SS und Polizei: Myths and Lies of Hitler's SS and Police

by J. Lee Ready

  Yet after the war the Allies used the German police extensively and on occasion even used German military police.

  This book shall explore the realities of these myths and lies.

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  Chapter One

  VERSAILLES: THE END IS THE BEGINNING

  On 11 November 1918 the end of the Great War caught the German soldiers by surprise. One minute they were fighting a dogged withdrawal action on the Western Front in Belgium and France. The next minute a revolutionary government had seized power in Berlin and had handed the keys to victory to the Allies. The German soldiers were ordered to march home, like players on a soccer field when the final whistle is blown.

  As a result Germany split apart into civil war. It was not a war of Gettysburgs and Nasebys, but of small skirmishes: sniping, machine gunning, firing squads and assassinations.

  The new government referred to the method by which they had stopped the Great War as an armistice, which means truce. But this was no truce. It was a complete and shameful surrender, and in summer 1919 when the details of the Treaty of Versailles were finally published every German felt ashamed. This document dictated by the French and British declared their air force was to be disbanded. Their large warships were to be handed to the British. Their army of several million was to be shrunk to just 100,000 men, and no more than 150,000 police were allowed. Their colonies in Africa and Asia were to be given to the British, Japanese and French. Even Germany itself was to be chopped up. The states of Lothringen and Elsass were to be handed to the French. The district of Eupen was given to the Belgians. West Prussia, Eastern Silesia and Eastern Pomerania went to the Poles. Danzig became an autonomous city of the League of Nations. The Saar district would be administered by the French. No German troops would be allowed west of the Rhine, and Northern Schleswig went to the Danes, who had not even fought in the war! The Rhineland was to be occupied by British, French, Belgian and American troops. Most damaging of all was that German industry was expected to produce goods for the Allies ‘free of charge’ and every German citizen was fined a monetary sum to be paid in a regular tax for the crime of having started the war.

  Considering the fact that the war had begun in July 1914 (as a Serb-Austrian confrontation), and that the Germans had only entered the fray in August 1914 in response to French and Russian mobilization against Germany (de facto declarations of war), the German people could not understand how they could be stained with the guilt of starting it all. Furthermore the British, Italians and Americans had declared war on Germany, not the other way around. This was too much for the Germans to bear. Even the Americans realized how shameful the Germans had been treated in the treaty and their congress refused to ratify the treaty.

  As a result of the Versailles Treaty the German civil war got worse. The ill-armed police and shrunken army could not face up to the millions of Communists armed with stolen rifles, nor the millions of Socialists and Monarchists and Nationalists, equally armed. This was the day of the fanatic. The government created a militia, the Einwohnerwehr, but Versailles Treaty monitors inhibited its use and eventually forced its demobilization. In desperation the German Army began to create an illegal army, the Freikorps. This was illegal in the sense that the British and French governments forbade it. The Freikorps had no central command and certainly some units were little more than mobs of drunken sots, while others were gangs of criminals using their ‘Freikorps’ status as a cover for their misdeeds, and a few were fanatic killers, but there were serious soldiers within its ranks too, and some units were in fact entire formations of the army and navy that supposedly had been disbanded. They were simply renamed.

  The Freikorps was not just necessary to defend the government from rebels, but also to defend the shrunken remnant of Germany from outside elements: the Polish and Czecho-Slovakian armies on the eastern border that were trying to grab more territory than they had been granted by the treaty. Furthermore the German Army had not come home from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, but had remained to help these small nations fight off the invading Russian Bolsheviks [forerunners of the Soviet Red Army]. They had turned some German Army units there into Freikorps. One unit in Latvia went rogue and tried to take over Latvia.

  Though the British considered the Freikorps to be illegal, they soon turned a blind eye to the force, because the British were also fighting the Russian Bolsheviks. In fact in Latvia the British fought alongside the Freikorps and in some cases even provided officers as advisors! The US Army was also fighting the Bolsheviks.

  The importance of the Freikorps in Nazi history cannot be overemphasized. A high proportion of future Nazi and SS leaders won their spurs in this illegal army.

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  Adolf Hitler was an Austrian, who had emigrated to Germany before the Great War, and he had fought in that conflict as a member of the Bavarian Army (unlike most German soldiers who were members of the Prussian Army). In early 1919 Corporal Hitler’s commanding officer took notice of him when he ran off some Bolshevik [Communist] rebels with his rifle, and he gave Corporal Hitler the job of spying on various lunatic fringe political rabble-rousers in the city of Munich. When Hitler investigated Anton Drexler’s political party, he liked it so much he joined it, and within months, by which time he had been discharged from the army, he had gained a seat on the party leadership council.

  Hitler did not join the Freikorps, but sank himself into politics, and by July 1921 he had ousted Drexler and had become the sole leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party. The German word ‘Fuehrer’ means ‘Leader or Guide’.

  This party was initially not very anti-Semitic, but Hitler grabbed the idea that the Jews had profited from the Great War, and that this explained why they were now rich while everyone else in Germany was poor. In reality there were plenty of rich Christians too, and some destitute Jews, but it is true that German Jews were usually able to gain loans from foreign relatives in more affluent nations to tide them over. It is within the spirit of Jews to help relatives in other countries. Christians are rarely that generous.

  Owing to the chaotic situation of this period of civil war, Hitler felt he needed a gang of bullyboys who could protect his meetings from raids by other political bullyboys, especially the Communist Red Guards. He recruited Ernst Roehm, a Great War army officer who now led a part-time Freikorps unit, and he asked Roehm to convince some of his troops to protect Hitler at his rallies. One of these Freikorps soldiers was Heinrich Himmler, an ex-army cadet, who had not finished training when the Great War had ended and thus had never seen battle. In 1919 he had turned to chicken farming as a civilian occupation and became a part-time member of the Freikorps. Hitler managed to recruit Hermann Goering a famous fighter pilot from the Great War.

  In August 1921 Hitler formalized his bullyboys as the SA - Sturmabteilungen [Storm Detachments]: storm in the sense of to ‘storm’ a fortress.

  The period after the Great War was a time of political upheaval throughout the western world, not just in Germany, and many a political party had its own ‘army’. All those of extreme nationalist views imitated the political army raised by Benito Mussolini in Italy, the Blackshirts. The odd thing about extreme nationalism [i.e. Fascism/Nazism] was that it preached that one should look to one’s own ethnicity and disdain everyone else’s, and yet the Fascists shamelessly copied the Italians. Spain created the Falangist Blueshirts. The Americans had their Silvershirts. The British had their Blackshirts. The Irish had their Blueshirts. The Hungarians had their Greenshirts, and so on. Hitler too was in awe of Mussolini, and he made his SA wear brown shirts.

  Hitler’s Brownshirts - also known as Stormtroopers - were part-timers and were not paid, but they were eligible for jobs in premises owned by Hitler’s friends. Jobs in Germany were important because they were scarce owing to several factors: the demobilization of the army at the end of the Great War; the upheaval caused by the civil war and the Polish War; the loss of manufactured goods sent to Britain and France for free
; and the ‘war guilt’ tax. But, one’s children still had to be fed; so many a German father joined somebody’s rag tag political army, such as the SA Brownshirts of the Nazis, the Red Guards of the Communists or the Stahlhelm of the Nationalists, just to bring food to the table. Membership of these formations made one eligible for food packages, and might lead to employment. These unarmed ‘political soldiers’ wore their uniforms with pride and traveled in gangs for protection, because a lone stormtrooper might be caught and murdered by Communists, or vice versa.

  As if the surrender to the Allies in 1918 was not shameful enough, in 1923 the French and Belgian armies invaded the Ruhr industrial district of Germany, but the German government refused to allow the German Army or Freikorps to fight back! Instead they were ordered to retreat. The government urged passive resistance and told workers in the occupied zones not to work for the invaders. In return the government printed money to pay the striking workers. Terrible things happened because of this. First the invading French and Belgians pointed their bayonets at German workers and forced them to work to produce free goods and even shot some who refused to work. The French imprisoned Germans for striking and demonstrating, including Jacob Sporrenberg and Martin Bormann, both Freikorps soldiers, and Heinz Roch and Werner Best, both teenage students. The most terrible thing to happen was that the mass printing of money caused an inflation throughout Germany so ridiculous that within months workers had to be paid daily with wheelbarrows full of money. Anyone who had stashed away any money at all was suddenly as broke as a tramp, because everyone became a millionaire, but one had to have a million marks just to buy a loaf of bread! It cost two million marks to mail a letter. Those Jews who had access to foreign money began to buy property, art, jewelry and antiques as hedges against inflation, which could be ‘banked’ to await better times.

  Owing to this terrible state of affairs, by late 1923 Hitler believed he was ready to seize power and he chose to try for the state government of Bavaria in Munich, rather than the national government in Berlin. He mobilized his SA and anyone else who would join him, including the internationally famous Field Marshal Ludendorff. However, his Munich Putsch (revolt) on November 9 was a comedy of errors and failed miserably after a short exchange of gunfire. Fifteen of the Nazis were killed and several wounded, including Hermann Goering. Heinrich Himmler had carried a flag in the assault. The Nazis were then disarmed by the army and for the most part set free. Hitler had fled and was arrested at the home of his publicist, Ernst Hanfstaengl.

  Following a much-publicized trial Hitler was sentenced to five years imprisonment.

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  Chapter Two

  LEGITIMACY

  Hitler was paroled at Christmas 1924, just over a year since his arrest, but much had happened while he was ‘inside’. The Munich Putsch was the last gasp of the civil war. Furthermore the Polish War had ended, as had the fighting in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, and the French and Belgian armies had left the Ruhr. A new monetary policy had reduced inflation significantly, so the economy began to get better. The Freikorps was no longer needed and had been disbanded.

  Having thought through his mistakes, Hitler began to try for power legally, but he knew his Nazis would have an uphill climb to gain any political respectability at all. He wanted to expand his SA rapidly, and fortunately for him many wealthy industrialists were still terrified of the Communists, so that they eagerly financed anyone, Hitler’s Nazis included, who promised to control the Communists. With this money Hitler could hire more Nazi party functionaries, such as Josef Goebbels, who worked in the party propaganda department run by Gregor Strasser, and he could also outfit more SA reservist stormtroopers.

  By 1925 Heinrich Himmler was a Nazi party member and a reservist in the SA and a paid employee of Strasser’s department, and this year he cemented his party affiliation even more by transferring from the SA to the SS, the 168th person to join that small body. The SS - Schutzstaffel [guard squad] had been formed by Hitler to be his own personal bodyguard. Some of its members were ordered to stick to him like glue and were known as the SS LAH - Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. In this connotation life standard means a flag on a pole and infers the unit that bears the flag. Other SS lived in different towns and were to be on call if he visited their area. Most SS members, like Himmler, were reservists. Moreover the SS was a department of the SA. It is noteworthy that the SS was established to preserve life, not to take it.

  However, in September 1927 Himmler graduated to the position of full-time paid member of the SS and was promoted to deputy head under Erhard Heiden. Only now did he leave his propaganda job. At once Himmler began to have a profound influence on the SS, behaving as the de facto commander.

  In the 1928 elections after four years of political campaigning the Nazis managed to gain a mere two point eight per cent of the vote. Such a low result was obviously a tremendous embarrassment for Hitler. However, Germany at this time had a proportional representation form of parliamentary democracy, which meant that these few votes did allow the Nazis twelve seats in the Reichstag [parliament]. Hitler designated who should occupy these seats. He did not take one himself. As an Austrian he was ineligible.

  Meanwhile Himmler had been running the SS on a day-to-day basis, so that his promotion to commander of the SS with the title of Reichsfuehrer [imperial leader] on 20 January 1929 was a mere formality. But twenty-eight year old Himmler was still under restrictions, because the SS was a part of the SA. Nonetheless, little by little Himmler began to try to siphon off his SS from the rank and file of the SA.

  The SS was trained differently than the SA and wore a black coat over their brown shirt and wore a skull badge. Black was a common military color in German history and the skull was a common emblem. Neither had sinister implications! Naturally the SS used SA rank insignia, but preceded the title with ‘SS’, to denote SS membership. Furthermore all SS personnel also wore army rank insignia at the same time! Initially this was so that members of the police and armed forces could recognize the rank of an SS member. There was another difference, harder to distinguish, and that was the new philosophy espoused by Himmler. Whereas the SA paraded their street origins with pride and aimed for social equality, emphasizing the ‘Socialist’ and ‘Workers’ words within the Nazi party’s title, Himmler began to teach his men that they were above the ordinary people, an elite at the forefront, emphasizing the ‘National’ and ‘German’ words of the Nazi party’s title. Roehm might rule his SA by pretending he was just one of the ‘boys’, but Himmler would rule his SS like a prince!

  Himmler made this philosophical change for three reasons. First he found the SA ‘generals’ to be illiterate bumpkins or pseudo intellectual oafs. Secondly he was appalled that many of the SA ‘generals’ including Roehm were obvious homosexuals or ‘perverts’ of some description, and that Hitler tolerated this. Thirdly he intended to grab as much power as possible, and that could only happen if he called the shots in his own independent organization. Though a lapsed Catholic, Himmler admired the Jesuit Order of priests for their militant defense of Christianity and the Roman Catholic Church, and he declared that his SS would become the ‘Jesuits’ of the Nazi Party. With this goal in mind Himmler recruited more SS members, expanding the force from a few hundred to several thousand in just two years. These new recruits came directly into the SS without having been an SA stormtrooper first.

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  Hitler may well have remained a mere footnote in history but for the events on Wall Street in New York City in October 1929. The crash of the American stock market soon reverberated around the world and every nation was affected, some distressingly so. In fact it appeared that the only nations to escape the worst effects were those with a strong police state apparatus, such as Stalin’s Communist Soviet Union and Mussolini’s Fascist Italy.

  Within months millions of Germans were out of work and favoritism was rampant among employers. The political armies, including the SA, gained many new recruits, who hop
ed to have a better chance of a job if they ‘belonged’. Moreover, the Nazi party made sure that kids of SA and SS members did not go hungry, so the SA grew from a few thousand to over 400,000 in the three years following the Wall Street Crash. And Himmler’s SS grew proportionally right along with the rest of the SA.

  Racially speaking, the Nazis accepted all Nordics, Germanics and Alpine Celtics, though Himmler went one better and for his own SS he drew the line at Alpine Celtics. In other words he refused to recruit people who looked like he did! Not only he but Hitler too was an Alpine Celtic. German citizenship in itself meant nothing to the Nazis. E.g. German citizens who were ethnically Jewish, Danish, Frisian, Wend, Polish, Lithuanian or Gypsy were excluded from the Nazi party, whereas a non-citizen of the right ethnic background was acceptable. Thus Hitler, who by 1929 was still not a German citizen, was allowed to be a party member.

  The Nazis used the term ‘Aryan’ to describe acceptable ethnicity. Here was a lie. The term Aryan actually refers to the early peoples of Northern India. The Nazis hijacked the term for their own ends, using it in their phony pseudo-scientific racial theories.

  As far as Himmler was concerned an SS candidate had to prove acceptable Aryan ethnicity as far back as the year 1800, and 1750 for officer candidates. If married, a recruit’s spouse had to fit into this ‘Aryan’ racial category too. Himmler retained the right to refuse an SS member’s marriage application if the prospective bride was not racially sound.