Nikolai Nazarenko

Nazarenko was born in Starocherkasskaya in the territory of the Don Cossack Host. The Don Cossacks in common with the other Cossack Hosts of the Russian empire were a privileged group, serving as one of the main bulwarks of the House of Romanov. The Cossack Hosts who had long owned their land quickly came into conflict with the new Bolshevik regime. In 1918 Nazarenko's family fled to Romania.[2] Nazarenko grew up in Romania and subsequently enlisted in the Romanian Army.[2] Owing to his Russian language skills, he was recruited as a spy for Romania.[2]

Nazarenko was sent on an espionage mission for Romania into the Soviet Union, but was captured and imprisoned.[3] After escaping from prison, Nazarenko settled in Taganrog.[3] Taganrog was in the traditional territory of the Don Cossack Host, and many of the local people were hostile to the Soviet regime.[4] Using an assumed name, Nazarenko was able to take command of a Don Cossack militia being sent to support the Red Army, At the factory he worked in, a militia was recruited to fight for the Red Army, and Nazarenko had enough knowledge of military matters to be given command with the rank of First Lieutenant.[5]  Nazarenko subverted his militia unit and persuaded to fight for Germany instead.[3]

As German forces approached the Mius river, Nazarenko's company attacked the Red Army.[3] Nazarenko and his men were positioned on the second line, and seeing the Wehrmacht was close by, he gave the orders to attack the Red Army's first line.[5] In October 1941, the XIV Panzer Corps of the Wehrmacht discovered that the 9th Soviet Army was engaged in battle against a Cossack formation led by Nazarenko.[3] After being relieved by the Wehrmacht, Nazarenko and his 80 surviving men were sent to the rear.[6] Nazarenko met General Gustav von Wietersheim and insisted to him his loyalties were to Germany.[6] Nazarenko and his men were enlisted into the Wehrmacht as a reconnaissance battalion, wearing German uniforms with the words Kosaken stamped on them.[6]

On 23 October 1941, Nazarenko and his formally took an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, swearing he would obey he would obey and fight for Hitler for the rest of his life.[6] Nazarenko was given a German officer's head, which he altered by the removing the red, white and black roundle and replacing it with the blue and white of the Don Cossack Host.[7] He followed the XIV Panzer corps to Rostov and was shortly transferred over to the 1st Panzer Army.[6] The Cossack Reconnaissance Battalion was primarily used for anti-partisan duties and for guarding Red Army POWs, and was judged to be successful in performing these duties.[8] 

In February 1942, Alexander Siusiukin, a Don Cossack serving in the Red Army contacted the Wehrmacht, saying many of his fellow Don Cossacks viewed Hitler as a liberator and were prepared to do anything to assist in Germany's victory.[4] Siuskukin was put into touch with Nazarenko and a means of communication were opened.[4] By 1942, Nazarenko, through his rank was only first lieutenant was commanding a force of 500 men.[9] On 14 October 1942, Nazarenko attended Pokrov, the Orthodox feast honoring the Intercession of the Theotokos by the Virgin Mary with Altman Pavlov.[10] After Pokrov, Nazarenko toured the countryside dressed in a uniform combining aspects of the traditional Cossack dress together with the more German uniform, praising Hitler as a "liberator".[10]

Alfred Rosenberg, the Minister of the East (Ostministerium), favored an approach called "political warfare" in order to "to free the German Reich from Pan-Slavic pressure for centuries to come".[11] Under Rosenberg's "political warfare" approach, the Soviet Union was to be broken up into four nominally independent states consisting of the Ukraine; a federation in the Caucasus; an entity to be called Ostland which would comprise the Baltic states and Belorussia (modern Belarus); and a rump Russian state.[11] Rosenberg was a fanatical anti-Semite and a Russophobe, but he favored a more diplomatic policy towards the non-Russian and non-Jewish population of the Soviet Union, arguing that this was a vast reservoir of manpower that could be used by the Reich.[11] Initially, Rosenberg considered the Cossacks to be Russians, and he ascribed to the popular German stereotype of Cossacks as thuggish rapists and looters.[12] However, as the numbers of Cossacks rallying to the Reich continued to grow into 1942, Roseberg changed his opinion, deciding that the Cossacks were not Russians after all, instead being a separate "race" descended from the Goths.[12] The Ostministerium was supported by the SS, whose "racial experts" had concluded by 1942 the Cossacks were not Slavs, but rather the descendants of the Ostgoths and thus were Aryans.[13] Rosenberg decided that after the "final victory" Germany would establish a new puppet state to be called Cossackia in the traditional territories of the Don, Kuban, Terek, Askrakhan, Ural and Orenburg Hosts in southeastern Russia.[12] Most of the Cossack leaders tended to reject the concept of "Cossackia", but since it was German policy to promote "Cossackia", they had little choice in the matter.[14] Nazarenko seems to be one of the Cossack leaders to actually embrace the idea of "Cossackia".

In August 1943, Nazarenko's company of 500 was incorporated into the 1st Cossack Cavalry Division, which was formed and trained in Mielau (modern Mława, Poland).[9] When the 1st Cossack Division was formed, Nazarenko was given soldbuch (paybook) number 1 in recognition for being the first Cossack to fight for Germany.[15] By the summer of 1943, Nazarenko was involved in a relationship with a German woman living in Mielau.[16] One of her neighbors denounced her for sleeping with a Slav, leading to her arrest by the Gestapo.[16] Nazarenko complained to his commander, General Helmuth von Pannwitz, saying he had been faithful to his oath to Hitler and had been fighting for the Reich for almost two years.[17] Through Pannwitz was able to use his influence to have the woman released, the incident had soured her enough to cause her to end the relationship.[17] The 1st Cossack Division was sent not in the Soviet Union as expected, but instead to Bosnia and Croatia. When the Cossack Division was transferred from the Wehrmacht to the Waffen-SS, Nazarenko also became a part of the SS.[18]

Nazarenko served as a translator and an interrogator of POWS for the Wehrmacht and SS in Romania in 1944.[1] Nazarenko was accused of executing Red Army POWs and of hanging Jews from the lampposts in Odessa, claims which he denied, through he stated in an interview that Jews were his "ideological enemies".[19] In 1944 while living in Belgrade, Nazarenko married the daughter of General Vyacheslav Naumenenko, the ataman of the Kuban Cossack Host.

Towards the end of World War Two, Nazarenko was in Berlin serving as the intelligence chief for the Cossack "government-in-exile" set by Alfred Rosenberg.[19] At the end of World War Two, Nazarenko was in Munich and was not repatriated by the Americans to the Soviets.[20] From 1945 to 1949, Nazarenko worked in Bavaria for the U.S Army Counter-Intelligence Corps.[19]

In 1949, he immigrated to the United States, living at various locations in the New York-New Jersey area.[19] In the United States, Nazarenko founded and led the Cossack War Veterans' Association made of veterans of the 1st Cossack Division.[2] As the organiser of the annual Captive Nations day parade held every July in New York starting in 1960, Nazarenko had a certain degree of local prominence.[1] In the 1968 and 1972 elections, Nazarenko campaigned for the Republican candidate, Richard Nixon in his capacity as the president of the Cossack American Republican National Federation.[19]

In 1969, Nixon founded the National Republican Heritage Groups Council, whose first president was a Hungarian immigrant, Laszlo Pasztor, who began his political career as an activist for the fascist Arrow Cross movement in his native Hungary.[21] Pasztor had much success in the 1968 election as a Republican activist working in neighborhoods inhabited by Eastern European immigrants or the descendants of Eastern European immigrants, leading Nixon to make the Heritage Group a permanent part of the Republican Party. Pasztor in turn recruited Nazarenko into the Heritage Groups Council.[21] The Heritage Croup Council was founded at a conference in Washington D.C. held between 29-31 October 1969, with Nixon speaking to the founders at the White House on 30 October 1969.[22] Nazarenko attended the conference, where he was listed as representing the Cossacks.[23]

The American scholar Leonard Weinberg described the recruitment of activists such as Pasztor and Nazarenko into the Republican Party in the late 1960s as the beginning of a tilt towards a more right-wing stance within the GOP.[21] In 1972, Nazarenko converted the Cossack War Veterans' Association into the World Federation of the Cossack National Liberation Movement of Cossackia. Nazarenko took part in Captive Nations day parades in his Cossack uniform and as the president of the Cossack American Republican National Federation was active in Republican politics.[24]

In 1978, Nazarenko dressed in his Cossack uniform led the Captive Days day parade in New York city, and told a journalist: "Cossackia is a. nation of 10 million people. In 1923 the Russians officially abolished Cossackia. as a nation. Officially, it no longer exists...America should not spend billions supporting the Soviets with trade. We don't have to be afraid of the Russian army because half of it is made up of Captive Nations. They can never trust the rank and file".[25] The journalist Hal McKenzie described Nazarenko as having "cut a striking figure with his white fur cap, calf-length coat with long silver-sheathed dagger and ornamental silver cartridge cases on his chest."[25]

On 21 July 1984, Nazarenko, gave a speech at a diner for the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations in New York.[26] Nazarenko began by praising those who fought for Nazi Germany in the Ostlegionen and the Waffen-SS as heroes.[26] Turning to his main subject, Nazarenko stated: "There is a certain ethnic group that makes its home in Israel. This ethnic group works with the Communists all the time. They were the Fifth Column in Germany and in all the Captive Nations...They would spy, sabotage and do any act in the interest of Moscow. Of course there had to be the creation of a natural self defense against this Fifth Column. They had to be isolated. Security was needed. So the Fifth Column were arrested and imprisoned. This particular ethnic group was responsible for aiding the Soviet NKVD. A million of our people were destroyed as a result of them aiding the NKVD...You hear a lot about the Jewish Holocaust, but what about the 140 million Christians, Moslems and Buddhists killed by Communism? That is the real Holocaust and you never hear about it!".[27] The audience roared it approval and Nazarenko's speech was the best received of the evening.[27]

On 17 May 1985, he attended a speech given by President Ronald Reagan at a meeting of the Republican Heritage Groups Council at the Omni Shoreham Hotel representing the Cossack American Republican National Federation .[28] The next day, Nazarenko was interviewed by the American journalist Russ Bellant. Before Bellant, Nazarenko produced a briefcase full of anti-Semitic literature on the "Jewish question", Cossack publications and memorabilia from his service in the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS.[19] Bellant described Nazarenko as a man standing 6'1 with a flamboyant mustache; an immense capacity to consume vodka and to chain-smoke; and with a raging hatred for Jews and Russians.[24] In common with many other Cossacks, Nazarenko insisted the Cossacks were a distinctive nation who were not Russians despite speaking Russian. Nazarenko when questioned, denied the Holocaust, saying that "Jews didn't die from gas chambers. Those mountains of bones are from people who staved to death or died of disease".[29] In 2014, Bellant recalled: "I interviewed the Cossack guy; he showed me his pension from service in the SS in World War II, and how he was affiliated with free Nazi groups in the United States, and he was just very unrepentant."[30]

Nazarenko also told Bellant that he was in contact with "patriotic" publications such as Thunderbolt edited Edward Reed Fields, The Spotlight and Instauration.[19] Nazarenko lived comfortably on a veteran's pension provided by the West German government.[19] Nazarenko boosted to Bellant that when meeting Nazis: "They respect me because I was a former German Army officer. Sometimes when I meet these guys, they say 'Heil Hitler!'".[19] Much of Nazarenko's time in the 1980s was taken up with trying to discredit the Office of Special Investigations, the branch of the Justice Department responsible for investigating accused Nazi war criminals living in the United States.[31]

In an article in the New York Times in 1988, Bellant asked for the Republican Party to expel Nazarenko.[32] In late 1988, Nazarenko was expelled from the GOP together with 7 other ethnic organizers with Nazi ties.[33]

• Bellant, Russ (1991). Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party. Boston: South End Press. ISBN 0896084183.
• Burleigh, Michael (2001). The Third Reich A New History. New York: Hill and Wang. ISBN 080909326X.
• Beyda, Oleg; Petrov, Igor (2018). "The Soviet Union". In David Stahel (ed.). Joining Hitler's Crusade: European Nations and the Invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 369–428. ISBN 1316510344.
• Lee, Martin (2013). The Beast Reawakens: Fascism's Resurgence from Hitler's Spymasters to Today's Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists. London: Routledge. ISBN 1135281319.
• Mueggenberg, Brent (2019). The Cossack Struggle Against Communism, 1917-1945. Jefferson: McFarland. ISBN 1476679487.
• Newland, Samuel J. (1991). The Cossacks in the German Army 1941-1945. London: Frank Cass. ISBN 0714681997.
• Simpson, Christopher (1988). Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War. New York: Grove Atlantic. ISBN 1555841066.
• Weinberg, Leonard (1998). "An Overview of Right-wing Extremism in the Western World: A Study of Convergence, Linkage and Identity". In Jeffrey Kaplan & Tore Bjørgo (eds.). Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture. Boston: Northeastern University Press. pp. 3–33. ISBN 1555533329.CS1 maint: uses editors parameter (link)

• Will Bush Purge Nazi Collaborators from the GOP?
• George H.W. Bush Used Nazi Collaborators to Get Elected
• White Supremacy, Nazism, and the Republican Party
• Nazarenko's CIA File 1952
• Nazarenko's CIA File 1951
• Nazarenko's CIA File 1949