Germanic Volunteers from Northern Europe

Between the late 1930s and 1945 nearly 50,000 so-called Germanic volunteers joined the Waffen-SS. The largest group comprised between 23,000 and 25,000 Dutchmen, followed by some 10,000 Flemings, around 6,000 Danes, and approximately 5,000 Norwegians. To this should be added smaller numbers of Swedes, Britons, and a host of other nationalities that at one point or another were classified as so-called Germanics. The SS concept of a Germanic people was somewhat fluid and at times included nationals not only from Germany, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Britain, the Netherlands, and Flanders, but also, for example, from Wallonia, France, Switzerland, Estonia, and Croatia. This chapter focuses on what may be considered the core non-German Germanic Waffen-SS volunteers, i.e. men from Norway, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Belgium; but it also includes a brief consideration of the small contingent of British volunteers.