Russian Corps - Deployment and Growth

Deployment and Growth

The Corps under General Shteifon were used at first primarily for guarding regions from partisan control, then in the spring of 1944 plunged into the heat of the Yugoslav guerrilla war. It engaged Titoists in villages and cities throughout Yugoslavia, often deployed in regions the Germans considered particularly dangerous. This went against the hopes of the founders of the Corps, who had hoped that it would be primarily deployed as a defense unit against partisan aggression and spared from heavy action.

As per Skorodumov's point 6, the Corps refused to attack the national Serbian Chetnik forces. The Chetniks maintained a neutral and occasionally an allied relationship with the Corps, with a few exceptions. The Serbian Volunteer Corps of Dimitri Ljotic, by contrast, were a constant ally of the Corps.

Frictions had also developed between the Corps and the Croatian Home Guard, with which the Corps was in a de jure alliance. This occurred after the Corps' soldiers had intervened several times by force to stop atrocities against Serbian civilians committed by Croatian soldiers.

Shteifon's diplomatic war with the German command forced him to make several concessions. One was the introduction of the German uniform (as the Germans refused to supply anything else), another was an oath all soldiers were forced to give to Hitler. Shteifon was, however, able to win permission to send representatives to occupied territories (notably in Romanian occupied Odessa and Bessarabia) in order to recruit Soviet POWs and civilians for the Corps. Over 5,000 new recruits were successfully enlisted this way. In the wake of this expansion, an officer training program was instituted in order to create new ranks for a future army.

In 1944, the Germans ordered the Corps to cover their retreat from Greece. In September of that year, after the capitulation of Bulgaria and Romania, the Corps found itself confronting not only Josip Broz Tito's partisans (whom Winston Churchill had begun favoring over Mihailović, in view of the former's alliance with Joseph Stalin), but regular units of the Red Army, along with its newly allied Bulgarian and Romanian armies. Heavily outnumbered and poorly equipped, the Corps lost over one third of its men in a few months time. Data from a report dated August 22, 1944 that was prepared by Maximilian von Weichs for Adolf Hitler showed that the Corps had five regiments with 11,188 officers and men.

In the winter of 1944-45, upon learning that General Vlasov's Russian Liberation Army was finally in existence, Shteifon met with Vlasov and offered his "unconditional subordinance". Thus, Shteifon and his men were coopted into the Russian Liberation Army. However, this remained a de jure designation, as the turn of events did not permit Vlasov to include the Corps in his operations.

The Corps began retreating into Slovenia. On the 30th of April, Shteifon died of a heart attack by Zagreb. Colonel Anatoli Ivanovich Rogozhin became the Corps' last commander.