Anti-Soviet Russian units in WWII (within the German forces)

Last modified: 2005-12-17 by antonio martins
Keywords: soviet union | germany | nazi | poa | roa | poha | rona | saltire (blue) | collaborationist |
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• Russian Liberation Army / Russkaia Osvoboditelnaia Armiia
• Russian Liberation Peoples’ Army / Russkaya Osvoboditelnaya Narodnaya Armiya

• Soviet Union
• Germany (1933-1945)
• Volunteer Units in the German Armed Forces 1941-1945
• German-Occupied Territories 1939-1945

Russian Liberation Army / Russkaia Osvoboditelnaia Armiia

Russian Liberation Army (Russkaia Osvoboditelnaia Armiia, whose cyrillic initials are of course POA). This was Lt. General Andrei Andreievich Vlasov’s army (rather an amalgamation of many units) which reached about 750 000 men at its strongest point. David Littlejohn [ltj87] says «The flag of the ROA was a blue saltire on white with a narrow red edging», thus identical to the unit’s arm badge.
Santiago Dotor, 09 Jun 2000

Russian Liberation Peoples’ Army / Russkaya Osvoboditelnaya Narodnaya Armiya

RONA (or POHA in cyrillic characters) stood for "Russian Liberation Peoples’ Army" (Russkaya Osvoboditelnaya Narodnaya Armiya), a grandiloquent title for the infamous 15,000-strong anti-partisan unit led by Bronislav Kaminski (who was shot by the SS under charges of looting). David Littlejohn in Foreign Legions of the Third Reich speaks of no flag for the RONA, but describes and illustrates its arm badge as a fully-black Cross of Saint George (a Czarist order, a cross formy whose arms join in a small central disc crossed by two swords, as can be seen here — though this is the 4th Class which lacked the crossed swords).
Santiago Dotor, 09 Jun 2000