The Catholic Church had suffered atrociously during the Civil War. Thousands of priests had been assassinated and many thousands of religious buildings had been destroyed. The Vatican had qualified the war against the Popular Front as a 'Holy Crusade'. Therefore, although the neo-paganism of the Nazis was alarming for Spanish Catholics, it was still considered far preferable to the hatred inspired by the Soviet Union.
Other conservative groups in Spain were stupefied to see the United Kingdom ally itself with Stalin. Many of them, who until then would have preferred to see a British victory over Germany, changed their opinion when it became clear that the defeat of Germany would be a victory for Stalin.
So it was that the Blue Division arose with massive popular support from all those social and political groups who had supported the Nationalist Uprising of 18 July 1936.
For these sections of Spanish society, the campaign against the Soviet Union was the continuation of a war that had begun in Spain. Therefore, Spain could lay claim to the honour of being 'the first country to defeat communism'. Because of this, it was felt, Spain could not fail to participate in some way in Operation Barbarossa.
This desire to fight communism was integral to the origins of the Blue Division and was given as the main justification for its existence.
Many of those who passed through its ranks also wanted to show their sympathy for the Third Reich. They admired its social and economic policies and wished to see similar ideas implanted in Spain. They also hoped that their presence in the campaign in Russia - a campaign it was assumed would end in victory - would result in Spain improving its international position.
Russia had never before been an enemy of Spain, but the Soviet Union was definitely considered an enemy by many Spaniards. Nothing obliged the Spanish to march to Russia to fight communism, but many thousands of them did: some 45,000 took part in that campaign. The profile of the typical soldier filling the ranks of the Blue Division can be perfectly defined from the beginning: volunteer and anticommunist.
Another casualty of Yelnya
German column heading eastward through The Ukraine-not far from the old Russo-Polish border. July 1941
Infantrymen board a small inflatable boat, which could carry three or four men. They are going to reconnoiter the far shore before the main body attempts to cross. One of the men aboard the boat is armed with a Czechoslovak 7.92mm vz.26 light machine-gun. Some German units were armed with this weapon in lieu of the MG34 machine-gun, which was in short supply. The Germans designated this weapon the MG26(t) or MG146U) depending on whether it was obtained from Czechoslovak or Yugoslavian stocks. It was fed by a 3D-round box magazine; the man about to board the boat is carrying a container with extra magazines.
No description or date but appears to be German mountain unit passing through a village (Ukraine?)
Another abandoned Soviet airfield outside Lvov.
Panzer troops interrogate a Soviet POW. The officer with his back to the camera wears a black panzer jacket while the German tank crewman center wears the mouse-gray "Trikot" shirt. The odds that the Red Army prisoner survived German captivity are very slim.
Traffic jam at a Luga River bridge in late August. The river is neither wide, with steep banks, nor fast flowing yet was obviously an obstacle. German pioneers have constructed a new bridge to the left.
A German soldier inspects a Soviet sniper's nest high in a tree. Snipers were such a threat in the heavily wooded north that the SS-Divison "Totenkopf" commander Theodor Eicke authorized division officers to remove rank insignia on Barbarossa's second day.
Exhausted German soldiers relax in the shade of a building. Unusually, the men appear to wear SS-pattern camouflaged helmet covers and smocks over their regular army tunics.