Hitler's Bandit Hunters (32 page)

The guidelines for the infantry reflected Bach-Zelewski’s military expertise. Because the infantry was the backbone of all military and security operations, Bach-Zelewski demanded superiority over the “bandits” in firefights through strict discipline because the “bandits” in their camouflaged positions presented only the briefest opportunity as a target. Fire discipline had to maintain the element of surprise and required rapidity and accuracy. Officers were warned to prevent random and careless shooting. The infantry was advised to employ support weapons to cover movements, to attack strong-points, and during counterattacks. These support weapons had to be ready to fire and portable over difficult terrain. Fighting continued into the night. Bach-Zelewski expected the troops to avoid rest at night in villages and other equally “spoiled behavior.” The preferred weapons for this “special kind of warfare” included small arms, machine pistols, sniper rifles, machine guns, automatic rifles, light and medium antitank guns, light infantry guns, and flamethrowers. Heavier weapons, such as artillery and anti-aircraft guns, were
regarded as essential during blocking encirclement duties.
¹⁰⁵
Evacuating wounded from the combat area was regarded as crucial to morale.

As operational commander, Bach-Zelewski was also responsible for the treatment of civilians and was assisted by economic experts. Civilians were taxed and registered, and all goods and produce of economic value in the community collected. Tactical collection teams (
Erfassungskommando
) were formed from among the troops. The registration of plunder was itemized in the 1944 regulations: “Everything, which can be used for our own war economy or is of any use to the bandits, must be removed.” The collection operations imposed special security arrangements: “The transports of the registered goods as well as the assembly camps have to be protected … [and] the troop has to understand that accounted goods are not booty.” The deportation collection camps (
Sammellager
) or depots (
Sammelplätze
) were to be erected prior to an operation and act as holding camps for persons rounded up for deportation to serve as labor in Germany. If the people from villages under suspicion of being partisan supporters survived police action, they were normally deported to Germany as slave labor. The order to remove produce was tempered by the overriding order that “Everything has to be given to the civilians necessary for their livelihood and for the cultivation of the country, if an area is to be permanently pacified.” The Erfassungskommando was supposed to be trained in how to conduct this work professionally and was given the assistance of translators. To ensure success in operations, the Erfassung-skommando was advised to gather the community leaders, including the mayor, the bookkeeper, or the headman of the village to assist and guide the collection process. The regulations stressed that these actions were a civil-police matter where civilian confidence in the police was determined by respect for the troops and should not cross the threshold of mutual necessity. The troops were warned against being lulled into a false sense of security (
Wachsamkeit einschläfern
). Any suspicious individuals (
verdächtigte Leute
), whether in civilian clothes or German uniform, were handed to the SD and GFP.

Omer Bartov has written of the “perversion of discipline” to explain how German military methods led to brutalizing Germany’s own fighting force. Hitler feared a repeat of the breakdown in military discipline as occurred in 1918. Discipline was, according to Bartov, politicized to meet the demands of enhanced military capability and Nazi ideological goals but placed the troops in the difficult position of facing indefatigable commanders and an unbeatable enemy, and so resorted to violence against civilians and POWs.
¹⁰⁶
The continuing drift toward brutal regulations was institutionalized through the Operation “Barbarossa” directives and on into the Bandenbekämpfung codes of 1942–43. The SS judicial system handled all disciplinary matters and
administered regulations parallel with the German military code. On April 18, 1940, Himmler was granted the legal powers in matters of discipline corresponding to the supreme commander of an army, including signing death warrants, granting pardons, and commuting sentences. The SS code was extended by Führer decree on November 15, 1941, encompassing the SS organization, including the Waffen-SS, SS-Totenkopfverbände, and the SS-Polizeiverbände. The system followed the trickle-down effect with justice divided between field courts (
Feldgerichte
) and tribunals usually held in Germany. There was also the SS-Police special jurisdiction (
Sondergerichts-barkeit der SS und Polizei
), which held regional court under HSSPF authority. Each SS authority usually included a court or tribunal and catered to secret and honor courts. The SS legal system sentenced men to prisons or concentration camps and arranged executions. Justice was generally swift and meted out with typical severity. Those found guilty were expelled from the SS, sent to serve in penal formations at the front lines, forced into hard labor in a construction battalion, or executed by hanging (dishonorable) or firing squad (honorable), depending on the crime.
¹⁰⁷

Bach-Zelewski’s most serious case involved troops under his direct command. The failure of the 14th SS-Police Regiment hit the heart of the command system at the time of Stalingrad. The 14th SS-Police Regiment formed in July 1942 from Police Battalions 51, 63, and 122. Along with the 13th, it was one of two police regiments originally handed to Bach-Zelewski in October 1942. He had already forged a strong relationship to the regiment and its commander when he recorded their activities on August 9. The regiment destroyed a bandit group in a forest near Kutschin; they killed a Jew and a commissar in an exchange of hand grenades. Bach-Zelewski allowed them to use his reconnaissance airplane to ferry four of the wounded to a field hospital. He hosted a coffee meeting, on October 22, 1942, for the first battalion’s officers in preparation for the coming campaign. He met with the regimental commander, Oberstleutnant Buchmann, on October 31 regarding an operation in conjunction with Sonderkommando Dirlewanger. On November 7, the 1st Battalion, 14th Police Regiment, stormed and captured a partisan camp northwest of Slutsk following thirty-four hours of continuous fighting. The battalion lost eighteen police officers and a tank. On November 10, the battalion lost seventeen more and suffered an undetermined number of wounded. The regiment remained in action until November 13 before transferring to Minsk to prepare for Operation “München.” On November 15, Bach-Zelewski noted the officers of the regiment had a particularly hard day, and so he arranged for the theater in Minsk to be made available for their exclusive use. Two days later, the regiment began deportations of forced labor.

In January 1943, during the Soviet onslaught, the 14th SS-Police Regiment was one of four police regiments destroyed in heavy fighting. The regiment was accused of poor performance by the 8th Italian Army while under
attack from an inferior force. It was a political disaster, and the consequences were severe for its commanders. The army COS sent a report to Himmler stating that “the regiment performed badly, allowing itself to be surrounded and only escaped after discarding most of its equipment. It then took up a defensive position where it employed primitive tactics and preparedness; it was surprised and defeated by two Russian companies.”
¹⁰⁸
As was usual in the German armed forces, commanders dispersed the surviving personnel to other formations or used them as cadres for new regiments and battalions. On February 23, the first battalion of the regiment took part in a reprisal action (
Vergeltungsaktion
) in the area of Bobruisk-Mogilev, shooting 463 partisans and suspects, arresting 1,834 forced laborers, and capturing foodstuffs and 193 horses, while destroying two bandit camps, with a cost of two wounded. At the time, an unnamed Polish Schuma battalion was supporting the regiment. Oberstleutnant Buchmann was killed in action on March 11, 1943.
¹⁰⁹

In April 1943, just prior to his Kharkhov trip, Himmler requested the regiment’s papers. Bach-Zelewski wrote to Kurt Daluege, referring to problems of the 14th SS-Police Regiment as his responsibility. He felt their failure was a burden that caused him great personal pain. He confessed to raising the regiment from its baptism of fire and remaining too close with its commander Buchmann.
¹¹⁰
Meanwhile, Himmler issued a further order: “I employ the SS police-court [in] Berlin with the orders for preliminary proceedings of a court martial against the regimental-commander and battalion-commanders because of insubordination and poor service in the field.”
¹¹¹
Himmler was determined to punish even the junior officers. The official listing of those still alive and able to attend the court-martial appeared in the charge sheet of June 17, 1943.
¹¹²
The chief of the SS legal department and the SS Police Court in Berlin received full instructions for the case from Himmler. There appears to be no concluding record. On reflection, Bach-Zelewski neither defended nor accused those charged while the new 14th Regiment was handed to Oberst Grieser with no further problems.
¹¹³

However, problems did occur over the handling of collaboration forces. In November 1942, ethnic Germans sent to the Prinz Eugen Division turned problematic, according to a British decode; the Croatian recruits had rebelled and this had raised “political dust.” The Croatians were secretly spirited away to Auschwitz, and the ethnic Germans were retained in Germany.
¹¹⁴
On March 4, 1943, a mutiny by the men of a Cossack battalion led them to flee into the Pripyat marshes.
¹¹⁵
In 1943, another Cossack battalion ran amok in Yugoslavia among communities of ethnic Germans, killing, raping, and plundering. Bach-Zelewski referred to it in his diary as the “Terror of the Cossacks.” The Cossacks were under the command of Gen. Helmut von Pannwitz, a former leading figure of in the Buchrucker putsch.
¹¹⁶
He and Bach-Zelewski were old acquaintances, and this again illustrates the breadth of Bach-Zelewski’s personal network in the higher echelons of the armed forces.
¹¹⁷
Collaboration forces thus proved
to be less than reliable. The Galicia Division’s reserve battalion was quartered in Tarbes (France); most of its recruits were taken from battalions broken up to raise the division and transferred to France for training. Michael Logusz established that many deserted to the French resistance (
Forces Francaises de Interieur
), known as the
maquis
, or FFI.
¹¹⁸
The most serious case of mutiny also occurred in France within the 13th SS-Division Handschar in September 1943. A group of recruits with contacts to the FFI attempted to kill the SS officers and were set to defect, although this intention was less than clear. Eventually, the SS arrested the ringleaders and shot a dozen.
¹¹⁹

The case of the 53rd Schuma Battalion is prominent in Bach-Zelewski’s diary. It ran into difficulties during a stream of accusations against SS plundering. Criticism leveled by the Germany army’s local Feldkommandantur had reached the headquarters of Army Group Centre. Bach-Zelewski’s investigation concluded that this was partisan subterfuge. He censored the army major for criticizing the SS and alleged that while everyone was stealing food, only the SS were called plunderers. The same major ignored warnings of a partisan strike in the area. During the attack, the “bandits” killed the major and the 53rd Schuma Battalion rebelled. Bach-Zelewski discussed the situation with Schenckendorff and Himmler and concluded that the continuing German retreat had undermined their morale. “‘Bolshevism’ appeared to be returning,” said Bach-Zelewski. “Soviet propaganda had incited the populous [sic], and faith in ‘Bolshevism’ had become an alibi.” Bach-Zelewski claimed these problems had sparked within the Wehrmacht’s eastern army (Osttruppen). He argued that Schenckendorff had suppressed the charge against his own troops, ignoring the wider problem among all collaboration forces. He concluded that the soldiers required sifting to remove the rotten elements and the undecided. The Schuma battalions, he continued, could no longer operate under their own authority but must be kept in close proximity to other German troops. The operations officer of the Army Group Centre rear area had also ignored these problems, but Bach-Zelewski accepted the error of judgment on grounds of military necessity. The difficult situation on the front had removed troops from the rear and remaining army units were concentrated railway protection. Bach-Zelewski judged that the partisan leaders in the Mogilev area understood German procedures and had exploited them. The partisans had infiltrated into the 53rd Schuma Battalion, formed a communist cell with two of the battalion’s officers, and gradually taken control. They had acquired large numbers of guns and ammunition. This incident had raised problems of covert activities in this area that required further investigation, of which there is no evidence today of the outcome.
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Bach-Zelewski’s unstructured thoughts on command appear frequently in his diary. In January 1943, he reflected on an argument that had broken out
between Gottberg and Bassewitz-Behr. The latter had received the laurels for an operation actually led by Gottberg. This left Gottberg incensed, and while Bach-Zelewski acknowledged this, he commented on how the wrong person could receive merits. He referred to the Battle of Tannenberg, for which Hindenburg received the accolades for Ludendorff’s efforts. He felt all his successes had been paid for by bitter disappointments. It was his opinion that selfless action on behalf of the people was rarely rewarded. He hypothesized how the commander of a formation bristling with heavy weapons would receive all the plaudits for a combat success. However, the real heroes were the men of the alarm units—lost, surrounded, and under-equipped—only to be killed in combat or admonished for failure later.
¹²¹
Even with his reputation for leading poorly equipped troops, he spent a lot of time bemoaning the situation.