"German Don Cossacks" Topic

"When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 many people in that empire saw them as liberators from the Russian occupiers and Stalin's horrific government. A great many, including many Cossacks, volunteered to fight with Germany, and in time a number of Cossack units were organised, filled partly with POWs from the Red Army and partly from those that had escaped the Soviet Union previously. Their role was seen as mainly to fulfil behind-the-line functions such as logistics protection and anti-partisan campaigns, and in this role they served as far afield as Croatia and France. Ultimately of course they suffered defeat along with the rest of the Axis forces, and many were then sent to Stalin's Russia, where they were executed.

The various Cossack forces fighting alongside the German Army were given German uniforms, meaning they were indistinguishable from native Germans apart from smaller details like colour and insignia, undetectable at our scale. Therefore in a real sense many sets of Germans could also be used as Cossacks, so Mars have designed these figures to be distinctive and clearly nothing but Cossack. This is mainly done by giving each man a fur cap, the design of which varied between the hosts. To our eye most here are quite short, and so would be the lambswool kubanka, which was not the traditional headgear of the Don Cossack (which was the taller papacha). A couple here could perhaps be large enough to be considered to be a papacha, but in any event on occasion Don Cossacks also wore the kubanka, so these are not wrong, though calling them Terek or Kuban Cossacks might have been better. In each case there is a cross on the top of the cap, and this would be different colours depending on the Host (red for the Don)…."

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Amicalement
Armand

pssst! ;-)
TMP link

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Amicalement
Armand

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Mwahahaha