Did any WW2 German soldiers ever fight as mercenaries after the war?

World War II ended in 1945, BUT for thousands of German soldiers, the fighting simply moved to a new country and a new paycheck.

Germany was ruined. Workplaces were few, finances were tough, and most of the veterans could do just one thing: FIGHT.

France took advantage of their fighting skills straight away. The country was involved in the war in Indochina and French Foreign Legion needed trained warriors. From 1945 to 1954, up to 50,000 German veterans fought in Vietnam for the French, supporting the country which they had recently fought against.

Some veterans moved to the Middle East. Egypt and Syria employed German officers, among others former SS officers, to train military personnel, form commando forces and set up intelligence services.

The USA provided another option in 1950, when an act regulating foreign recruitment was passed, allowing foreigners to join the American army in order to obtain citizenship in five years. Many German and Eastern European veterans accepted it.

In the 1960s, another place where mercenaries could be hired appeared – Africa.

The most famous was Siegfried "Kongo-Müller" Müller, fighting in the Congo with his old Iron Cross. Television gave him the fame of mercenary hero, although his comrades-in-arms said that there was more fiction than fact in him.

For many German veterans, war was no longer an ideological issue.

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Holocaust victim

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