in Berlin from mid to late Faupel had gained control over the newspaper by paying its debts to the German government.

Edited under Faupel's direction by Martin Arrizubieta, a defrocked Spanish Basque priest and former Republican captain in the Spanish Civil War, the newspaper took on a decidedly anti-Francoist bent in the fall of Promoting a strange mixture of Nazism and Basque separatism, the paper, continuing under its old title, produced a great deal of confusion among the remaining members of the Spanish colony in Germany.

Together with his wife, Edith, the old general won over the most ardent Falangists left in Berlin. The Faupels hoped to use these collaborators someday to overthrow the Franco regime. Despite the protests of the Spanish embassy, the German government refused to silence Faupel and Enlace. The city was a fortress, surrounded by five rings of fortifications guaranteed to make the Soviet assault a costly one.

Rejecting the pleas of his military and political advisers to fly out of the Berlin pocket, Hitler decided to remain and personally lead the defense of the city, entrusting Joseph Goebbels to embolden the last defenders of Nazism. By , this continental vision was confined to a shrunken remnant of Central Europe, stretching from the Alps to the Norwegian Arctic Circle. In the final months only the most deluded could still have expected victory, the rest hoping for a last minute collapse of the Allied coalition.

What else could they do? They had made their choice: For the most part, however, desperation had replaced hope. Surrender meant imprisonment or death at the hands of the Allies. Desertion was still a crime against Germany, punishable by death. In uniform, these exiles could at least hope to die among comrades.

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From January to April, the Einheit Ezquerra fought on what remained of the Eastern Front, suffering tremendous casualties without much result. After additional recruiting and transfers from other units, by mid-April Ezquerra cobbled together just over Spaniards for the final defense of Berlin. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Advertising Find, attract, and engage customers. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon.

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Spaniards in Waffen-SS - Axis History Forum

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