This book looks at the uniforms worn by the foreign volunteers integrated into the German forces during the Second World War, between the years of 1941 and 1945.

This illustrated book provides an in-depth examination of the 350,000 or so foreign volunteers who fought for Hitler and Germany in World War II and it explores the background to their recruitment and also describes on a unit-by-unit basis their structure and combat record.

Drawing on a superb collection of rare and unpublished photographs SS Foreign Divisions & Volunteers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia 1942 - 1945 describes how the occupying Nazis recruited Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian conscripts into the Waffen-SS. Unlike her Latvian neighbor, Lithuania had no plans to provide Germany with a National Legion. Although volunteers came forward, the majority did not. This was not the case for Latvia and Estonia, which undertook huge recruitment programs, and thousands of men were drafted into their own foreign legion of Waffen-SS Grenadier divisions. After intensive training, these divisions saw action on the Eastern front, around Leningrad, in the Ukraine, before vicious defensive operations as the Red Army smashed its way through the Baltic States in 1944. Even in the last dying weeks of the war, what was left of the Baltic soldiers of the 15th, 19th, and 20th Waffen-SS Grenadier Divisions, continued to fight alongside their Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS counterparts until they were either destroyed or surrendered. The story of these divisions is graphically told with detailed captions and text together with many contemporary images in true Images of War style.

During the Japanese occupation of large parts of Asia and the Pacific in 1941–45, Japan raised significant numbers of troops to fight alongside them, as well as militias to guard their conquests. The total number of these soldiers is estimated at no fewer than 600,000 men. These ranged from the regular troops of Manchukuo (200,000 men), Nanking China (250,000), Thailand, and recruits from the 'puppet' Burmese Independence Army (30,000) and Indian National Army (40,000), to constabularies and spear-wielding militias in the Philippines (15,000), Borneo, Indonesia and New Guinea. Many of the recruits from former European colonies hoped for independence as part of the 'Greater East-Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere' proclaimed by Japanese propaganda, but Japan's intentions were entirely cynical. They formed alliances to deny the Allied powers access to territory that they could not actually occupy, and raised these large numbers of auxiliary troops to relieve the manpower burden of occupation, or simply as 'cannon-fodder'. This extensively researched study examines each of these armies and militias in detail, exploring their history and deployment during World War II, and revealing the intricacies of their arms and equipment with stunning full-colour artwork and previously unpublished contemporary photographs.

The Waffen-SS were the elite of Hitler’s armies in World War II, but the most fanatical were not even German. This is a comprehensive examination of every foreign Waffen-SS formation, including infamous divisions such as Wiking and Prinz Eugen, units such as the Kaminski Brigade and the British-recruited Britisches Freikorps.

Given the merciless way in which the war on the Eastern Front of World War II was conducted, it is difficult to envisage anyone changing sides during the conflict. Yet after the German invasion of Russia in Operation Barbarossa, well over 400,000 former Soviet citizens went on to fight for Nazi Germany. These included not only the 'legions' recruited from non-Russian ethnic groups eager for freedom from Stalin's dictatorship, but also some 100,000 Russians and Cossacks. What began as small local security units of 'Ostruppen', enrolled for the ongoing campaigns against Soviet partisans, were later reorganized, given special systems of uniform and insignia, amalgamated into larger formations, and eventually committed to the front line. This book offers up an essential guide to the appearance, formation and equipment of the myriad Russian and Soviet units that fought for the Germans. It uses rare photographs and revealing colour illustrations to create a peerless visual reference to the troops who switched from one ruthless superpower to another and met with a horrific fate when the fighting was over.

Kenneth Estes studies the 100,000 West Europeans who fought against Russia as volunteers for the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS. A retired Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, Estes shows tremendous knowledge of combat and writes gripping battlefield prose. Two-thirds of the West European volunteers came from Spain and the Netherlands, yet Estes demonstrates wide range and covers also Flemish, Walloon, French, Danish, and Norwegian combat units. Avoiding over-generalization, the author distinguishes carefully among the Danes and Flemings who fought competently with the SS-Wiking Division and later with Nordland, the courageous but poorly-armed Spanish, the ill-trained Dutch and French in Landstorm Nederland and SS-Charlemagne, and the Norwegians who after a first wave of enthusiasm held back altogether. Estes pulverizes the Nazi propaganda notion of a multinational European army defending 'Western civilization' against 'Bolshevism'. He shows that West Europeans, mainly of the urban working classes, volunteered from a mix of motives -adventure-seeking, ideology, hopes of personal advantage or material gain, a desire for better food, or a wish to escape a criminal record at home. He demonstrates that the best-performing foreign legions were trained and led by German officers and formed parts of larger SS units, and also that the Wehrmacht placed little value on foreign formations until its other manpower reserves ran out in 1944-45. This is a landmark work on a subject which has been much written about, but rarely understood or described as perceptively as in the pages of this book.