Description

Featuring previously unpublished photographs and interviews with veterans, this is the first book to cover all the Scandinavians who served in Hitler's feared Waffen-SS Based in part on interviews with surviving veterans, this history details the battles the Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish men of the Waffen-SS fought, and what inspired them to join. The Nazis' dream of a world dominated by legions of Aryan "supermen," forged in battle and absolutely loyal to Adolf Hitler, was epitomized by the Waffen-SS. Created as a supreme military elite, it grew to become an immense force totaling almost one million men by the end of the war. An astonishing fact about the SS is that thousands of its members were not German. Men stepped forward from almost every nation in Europe, for many complex reasons that included hatred of Bolshevism and nationalist sentiment or even straightforward anti-Semitism. Thousands of Scandinanians were recruited from 1940 onwards and fought with distinction on the Russian Front. They served at first in national legions but were then brought together in the elite Wiking Panzer Division and the Nordland Panzer-grenadier Division.