A Thai in the German Wehrmacht

For years I have been looking for a book that can shed light on one of the most intriguing pages of Thailand's World War II history. On the cover is a photo of an officer of the German Wehrmacht with unmistakable Asian facial features. This book contains the memoirs of Wicha Thitwat (1917-1977), a Thai who served in the ranks of the German army during this conflict. Wehrmacht had served.

In 1936 he had enrolled at the Military Academy in Bangkok and two years later this aspiring officer, together with another fellow student, was sent to Belgium to study military communication systems at the Military School in Brussels. Surprised by the German invasion of May 1940, he could not immediately return to Thailand and for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, he suddenly turned up a few months later in a German military school. In itself this was not so strange because already from the end of the 19^e century, at the request of King Chulalongkorn, Thai candidate officers were sent to European military schools for further training. However, it is not clear whether his compatriot, who had been sent to Brussels with him, had also gone to Germany.

As mentioned, Wicha Thitwat started studying at the Military Academy in Berlin, but less than a year later he voluntarily enlisted as funker or radio operator in the 29^e Panzer Grenadier Division of the German Wehrmacht. A few months after his enlistment, he was transferred to the 3^e Panzer Grenadier Division. In all likelihood, this happened with the – tacit – agreement of the Thai government at the time, because after all he was not only a Thai national but also a Thai aspiring officer and accountable as such…

In early 1942, he mutated into a unit that would become known as East Battalion 43. A unit under German command formed exclusively with Asians: At least 300 Japanese were part of this unit. Logical, because Japan had been an ally of Germany since 1938. Most of these soldiers from the Land of the Rising Sun were students at various military academies in Germany at the outbreak of the war and enlisted voluntarily. Following in the footsteps of the Japanese, several hundred Koreans and Mongols who came from Manchuria also followed. Korea had been occupied by Japan since 1909 and Manchuria since 1931.

One of the bizarre aspects of this already bizarre unity was that in the East Battalion 43 several dozen Chinese also served. They were candidate officers of the Chinese Nationalist Army Kuomintang who were trained in Germany before the war. Among them was the son of the Chinese head of state Chiang Kai-shek. The Kuomintang had been fighting the Japanese since 1936, who had taken over a large part of China. Now they fought shoulder to shoulder in it East Battalion 43. Another special contingent was made up of a few Indonesians, who, after the Japanese occupation of their country and the associated collapse of the Dutch colonial regime, believed they could do their bit by doing odd jobs for the occupier. It was probably thanks to the mediation of the Japanese that these followers of Sukarno ended up in a German uniform.

The remaining men in this unit were Asians captured in the ranks of the Red Army and recruited from POW camps. Although most of these former prisoners of war later returned to their own, ethnically composed Eastern Battalions would end up. For example, there were units for Kyrgyz, Kalmoek and Ossetians. East Battalion 43 was deployed from mid-1943 against the Red Army and in fighting partisans operating in the back of the German army. In the absence of the book I can say little about Whicha Thitwat's career, but he may have made it to officer because in at least one photo he wears the shoulders of a 'Führerbewerber', a candidate officer. In any case, he survived the war and after his return to Thailand he became a colonel in the Thai army. In the XNUMXs, Whicha Thitwat was a Thai military attache seconded successively to the Thai embassies in Denmark, Norway and Iceland.

According to Whicha Thitwat, several dozen Thais served in the German army during World War II. Until I can get my hands on his book, I have only been able to find one other and then he was still of 'mixed' origin. Lucien Kemarat's mother was French, his father was a Thai from Isaan, who probably arrived in what was then Indochine via an intermediate stop. la douce France had gotten lost. Almost immediately after most of France was occupied, the then 18-year-old Kemarat tried to enlist in the Waffen SS as a war volunteer. His candidacy was rejected on racial grounds, so in 1941 he engaged in the Legion Volontaire Français (LVF), a volunteer legion created by French collaborators to work with the Wehrmacht to fight on the Eastern Front. In the ranks of the LVF there were much less strict conditions and he was immediately allowed the feldgray put on a coat of arms. Originally trained as a scout, he eventually became the first gunner of the MG heavy machine gun

42. Kemarat was wounded and taken prisoner of war by the Soviets in early 1943 but managed to escape and rejoin his unit. In the summer of 1943 the LVF was transformed into the 'Sturmbrigade Frankreich' and incorporated into the Waffen SS where this unit would become infamous as the Waffen SS Panzergrenadier Division 'Charlemagne' who, together with Dutch, Norwegian and Danish SS volunteers, died in 1945 to the last man Reich Chancellery defend in Berlin.

Panzergrenadier Kemarat, who eventually ended up with the Waffen SS, was assigned to the 10^e (anti-tank) company of the Infantry Regiment No. 58. The Germans needed cannon fodder and Asian blood was apparently no longer an obstacle for the Waffen SS. He survived the heavy anti-aircraft battles in Ukraine, Pomerania and on the Oder. With several hundred survivors of the Infantry Regiment No. 58 he tried to escape to Denmark but on 2 May 1945 this unit surrendered to the British. It is not clear whether Lucien Kemarat was taken prisoner or whether he escaped in civilian clothes. It is certain that he returned to France after the war. According to my old comrade, the Norman military historian Jean Mabire, he was alive at least until the early 2000s, and in 1973-1974 had contributed to the writing of his book 'La Division Charlemagne: les combats des SS français en Poméranie'....