Customer Reviews

The East Came West: Muslim, Hindu & Buddhist Volunteers in the German Armed Forces, 1941-1945

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3 star:		(1)
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The mere fact that this book brought into attention a subject pervioulsy unknown desrves high respect. We all know a lot of foreign volunteers and conscripts in british and french armies. But arabs, indians and asians in the Whermacht? They should ahve been suppposed to belong to the category of Untermensch...yet they fought with germans and italians with remarkable courage that was witnessed by their Axis commanders. Some of them were POW's that chose to leave the miserable life of prison for the risks of war....others were labourers working for allies who certainly for reasons of bad circumstances and possibly bad treatment "defected" if that is the right word to choose and joined the enemy of their enemies. Others seemingly fought because they liked it or beleive in the "cause"...fighting even to the last days in Berlin displaying remarkable courage. One German commander testified as to his life being saved a couple of times by those foreigners. Though their numbers were few, their presence in the Axis armies was extra ordinary for a country who revolved around a racial vision that shouldnt have elevated those Untermenschen to worthy warriors meriting the respect of their "Ubermensch" officers.
I hope however more research wil follow this up with probably more documentation and bibliography. But bringing this subject under light must deserve merit for it certainly took lot of difficult research to uncover it

timely a must read as background to Post WW II Middle East course of events

This book touches upon a little known subject: that Muslims,Hindus and Buddhists served in the Waffen SS foreign legions. Lot's of good information which will contribute to my collection of WW2 books,but a rather drab and disappointing presentation: black and white pictures and pages that almost look like they were photo copied. It almost resembles an eighties punk 'zine. I think this book could have been better.

In my opinion, and I'm not alone, Antonio Munoz stands in a league of his own. He has done what no other historian could or would do: he amassed an incredibly rich collection of photographs and information about foreigners and ethnic minorities in Hitler's armed forces and told as much of their respective stories as could be told. This book contains loads of information on the obscure combat formations and volunteers that mainstream and court historians refuse to discuss for whatever reason. No one can possibly claim they "know" about NS "racism" (or lack thereof) until they have read this book. Indispensible.