Blue Division
250th Infantry Division ("Blue Division") | |
---|---|
Spanish: 250.ª División de Infantería ("División Azul") German: 250. Infanterie-Division ("Blaue Division") | |
Active | 24 June 1941 | – 10 October 1944
Country | Spain |
Allegiance | Germany |
Branch | German Army |
Type | Infantry |
Size | 18,000 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 (
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
Formation
The
Recruitment began on 27 June 1941 and 18,373 men had volunteered by 2 July 1941 from within the Spanish Army and Falangist movement.
Operational history
Organization and training
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
On 31 July, after taking the
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
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.
Through rotation, as many as 45,000 Spanish soldiers served on the Eastern Front.
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 to bring those prisoners who desired repatriation to Barcelona.
Portuguese volunteers
Like Spain,
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
- ^ Moreno Juliá 2018, p. 193.
- ^ a b Moreno Juliá 2018, p. 195.
- ^ Moreno Juliá 2018, p. 196.
- ^ Moreno Juliá 2018, pp. 197–198.
- ^ Moreno Juliá 2018, pp. 198–199.
- ^ Moreno Juliá 2018, pp. 201–202.
- )
- ^ Arnold Krammer. Spanish Volunteers against Bolshevism: The Blue Division. Russian Review, Vol. 32, No. 4 (Oct., 1973), pp. 388–402
- ^ David Wingeate Pike. Franco and the Axis Stigma. Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Jul., 1982), pp. 369–407
- ISBN 978-5-86983-862-9
- ISBN 978-1-3990-6208-4.
- ^ Gavrilov, B.I., Tragedy and Feat of the 2nd Shock Army, defunct site paper
- ISBN 978-84-89365-89-6.
- ^ Norman Cameron and R.H. Stevens (translators). Hitler's Table Talk 1941–1944: His Private Conversations. Enigma Books. New York, 2000. p. 179.
- ^ a b
Clodfelter, Micheal (2017). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492–2015 (4 ed.). McFarland. p. 456. ISBN 978-0-7864-7470-7.
- World Association for International Studies. Retrieved 3 June 2014.
- ^ Caballero Jurado 2019.
- ^ "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. ISBN 978-1-316-51034-6.
Further reading
- Caballero Jurado, Carlos (2019). La División Azul: Historia completa de los voluntarios españoles de Hitler. De 1941 a la actualidad (in Spanish). Spain: La Esfera de los Libros. ISBN 978-84-9164-606-8.
- Bowen, Wayne H. (2005) Spaniards and Nazi Germany: Collaboration in the New Order. University of Missouri Press, 250 pages, ISBN 0-8262-1300-6.
- Kleinfeld, Gerald R. and Lewis A. Tambs (1974) Hitler's Spanish Legion: The Blue Division in Russia. Southern Illinois University Press, 434 pages, ISBN 0-8093-0865-7.
- Morales, Gustavo and Luis Togores "La División Azul: las fotografías de una historia". La Esfera de los Libros, Madrid, second edition.
- Moreno Juliá, Xavier (2005). La División Azul: Sangre española en Rusia, 1941–1945. Barcelona: Crític.
- Núñez Seixas, Xosé M. "Russia and the Russians in the Eyes of the Spanish Blue Division soldiers, 1941–4." Journal of Contemporary History 52.2 (2017): 352–374. online
- Rusia no es cuestión de un día.... Juan Eugenio Blanco. Publicaciones Españolas. Madrid, 1954