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During the course of the Second World War a number of Armenian soldiers, the vast majority of them prisoners of wars from the Soviet Red Army, joined specially-created battalions in the German Army. The Armenian and Georgian battalions were mainly stationed in the Netherlands as a result of Adolf Hitler's distrust for them, and due further to low morale and poor training, many of them deserted, defected or revolted. The legion, like other Turkic and Caucasian forces formed by the Germans, has been described by one military historian as "poorly armed, trained, and motivated," and was "unreliable and next to useless." The Israeli scholar Yair Auron has noted that Turkish nationalist efforts to thwart recognition of the Armenian Genocide have resulted in the dissemination of various Turkish propaganda publications in regard to the Armenian Legion aimed at portraying Armenians in negative light.〔Auron. ''The Banality of Denial'', pp. 260ff.〕 ==Background== The majority of the soldiers in the legion were former Soviet Red Army prisoners of war, who had opted to fight for German forces rather than face the genocidal conditions〔Auron, Yair. ''The Banality of Denial'', p. 261.〕 of the Nazi POW camps. Some Berlin-based representatives of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF, Dashnaks), though repudiated by the official party organs, made an agreement with the Nazis in 1942 to support the Germans against the Soviet Union.〔Suny, Ronald G. "Soviet Armenia" in ''The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times, Volume II: Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century'', ed. Richard G. Hovannisian. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997, pp. 366-367. ISBN 0-312-10168-6.〕 A number of veterans of Armenians who had escaped to the US after World War I came back to Europe to head it.〔Auron, Yair. ''The Banality of Denial'', p. 238.〕 General Drastamat "Dro" Kanayan (a one-time leader of the Democratic Republic of Armenia〔) led the legion,〔Walker, Christopher J. ''Armenia: The Survival of a Nation.'' New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990 p. 357〕 and fought on the Eastern front. French genocide scholar Yves Ternon, who has studied the battalion, suggested that while there were no "substantial" fascistic inclinations among the Armenians in general, Kanayan was an exception; Ternon characterized "Dro" as possessive of substantial "fascist deviation."〔Auron. ''The Banality of Denial'', p. 261.〕 The short-lived Democratic Republic of Armenia established in 1918 in the Southern Caucasus by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (The Dashnaks) was conquered by the Russian Bolsheviks in 1920, and ceased to exist. During World War II, some of the Dashnaks tried to counter Turkish propaganda which falsely portrayed Armenians as a Semitic people close to the Jews to ensure their genocidal destruction should Soviet Armenia fall under Nazi rule.〔 Kurt Mehner, Germany. Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Bundesarchiv (Germany). Militärarchiv, Arbeitskreis für Wehrforschung. Die Geheimen Tagesberichte der Deutschen Wehrmachtführung im Zweiten Weltkrieg, 1939-1945: 1. December 1943-29. February 1944. p. 51.〕 To fight Turkey's anti-Armenian politicking, the Dashnaks entered into negotiations with Berlin, and reluctantly agreed to participate in the formation of the legion.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Armenische Legion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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