Kalmykian Voluntary Cavalry Corps

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The Kalmykian Voluntary Cavalry Corps was a unit of about 5,000 Kalmykian volunteers who choose to join the Wehrmacht in 1942 rather than remain in Kalmykia as the German Army retretaed before the Red Army. (In 1943 Stalin subsequently declared the Kalmykian population as a whole to be German collaborators and had them deported to Siberia suffering great loss of life.) When Erich von Manstein led the 16th Motorized Infantry Division into Kalmykia in early 1942 he already had some Kalmykian advisors from a committee drawn together by Goebbels for propaganda purposes. These were supplemented by other Kalmykians who had settled in Belgrade following their flight with White Russian emigres after the Russian October Revolution.

The Kalmykian Voluntary Cavalry Corps fought with the Nazi army behind the lines, especially around the Azov Sea. At the end of 1944, the surviving Kalmyk cavalry troops, together with their families, retreated with the German army. About 2,000 went to Silesia, Poland and 1,500 to Zagreb, Croatia, where they were reorganized to fight against the partisans.

After the war, the Kalmyks left in Western European countries were interned in displaced persons camps in Austria and Germany, especially in the Munich area. This was where the remnants of the Belgrade Kalmykian community had retreated, fearing reprisals as collaborators from the victorious Yugoslav partisans. Released in 1951, they settled first in Munich, moving later that year to New Jersey, USA, thanks to the Tolstoy Foundation. Tito handed those left in Serbia over to the Soviets, who promptly deported them to Siberia.