On 8 February 1942, they formed a Legion of 11 battalions from those Armenians, who were prisoners in the Nazi POW camps and had opted to fight for German forces rather than face the genocidal conditions of those camps. The Legion was 18,000-strong and had been known as "Armenische Legion", while the "812th Armenian Battalion of Wehrmacht" as each battalion of this unit, had 1,000 men under the command of Kanayan. The Legion was trained by Wehrmacht officers and participated in the occupation of the Crimean Peninsula and the Caucasus.