Aserbaidschanische Legion

The Azerbaijani Legion (german: Aserbaidschanische Legion) was one of the foreign units of the Wehrmacht. It was formed in December 1941 on the Eastern Front as the ''Kaukasische-Mohammedanische Legion'' (Muslim Caucasus Legion) and was re-designated 1942 into two separate legions, the North Caucasian legion and the Azerbaijani legion. It was made up mainly of former Azerbaijani POW volunteers but also volunteers from other peoples in the area. It was part of the Ostlegionen. It was used to form the 162nd (Turkistan) Infanterie-Division of the Wehrmacht in 1943.
Many Azerbaijanis joined here in hopes of liberating their homeland from Soviet rule. One Azerbaijani soldier who was captured said to the Germans he was anti-Bolshevik, and only wanted an opportunity to free his homeland.

The Azerbaijani Legion participated in the systematic killing of between 40,000 and 50,000 Polish civilians in Warsaw during the Wola massacre.

Origins

The sweeping initial victories of Operation Barbarossa produced hundreds of thousands of Soviet POWs, many of whom were not Russian. All of them were hungry; many were starving. In a mere eight months of 1941-42, the invading German armies killed an estimated 2.8 million Soviet POWs through starvation, exposure, and summary execution. Conditions in the prison camps were atrocious.

There were no barracks or permanent housing. The camps were simply open areas fenced off with barbed wire. The prisoners had to lie in the sun, then in mud, and in the fall—with temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees Celsius—faced the possibility of freezing to death.

The foreign Waffen beginnings were shrouded in great secrecy for fear of Hitler's disapproval, who was categorically opposed to any form of participation of Soviet citizens in the war against Russia. But the German army's needs on the Eastern Front induced German commanders to accept the services of volunteers to fight the Soviet regime even against the clear orders of the German High Command.

Tens of thousands of them were Muslims, where most of them came from the Soviet Union. In December 1941 a top-secret memorandum ordered that the OKW was to create two Muslim units: the Turkestan Legion, consisting of Central Asian Muslim volunteers; such as Turkomans, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Karakalpaks, and Tajiks, and the Kaukasisch-Mohammedanische Legion from Caucasian Muslims volunteers; such as Azerbaijanis, Dagestanis, Ingush, and Lezgins.

The German courting of the Muslims was part of Hitler's schemes for bringing Turkey onto his side and to advance control of the oil fields in the Middle East and Baku. The most numerous ethnicity among the Muslims that served the Germans were the Turkestanis. The first Turkestani volunteers were integrated as a single battalion of the 444th Security Division in November 1941 and became an auxiliary force to help the Germans fight the Soviet partisans. Major Andreas Meyer-Mader was appointed as commander of the 444th Battalion. Meyer-Mader, an Austrian, had served on the staff of Chiang Kai-shek’s National Revolutionary Army before World War II.

According to Argumenty i Fakty newspaper, 40,000 Azerbaijanis fought for Nazi Germany, while 700,000 Azerbaijanis were conscripted into Soviet armies.

450th Turkistanisches Battalion

The 450th Battalion was raised at Legionowo, then in General Government, and spent most of the summer patrolling the communications and rail networks between Kharkiv

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