Germany’s defence of France included a number of Eastern European and Asian battalions. While not actually involved in the fighting on D-Day, these Indian troops were stationed in the nearby Bordeaux region of France. The group, which was was made up of several hundred troops, was commanded by officers of the SS. Members of this outfit, known as the Tiger Legion, were recruited from the ranks of Allied POWs, while some conscripts travelled to Germany on their own to volunteer. (Image source: German Federal Archive)Īlso deployed was a unit comprised entirely of Indians who had flocked to the Nazi colours as a way to retaliate against British imperialism. Indian volunteers man the Axis defences at Bordeaux.
These foreign volunteers were grouped into units designated as Ostbataillone or “East Battalions”. Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians, all of whom opposed the Soviets, took part in the defence of Normandy, along with anti-Bolshevik Ukrainians, Georgians and Azerbaijanis. Ambrose pointed out that one out of every six soldiers fighting for the Axis in France on June 6 was a non-German. In fact, the list of ethnicities that manned the Nazi fortifications along the channel coast reads like a veritable multi-cultural who’s who. In his best-selling 1994 book D-Day: June 6, 1944, author Stephen E. ONE OF THE ironies of the June, 1944 Normandy campaign is that Third Reich, a regime so deeply obsessed with racial purity, would hold its Atlantic Wall in Europe with so many non-German foreign troops. (Originally published in on June 6, 2012) Many of these foreign volunteers saw action on D-Day. The Germans used troops from Eastern Europe, Central Asia and India to man its defences on the Atlantic Wall.