Despite an explicit order from Hitler forbidding such measures, the number of ‘Russians’ in Wehrmacht uniform kept climbing in the spring and summer of 1942. Most ‘volunteers’ simply wanted to escape the festering and famine-ridden camps and were allotted menial, non-combat roles, as servants to officers, medics, cooks, translators and drivers of trucks or horse-drawn carts. It was the simplest and most practicable way of making up the chronic under-strength of German units.
