Hitler's Swedes

';For those interested in the fighting on the Eastern Front in general. .. give[s] us some of the vast scale of the SS by the end of the war.' HistoryOfWar.org Though Sweden was neutral during the Second World War, Swedish SS volunteers saw action on both the eastern front and NW Europe, and participated in some of the bloodiest clashes: the initial stages of Operation Barbarossa, the winter of 194142, the battles of Kursk, Arnhem, Normandy, Narva, the Warsaw uprising, the Cherkassy and Kurland pockets and, finally, the end in Berlin. There was never an official recruitment drive in Sweden, which is why only some 180200 men enlisted. Those who wanted to recruit themselves often had to make their way to the occupied countriesa fact that makes those Swedes who joined the SS volunteers in the truest sense. This book lets us follow individuals such as Hans Linden, who was the first named Swedish volunteer to fall in action aged barely nineteen years old; the unpopular Swedish SS officer Gunnar Eklf; Elis Hglund, who after several years on the Eastern Front deserted and returned to Sweden; Gsta Borg, who volunteered for the SS a second time as he was denied the chance of becoming an officer in Sweden; and Karl-Axel Bodin, the only Swede to be included in the list of suspected criminals at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who joined the SD in March, 1945. The book includes over 150 photos and is thoroughly researched from primary sources, making it a valuable addition to the history of the SS, and the men who volunteered to serve in it.