Spanish "volunteers" against the USSR: "Blue Brigade" and "Blue Legion"
Soldiers of the Blue Division near Leningrad
В previous article We talked about the formation of the volunteer "Blue Division" in Spain, which was created under the pretext of "fighting communism." About its path to the front, the first battles and the fighting qualities of Spanish soldiers. Today we will continue this story.
"Blue Division" near Krasny Bor
So, on the Eastern Front, the Spaniards immediately attracted attention with their rather caricatured appearance, low discipline and tendency to steal, not only from the local population, but also from their German allies. About how they treated weapons and ammunition, one can judge from the message of Theodor von Bock:
"The boys cut up new harnesses for trouser belts and suspenders, and use gas mask boxes as pots for making coffee. The Spaniards abandon almost new bicycles on the side of the road because of a puncture in the tire, and the MG-34 machine gun is often assembled with a hammer. The "extra" parts that remain after assembly are buried in the ground."
However, at the same time, the Spaniards demonstrated personal bravery and steadfastness in holding their positions, so that soon the Germans began to trust them much more, and all the soldiers of the "Blue Division" received the medal "For the Winter Campaign of 1941-1942". And the Soviet command already took the Spaniards much more seriously. The Spaniards showed themselves very well, in particular, in repelling the attacks of the Red Army at Krasny Bor. They were carried out as part of Operation Polar Star - a joint offensive of the Northwestern, Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts on the territory of the Leningrad, Pskov and Novgorod regions. The goal of this operation was to unblock Leningrad, it was carried out in February - April 1943.
In the Krasnoborsk area (on a commanding height in the area of the city of Kolpino) there were approximately four and a half thousand Spanish soldiers, as well as one regiment of the 215th German infantry division, German Tanks and self-propelled guns. The Soviet 63rd Guards Rifle Division, reinforced by eight artillery and two tank regiments. The data on those battles is quite contradictory. Spanish sources often claim that the soldiers of the "Blue Division" repelled all attacks, Soviet historians say that the Spaniards were actually routed and the guards were stopped by hastily transferred German units. A similar picture is painted by the journalist of the Spanish newspaper ABC Cesar Cervera, to whom he wrote in 2019:
“The darkest day arrived: February 10, 1943. In Krasny Bor, a suburb of Leningrad, 5,9 thousand lightly armed Spaniards had to repel the powerful onslaught of 38 battalions of the Red Army, supported by a large number of artillery and tanks, for several hours...
"The first line of defense was simply crushed. The Russian tanks, initially stopped, began to advance again towards Krasny Bor, opening a breakthrough along the October Railway; nothing was known about the first battalion under the command of Major Rubio, nor about the situation with the 250th battalion, although the worst was assumed," one of the participants in the battle describes this catastrophe...
The Red Army fired tens of thousands of shells that day...
Confident that the shelling had destroyed all living things in their path, the Soviet infantrymen calmly approached the Spanish positions, who, in anticipation of superior enemy forces, hid in shell craters with MG34 machine guns in their hands and prepared for battle. And then hand-to-hand combat with the enemy began under the sights of Russian snipers, who mercilessly shot about a hundred Spaniards that day. Surrounded by enemies, the division officers ... asked by radio to carry out an air strike on their own positions.
After nine hours and 45 minutes of fighting, German infantry arrived to help the Spanish soldiers. But it was too late...
The Soviet troops liberated Krasny Bor, moving the front line by about six kilometers. The losses of the Blue Division by the end of the battle amounted to 1125 killed, 1036 wounded and 91 missing. But the successes of Stalin's army were far from being called a victory. It lost 7-9 thousand people."
"The first line of defense was simply crushed. The Russian tanks, initially stopped, began to advance again towards Krasny Bor, opening a breakthrough along the October Railway; nothing was known about the first battalion under the command of Major Rubio, nor about the situation with the 250th battalion, although the worst was assumed," one of the participants in the battle describes this catastrophe...
The Red Army fired tens of thousands of shells that day...
Confident that the shelling had destroyed all living things in their path, the Soviet infantrymen calmly approached the Spanish positions, who, in anticipation of superior enemy forces, hid in shell craters with MG34 machine guns in their hands and prepared for battle. And then hand-to-hand combat with the enemy began under the sights of Russian snipers, who mercilessly shot about a hundred Spaniards that day. Surrounded by enemies, the division officers ... asked by radio to carry out an air strike on their own positions.
After nine hours and 45 minutes of fighting, German infantry arrived to help the Spanish soldiers. But it was too late...
The Soviet troops liberated Krasny Bor, moving the front line by about six kilometers. The losses of the Blue Division by the end of the battle amounted to 1125 killed, 1036 wounded and 91 missing. But the successes of Stalin's army were far from being called a victory. It lost 7-9 thousand people."
The communications officer of the 14th fortified region headquarters, Vasily Golovko, recalled the losses suffered by the Soviet troops:
"It was early spring, the snow was melting quickly. But when we looked at the lowland between Krasny Bor and Kolpino, it seemed covered in snow. Day after day passed, and the lowland was still white. We thought that the snow melted slowly in the swamp. On a hot, sunny day, we decided to go down to the lowland and see what was white there. It turned out that it was not snow, but white camouflage coats that the advancing soldiers were wearing. The corpses lay so densely that in some places they formed large spots."
The Soviet troops were unable to build on their success and break through here. The battles in other areas also ended unsuccessfully. Marshal of Artillery N. Voronov wrote later:
"After the brilliant victories on the Don and the Volga, the failures on this front were depressing. It was clear that we should not have started a major operation here... We were condemning equipment to destruction, losing many people and countless amounts of ammunition in clearly unpromising directions."
And the Blue Division then suffered the greatest losses during its entire stay on the territory of the USSR, and 80% of the Spaniards who were captured surrendered right near Krasny Bor.
A Red Army soldier escorts captured soldiers of the Blue Division
The conditions of their detention can be judged by the fact that they had the opportunity to play football and even formed a team, which in 1949 in Vologda played a friendly match with the local football club Dynamo.
Most of the Spanish prisoners later returned safely to their homeland in 1952.
After the fierce battles near Krasny Bor, the Blue Division had largely lost its combat capability, and there was no one to replace the losses: the flow of those wishing to fight in distant Russia had practically dried up by that time. As a result, the Blue Division was withdrawn to the Slutsk region, to a quiet section of the front.
Spanish occupiers
And how did the Spaniards behave on the territory of the USSR? And what memories did they leave behind among the citizens of our country?
The opinion of the Red Army soldiers is clear: for them, the Spaniards were no better enemies than the Germans. The testimony of Nikolai Kovrukov, a sergeant from the 196th Rifle Division, is characteristic:
"One division fought against us, there were many Spaniards there, they fought for the Germans, ours really didn't like them, and if they sent captured Spaniards to accompany them, then the soldiers would shoot the hell out of such prisoners on the way. Well, since they were fighting for the Germans, ours also fought there in Spain for free power, so they were fascists."
As for the treatment of the civilian population of the occupied territories by the Spanish, the information can be found to be quite contradictory. One often hears about the "kindness" of the Spanish soldiers, but they were "kind" only in comparison with the Romanians, Hungarians, Estonians and Galicians. L. Osipova (O. Polyakova), mentioned in the first article, writes in her "Diary of a Collaborator" about the impression that the soldiers and officers of the Blue Division made on everyone:
"The Spaniards have destroyed all our ideas about them as a proud, beautiful, noble people, etc. No operas. Small, fidgety, like monkeys, dirty and thieving, like gypsies. But very good-natured."
At least this traitor didn’t lie about the appearance of Spanish men: a typical modern Spaniard is short, short-legged, a brunette who starts to go bald early (unless, of course, he is an Asturian or a Basque, they can be fair-haired) with a noticeable belly and a pronounced good-natured “don’t give a damn” attitude.
As for stealing from their German allies, the Spanish were seriously inferior to the Romanians in this matter. There is a known case when Soviet partisans managed to get a discount from them for purchasing a large batch of weapons - on the grounds that they were "regular, honest and wholesale" buyers.
Let us continue Osipova’s quote:
"All the German beauties immediately switched from the Germans to the Spaniards. And the Spaniards also show great tenderness and affection for the Russian girls. There is hatred between them and the Germans, which is now further fueled by rivalry among women."
By the way, Mussolini’s son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano left a funny entry in his diary:
"The Spanish Blue Division is a tough, but undisciplined and restless formation. The soldiers are suffering from the cold, and they want women. The pills that suppress sexual desire, which were effective against the Germans, have no effect on the Spaniards."
But, as disgusting as it may be, let us return to these unworthy German-Spanish “beauties” that the research fellow at the St. Petersburg Institute also talks about. stories RAS and professor of Novgorod University B. Kovalev, author of the monograph "Volunteers in Someone Else's War". In Poozerie he met old women singing in Spanish, who "blushed deeply and asked: "Am I at least singing decent words?"
The Spaniards, who were given the recordings to listen to, “cried with emotion” and said that “the grandmothers very accurately conveyed the 1936 hit Paloma Palomita – about a dove.”
It should be noted that the Spaniards themselves unexpectedly liked the famous song "Katyusha". They even wrote their own words to its melody:
"The Russian girl Katyushka came out onto the banks of the Volkhov and saw the Blue Division going into battle... A sad song of war and love... If they kill me, don't be sad about me, Katyushka, just remember this song."
There was something in the melody of "Katyusha" that touched the souls of other "hot" southern European guys - the Italians. In this country, two versions of the text were written - "Katerina" and "The wind is blowing", the latter became the march of Italian partisans.
Let's return to the Spaniards of the "Blue Division": the depth of their sympathy for the Russian "beauties" can be judged by the memoirs of the same Lidiya Osipova, who tells how the orderly of a Spanish officer stole French perfume from the wife of the German burgomaster of Pavlovsk and gave it to his Russian mistress.
There are known cases of Spaniards stealing cows, which they then drove to other villages – again, in order to give them to some “hottie”.
In addition, a special love of the Spaniards for fried or stewed cat meat is described, which they often treated their "darlings" to. They called cats "a freshly shot hare", and after the meal, laughing, they showed a skin with a cat's head.
Further, collaborator Osipova paints a completely idyllic picture:
"The population immediately appreciated all the Spanish good nature and became attached to the Spaniards in a way they could never have become attached to the Germans. Especially the children. If a German is riding in a cart, you will never see children on it. If a Spaniard is riding, you won't see him behind the children. And all these Jose and Pepe walk the streets, hung with children."
However, there are other testimonies left by neither collaborators nor "hotties". The mildest of them sound something like this:
“They hardly robbed, mostly stole.”
But more often than not, things were much more severe. Even Russian traitors appointed by the Germans to the positions of "burgomasters" of villages and towns got it. One of them was killed because he did not want to give up the gold ring and put up strong resistance. The companion of the robber who shot the traitor explained his actions as follows:
“I couldn’t allow a Russian to offend my friend.”
Juan Eugenio Blanco, in his memoirs, “Rusia no es cuestión de un día. Stamps of the Azul Division,” recalled:
“We wanted to preserve the best memories of our stay there (in Russia)... We could bring back several icons as souvenirs.”
He then cites the rates set by the Spaniards:
“The small ones are priced at a pittance, the larger miniatures, which are three or four centuries old, are priced at a pack of cigarettes or a bottle of vodka.”
But here is what information about these “Spanish merchants” is given in the report of the employees of the German operational headquarters “Reichsleiter Rosenberg” (who searched for and evaluated works of art in the occupied territories of the USSR):
"March 3, 1942. Church of the Archangel Michael. The only church where services were held during the Bolshevik era. The Spaniards forced their way in, plundered and destroyed it."
“March 14, 1942. Church of Theodore Stratelates on the Creek… The iconostasis was partially used for fuel by Spanish soldiers.”
And on March 14, 1942, German hunters of cultural treasures reported with regret that the Spanish had beaten them to it. As a result, in two Novgorod museums (the historical and Russian art museums) "there are no more works of art."
The Spaniards even managed to take away the cross of the main dome of the Novgorod Cathedral of Saint Sophia as a trophy. It was only possible to return it to Novgorod in 2007.
The "dissolute" behavior of the Spaniards and their penchant for collecting "trophies" and "souvenirs" (i.e. looting) angered the German soldiers so much that they sometimes got into fights with them, as was recalled, for example, by the residents of the village of Pokrovskaya. Moreover, in the event of victory, the embittered "Teutons" shouted to the beaten Spaniards:
"These are your trophies."
Dmitry Likhachev also reports on such “art” of the “God-fearing” Spanish Catholics:
“On the walls of the staircase of St. George’s Cathedral in Novgorod, the Spaniards, who were keen on art, painted naked women directly from the remains of 12th century frescoes.”
Spanish soldiers in occupied Novgorod
Here are the testimonies of our compatriots who had the chance to closely communicate with the Spanish occupiers. First, about the girls who did not want to become "beauties":
"A Spanish officer... punched me in the face because I didn't let my daughter come to him for the evening. Also, a Spanish soldier punched citizen Maria Barinova in the face because she didn't open the door right away."
“Citizen Vera Karpova, 13, was beaten in the face so severely that she took to her bed.”
And this is about the “innocent” theft of Spanish soldiers who were supposedly embarrassed to rob:
“In the village of Lukinshchina... for refusing to give a cow to Spanish soldiers, an old man, Grigory Izotovich Izotov, born in 1881, was shot with a rifle.”
In the village of Babki, 70-year-old Vasily Ivanovich Pikalev was shot with a rifle in his home when he resisted Spanish soldiers who were taking his felt boots right off his feet.
“The Spaniards took all the felt boots from Praskovya Alekseyevna Filippova, and beat her very severely with hand grenades. They also threatened me with a grenade.”
“In November 1941, a Spanish soldier punched me in the face in my house when other soldiers were taking hay from me, and I asked them not to take it.”
“In the village of Troitsa in July 1942, the Spaniards beat citizen Yegor Timofeevich Barunov on the hands with sticks because he had not caught enough fish for them.”
And about the “kindness and mercy” of the Spanish occupiers:
"The landlord's son and I (we were both about 13 years old) were sleeping together on the stove, and there was sausage lying right in front of us on the shelf. We couldn't resist and ate the sausage that night. In the morning, barefoot and in just our shirts, they took us out into the yard and put us near the barn to shoot us. Grandma and the landlord ran out, fell on their knees in front of the soldiers, begging for mercy. They pardoned us, but beat us up badly."
"Blue Legion"
Emblem of the Blue Legion
In the autumn of 1943, Franco decided to return Spanish soldiers to their homeland. However, it turned out that some of them were quite happy with the war in Russia, and they stayed, forming the "Blue Legion", which numbered between two and three thousand people. The Spanish pilots of the "Blue Fighter Squadron" mentioned in the first article also continued to fight.
The Blue Legion was no longer a Spanish unit: in mid-December of the same 1943, it became part of the 121st division of the Wehrmacht and was subordinate to the German command.
Finally, having fully realized the inevitability of the collapse of the Third Reich, on April 12, 1944, Franco issued a strict order for all Spaniards to return to their homeland. He was quite rightly afraid of the "uncomfortable" questions that the leaders of the Anti-Hitler Coalition powers could ask him after the victory. But this order of the caudillo was also ignored by some members of the "Blue Legion". They joined the 28th SS Infantry Division, were then transferred to the 11th Motorized Division "Nordland" and even defended Berlin during the storming of this city by Soviet troops. And after Hitler's suicide, Spanish newspapers would write that the Fuhrer died "as befits a soldier - facing the Bolsheviks."
Blue Division veterans in post-war Spain
The soldiers who had gained combat experience were highly valued in the Spanish army. Many of them, in addition to Spanish awards, proudly wore the Iron Crosses of defeated Nazi Germany.
It must be said that the "scars" left in Spain by the 1936-1939 civil war have not completely healed, and stratification of society is still noticeable: some consider Franco and his comrades heroes, others - criminals. The attitude towards the "Blue Division" is also ambiguous. The traditional "indifference" saves: ordinary Spaniards are simply too lazy to engage in political debates.
The streets of the Blue Division can still be seen in some towns and villages in modern Spain. Several feature films and documentaries have been made about this unit. The stratification of Spanish society on this issue was also demonstrated by the responses received after the publication of an article about the exploits of its soldiers, which was published in the ABC newspaper on February 11, 2019. The soldiers and officers of the Blue Division were called "brave and fearless", "who endured hardships and defied death".
Some readers' comments were positive, but others wrote that the Spanish volunteers were "helping the worst enemy of humanity." The most harsh and uncompromising was this one:
"They fought for Zyklon B gas and the chambers where it was used, for crematoria, ghettos, mass murder, invasions and plunder of other countries."
However, it should be noted that other Spaniards also fought on the battlefields of World War II – former Republicans who left the country after the defeat in the civil war of 1936-1939. They ended up in the ranks of the troops of the states of the Anti-Hitler coalition, including the Red Army. We will talk about them in the next article.
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