The Cosaks participated in antipartisan operations in the Balkans throughout 1944.

By June 1944, the division was elevated to core status and became the 15th Ksac Cavalry Corps with 21,000 men.

In July 1944, it was formally transferred to the Raffan SS, though CSAs retained their vermached uniforms and ranks.

They never wore SS insignia.

The transfer was administrative, designed to improve supply and bypass uncooperative local authorities.

Panritz, a career vermarked cavalry officer, respected Ksac autonomy.

He attended orthodox ceremonies with his men.

The CSAs named him Supreme Atman, a title last used by Zar Nicholas II.

The 15th Csac Cavalry Corps fought one major battle against the Red Army on Christmas Day 1944 near the Draa River in Yugoslavia, where they routed the Soviet 133rd Infantry Division in brutal hand-to-hand combat.

The combat employment of Soviet volunteers varied enormously.

Kiwis initially served in support roles, drivers, cooks, ammunition carriers, laborers.

As German losses mounted, they moved into frontline units.

They fought in defensive positions, conducted antipartisan sweeps, and guarded rear areas.

At Stalingrad, between 40,000 and 65,000 Hiwis were trapped in the encirclement alongside German forces.

Most died in the fighting or from starvation during the siege.

Those who survived faced grim fates.

Soviet authorities treated all returned PS as potential traitors.

Many Hewis who fell into Soviet hands were executed on the spot or sent to gulag camps.

The fighting quality of these units varied.

Veteran Hiwis, fully equipped and integrated into German formations, were often indistinguishable from regular troops.

Some units performed competently, others deserted at the first opportunity, crossing back to Soviet lines.

The Russian Liberation Army saw limited combat.

Vlassov’s first division fought briefly on the Oda front in February 1945, engaging Soviet forces for 3 days before retreating under overwhelming pressure.

This was the only major engagement between Vassov’s formal ROA and the Red Army.

Most Ostropen and Heis fought against partisans or served in secondary theaters.

German commanders never fully trusted them.

Soviet volunteers were frequently transferred to the western front away from the eastern theater where they might defect back to Soviet forces.

After D-Day captured Ostropen were found among German defenders across Normandy, their presence in the west reflected German fears about their reliability when facing fellow Soviets.

The turning point came in 1943.

After Stalingrad’s fall and the Kursk defeat, Germany’s strategic position in the east collapsed.

Soviet forces began their relentless westward advance.

For the men fighting in German uniforms, retreat became the only option.

Velasov ordered his divisions to move south toward Bohemia in March 1945.

His plan was to concentrate his forces and negotiate surrender to American or British forces rather than face Soviet capture.

The ROA and other Russian formations hoped the Western Allies would recognize them as anti-communist fighters and grant them asylum.

Uh, this hope was a fatal miscalculation.

In early May 1945, as Germany disintegrated, Vlesov’s first division found itself positioned near Prague in central Bohemia.

The division had retreated from the Oda front after 3 days of brutal combat against overwhelming Soviet forces.

In February 1945, Flassov had ordered his formations to move south in hopes of concentrating his scattered units and negotiating a surrender to Western Allied forces.

General George Patton’s US Third Army had entered western Czechoslovakia and was approaching Pilson less than 100 kilometers from Prague.

Vlassov believed or desperately hoped that American forces would liberate the Czech capital and that his ROA units could surrender to the Americans rather than face Soviet capture.

On May 5th, 1945, the Czech resistance launched an uprising against German occupation forces in Prague.

Czech police officers burst into the radio station at Vinaradska Street and battled SS soldiers occupying the building.

Hearing the sounds of fighting, a Czech announcer began broadcasting appeals to the population to rise against the Nazis.

Barricades went up across the city center.

Czech fighters armed primarily with hunting rifles and improvised weapons seized key buildings.

SS O groupenfurer Carl Herman Frank the brutal administrator who had organized the destruction of Liddis and Ljaki in 1942 responded with overwhelming force.

German units deployed tanks and artillery against Czech positions.

The resistance fighters faced annihilation without heavy weapons to counter German armor.

Czech military leaders, aware that General Sergey Bunachenko’s first division of the ROA was camped approximately 40 km southwest of Prague, sent envoys to the Russian commander.

The checks hoped the ROA could be persuaded to switch sides and provide the tanks and artillery the resistance desperately needed.

Bonenko faced an impossible decision.

His division numbered between 15,000 and 20,000 men, organized into regiments with combat vehicles and heavy weapons.

They were positioned between advancing Soviet forces from the east and American lines to the west.

Byenko knew that Red Army units were approaching Prague.

He knew that Soviet authorities considered all ROA soldiers traitors who would face execution or the gulag if captured.

He also knew that the Western Allies had made no commitments to protect Russian collaborators.

Vlazov himself was initially against intervening in Prague.

He still harbored hopes that Germany and the Western Allies might come to some accommodation against the Soviet Union, making ROA service for Germany a potential asset rather than a liability.

Bunyenko disagreed fundamentally with this assessment.

At a military council meeting on May 4th, Bunyenko argued that the ROA needed to demonstrate anti-Nazi credentials to have any chance of Western protection.

Flassov, seeing that his subordinate was determined to act regardless of orders, reportedly left the meeting, saying that if his orders were no longer binding, he had nothing more to do there.

Bonoenko authorized his division to march on Prague and support the Czech uprising.

The ROA entered Prague on May 6th, 1945.

Because Bonenko’s men were wearing German uniforms, Czech resistance leaders provided them with Russian, white, blue, red, flags to distinguish them from German forces.

The first battalion of the ROA moved into the city center and immediately engaged German SS and Vermacharked units.

Over the next two days, ROA soldiers fought street battles against their former allies.

They attacked German positions with tanks and artillery.

They helped Czech fighters hold critical bridges over the river.

The ROA’s heavy weapons proved decisive in stopping German armored counterattacks.

During their intervention in Prague, ROA units disarmed approximately 10,000 German soldiers.

The fighting was intense and confused.

ROA casualties mounted to approximately 300 killed and wounded by May 7th.

American reconnaissance patrols made contact with ROA officers and Czech leaders.

This was when the checks learned the devastating truth about Allied agreements.

At the Yaltta conference, the Western Allies had agreed to turn over Czechoslovakia to Soviet liberation.

Patton’s third army would advance no further than Pilson.

Prague was designated for liberation by the Red Army.

The Czech National Council, realizing that Soviet forces would enter the city and that Stalin considered all ROA soldiers traitors, immediately reversed course.

On May 7th, they publicly denounced the ROA and demanded that Bunyenko’s troops leave Prague.

Communist Czech partisans acting in advance of the Red Army’s arrival began arresting ROA soldiers in the streets to hand them over to Soviet authorities.

Bunenko grasped immediately that his gamble had failed catastrophically.

The Western Allies were not coming.

The Red Army was approaching.

The checks, fearing Stalin’s wrath, were abandoning their temporary allies.

On May 7th, at 2300 hours, Bonoenko ordered his division to withdraw from Prague and march west toward American lines.

The second regiment of the ROA provided rear guard action on the southwestern outskirts of the city, engaging in firefights with Waffen SS troops who refused to honor the general German surrender that had been signed on May 7th.

As the ROA retreated from Prague, Soviet units were already entering the city’s eastern districts.

The Red Army’s first Ukrainian front under Marshall Ivan Konef had launched a final offensive to capture Prague beginning on May 6th.

Three Soviet tank armies advanced on the city from different directions.

The third guard’s tank army under General Pavl Rebalco, the fourth tank army under General Dmitri Leusenko, and the sixth tank army under General Andre Kfchenko all converged on Prague.

Soviet forces entered the city on May 9th, hours after the ROA had withdrawn.

The Prague uprising officially ended with Soviet liberation, though in reality, Czech resistance fighters had secured much of the city center before the Red Army arrived.

Soviet propaganda subsequently downplayed or entirely omitted the ROA’s role in the liberation of Prague, a historical fact that remained contentious for decades.

The ROA and 15th Ksac Cavalry Corps retreated west, desperately trying to reach American lines before Soviet forces could capture them.

Panwit’s Ksac surrendered to British forces in Austria on May 10th, 1945.

Vlo and the ROA reached American positions around the same time.

Both groups believed they had escaped.

Both groups were catastrophically wrong.

At the Yaltta conference in February 1945, Allied leaders had agreed to return all Soviet citizens to Soviet control.

This agreement, formalized in the Yaltta repatriation protocols, sealed the fate of hundreds of thousands of people.

In the weeks and months following Germany’s surrender, British and American forces began the systematic forced repatriation of Soviet citizens under agreements finalized at the Yaltta conference in February 1945.

The operation later cenamed Operation Keelh Hall for the final phase conducted in 1946 to 1947 was carried out with extraordinary brutality that shocked and horrified the Allied soldiers ordered to execute it.

Soviet repatriation officers were given near free access to Allied displacement camps to identify and claim Soviet citizens.

Smurch agents, Soviet military counterintelligence officers roamed through camps pointing out men they recognized or suspected of collaboration.

The repatriation protocols officially specified that only individuals who had been Soviet citizens as of September 1st, 1939 were to be forcibly returned.

In practice, Allied commanders ignored these distinctions and handed over virtually anyone the Soviets claimed.

Forced repatriation operations frequently descended into scenes of carnage that resembled battles more than administrative procedures.

When prisoners learned they were being sent to the Soviet Union, they resisted with desperate violence.

They formed human chains, linking arms to prevent separation.

They built barricades using whatever materials they could find.

When Allied soldiers approached with orders to load them onto trucks and trains, prisoners fought back with makeshift weapons, rocks, and bare hands.

Some prisoners impaled themselves on broken glass rather than face return to the Soviet Union.

Others bit into each other’s jugular veins in suicide packs.

Men leaped from moving trains, often dying in the fall or being crushed under the wheels.

Mothers clutching infants jumped from moving transport vehicles to their deaths, rather than face what awaited them in the USSR.

Allied soldiers, many of whom had fought through years of war, believing they were defending freedom and democracy, found themselves ordered to force these desperate people onto transport bound for certain death or imprisonments.

Field Marshal Harold Alexander and other senior British officers requested clarification from London about whether they were truly expected to use force against civilians and refugees who were clearly terrified of repatriation.

The orders came back, comply with the Yaltta agreements.

Soviet demands must be met.

The political necessity of maintaining the wartime alliance with Stalin took precedence over humanitarian concerns or international law regarding refilement, the prohibition against returning people to places of persecution.

On June 1st, 1945 at Camp Peggs near Leens, Austria, one of the most notorious forced repatriation operations took place.

Approximately 4,000 Csacs, including a large number of women and children, were gathered at the camp.

British authorities had assured them repeatedly that they would not be turned over to the Soviets.

The Cossacs, believing these promises, had maintained relatively calm conditions in the camp.

On the morning of June 1st, British troops surrounded the camp in overwhelming force.

The Cosixs assembled for what they believed would be a routine Orthodox religious service, linked arms, and refused to board the waiting trucks.

A Catholic priest who was present later described what happened next.

British soldiers moved in with clubs and rifle butts.

They used bayonets to separate the human chains of cosacs who had linked arms during their religious service.

For over 4 hours, British troops beat men, women, and children to force them apart and load them onto trucks.

Witnesses described scenes of extraordinary violence.

Old men were clubbed to the ground.

Women holding children were torn apart and dragged to separate trucks.

Children screamed as they were separated from parents.

Some cossacs fought back desperately, but they were unarmed against heavily equipped British soldiers.

By the end of the operation, 1,252 CSAs had been forcibly loaded onto vehicles.

Many were bleeding from head wounds.

Some had broken bones from beatings.

All were transported to Soviet custody at the demarcation line between British and Soviet zones.

The transport vehicles crossed into Soviet controlled territory.

What happened next was witnessed by British soldiers who remained at the handover points.

Soviet Enkid troops took custody of the repatriated cosacs with visible contempt.

Many were separated into groups immediately.

Some were marched away under armed guard.

Others were loaded onto Soviet trucks.

British observers reported hearing automatic gunfire soon after the handover.

When British liaison officers inquired about the fate of those repatriated, Soviet authorities provided no information.

Later investigations and survivor testimonies confirmed that many of the cosacs handed over at Le were executed within hours or days of Soviet custody.

Others were sent directly to Gulag camps without any formal trial or processing.

At Fort Dicks, New Jersey in June 1945, approximately 200 Soviet nationals in German uniform were held in American custody.

They had been captured while serving in Vermacked units and brought to the United States as prisoners of war.

American authorities had given these men solemn promises that under no circumstances would they be repatriated to the Soviet Union.

They had assured them that they would receive protection under American asylum traditions.

These promises were betrayed on direct orders from Washington to comply with Soviet demands.

The Soviet nationals at Fort Dicks had already witnessed American determination to violate international conventions during an earlier incident.

In Seattle, Washington, another group of Soviet PS had been ordered at gunpoint to board a Soviet ship.

The men at Fort Dicks knew what boarding a Soviet vessel meant.

When American guards approached with orders to load them for repatriation, the men barricaded themselves in their barracks.

The first attempt to force them onto trucks was repulsed.

The prisoners fought back, injuring several American soldiers.

Commanders ordered a second attempt.

Again, the prisoners resisted violently.

Several were wounded by gunfire.

Others were beaten into submission.

For the third and final attempt, American authorities secretly administered barbiterates to the prisoners through their coffee during morning meal service.

The sedatives took effect within an hour.

The prisoners became drowsy and disoriented.

Guards moved through the barracks, picking up unconscious or semic-conscious men and carrying them to waiting vehicles.

The prisoners were loaded onto trucks in their sedated state and driven to port facilities where a Soviet ship waited.

But they were carried aboard the vessel, still unconscious.

Three prisoners managed to commit suicide during the operation despite their drugged condition.

The ship departed with its cargo of forcibly repatriated men who would face execution or decades in gulag camps upon arrival in the Soviet Union.

In Yugoslavia, forced repatriation took a particularly deceptive form.

British Army Captain Nigel Nicholson later described the operation in his memoirs.

British soldiers were ordered to tell Yugoslav prisoners and refugees that they were being transferred to another British camp in Italy.

The prisoners trusting British asurances boarded trains voluntarily.

The soldiers had been specifically forbidden to inform the prisoners of their true destination.

As soon as the doors of the cattle cars were padlocked shut, British soldiers withdrew and Yugoslav partisan forces emerged from railway station buildings where they had been hiding.

The prisoners could see the partisans through cracks in the boarding.

They began hammering on the inside of the wagons, shouting abuse at British soldiers for having betrayed them, lied to them, and sentenced them to death.

Nicholson described this as among the most shameful operations he participated in during his military service.

Approximately 2 million Soviet citizens were repatriated to Soviet control between May 1945 and 1947.

The exact number remains disputed because Allied authorities deliberately obscured the scale of the operations and classified relevant documents for decades.

Among those forcibly returned were not only Soviet citizens, but also white Russian immigrants who had fled Russia during the civil war of 1918 to 1921 and had never held Soviet citizenship.

Kazaks, who had left Russia 25 years earlier and had taken citizenship in other countries or held League of Nations passports documenting their stateless status, were handed over to Soviet authorities despite clear violations of the stated Yaltta protocols.

Allied commanders knew they were exceeding the agreement’s terms.

They proceeded anyway.

General Helmouth von Panvbitz, the German Vemarked officer who had commanded the 15th CSAC cavalry corps with respect and affection for his Ksak soldiers, was not a Soviet citizen and had never been subject to Soviet jurisdiction.

When his CSA unit surrendered to British forces in Austria on May 10th, 1945, Panwitz voluntarily chose to accompany his men when they were handed over to the Soviets on May 28th, 1945.

He believed that his presence as a German officer might offer some protection to the CSAs under his command.

It did not.

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