Roland Battalion

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Roland Battalion
Active	25 February to late October 1941
Country	Nazi Germany Reichskommissariat Ukraine
Branch	Abwehr
Size	240 to 350
Engagements	Operation Barbarossa
Commanders
Notable commanders	Yevhen Pobihushchyi-Ren

The Roland Battalion (German: Battalion Ukrainische Gruppe Roland), officially known as Special Group Roland,^[1] was a subunit under the command of the German military intelligence agency's (the Abwehr's) special operations unit Lehrregiment "Brandenburg" z.b.V. 800 in 1941. It and the Nachtigall Battalion were the two military units set up following the 25 February 1941 decision by the head of the Abwehr, Admiral Wilhelm Franz Canaris, who sanctioned the recruitment of a "Ukrainian Legion [uk]" (Ukrainian: Дружини українських націоналістів, lit. 'Legions of Ukrainian Nationalists') under German command. The Roland Battalion, formed in mid-April 1941, 350-strong and initially based in the Ostmark (present-day Austria), was composed primarily of volunteers of Ukrainian ethnicity living in German-occupied Poland and directed to the unit by orders of Bandera's Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).^[2]

In Germany, in November 1941 the Ukrainian personnel of the Legion (Nachtigall and Roland battalions) was reorganized into Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201. It numbered 650 persons, who served for a year in the occupied Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (present-day Belarus) before disbanding.^[3]