Topic summary
Cossack Central Office
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Cossack collaboration with Nazi Germany.
Institutional cooperation and rivalries
High-level collaboration between Cossack leadership and Nazi Germany was orchestrated by a mix of veteran White Army émigrés and freshly defected Soviet commanders, who sought to leverage German military power to secure long-term political autonomy. Prominent figures like General Pyotr Krasnov and General Andrei Shkuro operated at the highest administrative levels, working alongside the Alfred Rosenberg's Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (Eastern Ministry). Despite initial reservations, the German setbacks of the winter of 1941 and 1942 led to ever increasing use of Cossacks auxiliary forces by the Wehrmacht. So that not to be left behind, Rosenberg jumped on the Cossack bandwagon and established the Cossack Central Office in mid-1942 to coordinate ideological propaganda and recruitment strategies. Krasnov became its head in January 1943.