Importance of the Blue Division

Alsina González
Specialist journalist and researcher

During World War II, Spain officially declared itself "non-belligerent," a strange position for someone unfamiliar with issues of war. policy international, since we are all used to the fact that in the event of a conflict, a country can only be a belligerent on one of the two opposing sides, or neutral.

Being non-belligerent means that although one of the contending sides is morally supported (and supplies can even be sent to it), said support does not include the use of troops in favor of the side supported.

Another classic example of a similar attitude is that of the United States towards the Japanese invasion of China or its aid to Great Britain during World War II. World until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the subsequent declaration of war by Germany and Italy, dragged the country into the war.

This non-belligerence did not prevent a contingent from being sent which, yes, fought under the German flag and framed in the Wehrmacht in the form of volunteers.

The Blue Division was a military unit of the Reich army during World War II (250 Infantry Division) made up of Spanish soldiers who fought on the eastern front.

There are some controversies about the volunteering of these soldiers: although most historians point out that, indeed, they were volunteers, there is another current of contrary opinion that speaks of conscriptions and of having forced some candidates when the voluntary path was exhausted.

Regarding the causes that led the volunteers to join this unit, they range from the ideological to the pecuniary: the pay was much higher than what an average worker or peasant earned in a Spain in which the majority lived in the misery left by the war. There were even Republicans in the ranks of the Blue Division

A curious case was that of the film director Luís García Berlanga, who enlisted to clean up his family's political file, since his father had been the civil governor of He valencian with the Republic during the war, although some of his comrades on the front claim that he believed in the ideals espoused by the promoters of the Blue Division.

Sending these soldiers was the way to pay Nazi Germany for its support for the rebels during the Spanish Civil War.

On October 23, 1940, Franco and Hitler met in a train carriage in Hendaye. The German dictator tries to persuade his counterpart Spanish so that he enters the war that he is waging, and according to the majority of historians, Franco wants it that way, but he sets a price that is too high -later, pro-fascist historians will spread the myth that it was a strategy concocted by Franco himself so as not to compromise Spain in the conflict-.

Ramón Serrano Súñer, Franco's brother-in-law and Spanish foreign minister at the time, was the main promoter of the idea of ​​the Blue Division. Not surprisingly, Súñer was a pro-Nazi and wanted Spain to enter the war, which is why he ended up being ousted from the government by Franco himself as soon as the tables began to change for the Axis.

At the cry of "Russia is guilty!” [of the Civil War], on June 27, 1941, the recruitment of volunteers began. The Division was commanded by General Agustín Muñoz Grandes, who during the course of the Civil War would manage to escape from his imprisonment on the government side to join the revolted.

TO beginning On July 13, the divisionaries grouped together in Spain and their organization began to be articulated, leaving on the 13th of the same month for Germany.

They arrive by train to the enormous military base of Grafenwöhr, in Bavaria, where they are equipped with German uniforms (with their own badge, yes, it included the Spanish flag, like all foreign units of the Wehrmacht) and they are familiarized with the use of German weapons.

The coexistence with the German military is degraded in those days: the German disciplined character, with a soldier model based on Prussian militarism, collides with the laissez-faire and the disinhibition of the Spanish. Some conflicts break out when the latter try to woo the local German residents… in some cases under the very nose of their partners, who are soldiers or officers of the Wehrmacht.

At the end of August the transfer of the division to its position at the front begins, which will be in Smolensk. Said transfer will consist of 1,600 km by train to East Prussia and Poland, and from here, 900 km more on foot until reaching its destination.

However, halfway, the division is assigned as a reinforcement to the siege of Leningrad, arriving in September 1941 to the city of Novgorod, where from the following month he will take part in the river crossing Volkhov.

It will be here where the Spanish begin to feel the ferocity of the enemy and the harsh weather conditions. It will also be here where the German commanders (who were suspicious of the performance of the Spanish troops) began to dedicate very good words to the Spanish military due to their courage, tenacity and good work on the battlefield.

In January 1942, a divisional company came to the rescue of a German unit, carrying out an almost suicidal action: crossing the frozen Ilmen Lake.

After these battles, the Blue Division will be moved closer to Leningrad, where one of its best-known battles will take place: Krasny Bor.

Krasny Bor will be the battle that will definitively establish the reputation of good and tough fighters of the divisions in the eyes of the Germans and also of their Soviet enemies.

In it, some 6,000 Spanish infantry soldiers plus some SS units in an indeterminate number (in any case, they would hardly add up to more than 10,000 together), made in front of 44,000 Soviet troops that had the support of artillery, tanks and aviation, holding their position despite the large number of casualties inflicted (more than half of the division).

Starting in mid-1943, the landscape has changed for the Axis powers, and the Franco regime is uncomfortable with their alliance. That is why the negotiation will begin to repatriate the division,

Said repatriation will take place from October 10, 1943, but it will not mean the end of the Spanish presence among the troops of the Third Reich; those divisionalists who refused to abandon their German comrades-in-arms were authorized to form a new unit, the Blue Legion, that it would fight until April 1944, when due to pressure from the allies it would be definitively withdrawn from the front and its members returned to Spain.

But again they did not all leave; the little less than 200 volunteers that remained enrolled in different divisions of the Heer, and some of them came to fight in the Battle of Berlin.

The chapter of the Blue Division will finally close (controversies, investigations and studies aside) in 1954, when the last group of 258 divisional soldiers who had remained prisoners of the Soviets returns to Spain.