In the aftermath of Germany’s invasion of the USSR, the ultra-collaborationist and fascist parties in France joined forces to create the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (LVF) on July 8, 1941. The LVF took its collaboration with Nazism to the extreme.
In the Occupied Zone, the leaders of the collaborationist parties (the National Popular Rally, the French Popular Party, the Revolutionary Social Movement, etc.) formed a steering committee for the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (LVF), which was established on July 8, 1941.
Recruitment proved difficult, especially since the Germans—wary of volunteers with no military experience—rejected nearly 70% of the applicants. Of the 100,000 fighters planned, 12,000 were enlisted in the German army. This low number reflects the French people’s rejection of the Nazi army. With fewer than 6,500 combatants enlisted, France provided the smallest contingent of volunteers in all of collaborationist Europe. This contingent consisted of staunch fascists, but also of adventurers, outcasts, and delinquents, as the pay provided by the German government was attractive (far higher than a French worker’s wage).
After a week of deadly fighting outside Moscow in December 1941, the LVF, reorganized in the spring of 1942 far from the front and confined to counterinsurgency operations, clashed with partisans in the Bryansk region, helping the German army (the Wehrmacht) and the Waffen SS (a Nazi organization loyal to Hitler) to burn down entire villages.
For example: From December 16 to 18, 1942, in Kruszyna, Poland, eight LVF legionnaires took part in a pogrom and the murder of 113 Jews.
In July 1944, Heinrich Himmler, a high-ranking Nazi official, ordered the integration of foreign volunteers into the Waffen-SS, where a few Frenchmen had already been fighting since July 23, 1943.
In late 1943, during a rally at the Vélodrome d’Hiver in Paris, members of the LVF took an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. The LVF was officially dissolved on September 1, 1944.
The thousand legionnaires were assigned to the 33rd SS Charlemagne Division, which was wiped out in Pomerania (Germany) in early 1945.
References:
– Jean-Paul Brunet, 1986, *Jacques Doriot: From Communism to Fascism*, Fayard.
– Ferro, Marc, 1987, *Pétain*, Paris: Fayard.
– Carrard, Philippe, 2011, *We Fought for Hitler*, Paris, Armand Colin.
