The Development Stage
The movement began spontaneously at the outbreak of the Soviet-German war in June 1941. White Russian emigres, veterans of the White movement, began seeking sympathetic ears in the German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) and trying to find a means of creating armed units that would be used on the Eastern Front (such as the Russian Corps).
Meanwhile, captured Soviet officers who were frustrated with the Stalinist regime also found several sympathetic ears in the German army and propaganda departments. The most notable was General Andrey Vlasov, who began emerging as the potential head of a yet to be united and defined Russian Liberation Movement.
The German propaganda department began exploiting the idea of a Russian Liberation Army (which did not exist) in order to encourage defections, printing up propaganda leaflets encouraging surrender and dropping them in Soviet zones. Most defectors, however, were immediately sent to a labor camp.
Read more about this topic: Russian Liberation Movement
Famous quotes containing the words development and/or stage:
“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“At a stage when young people want more than anything to be like everyone else, they find themselves the least alike. Everyone their age is growing and changing, but each at his or her own pace.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)