British Free Corps

British Free Corps
British Free Corps Armshield
Active	1943–1945
Allegiance	Nazi Germany
Branch	Waffen-SS
Type	Infantry
Size	27 (greatest size)
Disbanded	1945

The British Free Corps (German: Britisches Freikorps) was a unit of the Waffen SS during World War II, consisting of British and Dominion prisoners of war who had been recruited by the Nazis. The unit was originally known as the Legion of St George. Research by British historian Adrian Weale has identified 54 men who belonged to this unit at one time or another, some for only a few days. At no time did it reach more than 27 men in strength.

The idea for the British Free Corps (BFC) came from John Amery, a British fascist, son of the serving British Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery. John Amery travelled to Berlin in October 1942 and proposed to the Germans the formation of a British volunteer force to help fight the Bolsheviks. The British volunteer force was to be modelled after the Légion des volontaires français contre le bolchévisme (Legion of French Volunteers against Bolshevism), a French volunteer force fighting with the German Wehrmacht. Apart from touting the idea of a British volunteer force, Amery also actively tried to recruit Britons. He made a series of pro-German propaganda radio broadcasts, appealing to his fellow countrymen to join the war on communism.

The first recruits to the Corps came from a group of prisoners of war (POWs) at a 'holiday camp' set up by the Germans in Genshagen, a suburb of Berlin, in August 1943. In November 1943 they were moved to a requisitioned café in the Pankow district of Berlin. Recruits also came from an interrogation camp at Luckenwalde in late 1943. The Corps became a military unit on 1 January 1944 under the name ‘The British Free Corps’. In the first week of February 1944, the BFC moved to the St Michaeli Kloster in Hildesheim, a small town near Hannover. Uniforms were issued on 20 April 1944 (Hitler's 55th birthday). On 11 October 1944 the Corps was moved to the Waffen-SS Pioneer school in Dresden, to start military training for service on the Eastern Front. On 24 February 1945 they travelled from Dresden to Berlin, where they stayed in a requisitioned school on the Schönhauser Allee. On 8 March 1945 they were moved to the village of Niemegk, a few miles to the south-west of Berlin.