Hitler's Bandit Hunters (13 page)

Himmler set SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, HSSPF in the General Government, against Frank. Krüger was a tough veteran of the First World War and the Freikorps but a trusted lieutenant. He was wholeheartedly committed to implementing Lebensraum. The SS-Police under Krüger, assisted by his neighboring HSSPFs, planned an extensive settlement program. One neighboring colleague was Bach-Zelewski, HSSPF Southeast (Breslau). The defeat of Poland involved the annexation of Polish territory, and so his command territory extended into southwest Poland.
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Krüger and Bach-Zelewski were part of a team of seven SS officers who planned the transfer of Jews into ghettos, the permanent removal of “antisocials,” and the preparation of evacuated areas for an influx of ethnic Germans from Russia in an operation called the
Saybuscher Aktion
. The British intercepted a message on September 25, 1940, reporting one of these transports: The Migration Centre in Litzmannstadt reports to Berlin that a transport train (called “Cholm Action Train”) had departed for Lublin with 512 Poles and twenty-six children under the age of two.
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This program contributed to the training of SS-Police personnel in large-scale population transfers.

For a short period from October 1939, Bach-Zelewski was the deputy commissioner for the strengthening of Germandom (
Reichskommissar für die Festigung des Deutschen Volkstums
, RKFDV).
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In April 1939, he undertook a university lectureship (
Lehrauftrag
) in religious science for the department of theology under Professor Wendel, a specialist of the Old Testament.
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Since 1934, Bach-Zelewski had made numerous complaints to Himmler about the Jews of Poland. He described Danzig as “full of Jews” (
verjudet
) in 1935 and complained to Wolff in 1940 about Frank’s intervention over preventing the imprisonment of the Jews of Silesia. Bach-Zelewski believed they should
have been in concentration camps, wearing armbands with the Star of David and breaking stone in the quarries.
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In December 1939, Adolf Eichmann informed him that cooperation between his office and the RSHA was virtually perfect. In January 1940, Bach-Zelewski sent his representatives to a conference with Heydrich on the evacuation process. Promoting himself while treating human beings like cattle became his trademark. From mid-1940, he was busily engaged in forcibly deporting Poles from Zywiec in Poland while personally welcoming eighteen trainloads (17,500) of ethnic Germans from the Posen resettlement center.
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He visited Auschwitz with Rudolf Höss in 1940 and instructed the appropriate rules for shooting prisoners in reprisal for escapes. The rapid defeat of France and Germany’s domination of continental Europe led Bach-Zelewski to make another change of name. In November 1940, the Breslau Justice Ministry department confirmed the official removal of the “Zelewski” part of his name.
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For the rest of the war, he lived as Erich von dem Bach. This did not prevent him from passing evidence to Himmler over his ancestral connection to Johannes von dem Bach-Zelewski, the last knight commander of the Teutonic Order of Knights in Marienburg.
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The experience gained in Poland by the SS forced another confrontation between Epp and Himmler. It was triggered by Heydrich, who extracted from Epp the plan for the administration of the colonial office. This proposed five departments, one dedicated to policing. Epp expected each colony to be self-sufficient in the administration of law and order; with a colonial commissioner, aided by an SS representative. Acting on this information, Himmler concluded it was another plot, like Frank’s, to challenge his authority in control of the police. He tackled the question of colonial police guidelines through Daluege. In July 1940, Daluege sent instructions to Bomhard indicating that the differences between Epp and the SS had widened. Daluege explained that Himmler was prepared to acknowledge Epp’s seniority for the colonies but not for colonial policing. He insisted that policing for the colonial office must conform to that for the General Government, with an HSSPF under his direct control. Defeating Epp in SS plans was one thing, explaining them to him was obviously a daunting prospect. Timidity in the face of the party godfather led Himmler to order Karl Wolff, Epp’s former political adjutant, to explain to Epp policing for colonial office, while Daluege, equally timid, delegated Bomhard to explain the Order Police role in the scheme.
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Thus, the final triumph of Lebensraum in police policy matters became complicated again following the German victory in the west.

Querner referred to operations but chose to ignore the less savory aspects of SS behavior. The SS-Police performance in the western campaign ranged between capability and atrocity. The performance of the newly raised Waffen-SS Polizei-Division, under SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Polizei Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, embellished his reputation as the “top-soldier” of the Order Police. Other Waffen-SS formations played a minor part in the
campaign, and two committed separate acts of slaughter against British prisoners of war (Le Paradis and Wormhoudt). The Order Police played a significant part in organizing the traffic system behind the armored thrusts of the army. Their mission involved locating favorable routes to maintain a steady flow of supplies and reinforcements; the NSKK assisted in handling the motor transportation pools. The police raised a rapid reaction force with a fire-defense-police (
Feuerschutzpolizei
) regiment, six traffic platoons, two traffic sections, and five radio detection detachments for technical emergencies such as city fires and for maintaining public utilities during the occupation. The radio detection teams worked to intercept propaganda and allied signals traffic.
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However, most significant after the campaign, Germany found itself in control of French, Dutch, and Belgium colonies.

Himmler was forced to recognize the need for a colonial police department, not just for German and captured colonies, but within the breadth of SS-Police functions. Daluege initiated the regulation for a colonial service in June 1940. Bomhard drafted the regulations and, in July, issued the first instructions for police serving in the colonial department.
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On October 31, Daluege released further instructions for all senior SS-Police officers announcing the opening of a colonial police department.
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These instructions covered the basic details of service, including assignment periods, regulations, and codes of practice.
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In December, announcements were made for courses for district inspectors (
Revierbezirksoffiziere
) with the upper age limit of forty-eight. The Rhineland police presidents of Düsseldorf and Bochum were the first to send lists of potential candidates to Krakow, a collection center for the colonial service. The British assessed the required medical fitness for service in the tropics as measured by productive potential.
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Hitler initiated the second phase in the development of the SS as a national security corporation and confirming their responsibility for Lebensraum policing. In August 1940, he assigned them the role of “state protection corps” (Staatsschutzkorps). The “Statement on the Future Armed State Police” was intended to clarify the status of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS. The statement formed the ideological direction for the Staatsschutzkorps. Hitler began by soothing the army: “Never again must the German Wehrmacht, now based on universal military service, be required to use its weapons against its own fellow-countrymen in times of internal crisis…. In future the Wehrmacht is solely and only to be used against the Reich’s external enemies.” The power of the Waffen-SS, he added, would not grow beyond 5 to 10 percent of the Wehrmacht. Hitler explained its mission in the context of Lebensraum. “In its final form the Greater German Reich will include within its frontiers peoples who will not necessarily in all cases be well disposed towards the Reich.” Beyond the “borders of the old Reich,” he concluded, “it will be necessary to create a state protection corps capable, whatever the situation, of representing and enforcing the authority of the Reich in
the interior of the country concerned.” This Staatsschutzkorps was expected to carry out its duties with “men of the best German blood,” able to “resist subversive influences in times of crisis,” and with the “authority to carry out their duties as state police.”
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Scholars have argued without definite conclusion the impact of the Staatsschutzkorps announcement. They have generally focused on what this decision led to, emphasizing either the politicalracial solution to commit extermination, or the formation of a radical political soldiery operating beyond the boundaries of traditional military and police forces.
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Hitler’s Staatsschutzkorps decision was in fact the conclusion of the long struggle between the supporters of colonialism and his followers of Lebensraum. The status of the SS-Police within Nazi ambitions was finalized.

In the accelerating momentum of preparations for the invasion of Russia, the SS-Police expanded its corporate size and functions. The Waffen-SS increased the size of its militarized formations.
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The Order Police took the significant step of raising a colonial police department. In January 1941, Daluege presented his annual senior commander’s report to his IdOs.
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He announced the promotion of Pfeffer-Wildenbruch as inspector of the colonial police. Pfeffer-Wildenbruch’s tasks included the improvement of infantry training within the colonial police service and the extension of the foreign languages program.
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Daluege visited the Berlin Colonial School and was pleasantly surprised to find six hundred colonial officers and fifteen hundred officials (Polizeibeamten) undergoing training.
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He maintained that this training was turning them into the best-qualified troops so they would not be an embarrassment as compared to troops from other colonial powers.
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On March 6, the colonial police department joined the central office of the Order Police (
Kolonialpolizeiamt im Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei
), regulated through the Ministry of the Interior. Ministerial staffs conducted the department’s public administration while senior police staff administered its operations.
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These developments progressed in line with Ludendorff’s maxims of preparing for total war, they complemented Hitler’s Lebensraum ambitions, and Himmler began to administer the Staatsschutzkorps within the national security ethos. As Leonie Wheeler correctly concluded, the SS and Police had become more “sophisticated than that of its prewar counterpart.”
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Operation “Babarossa,” the codename for the attack on Soviet Russia on June 22, 1941, was the catalyst for all subsequent SS-Police operations during the war. The campaign for Lebensraum was two-sided: the racial-ideological war against Jewish-Bolshevism hand in hand with the military conquest of Soviet Russian territory.
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To fully participate in the invasion, the SS introduced command components that became its standard operating procedure: policymaking and implementation; centralized command, communication, and control; and micromanagement of limited human resources. Hitler’s
instructions for the attack on Russia were handed to Generalmajor Walter Warlimont of the Armed Forces High Command (
Oberkommando der Wehrmacht
, OKW) for drafting them as military regulation, later known as the “Barbarossa directives.” The SS-Police and Wehrmacht singled out Jews, Soviet officials, and Red Army political commissars for execution under the auspices of the “Commissar Order” and other directives.
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These “criminal orders” were a license to kill, although not the great departure from German military traditions often professed by veterans and scholars.
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The directives, including the often-quoted Heydrich–Wagner settlement, included an agreement between Warlimont and Himmler made in March 1941. This agreement confirmed the frontiers of field security for both the army and SS. Behind the front lines, in the rear areas, senior SS officers and army intelligence officers were expected to share intelligence and orders for the roundup and killing of political opponents. This was a preemptive security strike intended to eradicate all racial and ideological resistance before political opponents could rally a counter-reaction. In theory, based on experience in Poland, this would bring about unhindered Lebensraum.
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The SS applied its peculiar structures of command, communication, and control methods to the invasion. Leadership was highly visible in SS-Police culture. Predictably, Himmler draped himself in the mantle of
strategos
and carried on like a civil-military leader of antiquity. In the early part of the campaign, he visited armies, the SS-Police, and civilian administrators and was one of the few Nazi leaders to have a grasp on the overall campaign. He formed several command facilities. The first was a motor cavalcade codenamed “Wagenkolonne-RFSS”; the other, his special train
Heinrich
, was equipped as a communications center and was stabled close by Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg. Himmler dispatched a team of liaison officers into the field, personal representatives who freely entered SS-Police field command posts to monitor, measure, and report performances.
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Daluege lifted the marshal’s baton in the vain hope of becoming Feldherr, but this ambition outweighed his physical endurance. He also raised a command convoy codenamed “Wagenkolonne Daluege” and tramped around the rear areas inspecting “his” troops and overseeing killing actions.
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The convoy was slow and costly in fuel but carried a technically advanced radio-wireless capability.
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The field command system was based on Himmler’s trusted HSSPF structure. The leading personalities and their eventual commands were SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Prützmann (HSSPF Russia-South) in Kiev, SS-Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski (HSSPF Russia-Centre) in Minsk, and SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln as (HSSPF Russia-South) in Riga.