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Among the approximately one million foreign volunteers and conscripts who served in the Wehrmacht during World War II were ethnic Germans, Belgians, Czechs, Dutch, Finns, French, Greeks, Hungarians, Norwegians, Poles, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedes and British, along with people from the Baltic states and the Balkans.
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Russian émigrés and defectors from the Soviet Union formed the Russian Liberation Army or fought as Hilfswillige (approximately another 600,000 to 1,000,000 voluntary assistants) within German units of the Wehrmacht primarily on the Eastern Front. Non-Russians from the Soviet Union formed the Ostlegionen (literally "Eastern Legions"). These units were all commanded by General Ernst August Köstring (1876−1953) and represented about five percent of the forces under the OKH.