Germans supplied nearly half the Foreign Legion’s recruits in 1955

Evidence

During the Indo-China campaign a total of more than 10,000 Legionnaires had died, the majority of them Germans, who still (in 1955) provided forty-seven per cent of the Legion’s complement, followed by the French themselves (renouncing their nationality) at twelve per cent and Italians at eleven per cent. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 509