Hitler's Bandit Hunters (52 page)

Kesselring was not content to grant carte blanche to the armed forces to conduct brutal actions. Three days later on June 20, he issued more orders. They reflected Hitler’s September 16, 1941, order (
chapter 3
). The troops were to conduct reprisals against all males in villages and to publicly execute captured band leaders. Kesselring warned against allowing Mussolini’s fascists to participate in reprisals, while confirming that plunderers (meaning partisans) would be punished. He judged that the dignity of the German soldier demanded such orders.
²⁷
A public announcement was made to the Italian people to deter them from joining the “bandits.” Complying with these orders on July 11, the German commander of Covola posted an announcement to the community: “For every soldier or civilian killed, One Hundred men also taken from the locality of the crime, will be shot.”
²⁸

After the war, the British investigations of Wolff’s command concluded that there was wholesale destruction of villages on the flimsiest grounds of “bandits.” Wolff attempted to defend his actions in Italy:

I represented the type of “political general,” and despite all my prowess in the leadership of troops in anti-guerrilla actions and the independent defence of the Franco-Italian alpine passes at the Mont Cenis and west of Turin in Autumn 1944, my main activity lay solely in the political and administrative sphere.
²⁹

Wolff tried to contend that as an administrator, he had no real authority over people’s lives. On the contrary, Wolff had the power of life and death over the whole area of SS operations. In July 1945, Wolff was overheard saying, “During the one and a half years I was here in Italy, I never sent a single report to my superiors, neither as HstSSPF to Himmler, nor as Military Plenipotentiary to Keitel…. I never played a heavy hand here.”
³⁰
After interrogations, the British concluded, “Wolff cannot be regarded as a completely reliable witness.”
³¹
Reprisals remained common practice with the ratio pitched at 10 to 1 until August 1944 when Mussolini intervened to end them.

On November 30, after a recommendation from Kesselring, Wolff was awarded the German Cross in Gold, the Nazi political medal. Closer archival inspection indicates that Wolff received the Iron Cross in May 1944. The following month, he received a “letter of appointment” (
Ernennungsurkunde
)
to the Bandenkampfverbände, a statement of proficiency from Bach-Zelewski personally. The details are sparse but indicate consistent patterns of behavior. A large-scale operation in the western Alps in August 1944 in the areas of Domodossola and Monte Grappa northwest of Udine proved Wolff’s ability as a practitioner of Bandenbekämpfung. The operations were a response to the allied landings on the south coast of France (Operation “Dragoon”) that triggered widespread guerrilla action. The operation spread across the Franco-Italian border as Wolff tried to dislodge the guerrillas from the mountain passes. Wolff’s butchers’ bill itemized 1,634 enemy dead, including two “bandit” leaders, one political commissar, and one Italian colonel. There were 1,461 prisoners taken during the fighting, including one “bandit” leader, two English officers, and six German deserters. Added to these were another 1,902 arrested under the suspicion of banditry, 2,454 taken for labor in Germany, and 810 taken because they were between fourteen and twenty-seven years old and thus of military age. The German losses included 51 dead (2 officers). There were 218 wounded, including a major of the NSKK, and 6 missing. The Italians, fighting with the Germans, suffered 34 dead, 107 wounded, and 29 missing.
³²
This was, apparently, a command feat worthy of addition to the Bandenkampfverbände roll of honor.

Awards were also granted to Wolff’s lieutenants; one in particular to Willi Tensfeld provides yet more evidence of what Bandenbekämpfung meant in Italy. On September 10, 1941, Tensfeld joined a fourteen-day course on how to become an SSPF, working with the Order Police and security police. His peer group included Curt von Gottberg and Walter Schimana. Prior to becoming SSPF-Upper Italy West, he served as SSPF-Kharkov (August 1941–May 1943) and as SSPF-Stalino (May 1943-September 1943), and in 1943, he briefly served in Lublin. In February 1945, he received the German Cross in Gold for the following operations:

NACHTIGALL: July 29, 1944, twenty-three days of “hard” mountain fighting.

STRASSBURG: September 5–October 5, 1944 (460 enemy dead and 295 prisoners).

BERNI: October 5–November 4, 1944, in the mountains, where he was personally involved in leading the fighting (51 enemy dead and wounded 511 prisoners).

AVANTI: October 9–November 4, 1944, handled the skills of the enemy in a severe bloody fight in the area of Cannobino, Viggerro, Ossolatal-Lago-Magiore development battle (565 enemy dead and 387 prisoners).

KOBLENZ: November 15–December 22, 1944 (162 enemy dead and 1,628 prisoners).

HOCHLAND: January 12, 1945, an ongoing operation (124 dead and 816 prisoners reported so far).

The totals for all Tensfeld’s efforts were 1,254 enemy dead and 6,083 prisoners and the usual amount of booty.
³³

Bandenstab Rösenor, based in Laibach, controlled the lynchpin province of the Alpenland in Hitler’s southern flank. Today Laibach is the Slovenian capital of Ljubljana, an important geo-political city at the confluence of Austria, Croatia, and Slovenia. In 1900, the major cities of this area were Salzburg, Agram (Zagreb), Laibach, and Trieste, and all were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Versailles settlement redrew the map of the region and ceded these cities to Italy, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, ignoring identities and the indigenous populations. Following the Austrian Anschluss, Germany absorbed this region. In June 1939, SS-Oberabschnitt Alpenland administered the southern alpine districts of Carinthia, Styria, and the Tyrol, headquartered in Salzburg.
³⁴
Himmler authorized the formation of the HSSPF Alpenland covering Salzburg and Laibach and the HSSPF Croatia based in Agram, in January 1942. This was part of the steadily growing SS operational jigsaw that encompassed Serbia, Greece, Vienna, and Budapest. By 1943, the strategic junctions and key cities were interwoven into a security network that covered Graz, Klagenfurt, Marburg, Laibach, Agram, and the peninsula of the Karst in Istria.
³⁵
Analysis of Bandenstab Laibach provides the only near complete record of a working Bandenstab operation.

SS-Obergruppenführer Erwin Rösener joined the SS in 1929. In March 1933, he became police president of Aachen and reached a unique level of bureaucratic pedantry, even by Nazi standards, by issuing official orders to himself.
³⁶
Rösener was appointed HSSPF Alpenland on December 16, 1941. In keeping with many of his colleagues, Rösener suffered a catalog of health problems. Physically tall and lean and with great physical strength, his problems were all related to “nerves.” In 1938, Rösener was diagnosed with an ulcer. He was thirty-six years old and had worked himself into a state of psychological collapse. A workaholic, his condition was aggravated through a total lack of rest and recuperation. Marital problems also blotted Rösener’s copybook; he had three marriages in five years. Himmler ordered Rösener to make regular visits to his third wife, who lived in Berlin, a long journey from Alpenland. To make sure he followed these instructions, Wolff kept a log of each visit. Rösener included SS-Obergruppenführer Maximillian von Herff in his inner circle. Increasingly his duties as HSSPF Alpenland concentrated on Bandenbekämpfung, which proved stressful. In an attempt to escape these duties, Rösener tried, through Herff, to position himself for the HSSPF Vienna job after Kaltenbrunner moved to the RSHA. Rösener’s intrigues failed, and he was denied transfer because of his success in prosecuting Bandenbekämpfung. Rösener’s story was about success in Bandenbekämpfung in spite of health problems.

The link between HSSPF Alpenland and Bandenbekämpfung had been formalized in June 1942 (refer to
chapter 3
). Insurgency had plagued the SS since 1941, and on October 5, 1942, what was to become the Bandenstab Laibach began the routines of coordinated reporting and responses.
³⁷
Rösener’s right-hand stooge in formulating procedures was SS-Standartenführer Otto Lurker, a long-serving SD officer. Lurker joined the SS in 1929 and moved in prestigious circles; his first superior was Prützmann. Lurker had perfect First World War credentials, was awarded the severe combat wound badge, and had joined the Freikorps. Among the details of his SS officer appraisal there is the comment, “probably the best leader of an SD section.” He was Hitler’s former prison warder and prison assistant, later writing the book
Hitler Behind Prison Walls
.
³⁸
The former jailer was a proponent of raising local armed militias for self-defense.
³⁹
As the wave of panic about the partisan threat swept over the region, one director of local mining operations wrote with concern to Rösener. He was fearful of “communist activity” against his mines not only because of the potential loss of production but also because it might undermine the morale of the workers (
Arbeitsmoral).
⁴⁰
It was the kind of letter on which the SS thrived, and Lurker was quick to take advantage.

From October 24, 1942, Lurker adopted common forms of Bandenbekämpfung reporting. In November, he organized a meeting of all the section chiefs in Marburg, but the proceedings were marred by a case of indiscipline. There had also been a “wild slaughter party” of farm animals by members of the Order Police, and meat had gone wasted. Himmler heard about it and responded immediately, warning that breaches in ration regulations would result in punishments without mercy. Months earlier, in February 1942, there was a serious breach of discipline in Veldes, Yugoslavia. Suspicion fell on the 4th Company of Police Battalion 181 of aiding local “bandits” and defacing a picture of Hitler in their mess canteen.
⁴¹
The military governor initiated court-martial proceedings; the troopers were disarmed and imprisoned in Graz. This time, the BdO Alpenland was forced by Himmler to issue a standing order on December 17 on the punishments for abuses of local population rations.
⁴²
This problem only distracted Lurker and Rösener for a short time, because by the end of the month, British intercepts recorded the senior conference had taken place at the BdO headquarters.
⁴³
This was the beginning of the Bandenstab Laibach.

Following the new year lull, serious partisan incursions began in February 1943. Many SS signals deciphered by the British indicated that three battalions of the 19th SS-Police Regiment were fully engaged in northern Yugoslavia. By March, the fighting had spilled over into the HSSPF Alpenland, as a tactical situation report from Lurker indicated. He warned of the presence of a band, fifty strong, fully armed with rifles and machine guns, and recommended full-scale operations to the north, south, east, and west: encirclement
in all but name. He added that since March 2, bands up to thirty strong were streaming into the territory under Tito’s orders. The security commando “Karl” had arrested seven “bandits” and their leader, and through interrogations, it was discovered that another twenty “bandits” were raiding for food.
⁴⁴
“The outstanding feature of these operations,” the British observed, “has been the ability of partisans to keep the Germans continually on the move; no sooner has an area been cleared or an attack on a strong point beaten off than the partisans appear again in or near the same area. The Germans reckon that the partisans are short of arms but at the same time are always calling for help themselves.”
⁴⁵

In his May report, Lurker concentrated on the increasing infiltrations into the Veldes area. “Bandit” activity had increased markedly. Large-scale Bandenbekämpfung operations had fractured the bands, but the “bandits” kept their numbers intact by press-ganging (
Zwangsrekrutierungen
) terrorized members of the local population. The bands had replenished their weapons and had donned a pseudo-German uniform. The May Day celebrations were interrupted by cases of arson in towns, ambushes, and bonfires on hilltops (beacons for the partisans). Lurker included a casualty record: “bandit” losses were twenty-three shot dead, eleven prisoners, and twenty-seven deserters. German casualties were twenty-nine dead, ten wounded, and one missing.
⁴⁶
That month, Rösener deployed two companies of Order Police to combat the
Moraeutscher Bande
. There followed 48 hours of intensive fighting in coordinated operations with the army, gendarmerie, and border troops (
Zollgrenzschutz
). General Brenner, the military district commander, and Rösener joined forces to increase the effectiveness of the operations. Rösener later complained that their actions were compromised by a lack of an early warning system, allowing only short lead times to counter the bands. This indicated that civilians were becoming reluctant to raise the alarm over the presence of bands. He complained about the poor quality of his troops, who were ill prepared for such operations, causing mixed results. On May 19, Rösener, in an act of bureaucratic self-protection, reported to Himmler that the troops were still conducting Bandenbekämpfung against the Moraeutscher Bande.
⁴⁷

The intensity of partisan incursions continued through June 1943. A series of “bandit” attacks formed the centerpiece of an Order Police situation report. On June 2, eight battalions of “bandits” were identified preparing for an attack on the gendarmerie in St. Martin (Styria); allegedly their plan also involved plundering the Reich-Slovenia border. The gendarmerie was warned that support was unavailable, and on June 13, a superior “bandit” force surrounded them. The next day, “bandit” attacks were delivered against the strategic railway line near Lichtenwald station. The bands had removed track pins along a large section of line, disguising their actions by resting the rails in position, but causing a 15mm misalignment. This was enough to derail a passenger train. The locomotive and two carriages tumbled down an incline,
injuring twelve soldiers. Police troops had patrolled that area two days before and found nothing out of the ordinary. The line was back in service the next day, and two battalions of the 19th SS-Police Regiment were ordered to patrol the line.
⁴⁸
The British identified further activity in Virovitica area on June 17. This time the sheer weight of German counter-attacks forced the partisans to withdraw.
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