Which area?

[CMc]

I seem to recall reading that a lot of Red Army soliders captured by German forces, particularly ones who were from states such as Ukraine where Soviet rule had always been resented by many, were given the option after capture of joining the SS. Your Granfather by marriage might have been one of those soliders maybe? I seem to recall reading that the decision wasn't necessarily an ideological one, or a case of preferring Nazi rule to Soviet, but in some cases just a case of preferring to be a soldier, rather than a Prisoner of War, in a bleak prison camp.

Furthermore, at least in the early stages of the war, many in Ukraine and elsewhere had viewed the German army as a liberator from the oppression and harships that Stalin and the USSR had inflicted on them (such as the terrible famine of the Ukraine.), it wasn't until later that those people realised that Nazi Germany was no more a liberator than Soviet Russia had been.