The Waffen-SS

This is the first systematic pan-European study of the hundreds of thousands of non-Germans who fought -- either voluntarily or under different kinds of pressures -- for the Waffen-SS (or auxiliary police formations operating in the occupied East). Building on the findings of regional studies by other scholars -- many of them included in this volume -- The Waffen-SS aims to arrive at a fuller picture of those non-German citizens (from Eastern as well as Western Europe) who served under the SS flag. Where did the non-Germans in the SS come from (socially, geographically, and culturally)? What motivated them? What do we know about the practicalities of international collaboration in war and genocide, in terms of everyday life, language, and ideological training? Did a common transnational identity emerge as a result of shared ideological convictions or experiences of extreme violence? In order to address these questions (and others), The Waffen-SS adopts an approach that does justice to the complexity of the subject, adding a more nuanced, empirically sound understanding of collaboration in Europe during World War II, while also seeking to push the methodological boundaries of the historiographical genre of perpetrator studies by adopting a transnational approach.

Jochen Böhler is a Research Associate at the Imre Kertesz Kolleg in Jena, where he teaches courses on the history of early twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe. His recent major publications include: War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 1939: The Einsatzgruppen in Poland (2014, with Jurgen Matthäus and Klaus-Michael Mallmann) SS-Oberscharführer Hermann Baltruschat's Career 1939-1943 (2014, with Jacek Sawicki) and Legacies of Violence: Eastern Europe's First World War (2014, with Joachim von Puttkamer and W?odzimierz Borodziej). He is also currently preparing a monograph on Embattled Poland 1918-1921 for Oxford University Press. Robert Gerwarth is Professor of Modern History at University College Dublin and Director of the Centre for War Studies. He is the author of The Bismarck Myth (2005) and a biography of Reinhard Heydrich (2011). His third monograph, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End will be published in late 2016. He has also published ten edited collections, including, most recently, War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (2012, with John Horne) and Empires at War, 1911-1923 (2014, with Erez Manela).

- 1: Jochen Böhler and Robert Gerwarth: Non-Germans in the Waffen-SS: An Introduction - 2: Peter Black and Martin Gutmann: Racial Theory and Realities of Conquest in the Occupied East: The Nazi Leadership and Non-German Nationals in the SS and Police - 3: Claus Bundgård Christensen, Niels Bo Poulsen, and Peter Scharff Smith: Germanic Volunteers from Northern Europe - 4: Georgios Antoniou, Philippe Carrard, Stratos Dordanas, Carlo Gentile, Christopher Hale, and Xosé M. Núñez Seixas: Western and Southern Europe: The Cases of Spain, France, Italy, and Greece - 5: Matthew Kott, Arunas Bubnys, and Ülle Kraft: The Baltic States: Auxiliaries and Waffen-SS soldiers from Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania - 6: Jacek Andrzej Mlynarczyk, Leonid Rein, Andrii Bolianovskyi, and Oleg Romanko: The Special Cases of Eastern Europe: The Polish Blue Police, Auxiliaries, and SS Formations - 7: Thomas Casagrande, Michal Schvarc, Norbert Spannenberger, and Otmar Trasca: The "Volksdeutsche": A Case Study from South-Eastern Europe - 8: Xavier Bougarel, Alexander Korb, Stefan Petke, and Franziska Zaugg: Muslim SS Units in the Balkans and the Soviet Union - 9: Immo Rebitschek, Gerald Steinacher, Mats Deland, Sabina Ferhadbegovic, and Frank Seberechts: Prosecution and Trajectories after 1945 - 10: Steffen Werther and Madeleine Hurd: Waffen-SS Veterans and their Sites of Memory Today