Volunteer
As auxiliary volunteers , shortly HIWI (also HiWi or student assistant ), were used during the Second World War assistants within the German Wehrmacht and the SS called that from the ranks of the population in the occupied territory of the Soviet Union were recruited.
Historical use of the term
After the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 , the so-called volunteers consisted of former Red Army soldiers who were initially deployed within German formations of the Wehrmacht to build defenses and other work. This offered them an opportunity to escape the catastrophic conditions in the prison camps and survive. When the German units on the Eastern Front became increasingly weaker, the volunteers were also deployed in armed units, especially in the area of Army Group Center , but mainly with occupation tasks.
Around 800,000 to 1 million inhabitants of the Soviet Union , including civilians, served in units of the Wehrmacht, around 200,000 were active in the police service. Hundreds of thousands more Soviet citizens worked for the occupying power, in German administrative offices, commercial enterprises, as truck drivers and transport workers in the Speer Legion or within the Reichsbahn . Under the conditions of a "war of annihilation" it is difficult to differentiate between the actually existing, purely voluntary, willingness to collaborate and quasi forced labor . In practice, a wide variety of motivations may have played a role, above all the desire for better chances of survival and living conditions.
While Soviet citizens initially only performed unarmed auxiliary services for the German occupying power, in the course of the unfavorable course of the war for the German side, they were increasingly integrated into the occupation units of the Wehrmacht, up to and including active participation in the extermination of the Jews and the fight against partisans or their own what the German army command understood by it. In 1943 the Eastern Legions were formed from “volunteers” . But it was not until 1944 that the desperation on the German side was so great that the occasional actual will to resist Soviet rule was bundled in a Russian Liberation Army (ROA, Vlasov Army).
Since 1941 the SS trained volunteers in the Trawniki training camp (“Trawniki men”, “Trawniki”, “ Askaris ”) who were deployed to carry out the genocide of the Jews. The trained, the number of which is estimated at 4,000 to 5,000, came mainly from the Ukraine and the Baltic States.
Current use of the term
The end of the Nazi era and the defeat of the Wehrmacht ended all employment. However, the term “Hilfswilliger” was retained in German after 1945, albeit without a military background and mostly in the abbreviated form. In particular, student and research assistants in German university operations are often referred to colloquially as "Hiwis" (research assistants ).
See also
literature
- Werner Röhr (ed.): Occupation and collaboration. (1938-1945). Contributions to concepts and practice of collaboration in the German occupation policy (= Europe under the swastika. Erg.-Bd. 1). Published by the Federal Archives. Hüthig, Berlin et al. 1994, ISBN 3-8226-2492-6 .
