Hitler's Bandit Hunters (14 page)

Owing to prejudices dating from the First World War, Hitler forced the army to replace the Etappen concept, which introduced complex structural formulae for rear-area armies instead. There was an integration of static rear-area units alongside the mobile and semimobile formations, purposely
designed to meet the expectations in Russia. The leading personality among the security formations was the commander of the Rear Area Army of Army Group Centre, General of Infantry Max von Schenckendorff. He came to dominate the initial phases of Germany’s response to the Soviet partisan movement. Bach-Zelewski’s HSSPF initially came under the command of Schenckendorff. There is evidence to suggest that Bach-Zelewski had served under Schenckendorff at the end of the First World War.
¹³³
This was not the only coincidence. The Army Group commander was Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, the former chief of staff of Wehrkreis III. Bock was responsible for crushing the Buchrucker putsch, while the 29th Infantry Regiment came under his Wehrkreis responsibility. This ménage à trois indicates deliberate selection; these forces were meant to work together in an area designated for mass extermination and exploitation.

In preparation for the invasion, in May 1941, Himmler established the Command Staff of the Reichsführer-SS (
Kommandostab Reichsführer-SS
, KSRFSS).
¹³⁴
He realized that the scale of tasks and diversity of his troops required a central command. Diagram I (p. 307) shows a chart illustrating the different branches of this organization. Yehoshua Büchler was one of the first scholars to recognize the lynchpin role of the KSRFSS and its influence in the killing operations in 1941.
¹³⁵
However, the functions of the KSRFSS were more complex than simply recording killing. The KSRFSS served as the model command for the Staatsschutzkorps concept. The primary task of the KSRFSS was to facilitate and support rapid decision making. Its routines involved monitoring the progress of all SS operations. This gave the SS a distinct advantage over the army in communications where conditions in Russia forced long lead times on decision making. Its war diary records a steady routine of collected information on security operations, killing actions, and the regular visits by dignitaries.
¹³⁶
Another of its tasks was regulation through preventing the dilettantes within the SS from derailing corporate progress. To this end, the senior staffs of KSRFSS were proven staff officers. The chief of staff, Kurt Knoblauch, was a deputy to Theodor Eicke, commander of the
SS-Totenkopfverbände
, and was noted for his obtuse behavior.
¹³⁷
Ernst Rode, the senior Order Police officer in the KSRFSS, served as chief of operations (designated Ia) and was experienced in coping with Daluege’s prickly character. The significance of the KSRFSS, therefore, was not conducting killing actions, but keeping the SS-Police establishment functioning, mindful of Clausewitz’s warnings of reducing friction in operations.

The overall complement of the KSRFSS was approximately eighteen thousand troops. The principle combat formations within its remit were two SS-Infantry brigades and one SS-Cavalry brigade. It also carried support units such as the Waffen-SS geological detachment. Later in the campaign, significant numbers of foreign volunteers from various western European countries joined these troops. The Waffen-SS component, largely reservists and only
basic-trained recruits, was the backbone of the fighting formations. The three brigades were coordinated within a pooling arrangement to provide the maximum support for the three HSSPF. In effect, although under the direct control of KSRFSS, they were “loaned out” to reinforce HSSPF forces during specific actions. Each HSSPF commanded a dedicated police regiment of three battalions per regiment with mobility provided by motor vehicle sections from the NSKK. Detachments of Technische Nothilfe assigned to each regiment provided the HSSPF public works expertise. Thus, from the onset of the campaign, there was a large civilian component attached to SS-Police operations.
¹³⁸

Once the invasion was in progress, plans and policies rapidly became redundant as the conditions fluctuated. Within weeks of the campaign, Hitler provided another example of his First World War consciousness. During a heated moment caused by Stalin’s declaration of a general guerrilla uprising, Hitler invoked memories of the franc-tireur complex of 1914. “This partisan war,” he declared, “has some advantage for us; it enables us to eradicate everyone who opposes us.” Ignoring the fact that he had unleashed a surprise attack of Russia, Hitler suggested they cloak their territorial ambitions and appear as the guardians of the Russian people. “We shall emphasise again,” he added, “that we were forced to occupy, administer, and secure a certain area; it was in the interest of the inhabitants.” Hitler wanted to disguise his real intentions: “Nobody shall be able to recognise that it initiates a final settlement. This need not prevent our taking all necessary measure— shooting, resettling, etc.—and we shall take them.” In an absurd remark, totally out of proportion with the program of mass killing and slaughter already in progress, Hitler said, “We do not want to make people into enemies prematurely and unnecessarily.”
¹³⁹
Typically for Nazi polycracy, Hitler ranted while the army struggled to find a suitable answer to the Soviet partisans. It wrestled over directives and guidelines, even tampering with the soldiers’ conduct. Characteristically, the army concentrated its efforts on controlling ground and targeting strong-arm blows against all incursions. On October 25, the Wehrmacht released its last major regulatory guidelines for combating partisans in the east. They proved ineffectual and took until November for Otto Winkelmann to relay them as binding on police troops.
¹⁴⁰

The decision to absorb Slav collaborators into the police was part of the calculated plan to raise a colonial police department within the SS-Police. The hurdle to raising Slav collaborationist manpower might appear to have been Hitler himself following one of his racist outbursts during the July 16 meeting:

We must never permit anybody but the Germans to carry arms!
[translator’s italics] This is especially important; even when it seems easier at first to enlist the armed support of foreign subjugated nations, it is wrong to do so. In the end this will prove to be to our disadvantage unconditionally and unavoidably. Only the
German may carry arms, not the Slav, not the Czech, not the Cossack nor the Ukrainian!
¹⁴¹

However, within days Himmler and his cohorts had moved in an opposite direction. There is evidence indicating that the army was at least thinking about the colonial situation in the late 1930s:

The Schutztruppe had 260 Germans and 2,470 coloureds. In support there was a Polizeitruppe of 55 Whites and 2,140 coloureds. The proportion of coloureds and military protection troops [Schutztruppen] is in strong relation to the proportion to the population. The proportions in [Southwest Africa] were different where there were no coloured in the Schutztruppe whereas in the Polizeitruppe the coloureds represented 40% of all operatives.
¹⁴²

Himmler moved first and announced, on July 25, 1941, the formations of Russian collaboration police forces, the
Schutzmannschaft
(Schuma).
¹⁴³
These Schuma formations were organized under the inspector of Colonial Police. On November 4, 1941, the Schuma formations received official regulation through the Reich Ministry of Interior and were granted legal status as a regular branch within the police.
¹⁴⁴
This decision came after the Nazis had implemented a policy of killing millions of Soviet prisoners of war and citizens. Martin Dean found that the first duty of the Schuma was to man small outposts (
Einzeldienst
) erected by the gendarmerie, connecting towns and districts to a network of security.
¹⁴⁵
British intelligence made an early assessment of the Schuma:

[Police] units formed of local inhabitants are being enlisted in the central sector. But a good many difficulties are arising in the process: officers to take charge of the units cannot be released; and while questions of provisioning and pay are settled, that of their uniform and footwear is not. Russian uniform is ruled out as impossible, besides being difficult to procure. The units have been waiting “for weeks.”
¹⁴⁶

By December 1941, Georg Jedicke (BdO Ostland) could write to the Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei with precise muster numbers for Schuma battalions. He suggested 140 men per company, with three companies per battalion, and a battalion staff of forty. The desired strength for each battalion was expected to total seven hundred, and only under special circumstances or for local reasons were the numbers to drop below seven hundred.
¹⁴⁷

The language and terminology of the campaign was old and included many terms used against the Herero and in previous actions. No SS leader appears to have thought about the subject of secure communiqués prior to
the campaign. The explicit nature of the language sprinkled throughout police signals included combating partisans (Partisanenbekämpfung), cleansing (
Säuberung
), and destruction (
Vernichtung
) consistent with operational terminology adopted from earlier conflicts.
¹⁴⁸
Victor Klemperer noted that, since his days in the Ober Ost, new words, such as “liquidated” (
liquidiert
), “executed” (
exekutiert
), and “shot” (
erschossen
), had been added to the Nazi lexicon to reflect the semi-automation of actions.
¹⁴⁹
This can be seen from messages in August 1941 that referred to combating “bandits” (Banden), the killing of 3,274 partisans (Partisanen) and Jews and 260 irregulars (Freischärler). The executions were attributed to the Police Battalion 309. In a message from August 24, references were made to the presence of “bandits,” irregulars, and parachutists, which resulted in the shooting of 70 Jews, 294 Jews, 61 Jews and 113 Jews, and 65 Bolshevik-Jews, respectively. These killings concluded a series of tasks, designated a cleansing action (Säuberungsaktion), commonly used in Namibia.
¹⁵⁰

Eventually it dawned on Daluege that someone other than the SS might be listening, and he warned against the use of overly explicit reporting:

The danger of decipherment by the enemy of wireless messages is great. For this reason, only such matters can be transmitted by wireless as can be considered open …, confidential or secret; but not information, which is containing State Secrets, calls for especially secret treatment. Into this category fall exact figures of executions (these are to be sent by courier post).
¹⁵¹

The British tracked the change in transmissions language. “The effect of this was that situation reports from September 14 onward contained the enigmatic phrase ‘action according to the usage of war’ under the heading which had formerly contained the figures of executions.”
¹⁵²
By December, others were discussing the effects of the killings on the progress of the war. General Thomas, chief of the Economics and Armaments Office within OKW, received a report from his representative in the Ukraine. The report explained that the killing of the Jews took place publicly. Men of the Ukrainian militia and German army volunteers participated in the mass killing of more than one hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and children. The report summarized the effect of the killings. There had been a partial extermination of “superfluous eaters,” liquidation of those most hateful toward the Germans, removal of badly needed tradespeople, negative effects on foreign policy, and undermining of troop morale. The report also noted a “brutalising effect on the formations which carry out the executions—regular police—[Order Police].”
¹⁵³
Thus, camouflaging the evidence after its release and undermining the morale of the troops were only two of the strategic lapses in planning.
¹⁵⁴

The greatest strategic errors made by the SS-Police planners had been
to place too much faith on the Wehrmacht and to assume it would be a short, successful campaign. There was little provision if the Soviet Union continued to fight. There were no instructions of how to respond to a complete breakdown in the infrastructure resulting from Red Army scorched-earth methods. The planners overlooked the problem of the weather and failed to prepare a contingency plan that addressed simple human requirements. As early as August 1941, the Police Regiment Centre received orders to take up positions east of Slutsk in Belorussia, and remain there for seven days. Being out of action exposed the regiment’s weakness of the relatively simple task of collecting their fuel ration. Because of rules and regulations, the SS ration system procured and collected on an individual unit basis, rather than by convoy, from supply dumps. Release of the regiment’s fuel reserves could only be granted in times of combat. Further, the poor condition of the roads forced light loading procedures for vehicles and increased the number of trips to collect reserves and supplies, causing serious wear and tear. This Catch-22 situation caused unit deterioration. These problems were aggravated as regimental staff vehicles suffered breakdowns and were unable to receive maintenance or replacement.
¹⁵⁵

With the onset of severe weather, conditions deteriorated further. “We’re slowly sinking in mud,” Hermann Fegelein, the commander of the SS-Cavalry Brigade, cabled a friend in Berlin on September 4. “Be a good fellow and release two tractor-cars for the Brigade. You’ll really be doing us a good turn.” The British collected evidence of a virtual collapse of all SS-Police transportation. “The badness of the roads is the Leitmotiv of these decodes.” The road conditions led to a shortage of drivers exhausted from battling against the severe conditions.
¹⁵⁶
The strains on the system grounded courier flights, while trains departing east from Warsaw were limited to sixty per day. Men on leave, about to go on leave, or waiting for mail from home were stuck, and this further undermined morale.
¹⁵⁷
The calls for warm clothing became frantic as the troops began to freeze.
¹⁵⁸
The complications associated with disease took their toll. Medical officers requisitioned inoculations for Typhus and para-typhus, and in particular they requested cholera serum.
¹⁵⁹
In July, all SS depots were ordered to carry stocks of mineral water. The SS had not addressed the question of drinking water and had failed to deploy distillation facilities. Himmler’s adjutant urgently requested a courier flight to bring as much bottled water as possible to the KSRFSS. At the same time, the SS authorities in Riga requisitioned thirty thousand bottles of mineral water for the Polizei Division. In September, the Waffen-SS geological detachment was ordered to locate fresh-water sources. Fresh water had become so critical that trainloads of water traveled under convoy and special guard.
¹⁶⁰