Blue Division

This article deals with the “Blue Division” formed from Spaniards during World War II . Further meanings are listed under Blue Division (disambiguation) .

250th Infantry Division (Germany) División Española de Voluntarios (Spain)
Troop plates, the colors of the flag of Spain
active	June 24, 1941 to October 20, 1943 (dissolution)
Country	German Empire Spain
Armed forces	Wehrmacht
Armed forces	army
Branch of service	infantry
Type	Infantry Division
structure	structure
Strength	640 officers 2,272 NCOs 14,780 teams (target)
Nickname	Blue Division (German) División Azul (Spanish)
Second World War	German-Soviet War Leningrad blockade
Commanders
list of	Commanders
insignia
Troop flag of the 3rd Battalion

The Blue Division ( Spanish División Azul ), officially División Española de Voluntarios ( German : "Spanische Freiwilligendivision"), was an infantry division of Spanish volunteers who, under the leadership of the German Wehrmacht, were the 250th Infantry Division from 1941 to 1943 at war against the Soviet Union participated.

history

Emergence

After the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, there were large rallies in Spain under the motto: “It's Russia's fault!” (Meaning the Spanish civil war ). To what extent these rallies took place spontaneously or were initiated by interested parties cannot be said with certainty today. What is certain is that the government used the enthusiasm of young Falangists in particular to approach the German envoy on the same day with an offer of voluntary associations for the “fight against communism”. After brief negotiations, it was decided to send a volunteer infantry division made up of army cadres and volunteers from all over Spain. This División Española de Voluntarios consisted of four infantry regiments (named after their commanders Pimentel , Vierna , Esparza and Rodrigo ) and an artillery regiment and had a strength of 640 officers, 2,272 NCOs and 14,780 men. The voluntary nature of the unit was emphasized to the press, but in fact all important positions were occupied by members of the army who were regularly replaced. In addition to anti-communist motives, the improvement of their career opportunities played an important role in voluntary reporting, especially among officers. B. doubles the length of service in the Soviet Union.

Lineup

On June 24, 1941, the “Blue Division” was sent to the German Reich as a “combat force against Bolshevism” under the command of General Agustín Muñoz Grandes (in the rank of Lieutenant General of the Wehrmacht ) with 17,909 men for basic training at the Grafenwoehr military training area in the Upper Palatinate relocated. At the intervention of Muñoz Grandes, the duration of the training was shortened from three months to just five weeks. In Grafenwoehr she was converted into the 250th Infantry Division (Spanish) of the Wehrmacht and sworn in on Adolf Hitler on July 31, 1941 for the fight against communism.

The division had three infantry regiments (262nd (originally Pimentel ), 263rd ( Vierna ) and 269th ( Esparza )), an artillery regiment (250), an anti-tank division, a reconnaissance division, an engineer battalion and Division units. When the division was reclassified from four to three regiments, one regimental commander became vacant, for whom the otherwise unusual position of a chief of staff as deputy division commander was created at division level. In addition, the division had a reserve battalion, consisting mainly of veterans and foreign legionaries, which served as a division reserve. Originally it was planned to motorize the division, but since it was unclear who should be responsible, Spain or Germany, the division was equipped with horses from Serbia. Since these horses did not meet the requirements and in the short training not enough attention was given to horse care and handling, many animals died during the more than 1000 kilometers long march through the USSR.

As a German unit, the members of the division wore the uniform of the Wehrmacht, but with a sleeve shield in the Spanish colors, red and gold, and the inscription "España". The Blue Division was named after the color of the blue Falan shirts that were worn instead of the regular uniform shirts.

commitment

Training on heavy machine guns on the Eastern Front in 1942

Unit on the march to the front in 1942

Use on the front in 1943

After the end of basic training in Grafenwöhr on August 20, 1941, the division was set off for the Soviet Union. Originally, it was for the Army Group Center determined, but during the march to Smolensk it was on 26 September 1941, the Army Group North subordinated and after Vitebsk diverted. As part of the 16th Army , it was used to secure the Leningrad blockade along the Volkhov north of Lake Ilmen . Since the German leadership considered the division's combat value to be low, not least because of the "unsoldatic behavior" of its members, it was not given much attention. However, when the Spaniards defended their section of the front against violent attacks by the Red Army, the division's recognition grew as did its losses.

In the summer of the following year the division was handed over from the 16th to the 18th Army and transferred to the front in front of Leningrad, where it remained in service until October 1943. There she temporarily occupied the old Tsar's palace, Tsarskoye Selo . In December 1942, General Emilio Esteban-Infantes (in the rank of lieutenant general in the Wehrmacht ) took command of the division.

resolution

Under strong foreign policy pressure, Franco ordered the division back to Spain in 1943. It was officially dissolved on October 20, 1943. However, numerous volunteers stayed behind and initially formed a "Spanish Legion" ( Legión Española de Voluntarios ) of up to 3,000 men, which continued to fight on the Eastern Front until 1944. From June 1944, two volunteer companies (101 and 102) of the Waffen SS were set up at the Stablack military training area from the Spaniards who remained . Both companies fought in the defense of Berlin against the Red Army in the spring of 1945 .

The reasons for the dissolution of the division are primarily to be seen in the changed war situation after the Allies landed in North Africa and Sicily, which implied a direct threat to Spain. But the domestic political situation had also changed after the pro-German Foreign Minister Ramón Serrano Súñer was replaced in 1942 by the more Anglophile Francisco Gómez-Jordana Sousa .

structure

• Infantry Regiment 262 (span.)
• Infantry Regiment 263 (span.)
• Infantry Regiment 269 (span.)
• Artillery Regiment 250 (span.)
  • Panzerjäger -teilung 250 (span.)
  • Reconnaissance Department 250 (Spanish)
  • Pioneer Battalion 250 (span.)
  • Infantry Division Supply Leader 250 (Spanish)
  • Division units 250

Commanders

• Major General Agustín Muñoz Grandes , July 1941
• Lieutenant General Emilio Esteban Infantes y Martín , December 1942

Balance sheet

Memorial to those killed in the Division in the Almudena Cemetery in Madrid

A quarterly replacement cycle made it possible for a total of 47,000 men to serve in the Blue Division during the two-and-a-half year deployment and to gain "Eastern Front experience". Between 3,500 and 4,500 of them were killed and more than 8,000 were wounded. Of the 321 volunteers who were captured by the Soviet Union, 286 survivors returned to Spain by sea via Barcelona in 1956 with great public sympathy.

Utility payments

A small request from Andrej Hunko and other members of the left-wing parliamentary group in the Bundestag to the federal government revealed in November 2015 that Germany is making pension payments to former members of the Blue Division and their relatives. At the time of the questioning, these payments amounted to 107,352 euros a year to 50 people: 5,390 euros a month to 41 injured people, 3,336 euros a month to eight widows and 220 euros to a frail orphan . These payments are based on the "Agreement of May 29, 1962 between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Spanish State on War Victims' Care" concluded between Spain and Germany.

Commemoration

Road sign

In Madrid there is a Calle de los Caídos de la División Azul (in German "Street of the Fallen of the Blue Division").

Web links

• 200th through 370th German Infantry, Security, and Panzer Grenadier Divisions. Organizations and Histories 1939–1945 ( Memento from February 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 461 kB), Nafziger Collection, Combined Armed Research Library.
• Españoles en la 2ª Guerra Mundial
• Spanish documentary on the mission of the División Azul

literature

• Jürgen Förster: Volunteers for the “European crusade against Bolshevism”. In: Horst Boog, Jürgen Förster, Joachim Hoffmann , Ernst Klink, Rolf-Dieter Müller , Gerd R. Ueberschär : The attack on the Soviet Union (= Military History Research Office [ed.]: The German Reich and the Second World War . Volume 4 ). 2nd Edition. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-421-06098-3 , pp. 908–935 ( limited preview in Google Book Search - especially pp. 911–915).
• Gerald R. Kleinfeld, Lewis A. Tambs: Hitler's Spanish Legion: The Blue Division in Russia , Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville 1979, ISBN 0-8093-0865-7 .
• Gerald R. Kleinfeld, Lewis A. Tambs: North to Russia: The Spanish Blue Division in World War II. In: Military Affairs , Vol. 37, No. 1 (1973), pp. 8-13.
• Arnold Krammer: Spanish Volunteers against Bolshevism. The Blue Division. In: Russian Review Vol. 32, No. 4 (1973), pp. 388-402.
• Xosé M. Núñez-Seixas: The Spanish Blue Division on the Eastern Front (1941–1945). Between war experience and memory . Aschendorff Verlag, Münster 2016, ISBN 978-3-402-14868-6 .
• Raymond L. Proctor: Agony of a Neutral. Spanish-German Wartime Relations and the Blue Division. Moscow, ID, 1974.
• Pedro Roig: Spanish Soldiers in Russia. Miami, 1976.
• Veit Scherzer : Formation history of the army and the reserve army 1939 to 1945. Structure, strength, equipment, armament (= German troops in World War II. Volume 1) . Partial volume A. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-07-3 , p. 211 ( limited preview in Google Book search).
• John Scurr, Richard Hook: Germany's Spanish Volunteers 1941–45. (Men-at-Arms Series, 103) 1980. ISBN 0-85045-359-3 .
• Georg Tessin : Associations and troops of the German Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in World War II 1939–1945 . Volume 8: The Land Forces 201–280 . 2nd Edition. Biblio-Verlag, Bissendorf 1979, ISBN 3-7648-1174-9 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Der Grosse Ploetz , Freiburg i. B. 2008, p. 1089.
2. ^ Xosé M. Núñez-Seixas: The Spanish Blue Division on the Eastern Front (1941–1945). Between war experience and memory . Aschendorff Verlag, Münster 2016, pp. 151–165.
3. ^ Xosé M. Núñez-Seixas: The Spanish Blue Division on the Eastern Front (1941–1945). Between war experience and memory . Aschendorff Verlag, Münster 2016, pp. 166–174.
4. ↑ Chris McNab Hitler's Elite, the SS 1939-45 p. 326 (English).
5. ↑ Briefly exposed. Barcelona Film report of the Neue Deutsche Wochenschau No. 220/1954 from April 14, 1954 in the film archive of the Federal Archives
6. ↑ Supply payments to Nazi collaborators of the “Blue Division” , response of the Federal Government to the minor question from MPs Andrej Hunko, Wolfgang Gehrcke, Jan van Aken, other MPs and the DIE LINKE parliamentary group. Printed matter 18/6259 of November 3, 2015, accessed on March 2, 2016.
7. ↑ Draft of a law to the contract of May 29, 1962 between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Spanish State on War Victims Care , Printed Paper IV / 718, November 7, 1962, accessed on March 2, 2016.