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Event Details

Join us 9:00 am on third Thursdays for our monthly Coffee With the Curator. This month's speaker will be Larry Menestrina giving a talk entitled "The German Cossacks and the Russian Army of Liberation in World War II."

No need to register; simply walk in! Tickets are $4 plus tax or free for Museum members. Light refreshments provided.

talk summary

From the summer of 1941 onward, vast numbers of non-German Europeans and individuals from the Soviet Republics joined the ranks of the German Army to participate in the war against the USSR. They did not view their military service as treasonous to their Motherland but rather as a continuation of their ongoing struggle against Moscow and the Bolsheviks.

As Germany faced a pressing need for fighting men, various Russian ethnic groups volunteered to combat the Red Army. One such group was the Cossacks, who fought valiantly and effectively on the Eastern Front and in the Balkans. They were under the command of German General Helmuth von Pannwitz, whom they greatly admired.

Following the German capture of Russian General Andrei Vlasov at the Leningrad Front, he eventually became the leader of a Russian Liberation Army (POA). This army comprised anti-Soviet soldiers determined to defeat the Communist government in Moscow.

However, for the Cossacks and Russian volunteers, the story concludes with the forced repatriation of nearly two million Russian and Ukrainian men, women, the elderly, and children to Soviet authorities. There, they faced execution, imprisonment in Gulags, or deportation into forced labor.

about larry menestrina

Larry Menestrina was born and raised in Anderson, Indiana. As a young boy, he developed a love affair with airplanes, which eventually brought him to Wichita, KS, in 1979 to pursue his dream of a career in aviation. Mr. Menestrina retired in 2019 after working for 40 years as an Aircraft Engineer.

His passion for military history was nurtured by his family's intense involvement in both World War I and II. His mother's family was German, and his father's family was Italian-American, with both sides on opposing sides during both wars. Mr. Menestrina's World War II specialty lies in the titanic struggle between Germany and the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front. He has an extensive collection of World War I and II military items and worked extensively in the early days of the Museum to create the World War I and II Military Exhibits currently on display.

Mr. Menestrina has written two books on his family's involvement during the war years, titled "Memories from World War II and Beyond." When he is not working on his Military Collection or his books, you will find him substitute teaching at either Bishop Carroll or Kapaun Mt. Carmel High Schools.