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33-563: Denmark had signed a treaty of nonaggression with Nazi Germany in 1939. Germany invoked this treaty on 9 April 1940, when it ordered the military occupation of Denmark under the guise of protecting the Danes from British invasion. Faced with potential German aerial bombing, King Christian X and the Danish government accepted "protection of the Reich" and permitted the "peaceful occupation" of

66-673: A device for neutralising a potential military threat, enabling at least one of the signatories to free up its military resources for other purposes. For example, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact freed German resources from the Russian front . On the other hand, the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact , signed on April 13, 1941, removed the threat from Japan in the east enabling the Soviets to move large forces from Siberia to

99-593: A general. Christian Frederik von Schalburg replaced Kryssing as the leader of Frikorps Danmark; von Schalburg was a Danish-Russian aristocrat, anti-communist , and member of the DNSAP who had been raised in Russia and had seen the aftermath of the Russian revolution in 1917. On 8 May 1942, the corps was ordered to the front line where it engaged in fighting near Demyansk , south of Lake Ilmen and Novgorod . Schalburg

132-874: A western-Germanic state called Burgundia , which would be policed by the SS as a security buffer for Germany. In 1940, the first manifestation of the Germanic SS appeared in Flanders as the Allgemeene SS Vlaanderen to be joined two-months later by the Dutch Nederlandsche SS , and in May 1941 the Norwegian Norges SS was formed. The final nation to contribute to the Germanic SS was Denmark, whose Germansk Korpset (later called

165-419: Is a treaty between two or more states/countries that includes a promise by the signatories not to engage in military action against each other. Such treaties may be described by other names, such as a treaty of friendship or non-belligerency , etc. Leeds, Ritter, Mitchell, & Long (2002) distinguish between a non-aggression pact and a neutrality pact . They posit that a non-aggression pact includes

198-716: The Germanische SS Schweiz . It had very few members and was considered merely a splinter Nazi group by Swiss authorities. Separately from the Germanic SS, a number of so-called Germanic Battalions ( Germanische Sturmbanne ) were established in September 1942 as part of the Allgemeine SS from among Flemish, Dutch, Norwegian, and Swiss expatriates and volunteer workers in Germany. A Danish unit in Berlin

231-701: The Nazis . They typically served as local security police augmenting German units of the Gestapo , Sicherheitsdienst (SD), and other departments of the German Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), rendering them culpable for their participation in Nazi atrocities. The Nazi idea behind co-opting additional Germanic people into the SS stems to a certain extent from the Völkisch belief that

264-486: The Reich Security Main Office ( Reichssicherheitshauptamt , RSHA). Their principal responsibilities during wartime were to root-out partisans, subversive organizations, and any group opposed to Nazi ideas. In other cases, these foreign units of the SS were employed by major German firms to distribute propaganda for the Nazi cause among their compatriots and to police and control workers. In addition,

297-557: The Royal Danish Army wishing to join this corps would be granted leave and allowed to retain their rank. The Danish Cabinet issued an announcement stating that "Lieut. Colonel Christian Peder Kryssing , Chief of the 5th Artillery Regiment, Holbæk, has with the consent of the Royal Danish Government assumed command over Free Corps Denmark." Free Corps Denmark was one of "four national legions" established by

330-622: The Waffen-SS in 1941. The original number of accepted recruits in 1941 was 1,164 men. The role of the Danish government in the formation of the Free Corps Denmark is today disputed. Some authorities maintain that the Corps was unique among the legions of foreign volunteers fighting for Hitler in that it carried the official sanction of its home government. Others maintain that while the Danish government may have sanctioned formation of

363-726: The fall of the Soviet Union . States with a history of rivalry tend to sign non-aggression pacts in order to prevent future conflict with one another. The pacts often facilitate information exchange which reduce uncertainty that might lead to conflict. Additionally, the pact signals to third party nations that the rivalry has reduced and that peaceful relations is desired. It has been found that major powers are more likely to start military conflicts against their partners in non-aggression pacts than against states that do not have any sort of alliance with them. [REDACTED]   Achaemenid Empire The term has colloquial usage outside

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396-586: The Corps, it did not itself form the Corps. With about 1,000 recruits, the corps was sent to Langenhorn barracks in Hamburg for basic training in late July 1941. It was considered ready for action by 15 September and sent to Owińska in Poland. Commander Kryssing was dismissed in February 1942 for insufficient ideological adherence to Nazism. He was transferred to the artillery where he ended his career as

429-713: The DNSAP. It is estimated that approximately 6,000 Danes served in the Free Corps Denmark. A 1998 study showed that the average recruit to Free Corps Denmark was a member of the Danish Nazi party and/or a member of the German minority in Denmark , and that recruitment was very broad socially. Danish historian Bo Lidegaard notes: "The relationship between the population and the corps was freezing cold, and legionnaires on leave time and again came into fights with civilians meeting

462-555: The Netherlands, and Norway as co-bearers of a greater Germanic empire, Hitler refused to grant them the same degree of independence despite ongoing pressure from ranking members of the SS. The purpose of the Germanic SS was to enforce Nazi racial doctrine , especially anti-Semitic ideas. They typically served as local security police augmenting German units of the Gestapo, Sicherheitsdienst (SD), and other main departments of

495-486: The SS against Danish Jews, who totaled about 6,500, but most of them managed to go into hiding or escape to Sweden before the senior German representative in Denmark, SS-General Werner Best , could marshal the SS forces at his disposal and complete his planned raids and deportations. The following countries raised active Germanic SS detachments: An underground Nazi organization also existed in Switzerland, known as

528-493: The SS and enjoyed the highest privileges as did foreign workers from these regions, to include unrestrained sexual contact with German women. Eager to expand their reach, Nazis like Chief of the SS Main Office , Gottlob Berger considered the Germanic SS as foundational for a burgeoning German Empire. Himmler's vision for a Germanic SS started with grouping the Netherlands, Belgian , and French Flanders together into

561-588: The Schalburg Corps) came into being in April 1943. For the SS, they did not think of their compatriots in terms of national borders but in terms of Germanic racial makeup, known conceptually to them as Deutschtum , a greater idea which transcended traditional political boundaries. While the SS leadership foresaw an imperialistic and semi-autonomous relationship for the Nordic or Germanic countries like Denmark,

594-626: The Soviet Union in 1941 , Germany asked Denmark to form a military corps to fight with the Germans against the Soviets. On 29 June 1941, seven days after the invasion had begun, the Danish Nazi Party newspaper Fædrelandet ("The Fatherland") proclaimed the creation of the Free Corps Denmark. Danish Foreign Minister Erik Scavenius entered into an agreement with the Reichsbevollmächtigter that officers and soldiers of

627-581: The corps was then moved up to the front line. In December, the corps engaged in intense fighting at the Battle of Velikiye Luki alongside Germany's 1st SS Infantry Brigade . The Free Corps was withdrawn from the front line in April 1943 and sent to the Bavarian town of Grafenwöhr , near Nuremberg . It was formally disbanded on 6 May 1943. It was reformed as SS-Panzergrenadier Regiment 24 "Denmark" ( SS-Panzergrenadier-Regiment 24 "Danmark" ) and integrated into

660-514: The corps' volunteers with massive contempt." Lidegaard gives the following figures for 1941: 6,000 Danish citizens had signed up and were approved for German army duty and 1,500 of these belonged to the German minority in Denmark. Half of the over 12,000 Danes that initially volunteered for active service were regarded as being not suitable for active service. List of Commanders: Non-aggression pact A non-aggression pact or neutrality pact

693-467: The country in return for nominal political independence. The Danes began a policy of collaboration that included diplomatic and economic support of Germany. The German diplomat Cécil von Renthe-Fink was accredited to the Danish King and Cabinet as Reichsbevollmächtigter ("Imperial Plenipotentiary") and charged with the duty of supervising Danish government. At the outset of the German invasion of

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726-630: The field of international relations . In the context of association football , the term can imply a deliberate lack of aggression between two teams, such as at the Disgrace of Gijón , which, in Germany, is known as the Nichtangriffspakt von Gijón (lit. "Non-aggression pact of Gijón"). A non-aggression pact can also be a formal agreement or gentlemen's agreement limiting transfers for players between two or more clubs. Schalburg Corps The Germanic SS ( German : Germanische SS )

759-455: The fight against the Germans, which had a direct bearing on the Battle of Moscow . The Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) dataset records 185 agreements that are solely non-aggression pacts between 1815 and 2018. According to this data, 29 such pacts were recorded in the interwar period with spikes in occurrences in 1960, 1970, 1979, and especially the early 1990s where a number of Eastern European states signed pacts following

792-489: The inclusion of other Germanic peoples was part of the Nazi attempt to collectively Germanize Europe, and for them, Germanization entailed the creation of an empire ruled by Germanic people at the expense of other races. One of the most notorious groups was in the Netherlands , where the Germanic SS was employed to round-up Jews . Of the 140,000 Jews that had lived in the Netherlands prior to 1940, around 24,000 survived

825-807: The original Aryan-Germanic homeland rested in Scandinavia and that, in a racial-ideological sense, people from there or the neighbouring northern European regions were a human reservoir of Nordic/Germanic blood. Conquest of Western Europe gave the Germans, and especially the SS, access to these "potential recruits" who were considered part of the wider "Germanic family". Four of these conquered nations were ripe with Germanic peoples according to Nazi estimations (Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, and Flanders). Heinrich Himmler referred to people from these lands in terms of their Germanic suitability as, " blutsmässig unerhört wertvolle Kräfte " ("by blood exceptionally valuable assets"). Accordingly, some of them were recruited into

858-587: The pact. Possible motivations for such acts by one or more of the pacts' signatories include a desire to take, or expand, control of economic resources, militarily important locations, etc. The 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany is perhaps the best-known example of a non-aggression pact. The Pact lasted until the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa . However, such pacts may be

891-408: The promise not to attack the other pact signatories, whereas a neutrality pact includes a promise to avoid support of any entity that acts against the interests of any of the pact signatories. The most readily recognized example of the aforementioned entity is another country, nation-state, or sovereign organization that represents a negative consequence towards the advantages held by one or more of

924-595: The recently formed 11th SS Volunteer Panzergrenadier Division Nordland . Returning to Denmark in February 1943, Martinsen established the Schalburg Corps , a paramilitary formation affiliated to the Germanic SS which carried out violent attacks and murders on perceived political dissenters in Denmark. It drew particularly on former soldiers who had served in the Eastern Front and its creation weakened

957-405: The signatory parties. In the 19th century neutrality pacts have historically been used to give permission for one signatory of the pact to attack or attempt to negatively influence an entity not protected by the neutrality pact. The participants of the neutrality pact agree not to attempt to counteract an act of aggression waged by a pact signatory towards an entity not protected under the terms of

990-542: The war by hiding. Despite their relatively small numbers, a total of 512 Jews from Oslo were hunted down by the Norwegian Police and the Germanske SS Norge (Norwegian General SS); once caught, they were deported to Auschwitz. More Jews were rounded-up elsewhere, but the total number of Norwegian Jews captured never reached a thousand throughout the course of the war. Similar measures were planned by

1023-627: Was disbanded in January 1943 amid a lack of personnel. In total, the total number of members was only 2,179 in March 1944. After the war, many Germanic SS members were tried by their respective countries for treason. Independent war crimes trials outside the jurisdiction of the Nuremberg Trials were conducted in several European countries, such as in the Netherlands , Norway and Denmark , leading to several death sentences; an example being

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1056-513: Was killed during the night of 2 June. His German replacement, Hans Albert von Lettow-Vorbeck, was killed only a few days later. On 11 July, the Danish officer Knud Børge Martinsen took command of the corps. The corps returned to Denmark from August to October 1942 and met with much hostility from the civilian population. On 13 November, the corps was redeployed to Jelgava in Latvia . Originally intended for anti- partisan activities,

1089-652: Was the collective name given to paramilitary and political organisations established in parts of German-occupied Europe between 1939 and 1945 under the auspices of the Schutzstaffel (SS). The units were modeled on the Allgemeine SS in Nazi Germany and established in Belgium , Denmark , the Netherlands , and Norway —population groups who were considered to be especially "racially suitable" by

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