Several thousand ethnic Germans in Romania were drafted into the Waffen-SS in 1943. Himmler used these new troops to form the 11th Waffen-SS Division. To fill its ranks, the "Nordland" Division also recruited volunteers from Denmark and Norway at battalion strength, even though 90 percent of the division consisted of ethnic Germans from Romania. The division saw its first combat in Croatia, the Oranienbaum Mountains, Estonia, and Latvia. After the Soviet attack on Pomerania, they fought in Berlin and were destroyed there.
