Ethnic Germans from Hungary in the Waffen-SS. Case Study of the Western Hungarian Borderland

In my study, I examine the recruitment actions of the Waffen-SS in the West-Hungarian region in the mirror of local archival sources. My hypothesis is that the voluntary recruitment campaigns in 1942 and 1943 were more successful and more popular in this region than in other parts of the country, and I try to find out what the reasons for this might have been. The German invasion of Hungary in the spring of 1944 also opened a new chapter in the history of SS recruitments. The forced recruitment of men at the western borderland was also hard hit because of its geographical location, where the war lasted longer, and men were still being taken as German soldiers in 1945, although by then, with few exceptions, the action had already met with resistance from those involved.