15th Waffen Grenadier Division of The SS (1st Latvian)

The 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Latvian) was formed during the Waffen-SS's drive for manpower in the wake of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. After a successful recruitment drive in the Reichskommissariat Ostland, the occupied Baltic states, to form anti-partisan brigades, Heinrich Himmler formed Baltic legions by late August 1942. These included the Lettische SS-Freiwilligen-Legion, the nucleus of the later 15th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS.

However, the small size of these Legions were inadequate for widespread use and were soon merged into divisions. The Lettische SS-Freiwilligen-Legion was renamed as the SS-Freiwilligen-Division, with the numerical designation added soon after. To bolster the numbers, Himmler enforced compulsory military service within the Baltic States during 1943 for those born between 1915-24. In 1944, the conscription dates were widened to 1904-26. These Latvian conscripts would form the renamed 15th Waffen-Grenadier-Division just in time for the Soviet 1944 offensives. The 15th SS, together with the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (2nd Latvian) formed the Latvian Legion. The 15th SS was swept up in the chaos of the collapse of the Eastern Front and lost much of its spirit after the Soviet re-occupation of their homelands. It was soon trapped and decimated in their hopeless defence of Pomerania.

The division fought on the Pomeranian Wall defences. On 2 February 1945, at Podgaje, Poland, men of the division bound 32 Polish soldiers, of the 4th Company, 3rd Infantry Regiment of the Polish First Army's 1st Infantry Division, with barbed wire and placed them in a barn that the Lativian troops subsequently set on fire.

However, out of fear of Russian revenge the division fought well in the last months of the war and a surviving Füsilier battalion took part in the defence of Berlin in mid-1945. Other remnants, under Waffen-Standartenführer Vilis Janums, surrendered to the advancing Americans at Güterglück near the Elbe River.