Nikolai Grigorievich Nazarenko (; 19 December 1911 – 20 November 1992) was a Don Cossack who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. In his later career, he was a Cossack émigré leader who served as president of the World Federation of the Cossack National Liberation Movement of Cossackia and the Cossack American Republican National Federation.
Emigre and spy 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, being granted exemption from taxation, allowed to own their own land and to elect most of the officials of the Host government (through not the ataman who headed the Host who was always appointed by the Emperor) in exchange for serving as one of the main bulwarks of the House of Romanov. The culture of the Cossacks was centered around riding horses and warfare. For a certain period of time every year, the men of the Host had to leave their farms to serve in the Imperial Russian Army as irregular cavalry or alternatively as a para-military police force in one of the provinces of the vast Russian empire, which served to increase the popular identification of the Cossacks as one of the most important bulwarks of the system . In 1913, the 2 million people of the Don Cossack Host owned 13 of the 17 million hectares of the land by the banks of the river Don and whose income was double that of a typical Russian muzhik (peasant). The Don Cossacks spoke their own dialect of Russian and the men dressed in distinctive colorful uniforms, which marked them out. Every Host had its own uniform, but a common aspect of all Cossack uniforms was that the men wore a gazyr (a bullet carrying vest), a wool hat known as the papakha and carried around a type of sword called the shashka. The Cossack Hosts who had long owned their land quickly came into conflict with the new Bolshevik regime, and all of the atamans committed their Hosts to fight for the White Army in the Russian Civil War. In 1918 Nazarenko's family fled to Romania. Nazarenko grew up in Romania and subsequently enlisted in the Romanian Army.
Owing to his Russian language skills, he was recruited as a spy for Romania. Nazarenko was sent on an espionage mission for Romania into the Soviet Union in 1933, but was captured crossing the Dniester river at night and imprisoned. After escaping from prison, Nazarenko settled in Taganrog in 1935. Taganrog was in the traditional territory of the Don Cossack Host, and many of the local people were hostile to the Soviet regime. Using an assumed name, Nazarenko was able to take command of a Don Cossack militia being sent to support the Red Army in the fall of 1941. 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. Nazarenko subverted his workers' militia unit and persuaded them to fight for Germany instead. The fact that most of the men in the workers' militia were fellow Don Cossacks who had lost their land under the Soviet regime greatly assisted Nazarenko with persuading his unit to switch sides.
World War II
As German forces approached the Mius river, Nazarenko's workers' militia company attacked the Red Army. 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. 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, which surprised them. After being relieved by the Wehrmacht, Nazarenko and his 80 surviving men were sent to the rear. Nazarenko met General Gustav von Wietersheim and insisted to him that his loyalties were to Germany. Nazarenko argued that he wanted to overthrow the Soviet regime and he saw Operation Barbarossa as the beginning of the "liberation" of his people. Nazarenko and his men were enlisted into the Wehrmacht as a reconnaissance battalion, wearing German uniforms with the words Kosaken stamped on them.
On 23 October 1941, Nazarenko and his men formally took an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, swearing he would obey and fight for Hitler for the rest of his life. Nazarenko was given a German officer's peaked hat, 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. He followed the XIV Panzer corps to Rostov and was shortly transferred over to the 1st Panzer Army. 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. The Cossack units serving with the Wehrmacht had an extremely brutal reputation when it came to anti-partisan duties, being used to do "dirty work" that the Germans did not wish to do themselves such as shooting Jews.
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. Siuskukin was put into touch with Nazarenko and a means of communication were opened. By 1942, Nazarenko, through his rank was only first lieutenant was commanding a force of 500 men. On 14 October 1942, Nazarenko attended Pokrov, the Orthodox feast honoring the Intercession of the Theotokos by the Virgin Mary with the Altman . After Pokrov, Nazarenko toured the countryside dressed in a uniform combining aspects of the traditional Cossack dress such as wearing a gazyr and a papakha while carrying a shashka together with the German uniform, praising Hitler as a "liberator".
Alfred Rosenberg, the Minister of the East (Ostministerium), favored an approach called "political warfare" in order to "free the German Reich from Pan-Slavic pressure for centuries to come". Under Rosenberg's "political warfare" approach, the Soviet Union was to be broken up into four nominally independent states consisting of 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. 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. Initially, Rosenberg considered the Cossacks to be Russians, and he ascribed to the popular German stereotype of Cossacks as thuggish rapists and looters. 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. 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. 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. Most of the Cossack leaders such as General Pyotr Krasnov tended to reject the concept of "Cossackia", but since it was German policy to promote "Cossackia", they had little choice in the matter. 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). 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. The soldbuch had considerable symbolical significance in the Wehrmacht and being awarded a soldbuch with a high number was a mark of trust. By the summer of 1943, Nazarenko was involved in a relationship with a German woman living in Mielau. One of her neighbors denounced her for sleeping with a Slav, leading to her arrest by the Gestapo. 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. 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. Nazarenko later stated that Pannwitz wanted "the creation of an unified spirit" in the 1st Cossack Division and tried to encourage his officers to treat the Cossacks with respect. Pannwitz put Nazarenko in charge of a counter-intelligence unit to investigate Soviet spies in the 1st Cossack Division. The 1st Cossack Division was sent not in Soviet Union as expected, but instead in Yugoslavia. When the Cossack Division was transferred from the Wehrmacht to the Waffen-SS, Nazarenko also became a part of the SS.
Nazarenko served as a translator and an interrogator of POWs for the Wehrmacht and SS in Romania in 1944. Nazarenko was accused of executing Red Army POWs and of hanging Jews from the lampposts in Odesa, claims which he denied, though he stated in an interview that Jews were his "ideological enemies". In 1944 while living in Belgrade, Nazarenko married the daughter of General Vyacheslav Naumenko, the ataman of the Kuban Cossack Host. Towards the end of World War II, Nazarenko was in Berlin serving as the intelligence chief for the Cossack "government-in-exile" set up by Alfred Rosenberg and headed by Pyotr Krasnov. Nazarenko's father-in-law, Naumenko, served as the "minister of war" in the "government-in-exile" for Cossackia. At the end of World War II, Nazarenko was in Munich, where he surrendered to the Americans. He was not repatriated by the Americans to the Soviets. From 1945 to 1949, Nazarenko worked in Bavaria for the US Army Counterintelligence Corps, being used as a translator and an investigator into possible Soviet agents living in the Displaced Persons camps.
Republican activist In 1949, he immigrated to the United States, living at various locations in the New York-New Jersey area. In the United States, Nazarenko founded and led the Cossack War Veterans' Association made up of veterans of the 1st Cossack Division. A number of Cossacks who served in the Ostlegionen and the Waffen-SS ended settling in Australia, where they were welcomed as almost matching the Australian ideal of the perfect immigrant as they were white, Christian and anti-Communist with the only black mark against being that they were not Anglo-Irish. Australia came to take in a very number of the Cossacks after 1945, being one of the main destinations for Cossack refugees. Nazarenko spent much time visiting Australia after 1950 to maintain contacts with the Cossacks living there. 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. 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. At some point, Nazarenko became involved with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN). In 1969, ABN Correspondence, the journal of the ABN, listed him on its board of directors as the Organization Representative for the "Cossackian War Veterans".