Russian Protective Corps

The Russian Protective Corps (German: Russisches Schutzkorps, Russian: Русский охранный корпус, romanized: Russkiy okhrannyy korpus, Serbian: Руски заштитни корпус, romanized: Ruski zaštitni korpus) was an armed force composed of anti-communist White Russian émigrés. Raised in the German-occupied territory of Serbia during World War II and commanded for almost its whole existence by Lieutenant General Boris Shteifon, it served primarily as a guard force for factories and mines between late 1941 and early 1944, initially as the "Separate Russian Corps" then as the Russian Factory Protective Group. Incorporated into the Wehrmacht on 1 December 1942, the Corps later clashed with the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and briefly with the Chetniks. In late 1944, it fought against the Red Army during the Belgrade Offensive, later withdrawing to Bosnia and Slovenia as the German forces retreated from Yugoslavia and Greece. After Shteifon′s death in Zagreb in the Independent State of Croatia on 30 April 1945, Russian Colonel Anatoly Rogozhin (1893–1972) took command and led his troops farther north to surrender to the British authorities in southern Austria. The British did not treat Rogozhin and his men formally as Soviet citizens, unlike most other Russian formations which had fought for Nazi Germany. Corps members, exempted from forced repatriation to the Soviet Union, were eventually set free and allowed to re-settle in the West.