Blue Division

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
250th Infantry Division ("Blue Division")
Spanish: 250.ª División de Infantería ("División Azul")
German: 250. Infanterie-Division ("Blaue Division")
Divisional insignia, incorporating Franquist symbols
Active24 June 1941 (1941-06-24) – 10 October 1944 (1944-10-10)
Country Spain
Allegiance Germany
Branch German Army
TypeInfantry
Size18,000 personnel (1941)
45,000 personnel (total, 1941–44)[1]
Nickname(s)Blue Division
Engagements
Commanders
Notable
commanders
Agustín Muñoz Grandes
Emilio Esteban Infantes

The 250th Infantry Division (

Spanish Army
.

infantry division was raised from Falangist and Spanish Army cadres and was sent for training in Germany. The unit fought on the Eastern Front and notably participated in the 1941–1944 siege of Leningrad, but was withdrawn from the Front after Allied pressure in October 1944 and returned to Spain soon afterwards. Several thousand non-returners were incorporated into the 121st Infantry Division, the short-lived Blue Legion, and eventually into the Waffen-SS
.

Background

Francisco Franco took power at the head of a coalition of fascist, monarchist, and conservative political factions in the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) against the left-leaning Spanish government supported by communist and anarchist factions. More than 300,000 people were killed, and lasting damage was done to the country's economy.[2]

Franco had been supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during the Civil War and Franco sympathised with many aspects of Nazi ideology, especially its anti-communism. On the other side, the Republican army had been supported by Soviet aid. Franco ensured that Spain was

neutral at the start of World War II but seriously contemplated joining the conflict as a German ally in the aftermath of the Fall of France in 1940.[2] He met Adolf Hitler on 23–24 October 1940 at Hendaye but was unable to gain promises that Spain would gain colonial territories from France in North Africa. Hitler feared delegitimizing the new Vichy regime in France.[3]
Ultimately, Spain remained neutral.

Formation

Blue Division soldiers manning a gun during training in 1941

The

the Soviet Union guilty of the Spanish Civil War. Senior officers of the Spanish Army supported the proposal. Franco soon agreed to the proposal, directing that the Spanish Army should unofficially co-ordinate the formation of the unit. Although disappointed that Spain had not declared war on the Soviet Union, the German regime accepted the Spanish offer on 24 June 1941.[5] Franco struggled to balance the demands of Spanish Army and Falangist factions
, both of which attempted to influence the new unit, himself siding with the former.

Recruitment began on 27 June 1941 and 18,373 men had volunteered by 2 July 1941 from within the Spanish Army and Falangist movement.

NCOs were professional soldiers given leave from the Spanish Army, including many veterans of the Spanish Civil War.[citation needed] The division was made up mainly of Falangist volunteers and almost a fifth of early volunteers were students.[7] General Agustín Muñoz Grandes was assigned to lead the volunteers. Because the soldiers could not use official Spanish Army uniforms, they adopted a symbolic uniform comprising the red berets of the Carlists, the khaki trousers of the Spanish Legion, and the blue shirts of the Falangists—hence the nickname "Blue Division." This uniform was used only while on leave in Spain; in the field, soldiers wore the German Army field grey uniform (Feldgrau) with a shield on the upper right sleeve bearing the word "España" and the Nationalist Spanish national colours
.

Operational history

Organization and training

The train trip from Madrid to Grafenwöhr

On 13 July 1941 the first train left Madrid for Grafenwöhr, Bavaria for a further five weeks of training. There they became the German Army's 250th Infantry Division and were initially divided into four infantry regiments, as in a standard Spanish division. To aid their integration into the German supply system, they soon adopted the standard German model of three regiments. One of the original regiments was dispersed amongst the others, which were then named after three of the Spanish cities that volunteers largely originated from—Madrid, Valencia and Seville. Each regiment had three battalions (of four companies each) and two weapons companies, supported by an artillery regiment of four battalions (of three batteries each). There were enough men left over to create an assault battalion, mainly armed with submachine guns. Later, due to casualties, this unit was disbanded. Aviator volunteers formed a Blue Squadron (Escuadrillas Azules) which, using Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Focke-Wulf Fw 190s, claimed to have shot down 156 Soviet aircraft.

Eastern Front

Division's soldiers at the siege of Leningrad in 1943
Soldiers of the Blue Division in skis in 1942 near the Volkhov

On 31 July, after taking the

Novgorod. It was in charge of a 50-kilometre (31 mi) section of the front north and south of Novgorod, along the banks of the Volkhov River and Lake Ilmen
.

The division's soldiers used the iconostasis of the Church of Saint Theodore Stratelates on the Brook for firewood. The iconostases of the Cathedral of St. Sophia, Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Kozhevniki, and the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the Antoniev Monastery were taken to Germany at the end of 1943.[10] According to the museum curator in the Church of the Transfiguration on Ilyina Street, the division used the high cupola as a machine-gun nest. As a result, much of the building was seriously damaged, including many of the medieval icons by Theophanes the Greek. Vladimir Kovalevskii, one of the division's White Russian emigre interpreters, left a particularly acerbic memoir account describing the low discipline and the crimes committed by the Spanish volunteers.[11]

In August 1942, the Blue Division was transferred north to the southeastern flank of the siege of Leningrad, just south of the Neva River near Pushkin, Kolpino and Krasny Bor in the Izhora River area. After the collapse of the German southern front following the Battle of Stalingrad, more German troops were deployed southwards. By this time, General Emilio Esteban Infantes had taken command. The Blue Division faced a major Soviet attempt to break the siege of Leningrad in February 1943, when the Soviet 55th Army, reinvigorated after the victory at Stalingrad, attacked the Spanish positions at the Battle of Krasny Bor, near the main Moscow-Leningrad road. Despite very heavy casualties, the Spaniards were able to hold their ground against a Soviet force seven times larger and supported by tanks. The assault was contained and the siege of Leningrad was maintained for a further year. The division remained on the Leningrad front where it continued to suffer heavy casualties due to weather and to enemy action.[12]

The Blue Division was the only component of the German Army to be awarded a medal of its own, commissioned by Hitler in January 1944 after the Division had demonstrated its effectiveness in impeding the advance of the Red Army.[13] Hitler referred to the division as "equal to the best German ones". During his table talks, he said: "...the Spaniards have never yielded an inch of ground. One can't imagine more fearless fellows. They scarcely take cover. They flout death. I know, in any case, that our men are always glad to have Spaniards as neighbours in their sector".[14]

Disbandment and the Blue Legion

Eventually, the

occupied France. The new pro-German Spanish units were collectively called the Legión Azul ("Blue Legion
").

Spaniards initially remained part of the 121st Infantry Division, but even this meagre force was ordered to return home in March 1944, and was transported back to Spain on March 21. The rest of the volunteers were absorbed into German units.

28th SS Volunteer Grenadier Division Wallonien
.

Through rotation, as many as 45,000 Spanish soldiers served on the Eastern Front.

International Red Cross.[16] In action against the Blue Division, the Red Army suffered 49,300 casualties.[15]

Vault of the Blue Division, in La Almudena cemetery, Madrid

After the war

Hundreds of Blue Division prisoners of war were held by the Soviet authorities. While most prisoners from other nations would be repatriated after the war, Francoist Spain and the Soviet Union did not have diplomatic relations. Soviet camps held together staunch anti-Communist prisoners, those who collaborated with the Soviets either by their previous hidden ideology or after captivity and even those Republican sailors whose Spanish ships had been requisitioned after the fall of the Republic. In 1954, after the death of Stalin, the French Red Cross arranged the ship Semiramis [es] to bring those prisoners who desired repatriation to Barcelona.

Portuguese volunteers

Like Spain,

Fascist Italy. There was some popular anti-communist sentiment, and 150 Portuguese volunteers served unofficially in the Blue Division. However, most had roots in Spain or had already fought on the Francoist side in the Viriatos division during the Spanish Civil War. The Portuguese served in Spanish units and had no separate national presence.[17]

War cemetery

1,900 soldiers of the Blue Division are buried in the war cemetery in Veliky Novgorod.[18]

See also

  • Spain in World War II

References

  1. ^ Moreno Juliá 2018, p. 193.
  2. ^ a b Moreno Juliá 2018, p. 195.
  3. ^ Moreno Juliá 2018, p. 196.
  4. ^ Moreno Juliá 2018, pp. 197–198.
  5. ^ Moreno Juliá 2018, pp. 198–199.
  6. ^ Moreno Juliá 2018, pp. 201–202.
  7. OCLC 884744421.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  8. ^ Arnold Krammer. Spanish Volunteers against Bolshevism: The Blue Division. Russian Review, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Oct., 1973), pp. 388–402
  9. ^ David Wingeate Pike. Franco and the Axis Stigma. Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Jul., 1982), pp. 369–407
  10. .
  11. ^ Gavrilov, B.I., Tragedy and Feat of the 2nd Shock Army, defunct site paper
  12. .
  13. ^ Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens (translators). Hitler's Table Talk 1941–1944: His Private Conversations. Enigma Books. New York, 2000. p. 179.
  14. ^ a b Clodfelter, Micheal (2017). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015 (4 ed.). McFarland. p. 456. .
  15. World Association for International Studies
    . Retrieved 3 June 2014.
  16. ^ Caballero Jurado 2019.
  17. ^ "Kriegsgräberstätte: Nowgorod – Bau, Pflege und Instandsetzung | Volksbund.de". kriegsgraeberstaetten.volksbund.de.

Bibliography

  • Moreno Juliá, Xavier (2018). "Spain". In Stahel, David (ed.). Joining Hitler's Crusade: European Nations and the Invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 193–212. .

Further reading