Hitler's Bandit Hunters (16 page)

The redirection of security warfare, from a function controlled by the army toward a policy serving Lebensraum and led by the SS, became apparent in the latter half of “Barbarossa.” On September 16, 1941, Field Marshal Keitel issued an order-decree concerning the increase in communist-inspired insurrection within German occupied countries. The words were Keitel’s but their inspiration was Hitler. Keitel attributed the increase to the invasion of Soviet Russia and the actions of a “mass movement centrally directed by Moscow.” Consequently, he expected “nationalist and other circles” to take advantage of the situation. The existing security measures, he added, had proved inadequate, and the only remedy was spontaneous action, through drastic means, bringing about the rapid destruction of this movement. Keitel justified his orders on historical grounds. What was about to be introduced was how “great peoples restored order.” The general direction of his new order came in five parts. First, the German armed forces were to infer that every case of “bandit war” (
Bandenkrieg
) was communist-inspired, irrespective of the facts. Second, the armed forces were to take immediate and drastic action at the first indication of trouble. In reprisal, the death penalty was to be used, with fifty to one hundred hostages deemed the appropriate number because “life was valueless in these territories.” The selected method of execution was not elaborated but was supposed to heighten the deterrent effect. Third, the political relationship with the country concerned had no bearing on the conduct of reprisals. To calm the fears of the indigenous populace, Keitel ordered appropriate propaganda explaining the greater good that resulted from eradicating communist “bandits.” Fourth, collaborator units were regarded as unsuited to the task and incapable of reaching the “acts of violence” necessary for reprisals and had to be handled cautiously. Finally, if court-martial
proceedings were necessary, the death penalty was the only acceptable sentence. In a veiled reference to Britain, Keitel ordered the death penalty for all captives of foreign armed forces. This decree marked the turning point in Hitler’s war of security, when Bandenbekämpfung became the strategic doctrine behind the Germanization of Europe.
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From the outset, the Second World War involved guerrillas, fifth columnists, the bombing of cities, and the abuse of civilians. Governments excused this war in a third dimension as acceptable practices on military, political, and even moral grounds. In 1942, the effectiveness of covert and partisan warfare was still largely a hit-or-miss affair. The first phase of the Soviet partisan campaign had not achieved appreciable results. In Yugoslavia, the two politically polarized resistance movements were more likely to attack one another than the Germans. The British adopted a broad aggressive strategy that included covert warfare in a desperate attempt to stir resistance against Nazi occupation. The Nazis countered, swatting the hoped-for resistance swarm before it had even taken wing. They countered Churchill’s efforts with an effective propaganda campaign, stirring up considerable public hostility in Europe toward Britain.
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Widespread collaboration with Nazism, even participation in ethnic cleansing, indicated Hitler’s upper hand.
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Allied insurgency was not the only challenge facing the SS. The scale of Germany’s security commitments were enormous. In 1942, it could take three days to travel from one end of occupied territory to the other, even by airplane. The occupation counted more than thirty main languages, hundreds of dialects, and several alphabets. The total territory crossed numerous time zones, climatic conditions, and major geographical features, from undulating steppes to long coastlines with rich farmlands merging into rugged mountain ranges, swamplands, and icy wastes. Man-made obstacles included virulent diseases (in particular typhus, cholera, and tuberculosis), disjointed railway gauges, and every conceivable road construction. The occupation absorbed political administrations, religions, cultural differences. Communities included tiny hamlets of isolated illiterate peasants to the highly sophisticated capital cities of Europe. The accounted population was in excess of three hundred million including Germany. To meet these challenges, Himmler had to exploit all his ability to rally an effective security policy.

The rapid increase in territory placed severe strains on the SS-Police organization struggling to adjust to the constant challenges of war. The winter battles of 1941–42 exposed weaknesses and caused shudders from overstretched resources to ripple throughout the organization. Reinhard Heydrich was not complacent; he understood the implications of Churchill’s drip-drip strategy and Stalin’s war of attrition. In the summer of 1941, Heydrich’s commitment increased when he received the order to prepare the ground for the final solution of European Jewry. Plans and initial killing experiments had been tested through the summer and autumn of 1941, and on December 18,
Himmler’s appointment book carried the cryptic note, “Jewish question / to be exterminated as partisans.” Eventually, bringing the leading bureaucrats of the regime into concordance at the Wannsee conference (January 20, 1942), Heydrich succeeded in introducing the industrialized mass extermination of the Jews. Given the multiplying problems of limited resources and the polycratic nature of the regime, the SS had little choice but to organize the mass extermination of both racial and political enemies of the state under a series of coordinated programs. The SS plans forced Himmler to reorganize the SS-Police. Meanwhile, Hitler shifted the initiative toward southern Russia in an effort to seize and secure the rich ore and oil fields of the Caucasus. In May 1942, Hitler was on the verge of realizing his vision of Lebensraum, with the end of European Jewry and confirmation of German mastery in Europe: Bandenbekämpfung.

Britain troubled Hitler. His strategy to bring Britain quickly to heel involved, terrorizing the population through indiscriminate bombing, threatening starvation, and promising invasion. The German air force (Luftwaffe) attempted to destroy the Royal Air Force (RAF), during the Battle of Britain, while it also conducted widespread indiscriminate bombing of cities and ports. The bombing of London on August 25, 1940, albeit accidental, triggered a retaliation air raid.
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The German navy (Kriegsmarine) opened a blockade to starve Britain into submission. These naval operations included laying mines in international shipping lanes, raiding convoys, and engaging in intensive submarine warfare. The threatened invasion of Gibraltar exposed the frailty of British lifelines to the east. On February 6, 1941, Hitler introduced Directive 23, the “Directions for Operations against the English War Economy” (
Richtlinien für die Kriegführung gegen die englische Wehrwirtschaft
), which concentrated on the destruction of British shipping.
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The acquisition of colonies through his victories in Europe allowed Hitler the opportunity to pursue counterclandestine operations against British colonies and threaten its oil supplies. The German–Italian commission to Syria wished to stimulate an uprising against British interests in Iraq. Hitler issued Directive 30,
Unterstützung des Irak
, dispatching a military mission and aid to Rashid Ali, the leader of rebellion in Iraq. The military mission was codenamed Sonderstab-F, under General Felmy, and the German volunteers wore tropical uniforms with Iraqi insignia. It was a supreme failure.
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The British reaction to Hitler escalated. Williamson Murray has argued that Britain erected an effective strategic planning system of committees fully integrated into an intelligence network.
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Churchill applied the breadth of his experience and leadership behind a broad strategy. The fundamental strategic direction was political, to undermine Nazi rule and force regime change. The British had no compunction about turning to covert warfare. In 1938, a British Foreign Office report of the Italian occupation of Abyssinia identified fifty-six
thousand Italian troops, sixty thousand indigenous troops, and ninety-five thousand white laborers. In response to the potential threat posed to her colonial interests, Britain planned covert operations against the Italian occupation.
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Between 1940 and 1943, the British main effort was clandestine operations, strategic bombing of German cities, and military operations in the Mediterranean region. A significant part of Churchill’s operations in the early days of the war was inspired by the Ministry of Economic Warfare, the Combined Operations Executive, the RAF, and the intelligence services. The British held a strategic advantage in intelligence, having broken German police and “Ultra” signals codes and used her remaining open embassies and consuls as an intelligence collection network.
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In 1940, Churchill endorsed the Special Operations Executive (SOE), responsible for acts of sabotage and espionage against targets in occupied Europe.
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He also agreed to forming commando units wearing full military uniform, carried into combat by the Royal Navy and carrying out “hit-and-run” raids against German installations along the European coastline.
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A shock wave of raids in Norway and France culminated in the attack against St. Nazaire (March 27–28, 1942) that closed the harbor facilities. The RAF assisted clandestine operations by ferrying SOE agents into and out of occupied Europe. In February 1942, RAF Bomber Command joined the offensive for regime change by striving to break the morale of the German public.

The German answer to Britain was to solicit mass collaboration across Europe. Marshal Pétain encouraged the French to volunteer; in Belgium, Leon Degrelle raised a unit of Catholic Walloon volunteers; and Dutch SS units participated in Operation “Barbarossa.” From 1940, Czechoslovakia came sharply into focus for both Germany and Britain. Intelligence gathered by either side indicated that adopting less stringent measures in Czechoslovakia had reaped benefits for the Nazis.
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Heydrich exploited this to marginalize the Czech resistance movement into irrelevance. In the winter of 1941, Prime Minister Benes of the Czechoslovakian government in exile encouraged opposition in Czechoslovakia when he announced in the British press that the German army at the gates of Moscow was on the point of collapse on the Eastern Front.
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At the same time, Heydrich’s strategy of combining counterintelligence with counter-espionage was taking its toll on British covert strategy. It was in an atmosphere of despondency that Benes approached Churchill for assistance and approval to assassinate Heydrich. He received a positive reception.
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Preparations for Operation “Anthropoid,” the assassination of Heydrich, began in December 1941. Several Czech SOE teams parachuted into Czechoslovakia to destroy strategic targets and prepare the ground for the assassination team.
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From the German viewpoint, the sequence of events that led to Heydrich’s death began on May 2, 1942. Himmler and Heydrich discussed allied covert operations and the recent discovery of a weapons cache in Czechoslovakia.
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Three days later, Himmler took part in discussions concerning the training of police officers. To counter covert forces, the Order Police received training in the use of flare pistols, hand grenades, and other countermeasures. On May 16 and 23, the subject of “English” sabotage equipment was again on the agenda for a meeting between Himmler and Heydrich.
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On the morning of May 27, Himmler began his usual routine with a telephone call with Kurt Daluege at 10:30. They discussed antipartisan warfare (Partisanenbekämpfung) and other SS matters. Then, at 11:30 a.m., Himmler received a call from SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Frank, the Nazi state secretary in Prague, informing him of the assassination attempt on Heydrich by Czechoslovakian partisans.
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Himmler told Frank to relay the details to Hitler, personally. He ordered Wolff to organize immediate travel arrangements for Professor Gebhardt, the leading SS physician, to attend Heydrich. Afterward, Himmler lunched with Hitler whereupon they discussed a series of issues including a proposal for sending Bach-Zelewski to eradicate all Czech resistance. Himmler persuaded him otherwise, suggesting that Bach-Zelewski’s work in Russia was far too valuable.
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By coincidence, that evening the RAF carried out its first “1,000 bomber” raid against Cologne. Leaflets dropped by the RAF following the raid announced the opening of a new form of bomber offensive. Unlike previous raids, the bombing was concentrated into ninety-eight minutes and claimed four hundred dead and five thousand injured and left forty-five thousand homeless. The German air raid services were useless in the face of the storm as flak artillery expended their ammunition supply, and for a brief period, the city faced anarchy. In response, on May 31, the Luftwaffe retaliated against Canterbury, the
Berliner Morgenpost
recorded, adding that it was revenge for Heydrich.
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A few days later, Heydrich died.

The fear of assassination kept the security troops assigned to protect Hitler and the inner circle in a constant state of readiness. The Nazis went to extraordinary lengths to minimize their exposure to assassination, but still it became a major feature of the war.
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Hitler actually had little sympathy for Heydrich’s acts of bravado and called him “stupid and idiotic” for exposing himself to danger. He tightened the security procedures for senior officers and officials, demanding eradication of all “foreign rabble” from the occupation zones as a prerequisite to guaranteeing German safety.
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During Heydrich’s funeral orations, Daluege announced that the British and Americans were guilty of murder. Daluege warned of retribution, and this was relayed across Europe.
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Hitler called for collective punishment (
Kollektivmassnahmen
) as reprisal and revenge. Immediate punishment fell on four villages—Lidice, Le•áky, Svermovo, and Javøièko. The SS-Police led by Daluege and Karl Frank killed the adults, packed the children off to concentration camps, and killed family pets in their kennels.
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The Nazi propaganda service produced a documentary of the destruction, a visual record of the procedures, which the police incorporated into their training schedules. In Mogilev, fifty Jews were
executed by members of the HSSPF Russia-Centre for their collective responsibility in killing Heydrich.
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