Lions of Flanders

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For all too many people the "Eastern Front 1941-45" is synonymous with a struggle between Germans and Russians, ignoring the thousands of non-German Europeans who volunteered to take up arms against the most enduring despotic regime of the twentieth century, risking their lives on the most terrible of its battlefronts. Favored as a "Germanic" people over their Walloon (French-speaking) compatriots in the hybrid Belgian state, the Flemings were permitted to field a volunteer legion, a battalion sized infantry unit, under Waffen-SS auspices for service from early as November 1941 in the Northern section between Leningrad and Novgorod; integrated into the 2nd SS-Infantry Brigade and often fighting alongside the Spaniards of the Blue Division and other Western European volunteers, the Flemings proved themselves in defensive fighting in the first winter, in the final reduction of the Volkhov pocket in June 1942 and in Feb.-March 1943 at the battle of Krasnyi Bor