After Germany invaded the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa, recruits from France, Spain, Belgium, the territory of occupied Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and the Balkans were signed on.^[16] By February 1942, Waffen-SS recruitment in south-east Europe turned into compulsory conscription for all German minorities of military age.^[17] From 1942 onwards, further units of non-Germanic recruits were formed.^[12] Legions were formed of men from Estonia, Latvia as well as men from Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Ukraine, Russia, and Cossacks.^[18] By 1943 the Waffen-SS could no longer claim to be an “elite” fighting force overall. Recruitment and conscription based on “numerical over qualitative expansion” took place, with many of the “foreign” units being good for only rear-guard duty.^[19]

A system of nomenclature developed to formally distinguish personnel based on their place of origin. Germanic units would have the “SS” prefix, while non-Germanic units were designated with the “Waffen” prefix to their names.^[20] The formations with volunteers of Germanic background were officially named Freiwilligen (volunteer) (Scandinavians, Dutch, and Flemish), including ethnic Germans born outside the Reich known as Volksdeutsche, and their members were from satellite countries. These were organised into independent legions and had the designation Waffen attached to their names for formal identification.^[21] In addition, the German SS Division Wiking included recruits from Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden, and Estonia throughout its history.^[22] Despite manpower shortages, the Waffen-SS was still based on the racist ideology of Nazism.^[23] Early in 1943, the Waffen-SS accepted 12,643 of the 53,000 recruits it garnered in western Ukraine and by 1944 the number reached as high as 22,000.^[24] Recruitment efforts in 1943 in Estonia yielded about 5,000 soldiers for the 20th Estonian SS Division.^[25] In Latvia, however, the Nazis were more successful, as, by 1944, there were upwards of 100,000 soldiers serving in the Latvian Waffen-SS divisions.^[25]

Before the war’s end, the foreigners who served in the Waffen-SS numbered “some 500,000”, including those who were pressured into service or conscripted.^[26] Historian Martin Gutmann adds that some of the additional forces came from “Eastern and Southeastern Europe, including Muslim soldiers from the Balkans.”^[27]