Hitler's Bandit Hunters (25 page)

Following the crisis caused by the collapse of Italy, Hitler promoted Karl Wolff as the supreme SS leader in Italy. This marked a new development in SS-Police security policy. Hitler charged Wolff with three tasks: special consultant for all police matters for the puppet Italian Fascist national government; chief of police under the commander of Army Group B and the chief of Army Group South; and commander of the SS regional establishments. After the war, during interrogations by the British, Wolff denied he had been handed these orders.
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Himmler promoted Wolff “higher-HSSPF” (
Höchste SS und Polizeiführer
) Italy, designated HstSSPF-Italien. It was his first operational task in the war, and with its proximity to Rome, it was largely a political mission.
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Among Wolff’s command was Odilo Globocnik, transferred from Poland as HSSPF Adriatic Coastland (
Adriatisches-Küstenland).
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The SS-Police structure in the southern theater initially followed on the coattails of the Wehrmacht, as it had done in Poland and France. In 1942, SS-Oberg-ruppenführer Artur Phleps transferred to the Balkans to raise SS volunteers. Phleps had organized a recruitment agency for the Banat region and, by June 1942, had processed twenty thousand volunteers. According to Berger, Phleps raised a homeland defense regiment (
Heimatschutzregiment
). Phleps was close to the recruitment officer responsible for Serbia, Obersturmbannführer Kecks, an ethnic German from Serbia; they collaborated in raising an SS division. Berger confirmed that Himmler agreed to Phleps’ recruitment of men to form an SS mountain division.
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Himmler transferred his senior SS lieutenants with experience or expertise in the region into positions in the Balkans. The SS establishment in the south expanded to encompass new borders after absorbing Austria and Czechoslovakia. Austria came under two SS authorities— HSSPF Danube in Vienna, and HSSPF Alpenland in Salzburg. Czechoslovakia had been partially annexed with the rump turned into HSSPF Bohemia and Moravia in Prague. Himmler exploited the former Habsburg system as a
platform for SS authority and assigned Austrian SS officers to key posts in former empire cities. From January 1944, the southern theater became the largest area of SS political security interests.

After Heydrich’s death in June 1942, Himmler had taken personal control of the RSHA. Himmler had resisted passing the job to Bach-Zelewski as Hitler had proposed. Hitler wanted Himmler to find a replacement quickly, probably because the waning powers and authority of the RSHA distracted Himmler from more important duties. Eventually, after six months, Himmler finally passed the position over to Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner. The RSHA had lost much of its prestige in the intervening period, and the SD found it was increasingly committed to Bandenbekämpfung-related functions and tasks. Kaltenbrunner imposed strict control over Heydrich’s former Young Turks, and became problematic for Himmler. In January 1943, Bach-Zelewski commented in his diary that he thought Kaltenbrunner was accepting a thankless task replacing the doyen of all Germans, Heydrich, with whom he had had fundamental disagreements.
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Almost immediately after becoming chief of the RSHA, Kaltenbrunner began raising yet another private army. His style of leadership gathering and channeling groups of his Austrian SS into strategic cliques within the regime. Kaltenbrunner’s influence spread through Wilhelm Hoettl, Adolf Eichmann, Skorzeny, and Odilo Globocnik, and the commanders of
Aktion Reinhard.
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This clique dominated security operations in the south and the Balkans. Kaltenbrunner lacked Heydrich’s charisma but tried to emulate his clandestine successes to cut a niche in the Nazi hierarchy. In his first few months as chief of RSHA, Kaltenbrunner turned to his long time friend, Otto Skorzeny, to raise a commando unit dedicated to covert political actions. Only a few weeks earlier, Skorzeny’s career appeared finished. He received eight days’ house arrest for drinking on the national day of mourning for Stalingrad. Assigned to a reserve transport detachment of the SS-Totenkopfverbände, based in Buchenwald concentration camp, he was about as far away from the war as a member of the SS could possibly be. On April 15, 1943, Skorzeny received a transfer to the RSHA. His arrival immediately sparked differences of opinion with his nominal superior officer SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg.

The great scandal that shamed the SS-Police came from a totally unexpected source. For several years, Kurt Daluege had been afflicted by a rash of absences caused by bouts of mysterious illness. Then, on July 5, 1943, Daluege officially stepped down. This finally ended the “Himmler-Daluege-Heydrich” triumvirate; Himmler was alone in command of the SS for the first time since 1929. The death of Heydrich in 1942 had rocked the regime; Daluege’s demise because of the regressive effects of “congenital” syphilis was a body blow to the SS-Police establishment.
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Hitler had spent seven pages of
Mein Kampf
arguing for the combating of syphilis and had attributed it to the moral collapse of Germany. He blamed his predecessors: “Particularly with regard to
syphilis, the attitude of the leadership of the nation and the state can only be designated as total capitulation…. The fight against syphilis demands a fight against prostitution, against prejudices, old habit, against previous conceptions, general views among them not least the false prudery of certain circles.”
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Thus, at the point when Hitler was about to lose the initiative in the war, the man he had written of as “my honour is loyalty” (
Meine Ehre heist Treue
) was cast out in shame. Daluege became a non-person within the regime. Hitler, as good as his word, shunned Daluege for the rest of the war.

Bach-Zelewski immediately broke off his relationship, while Himmler was later forced to warn Daluege not to cause intrigues. The only confirmation of Daluege’s circumstances comes from Albert Speer who briefly convalesced with him.
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Himmler remained embarrassed about Daluege, informing the gathering of senior SS officers at Posen,

Our old friend Daluege has such severe heart trouble that he has to undergo courses of treatment and now has to retire from active service for one-and-a-half to two years … we may hope that Daluege will have recovered in about two years and can then return to the front and get into harness.
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Daluege was replaced by Alfred Wünnenberg, a career police officer. Wünnenberg was an accomplished soldier-policeman but not a political soldier of Daluege’s calibre. The difference between the two concepts was profound and further indicates why Himmler did not give the job to Bach-Zelewski. The choice of Wünnenberg points the way toward Himmler’s thinking: the Order Police was reduced in political stature although its role remained crucial to Bandenbekämpfung. There was another significant change in the Order Police organization: the Kolonialpolizeiamt (discussed in
chapter 2
) was closed in 1943. Its commander, Pfeffer-Wildenbruch, became a Waffen-SS corps commander.

On August 20, Hitler sacked Wilhelm Frick and replaced him with Himmler as minister of the interior. This centralized the vast German legal and state bureaucracy and the SS completing the Nazi national security state.
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At the same time, Bach-Zelewski was gradually introduced into the grand circles of the regime as part of his grooming for high office. On August 7, Himmler, no doubt aware of the events to follow, held a meeting with Wolff and Bach-Zelewski, who had taken time out during Operation “Hermann.” Seven days after Himmler’s promotion, he met with Bach-Zelewski and Prützmann. Bach-Zelewski also held meetings to engage liaison officers from many institutions to his new office, a standard routine within the regime. One venue for these meetings was Göring’s Air Ministry building in Berlin. On August 31, Bach-Zelewski met Wünnenberg and Maximillian von Herff to discuss his influence over Order Police personnel policy. Herff was chief of SS personnel and had a
major influence over the whole SS-Police organization. Meetings held on September 4 were especially significant because of their strategic prominence. The first discussions involved the role of the Luftwaffe in Bandenbekämpfung operations. Luftwaffe chief of staff General Korten opened discussion on the role of the Luftwaffe in “bandit war” (Bandenkrieg). That evening Bach-Zelewski met with General Wagner. On September 21, Bach-Zelewski met with Artur Nebe, the former Einsatzgruppen commander and associate during the “Barbarossa” pogroms, and Major General Dahlem, another of Göring’s senior staff officers. The next day, Himmler and Bach-Zelewski consulted with Grand Admiral Dönitz and three admirals, a continuation from earlier in the year. In October, Luftwaffe colonel Dr. Bormann, a Knight’s Cross recipient, became Bach-Zelewski’s senior Luftwaffe liaison staff officer. On December 12, 1943, Bach-Zelewski was introduced into Himmler’s “circle of friends” (SS-
Freundeskreis
, RFSS), a gathering of industrialists and business leaders, almost certainly to discuss labor matters.
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However, this ended as the situation on the Eastern Front deteriorated and Bach-Zelewski was ordered to defend Kovel (discussed in detail in
chapter 8
). In October 1943, Himmler, after a turbulent year, was able to present further expansion from the new office in his presentation of the infamous Posen speech:

I considered it necessary for the Reichsführer-SS to be in authoritative command in all these battles, for I am convinced that we are in the best position to take action against this enemy struggle, which is a decidedly political one. [He added that this new office had contributed to an increase in the SS organization.] … It is notable that, by setting up this department we have gained for the SS in turn a division, a corps, an army and the next step, which is the High Command of an army or even a group …
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A common defense for German security methods by German defendants during the Nuremberg war crimes trials was attributing their brutality to the illegality of the resistance. This argument pinpointed single aspects of the partisan and resistance operations to explain the German campaign. They ignored the racial aspect underpinning German measures, the roundup of labor, and the widespread exploitation. The defendants were well aware that, as the war came to end, German measures had turned more severe. They hoped to steer the prosecution away from focusing on the integrated character of Bandenbekämpfung and its classification of the enemy. Since the trials, academic have consistently compared Soviet and German methods, partisan and antipartisan respectively, finding a common conclusion of mutual brutality. Their picture is one of a vicious cycle of blind terror, cold-bloodedness,
and wanton destruction and ignores the rational processes underpinning German behavior in forging policy, irrespective of the opponents. More important, comparative analyses have failed to explain why, as the Germans lost the war, their brutality found greater release for deeper depravity.

Modern Prussia and Imperial Germany were erected on a comprehensive body of state and national laws. In parallel to the national laws, Germany was a proactive participant in the international conventions governing the conduct of warfare. Before 1914, Prussia and later Imperial Germany attended The Hague and Geneva conferences and conventions. Germany was a full signatory of the 1907 Hague Convention IV, “Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land.” After the First World War, Weimar Germany endorsed the Geneva Protocols on Gas Warfare and Prisoners of War. Hitler conducted law making like a barrack-room lawyer; to whit, laws were only acceptable as long as they worked for his benefit and to the detriment of his enemies. In 1939, he typically promised to abide by the existing precedents of war, while threatening the Jewish race with extinction and practicing ethnic-cleansing against the Polish people. In 1941, Hitler’s rules of engagement invading Soviet Russia were encompassed in the infamous Barbarossa directives. By 1943, the Nazi regime was calling forth a different kind of language for the conduct of the war.
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The shift in the regime’s tone was matched by renewed attempts to further circumvent the laws of war.

The circumvention of The Hague conventions had been simplified by the German occupation of Holland, rendering its existence obsolete by right of conquest. The Dutch hoped the Germans would recognize The Hague conventions as binding.
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When Arthur Seyss-Inquart became the Reichskommissioner for the Occupied Netherlands in 1940, he reported to Hitler that the favorable way to incorporate the Dutch into Hitler’s Reich was through economic collaboration. However, Seyss-Inquart declared The Hague Conventions redundant as his administration aggressively ignored their rulings. By 1943, Dutch labor, like labor across occupied Europe, was combed by conscription waves from Sauckel’s offices. Eventually, more than a half million Dutch people were conscripted for labor. Seyss-Inquart was also responsible for imposing a catalog of Nazi measures in the persecution of the Jews. In his contribution to the Holocaust he ensured the mass deportation of more than one hundred thousand Jews to extermination camps and ghettos in the east.

The racial impetus of Fortress Europe went in two directions, decided either by “expediency” or extermination. Goebbels’s diary in the first six months of 1943 is evidence of how fixated the Nazis were on the “Jewish question” and of their commitment to extermination. In May 1943, Goebbels published an article titled “Der Krieg und die Juden” (The War and the Jews) and pleaded his cause to ensure the “evacuation” of the Berlin Jews.
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In 1942, the British
diplomatic services monitoring German attitudes thought the extermination of Jews was gradually working against the Nazis. One ambassador noted,