ex SS/Nazis in French Foreign Legion - myth?

[Alex655321]

Im an ex Legionnaire and I can tell you one thing its true , germans came after , and gave us a lot rules discipline , costum ,habits and songs !!

[pBenauer]

I have been surfing the net looking for info on ex nazi's fleeing to the FFL because theres stories in my family that my grandfather was in the young youth he was born apirl 20th met hitler a couple of times and was in the FFL. I was told he was in Algeria. my grandmother told me they had stacks of money on the table counting it and they had armed guards take it to the bank. My grandmother told me they had to escape on horse back and being shoot at by muslims that were taking over the french colonial. He was in Korean war too. My dad still has his gold budda ring. he came to canada in 1960's How do i find his service rocords?

[henry1]

Originally Posted by banger

I think that one should not overlook the fact that no all former SS troops were looking to escape a criminal past.

For some, the Legion was simply employment during difficult times that followed WW II. Remember, most of Europe, and virtually all of Germany was destroyed. The Foreign Legion offered food, lodging, money, and few questions.

In return, the French received a "disposable" force, that few inside of Metropolitan France cared about. After all, when the Foreign Legion fought and died, it wasn't exactly like the children of France were involved.

A closing thought, let me assure you that former SS troops found their way into the U.S. military following the war. This was a "fast track" for citizenship.

Originally Posted by WIHS2006

Several years ago I read the book Devil's Guard by George Elford and I have being wondering if it is true or if it is a myth that a significant amount of Legionaries post WWII were ex. Nazis? I heard an account that at Dien Bien Phu, one Legion unit counterattacked to recapture one of the strong points while singing the Horst Wessel Song.

This is also not the first time I have heard this about the post WWII FFL having large numbers of ex. SS ad other WWII German elites in their ranks.

both of your are pretty much on the money about the why and the how and i want to add this about the Legion right after the war end

first off most of the socalled germans where in the socalled units that the people where wanted by for war crimes where take to the FFL office and told this or the hangmens noose this was more common than you think inside french military at the time frame after the war ..

Since French was going back into the French Indochina in a big way after Japan surrendering and they return the area back to the french and they looked at this people to fillout the ranks of the Legion and not really have to draw on the french people for soldiers to go somewhere and die when you have all this socalled former soldiers sitting around in the pow camps doing nothing anyway and they had the skills and knowage inside there heads from years fighting the Americans and British and Russain militarys ..

so why not use them as basic cannon fodder in the Legion a unit that was design from the get go as a unit to sent somewhere to have there people die in the first place instead of french citizen plus there was a few specialist units where made up of these units inside the Legion for the fighting a socalled guerilla war that the Viet Minh

so they started a basic drive for soldiers inside the camps and most joined up without much beening said to them and those who where wanted for war crimes looked at away to escape there past with a fresh start and a new new and passport ..plus the Legion never said they where angels in the first place who they had inside the Legion ..

[R-R Force]

After serving the French Foreign Legion, ex SS officers were given a new name and French Citizenship papers.
This was told to me by an ex SS officer while in Germany, we were comparing notes on how the French moved
whole villages. I had started talking about a certain village that we (U.S. Army) had moved, and the ancient
gate way in the road to the new village.

He showed me pictures of the same gateway and said it was the original location of the village that the
French Foreign Legion had moved. We had just moved it back to its original location.

He told me more than I ever expected to hear. At length he told me about the German Final Solution and the
concentration camps. He said that the denials of local towns people about not knowing about the crematoriums
was absolutely false. He also said that the smell of these devices could be smelled for miles around.

[BlackShoe]

Pehaps not nearly as many ex SS or Nazis as generally believed, but recall reading some time ago, from a source that I cannot quote or verify, that in the late 40's nearly half of the FFL were Germans. These were just ordinary ex Wehrmacht, with a large number of those being former Afrika Korps, men already trained in and used to desert warfare.

[wanneroo]

Not familiar with the novel mentioned, but it's pretty well known that former German soldiers served in the FFL.

There were also a number of them that emigrated to the USA, in some cases changed their name and also ended up in the US Army and some ended up as serving in the Special Forces.

[Strelnikov]

Bernard Fall said that national components were kept at about 25%, and that even if additional numbers of Germans were recruited after WWII, it's unlikely that they were more than 35% at most. But more importantly, he says that by Dien Bien Phu the average age of a legionnaire was 23 years old. As Fall says, anyone in this age group would have been in "his Hitler Youth shorts" when WWII ended. I've also read that the French tightened up their recruiting standards to prevent any potential war criminals from joining, but I have forgotten where I read this. Although some people may have enlisted under nationalities not their own. Fascinating subject!