The Slovak Expeditionary Army Group was an element of the military forces of the

Slovak Republic Slovakia, officially the Slovak Republic, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west, and the Czech Republic to the northwest. Slovakia's ...

that fought under Nazi German command on the Eastern Front during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

Background

The

was a

puppet state A puppet state, puppet régime, puppet government or dummy government is a State (polity), state that is ''de jure'' independent but ''de facto'' completely dependent upon an outside Power (international relations), power and subject to its ord ...

established on 14 March 1939. It possessed a small army of its own, largely made up of parts inherited from the old

Czechoslovak Army The Czechoslovak Army (Czech and Slovak: ''Československá armáda'') was the name of the armed forces of Czechoslovakia. It was established in 1918 following Czechoslovakia's declaration of independence from Austria-Hungary. History In t ...

. The 1st Slovak Infantry Division took part in the

German invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...

in September 1939. In the aftermath of the German invasion of France, the German government consolidated its control of the Slovak regime. On 21 June 1941, the Slovak government not informed about the invasion of Russia and offered to participate in the

German invasion of the Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and several of its European Axis allies starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. More than 3.8 million Axis troops invaded the western Soviet Union along a ...

. Germany accepted the following day. The Slovak Army was called up, as the regime sought to demonstrate its indispensability to Nazi Germany and its greater loyalty than

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

History

The Slovak Expeditionary Army Group of about 45,000 men entered the Soviet Union shortly after the German attack. This army lacked logistic and transportation support, so a much smaller unit, the ''Slovak Mobile Command'' under command of Rudolf Pilfousek (a.k.a. the ''Pilfousek Brigade''), was formed from units selected from this force; the rest of the Slovak army was relegated to rear-area security duty. The Slovak Mobile Command was attached to the German 17th Army (as was the Hungarian

Carpathian Group The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians () are a range of mountains forming an arc across Central Europe and Southeast Europe. Roughly long, it is the third-longest European mountain range after the Ural Mountains, Urals at and the Scandinav ...

also) and shortly thereafter given over to direct German command, the Slovaks lacking the command infrastructure to exercise effective operational control. This unit fought with the 17th Army through July 1941, including at the

Battle of Uman The Battle of Uman (15 July – 8 August 1941) was the World War II German offensive in Uman, Uman, Ukraine against the 6th Army (Soviet Union), 6th and 12th Army (Soviet Union), 12th Soviet Armies. In a three-week period, the Wehrmacht encircle ...

and the

Battle of Lypovec The Battle of Lypovec was an armed clash fought between the Slovakia, Slovak Mobile Brigade (Slovak Republic), Mobile Brigade (''Slovenská rýchla brigáda'') and troops of the Red Army on 22 July 1941 in the set of Operation Barbarossa. It was ...

. At the beginning of August 1941, the Slovak Mobile Command was dissolved and instead two infantry divisions were formed from the Slovak Expeditionary Army Group. The Slovak 2nd Division was a

security division Security Divisions (German: ''Sicherungs-Divisionen'') were German rear-area military units engaged in Nazi security warfare in occupied Europe during World War II. Almost all divisions were employed in areas on the Eastern front with the excepti ...

, but the Slovak 1st Division was a front-line unit which fought in the campaigns of 1941 and 1942, reaching the Caucasus area with

Army Group B Army Group B () was the name of four distinct German Army Group, army group commands that saw action during World War II. The first Army Group B was created on 12 October 1939 (from the former Army Group North) and fought in the Battle of France ...

. The Slovak 1st Division then shared the fate of the German southern forces, losing its heavy equipment in the

Kuban bridgehead The Kuban Bridgehead (), also known as the "Goth's head position" (), was a German military position on the Taman Peninsula, Russia, between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. Existing from January to October 1943, the bridgehead formed after th ...

and suffering heavy losses at

Melitopol Melitopol is a city and municipality in Zaporizhzhia Oblast, southeastern Ukraine. It is situated on the Molochna River, which flows through the eastern edge of the city into the Molochnyi Lyman estuary. Melitopol is the second-largest city ...

in the southern Ukraine. Slovak troops took part in Operation Bamberg, an anti-partisan action in which 5,000 alleged partisans, including 200 Jews, were shot. Slovak soldiers participated in numerous pogroms and frequently robbed Jews during the first days and weeks of the occupation in the summer of 1941. However, there was no equivalent of the

Barbarossa decree The Military Justice Decree (), commonly known as the Barbarossa decree, was one of the criminal orders of the ''Wehrmacht'' issued by ''Generalfeldmarschall'' Wilhelm Keitel on 13 May 1941. The decree declared that the upcoming Operation Barbaro ...

(which authorized Wehrmacht soldiers to execute civilians without trial) and some Slovak soldiers were tried for robbing or murdering Jews, receiving only very light sentences. Many Slovak soldiers and the army leadership nevertheless approved of the anti-Semitic actions, due in part to the large amount of propaganda promoting the

Jewish Bolshevik Jewish Bolshevism, also Judeo–Bolshevism, is an antisemitic and anti-communist conspiracy theory that claims that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was a Jewish plot and that Jews controlled the Soviet Union and international communist movement ...

canard. In June 1944, the remnant of the division, no longer considered fit for combat due to low morale, was disarmed and the personnel assigned to construction and

logistical Logistics is the part of supply chain management that deals with the efficient forward and reverse flow of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption according to the needs of customers. Logi ...

work, a fate which had already befallen the Slovak 2nd Division earlier for the same reason.

Commanders of the 1st Mobile Infantry Division

Augustín Malár Augustín Malár (18 July 1894 – 28 February 1945) was a Slovak general during World War II. During the interwar period, Malár was one of the few successful higher officers of Slovak nationality in the Czechoslovak Army. After the German o ...

(September 1941 – September 1942) * Jozef Turanec (September 1942 – January 1943) * Stefan Jurech (January 1943 – September 1943) * Elmir Lendvay (September 1943 – June 1944)Feldgrau WW2 Slovakian Axis Forces
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References

Bibliography

External links