The Slovak Expeditionary Army Group was an element of the military forces of the
Slovak Republic
Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...
that fought under Nazi German command on the
Eastern Front during
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
.
Background
The
Slovak Republic
Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...
was a
puppet state
A puppet state, puppet régime, puppet government or dummy government, is a State (polity), state that is ''de jure'' independent but ''de facto'' completely dependent upon an outside Power (international relations), power and subject to its o ...
established on 14 March 1939. It possessed a small army of its own, largely made up of parts inherited from the old
Czechoslovak Army
The Czechoslovak Army (Czech and Slovak: Československá armáda) was the name of the armed forces of Czechoslovakia. It was established in 1918 following Czechoslovakia's declaration of independence from Austria-Hungary.
History
In the fi ...
. The 1st Slovak Infantry Division took part in the
German invasion of Poland
The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week afte ...
in September 1939. In the aftermath of the
German invasion of France
France has been invaded on numerous occasions, by foreign powers or rival French governments; there have also been unimplemented invasion plans.
* the 1746 War of the Austrian Succession, Austria-Italian forces supported by the British navy attemp ...
, the German government consolidated its control of the Slovak regime. On 21 June 1941, the Slovak government not informed about the invasion of Russia and offered to participate in the
German invasion of the Soviet Union
Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
. Germany accepted the following day. The Slovak Army was called up, as the regime sought to demonstrate its indispensability to Nazi Germany and its greater loyalty than
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...
.
History
The Slovak Expeditionary Army Group of about 45,000 men entered the Soviet Union shortly after the
German attack. This army lacked logistic and transportation support, so a much smaller unit, the ''Slovak Mobile Command'' under command of
Rudolf Pilfousek (a.k.a. the ''Pilfousek Brigade''), was formed from units selected from this force; the rest of the Slovak army was relegated to rear-area security duty. The Slovak Mobile Command was attached to the
German 17th Army (as was the Hungarian
Carpathian Group
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians () are a range of mountains forming an arc across Central Europe. Roughly long, it is the third-longest European mountain range after the Urals at and the Scandinavian Mountains at . The range stretches ...
also) and shortly thereafter given over to direct German command, the Slovaks lacking the command infrastructure to exercise effective operational control. This unit fought with the 17th Army through July 1941, including at the
Battle of Uman
The Battle of Uman (15 July – 8 August 1941) was the World War II German offensive in Uman, Ukraine against the 6th and 12th Soviet Armies. In a three-week period, the Wehrmacht encircled and annihilated the two Soviet armies.
The battle oc ...
and the
Battle of Lypovec
The Battle of Lypovec was an armed clash fought between the Slovak Mobile Brigade (''Slovenské rýchlé brigády'') and troops of the Red Army on 22 July 1941 in the set of Operation Barbarossa. It was the first battle of Slovakia with the Re ...
.
At the beginning of August 1941, the Slovak Mobile Command was dissolved and instead two infantry divisions were formed from the Slovak Expeditionary Army Group. The Slovak 2nd Division was a
security division
Security Divisions (German: ''Sicherungs-Divisionen'') were German rear-area military units engaged in Nazi security warfare in occupied Europe during World War II. Almost all divisions were employed in areas on the Eastern front with the exceptio ...
, but the
Slovak 1st Division was a front-line unit which fought in the campaigns of 1941 and 1942, reaching the
Caucasus area with
Army Group B
Army Group B (German: ') was the title of three German Army Groups that saw action during World War II.
Operational history
Army Group B first took part in the Battle of France in 1940 in Belgium and the Netherlands.
The second formation of ...
. The Slovak 1st Division then shared the fate of the German southern forces, losing its heavy equipment in the
Kuban bridgehead
The Kuban Bridgehead (german: Kuban-Brückenkopf), also known as the "Goth's head position" (), was a German military position on the Taman Peninsula, Russia, between the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea. Existing from January to October 1943, the b ...
and suffering heavy losses at
Melitopol
Melitopol ( uk, Меліто́поль, translit=Melitópol’, ; russian: Мелитополь; based on el, Μελιτόπολις - "honey city") is a List of cities in Ukraine, city and List of hromadas of Ukraine, municipality in Zaporizhz ...
in the southern Ukraine.
Slovak troops took part in
Operation Bamberg, an
anti-partisan action in which 5,000 alleged partisans, including 200 Jews, were shot. Slovak soldiers participated in numerous pogroms and frequently robbed Jews during the first days and weeks of the occupation in the summer of 1941. However, there was no equivalent of the
Barbarossa decree
During World War II, the Barbarossa decree was one of the Wehrmacht criminal orders given on 13 May 1941, shortly before Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. The decree was laid out by Adolf Hitler during a high-level meeting w ...
(which authorized Wehrmacht soldiers to execute civilians without trial) and some Slovak soldiers were tried for robbing or murdering Jews, receiving only very light sentences. Many Slovak soldiers and the army leadership nevertheless approved of the Holocaust, due in part to the large amount of propaganda promoting the
Jewish Bolshevik
Jewish Bolshevism, also Judeo–Bolshevism, is an anti-communist and antisemitic canard, which alleges that the Jews were the originators of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and that they held primary power among the Bolsheviks who led the revo ...
canard.
In June 1944, the remnant of the division, no longer considered fit for combat due to low morale, was disarmed and the personnel assigned to construction and
logistical
Logistics is generally the detailed organization and implementation of a complex operation. In a general business sense, logistics manages the flow of goods between the point of origin and the point of consumption to meet the requirements of ...
work, a fate which had already befallen the Slovak 2nd Division earlier for the same reason.
Commanders of the 1st Mobile Infantry Division
*
Augustín Malár
Augustín Malár (18 July 1894 in Reitern, Austria-Hungary – 1945? in Sachsenhausen, Germany) was a Slovak general during World War II.
During the interwar period, Malár was one of the few successful higher officers of Slovak nationality in ...
(September 1941 – September 1942)
*
Jozef Turanec (September 1942 – January 1943)
*
Stefan Jurech (January 1943 – September 1943)
*
Elmir Lendvay (September 1943 – June 1944)
Feldgrau WW2 Slovakian Axis Forces
/ref>
References
Bibliography
*
Further reading
*{{cite book , last1=Müller , first1=Rolf-Dieter , title=The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler's Foreign Soldiers , date=2012 , publisher=I.B.Tauris , location=London , isbn=9781780768908
Operation Barbarossa
Military history of Slovakia during World War II
Infantry divisions of World War II
Foreign volunteer units of Nazi Germany
Military units and formations of the Soviet–German War
Military units and formations disestablished in 1944
1944 disestablishments in Czechoslovakia
External links
Slovakian Axis Forces in WWII