I don't know if it is just me getting older but the once glorious, righteous, black and white world has given way to 256 shades of grey (no, not that kind!)

Sorry Germans but I must mention The War.

When I lived in Amsterdam I knew this old guy called David. He was Dutch and he served in the Waffen SS during the war. The largest regiment in the Waffen SS was composed of Dutch volunteers. No-one wants to talk about that, understandably so. One time David and I were in a hot tub on a rooftop in Amsterdam with two very rich American women. One of them asked David if he was in Amsterdam during the war. When he replied that he was, she said, assuming that he was with the Allies, "that must have been terrible". Without missing a beat David said, "You have no idea".

Well, there were many regiments in the Waffen SS composed of non-German volunteers and this book is about them.

What I never knew was how these regiments came into being. Sure, some of those volunteers were gung ho fascists, no escaping that, including English men too! But that is not the main story here.

Russia invaded Finland at dawn on the 30th November 1939 (see this:http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/winter_war_1939.htm). The Russians expected a walkover but were surprised to get the shit kicked out of them for quite a while. The effect of this on Scandinavia as a whole was electrifying.

They all expected to be next in line and were in fear of being subsumed into the Communist Empire. Apart from the Finns no-one was fighting back. Thousands of young men were keen to fight the Russian menace and it was only the Germans who were willing to take them on. So, many patriotic young Scandinavians signed up with the Germans to fight the Russians.

Things did not exactly turn out as the young "Vikings" expected. Instead of fighting in Finland almost all of them ended up on the Russian Front up to their assholes in mud, snow, blood and guts.

This book details their battles and indeed their history in this war.The book does not judge them or glorify them, it highlights their bravery, their courage and the conditions they fought under. It is detailed and horrific as all histories of war must be. It does not detail atrocities though it does admit that they happened but they were mainly perpetrated by Germans and Russians.

These guys were mainly at the front and not engaging in "mopping up" operations which were generally carried out by "special" troops.

Most of them signed up for a fixed period and so in the middle of say the battle for Leningrad, while they and the Germans were dying of cold and hunger, once their time was served they went home, unlike the Germans who were conscripted and stayed and died.

When it was all over, the few that survived went home to uncertainty. The Finns honoured their war survivors and looked after them. The Swedes just did not want to talk about it. The Danes executed some and imprisoned many. The Norwegians the same.

Those that survived the war but were taken by the Russians, of all races were worked to death in the Gulags only a few thousand ever came back and some as many as fifteen years later.

This is a quote from a Norwegian veteran:

"We, the Norwegian and other foreign volunteers, did not fight for Hitler or his regime, but alongside his country. Just as Britons didn’t fight for Stalin but alongside the Soviet Union, it’s a sad truth but in war you can’t pick your allies. If people are really interested in what actually happened then they should find out for themselves. They will see that it was not so easy at the time to choose a course of action, but it was then that a choice had to be made."

If you have a fixed view about the war it is an interesting read. ( )