page_title: Blue Division
section_title: Eastern Front
hierarchical_section_title: Blue Division / Operational history / Eastern Front
caption_attribution_description: Español: Soldados del ejército táctico de la División Azul española en Rusia
context_page_description: The Blue Division was a unit of volunteers from Francoist Spain within the German Army on the Eastern Front during World War II. It was officially designated the Spanish Volunteer Division by the Spanish Army and 250th Infantry Division by the Germans.
  Spain was ruled by an authoritarian regime under Francisco Franco installed in the Spanish Civil War with support from Nazi Germany. Franco chose to remain neutral in World War II but sympathised with the Axis powers. After lobbying by the Foreign Minister Ramón Serrano Suñer and senior figures within the Spanish Army, Franco agreed that Spaniards would be permitted to enlist privately in the German Army and agreed to provide tacit support. An infantry division was raised from Falangist and Army cadres and was sent for training in Germany. The unit participated in the Siege of Leningrad but was withdrawn from the Front after Spanish pressure in October 1943 and was returned to Spain soon afterwards. A small number of non-returners were incorporated into the short-lived Blue Legion and eventually into the Waffen-SS.
context_section_description: On 31 July, after taking the Hitler oath, the Blue Division was formally incorporated into the German Wehrmacht as the 250th Division. It was initially assigned to Army Group Center, the force advancing towards Moscow. The division was transported by train to Suwałki, Poland (August 28), from where it had to continue by foot on a 900 km march. It was scheduled to travel through Grodno (Belarus), Lida (Belarus), Vilnius (Lithuania), Molodechno (Belarus), Minsk (Belarus), Orsha (Belarus) to Smolensk, and from there to the Moscow front. While marching towards the Smolensk front on September 26, the Spanish volunteers were rerouted from Vitebsk and reassigned to Army Group North (the force closing on Leningrad), becoming part of the German 16th Army. The Blue Division was first deployed on the Volkhov River front, with its headquarters in Grigorovo, on the outskirts of Novgorod. It was in charge of a 50 km section of the front north and south of Novgorod, along the banks of the Volkhov River and Lake Ilmen.
  The iconostasis of the Church of Saint Theodore Stratelates on the Brook was used for firewood by the division's soldiers. The iconostases of the Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Sophia, Sts. Peter and Paul Church in Kozhevniki, and the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Mother of God in the Antoniev Monastery were taken to Germany at the end of 1943. According to the museum curator in the Church of the Transfiguration on Ilyina Street, the division used the high cupola as a machine-gun nest. As a result, much of the building was seriously damaged, including many of the medieval icons by Theophanes the Greek.
  In August 1942, it was transferred north to the southeastern flank of the Siege of Leningrad, just south of the river Neva near Pushkin, Kolpino and Krasny Bor in the Izhora River area. After the collapse of the German southern front following the Battle of Stalingrad, more German troops were deployed southwards. By this time, General Emilio Esteban Infantes had taken command. The Blue Division faced a major Soviet attempt to break the siege of Leningrad in February 1943, when the 55th Army of the Soviet forces, reinvigorated after the victory at Stalingrad, attacked the Spanish positions at the Battle of Krasny Bor, near the main Moscow-Leningrad road. Despite very heavy casualties, the Spaniards were able to hold their ground against a Soviet force seven times larger and supported by tanks. The assault was contained and the siege of Leningrad was maintained for a further year. The division remained on the Leningrad front where it continued to suffer heavy casualties due to weather and to enemy action.
caption: Division's soldiers at the Siege of Leningrad in 1943
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