Debunking the Myth of the Volunteers: Transnational Volunteering in the Nazi Waffen-SS Officer Corps during the Second World War

Abstract

This article explores the pre-war background of the Swiss, Swedish and Danish men who volunteered for the Nazi Waffen-SS combat formation during the Second World War. Through a detailed biographical examination of officer corps volunteers, this article contradicts what I call the myth of the volunteers -a long-standing popular and to some extent scholarly interpretation that perceives the volunteers as lower-class, social outsiders of a criminally inclined or mentally unstable nature. Instead this article demonstrates that these men held a distinctly European outlook and were characterised by a high level of education, intellect and their strong personal character. Moreover, they had with few exceptions developed a longing for a radical reorganisation

Estrangeiros na Wehrmacht e na Waffen-SS durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial: um "modelo nazista" de voluntariado?

“…Além disso, ao menos nos casos belga e francês, havia uma violenta disputa l em curso internamente e se apresentar para luta na URSS era também lutar essa guerra interna. Já no caso de, por exemplo, Suécia, Suíça ou Dinamarca (livres da ocupação alemã ou sob um governo civil com alguma autonomia), o europeísmo fascista, o desejo de lutar por ideais compartilhados parece ter tido um papel superior (GUTMANN, 2013;LUND, 2018).…”

Engineering the European Volksgemeinschaft: Social Engineering, Pedagogy and Fascism in the case of the Swiss Alfred Zander

“…60 In contrast, other Swiss Frontists, such as Franz Burri, proved more stubborn and while Burri continued to agitate from within on the world while maintaining a strong adherence to cross-national collaboration within Germanic Europe and the wish to see a political union above the nation state. 67 Riedweg, for example, saw a Germanic union as the only hope of preventing a Bolshevik revolution and had sought contacts with Nazi officials while still active in Switzerland. 68 The influential Nazi official Wilhelm Stuckart later said of Riedweg that he 'held decidedly European thinking without relinquishing his Swiss position, for whom an awakening of all European forces capable of effectively countering the Bolshevik threat was a priority'.…”