The Germanic legions

Unlike the Wiking Division's foreign standarten which had German officers, the Scandinavian and Western European legions were led by commanders from their own countries. This meant their military usefulness was limited at first, and they had to be gently exposed to the violence on the Eastern Front to gain combat experience. The legions were organized as infantry units with light weapons and sometimes StuG III assault guns. They seldom mustered more than 2000 men at any one time. When the legions were eventually expanded into nominal divisions to satisfy Himmler's desire to create more and bigger units, they rarely contained 10,000 men each, half the strength of a German army or Waffen-SS division.

In 1943 the bulk of the legions were grouped into the Waffen-SS Nordland Panzergrenadier Division, which fought tenaciously on the northern sector of the Eastern Front throughout 1944. Its hour of glory came in September 1944 when its timely intervention prevented the encirclement of the Eighteenth Army. The remnants of the division went down fighting around Hitler's bunker in Berlin in April 1945.

Dutch and Flemish recruits

Eventually some 50,000 Dutchmen joined the Waffen-SS, the majority of whom served in the Landsturm-Nederland Militia Division, which helped prop up German rule in Holland, before being sent to the Eastern Front for the remainder of the war. Belgium provided 40,000 recruits to the Waffen-SS, evenly split between Flemish- and French-speaking volunteers. Most of the Flemish speakers eventually served in the Langemarck Waffen-SS Division. More than 20,000 French recruits signed up to Hitler's anti-Bolshevik crusade, while Denmark and Norway each provided 6000 volunteers.

Himmler loved the propaganda value provided by these legions, as he attempted to prove that Europe was united behind the New Order. Two purely propaganda units were the so-called British Free Corps and Indian Legion, both formed from turncoat prisoners of war. They both saw very limited combat experience.

Baltic volunteers

When German armies rolled east in June 1941, they swiftly conquered the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, where they were greeted as liberators following Soviet occupation. Volunteers flocked to join police and militia units being set up by the new German rulers. Soon, Himmler started to take a close interest in the Latvian and Estonian units and incorporated several into the Waffen-SS. He was particularly impressed by their zeal in helping SS Einsatzgruppen squads murder Jews in ghettos that were being set up in the region. Thanks to the ethnic affinity of the Estonian and Latvians with Scandinavia, Himmler was willing to smooth their way into the Waffen-SS. The Reichsführer-SS once remarked of the Estonians: "The Estonians really do belong to the few races that can, after the segregation of only a few elements, be merged with us without any harm to our people." The Catholic Lithuanians were beyond the pale as Slavs, as far as Himmler was concerned, so they languished in special police battalions.

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