About this image

Since the opening phases of Operation Barbarossa in June of 1941, the German army found it had no shortage of Russian manpower to draw from. Whether it was from White Expats who had been forced to leave the country in the wake of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Ethnic Ukrainians, Latvians, Cossacks, and other nationalities who saw Soviet rule as tyranny and saw service with the Germans as a path to freedom for their respective peoples, or tens of thousands of Soviet POW's who enlisted to escape starvation, torture, and murder that was the norm for Soviet POWs in German POW camps, hundreds of thousands of Soviet Nationals served in the Wehrmacht or S.S during World War 2. Those in Wehrmacht service, at first, were relegated to mostly unarmed support roles, such as truck drivers and flak operators, under the name "Hiwis" (Short for Hilfswilliger, German for "Helpers" or Volunteers"), and mostly kept out of front-line and combat roles

This all changed in 1944, with the formation of the "Russian Liberation Army" (russian: Русская освободительная армия). It's commander, General Andrey Andreyevich Vlasov, was an ex-Soviet officer who defected after being captured during the Battle of Leningrad. Vlasov had pressured Berlin for the consolidation of Russian troops in German service into a cohesive fighting force, but Hitler and German High Command had rejected his requests, due to the fear of defection and Nazi racial views on Slavic People. However, by 1944, with the situation increasingly becoming desperate, German High Command gave into Vlasov's request, and 120,000 Russian Volunteers were organized into the "Russian Liberation Army." They were equipped with German weaponry, uniforms, and heavy equipment, but wore a special badge on their left arm to denote their membership. Their stated goal was the Liberation of Russia from "Bolshevism," but in the course of their 1 year of combat service, they were mostly used in Anti-Partisan Operations in Czechoslovakia. In fact, at the end of the war, the remains of the army ended up defecting, and fought alongside Czech Partisans during the Prague Uprising of 1945. After the war, most of the Survivors of the ROA were sent back to the Soviet Union, where they were tried as traitors and war criminals. Most were either executed, or served out long hard labor sentences. Vlasov himself was executed for treason in August of 1946

This Uniform is coming in my next major update for my "Historical Uniforms" Pack. You can check out the collection, featuring hundreds of uniforms from the American Civil War to the Second World War, HERE.