Original Items: Only One Set Available. This is a lovely matched pair of large WWI style Mannschaften Schulterklappen (Enlisted Shoulder straps), which are a flaschengrün (dark bottle-green) color with Hellgrün (light glue) piping around the edges. While one might assume these are for artillery, these are actually the style and size used for foreign volunteers later in the war. With these, the color of the piping indicated where they were from, and the light blue color was for Turkic volunteers, which included those from Turkey, as well as various other groups in Eurasia. Cossack volunteers had deep red piping, while volunteers from Azerbaijan were green. The Turkic volunteers became part of the Turkistanische Legion (Turkestan Legion), which like the other foreign volunteer groups, grew in size as the war progressed.

The shoulderboards are the button attached style, and have feldgrau undersides, while the straps are more of a blue color. They are not quite the same size, and vary a bit in construction, they were made by different companies, though we doubt that mattered when they were being issued. One shows a bit of moth damage to the top, and both show a bit of fading to the light blue piping, so they do look to have seen service.

A lovely set of shoulderboards that would dress up any late war tunic beautifully!

The Turkestan Legion (German: Turkistanische Legion) was the name of the military units composed of Turkic peoples who served in the Wehrmacht during World War II. Most of these troops were Red Army prisoners of war who formed a common cause with the Germans (cf. Turkic, Caucasian, and Crimean collaborationism with the Axis powers). Its establishment was spearheaded by Nuri Killigil, a Turkish theorist of Pan-Turkism, which sought to separate territories inhabited by Turkic peoples from their countries and eventually unite them under Turkish rule.

The first Turkestan Legion was mobilized in May 1942, originally consisting of only one battalion but expanded to 16 battalions and 16,000 soldiers by 1943. Under the Wehrmacht's command, these units were deployed exclusively on the Western Front in France and Italy, isolating them from contact with the Red Army. The battalions of the Turkestan Legion formed part of the 162nd Infantry Division and saw much action in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia (especially modern-day Croatia) and Italy.

A large portion of the Turkestan Legion was captured by Allied forces and repatriated into the Soviet Union after the war's end, where they faced execution or incarceration by the Soviet government for having collaborated with the Nazis. Notable members of the legion include Baymirza Hayit, a Turkologist who after the war settled in West Germany and became an advocate for Pan-Turkist political causes.