User:Vecrumba/Legion

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 * Formation as of April 92008

Latvian military under the Nazis
On July 171941 Hitler created the Reichministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete (Ministry for the occupied Eastern territories). Three days later, SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor der Polizei ...Stahlecker, who among other duties had arrived in the Baltics to implement Hitler's Holocaust, disbanded the Latvian defense force and ordered no Latvian uniforms to be worn.

under Alfred Rosenberg, an Estonian Baltic German, who in turn appointed Heinrich Lohse as Reichskommisar für das Ostland (State Commissioner of the East Land), the territories of Belarus, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Lohse took over administration on August 181941 and appointed the former mayor of Lubeck, Dr. Heinrich Drechsler, Der Generalkommisar in Riga (Commissioner General for Latvia).

Formation
The Latvian Legion was created in January 1943 on the orders of Adolf Hitler following a request by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Technically, it was a volunteer unit, but one month after the unit was founded, German occupation authorities in Latvia started conscripting military age men. They were given a choice between "volunteering" for SS Waffen legions, serving in the German army (Wehrmacht) as "auxiliaries" (laborers behind the front lines), commanded by German officers and often treated as subhumans, or being sent to a slave labor camp in Germany. Those who tried to avoid one of those options were arrested and sent to concentration camps. As a result, only 15-20% of the soldiers serving in the legion were actual volunteers.

With Nazi Germany losing the war, conscription was extended to larger and larger numbers of Latvians. The first conscription, in 1943, applied to all Latvian men born from 1919 to 1924. The subsequent conscriptions extended to Latvians born between 1906 and 1928.

The division commanders and most of the staff were German SS officers. The individual combat regiments were typically commanded by Latvian officers.

On July 1, 1944 the Latvian Legion had 87,550 men. Another 23,000 Latvians were serving as Wehrmacht "auxiliaries".