For Russia with Hitler: White Russian Émigrés and the German-Soviet War

“This masterful book is an instant classic in the historiographies of Stalinism, Nazism, and the Second World War. With the subtle skills of the critical historian, Beyda makes the reader understand the motivations, aspirations, choices, and crimes of men who thought they had Russia’s best interests at heart. In reality, of course, they contributed to one of the most criminal occupation regimes of the twentieth century. Beyda’s well-written account allows readers to understand this remarkable history of a consequential misunderstanding between anti-Bolshevik Russians and Nazi Russophobes.” Mark Edele, Hansen Chair in History, University of Melbourne

“For Russia with Hitler is the untold Second World War story of ‘White Russians’ who had never moved on from their civil war against the Bolsheviks twenty years earlier. As Talleyrand said of the Bourbons, they had learnt nothing, and forgotten nothing. Once Nazi Germany was going to attack the common enemy, the Soviet Union, these Russian officers were keen to join them – keener, in fact, than the Germans, who saw Slavs as an inferior race. After the war, they made no apologies for collaborating: they had been pursuing their own aims, not Hitler’s. This well-researched and judicious account leaves readers to make up their own minds.” Sheila Fitzpatrick, author of Lost Souls: Displaced Persons and the Birth of the Cold War

“For Russia with Hitler tells the unjustly forgotten story of history’s double-losers, those White Russians who remained prisoners of the past, unable accept their defeat at the hands of the Reds and ready to throw in their lot with the Third Reich. Oleg Beyda has written an important, fascinating, and at times disturbing book.” Douglas Smith, historian and author of The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of How America Saved the Soviet Union from Ruin

“The mass emigration of White Russians in the wake of the 1917 revolution and civil war has at its heart one enduring feature: a visceral attachment to Mother Russia and passionate sense of nationhood. For Russia With Hitler is a powerful and disturbing account of hopes dashed, of sacrifice and betrayal, based on impressive and extensive research. Oleg Beyda is to be congratulated for breaking important new ground in telling a story from which many historians have till now have shied away.” Helen Rappaport, historian and author of After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris between the Wars