Sovjetiska soldater på Brittisk kyrkogård

[Goeland]

Merci à vous, Hans. Votre Français est mille fois meilleur que mon Suédois !...

Pour le moment, nous n'avons trouvé aucune solution définitive à ce problème, malgré nos nombreux contacts en Normandie, mais plusieurs hypothèses ont été émises :
http://forum.6juin1944.com/viewtopic.php?t=4590

Amitiés

Franck

[Daniel L]

They don't necessarily have to be liberated POW's, they could as easily be Osttruppen who deserted or surrendered and therafter were enrolled in an Anglo-American unit. I have both read and seen photographic evidence of Osttruppen who took up arms against the Germans and fought alongside British or US forces after the invasion, or the French resistance for that matter. In the book "1944 Americans in Brittany - The Battle for Brest" from Historie & Collections there's a picture of two men from US 2nd Ranger Batallion speaking to some French resistance fighter, one of them a former Russian volunteer. It would have been more or less impossible for them to have returned to the USSR during the war and they would probably been unwilling to return anyway.

/Daniel

[Wooster]

Interesting theory Löwenhamn, but if they deserted from Osttruppen and enrolled in a west-allied force, why are they called "Soviet Forces"?

[varjag]

Interesting theory Löwenhamn, but if they deserted from Osttruppen and enrolled in a west-allied force, why are they called "Soviet Forces"?

I agree with Löwenhamn - the fact that they were soviets - and had ended up, via the Wehrmacht - with ''Allies'' was probably enough to exonerate them from previous sins, and embrace them as their own. Varjag

[Daniel L]

Now that's a good question Wooster, I guess it is because they were Soviet nationals.

/Daniel

[Terje]

There may also be a political angle tothat, calling them something else then Soviet soldiers might consievably have caused a little bit of extra strain on the relations had it come to the attention of the "somewhat unpredictable and unstable" Stalin.