The Fate of Nazi Germany’s Cossacks

Very good historical article taking a look at a portion of WWII often not looked at at all - despite by mid 1943 they had a force close to size of the current active US Army. They knew fully well by mid 1944 what their fate would be... and there was no way out of their pact with the devil against a devil they knew all too well. Definitely one of the ash heaps of history items - except that there was more to the story... and that part is not often known.
"After the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944, it did not take long for Allied commanders to realize that they were not just fighting Germans. In fact, up to 10 percent of the prisoners taken were not German and a good many were Russian. Had the British and American commanders had any real understanding of Soviet society, they would have understood why these Russians seemed so content in their imprisonment. These were men who had been knocked around and brutalized all their lives, first by the Communists, then by the Germans. For the first time in their lives, they were being treated like human beings. They did not know such a world existed. Later, when notified that they would be sent back to the Soviet Union, many preferred death to repatriation."