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

by J. Lee Ready

  Meanwhile the remainder of Stahlecker’s men ordered Jews to perform manual labor, often toilet cleaning and street sweeping, and the hiwis stood around yelling insults and laughing as bankers and lawyers were made to get down on their knees to clean toilet floors.

  At Vilnius in Lithuania some of Stahlecker’s men began regular ‘aktion’ after hiring about 150 Lithuanian hiwis. Vilnius [Vilna] is at a crossroads and was claimed by Germany, Lithuania, Poland and Russia.

  Initially Einsatzgruppe A only shot men - Communists, Gypsies and Jews. There does seem to have been an initial reluctance on the part of the killers to execute Jews and Gypsies without the proper legal cover, as if they expected to be investigated by the German police at some stage, thus their reports mentioned things like ‘courts martial’, ‘trials’, ‘legal proceedings’, ‘in accordance with martial law’ and so on. They also described the victims as ‘looters’, ‘partisans’, ‘shot while trying to escape’ or ‘shot in retaliation’. Invariably the victims were men and usually of normally accepted military age, i.e. around seventeen to forty-five. It must be realized that many of the members of the einsatzgruppe were policemen, who had that civil servant mentality. They insisted on crossing the‘t’ and dotting the ‘i’, namely giving a reason for the shootings. Furthermore as ‘cops’ they were used to having a public prosecutor lean over their shoulder now and then.

  When the einsatzgruppe personnel saw that locals hated Jews, they were pleased, but they were also concerned because these local Jew-haters had been arrested by the German Army for killing Jews. Members of the einsatzgruppe were told by their officers time and again that their mission was legal, but out here in ‘Russia’ where they had to rely on the German Army and Waffen SS for protection against partisans, they did not want to antagonize their protectors. Their reports of lawful executions of ‘partisans’ and ‘looters’ etc, were meant for the Army as much as anyone, so that they would not suddenly find themselves under arrest by military police for murder, the way local Jew-haters had been arrested.

  Smaller teams from SS Einsatzgruppe A went roving to outlying villages looking for Jews. They simply asked for them, and the local Lithuanian Christians often accompanied by their priest pointed out the Jews. These Germans and their hiwis then rounded up all Jewish men of approximate military age, stripped them of their clothing [for resale] and shot them naked in heaps in ditches and newly dug graves. There was no secrecy. In fact the local Christian men, women and children usually went along, shouting jeers and insults at their Jewish neighbors, and then they sat down with sausages and bread and picnicked at the execution site and cheered with every volley of shots. Their children played by imitating the shootings.

  Newly hired Lithuanian hiwis helped Einsatzgruppe A to shoot 1,150 Jewish men in Dvinsk and almost 4,000 outside of Kovno.

  Because Stahlecker’s SS men found such a willing populace in Lithuania, by August 1941 an ‘aktion’ in Lithuania might require no more than a half-dozen German einsatzkommando members, because they were helped by scores of Lithuanian hiwis. Usually the shooting itself was performed by Germans, no more than two or three being required.

  The new SSPF for Lithuania, Brigadefuehrer Lucian Wysocki, seemingly had little control over Stahlecker.

  In fact the Germans were constantly astonished at the virulence of anti-Semitism especially in small towns. After all the einsatzkommando members themselves did not especially hate Jews. They were professional killers or psychotics or sociopaths, who would have murdered left-handed people if that had been the order. The silliness of it all was that the einsatzkommando members were ordered to kill half Jews as well as full Jews, while in Germany half Hews [1st degree Mischlings] were at liberty and many were still serving in the armed forces. If members of an einsatzkommando in the Soviet Union knowingly ran into a German 1st degree Mischling they would have arrested him and shot him, even if he was a German army officer!

  Sturmbannfuehrer Rudolf Batz’s SS Einsatzkommando [of SS Einsatzgruppe A] moved into Latvia, where he too found eager hiwi recruits. Already in the city of Riga a local mob had burned down two synagogues with their congregations inside.

  There is no evidence that the German Army’s rear echelon soldiers who remained in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia took part in these exterminations or aided the einsatzgruppe, but the latter must have been pleased to find that the army occupation commander chosen for these three countries was Generalmajor Walter Braemer, who following his retirement from the army had joined the Allgemeine SS. Recalled by the army for the war, he still retained his rank of Brigadefuehrer in the SS reserves.

  Sturmbannfuehrer Martin Sandberger’s Sonderkommando [of SS Einsatzgruppe A] moved into Estonia, but here he did not find many volunteers. Anti-Semitism in Estonia was not nearly as rife as in other parts of the Soviet Union. Thus the SSPF for Estonia, Oberfuehrer Hinrich Mueller, had a different experience than his counterparts elsewhere in the east.

  There were also plenty of partisans in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, so much so that Stahlecker’s killers soon requested protection. Himmler sent them the 1st SS Motorized Brigade. The commander of the 8th SS Totenkopf Regiment within this brigade was Brigadefuehrer Leo von Jena, a 65-year-old retired army officer!

  SS Einsatzgruppe B commanded by Gruppenfuehrer Arthur Nebe [temporarily on sabbatical from his job as head of the Kripo] moved into Byelorussia behind Army Group Center and quickly hired Byelorussian hiwis. Together they shot 700 Jewish men at Bialystok, over 300 in Vitebsk, almost 200 in Gorodok, about 200 at Baranovice, over a thousand in Minsk, another thousand in Slonim, to name but a few ‘aktion’. These killers too demanded protection from partisans, and on at least one occasion some members of the SS Das Reich Division ‘protected’ them while they moved into villages to kill defenseless civilians.

  The task appeared daunting, and Himmler suspected he had too few killers in his einsatzgruppe. He therefore ordered units of the Police Reserve to take part too. Most of these men had volunteered to help Himmler run his police state. They were not the rank and file cops of the pre-Nazi days who had joined to catch thieves. At Bialystok the 309th Police Battalion rounded up hundreds of Jewish men, calling them ‘looters’ and/or ‘partisans’, and crammed them into a synagogue and then burned the building down around them. In mid-July the 316th Police and 322nd Police Battalions entered Bialystok to shoot another 3,000 Jewish men. The 307th Police Battalion entered Brest Litovsk and began almost daily shootings of Jewish men in ‘retaliation for partisan attacks’. The 322nd Police Battalion shot male Jews at Bialovic and Marovka-Mala.

  SS Einsatzgruppe C commanded by Oberfuehrer Otto Rasch followed Army Group South into Galicia/Ukraine and was swamped by hiwi volunteers from among the local Ukrainian population. Reaching Lwow they found that the local Christians had already murdered 7,000 Jews in recent days, their corpses piled in heaps or hanging from hundreds of lampposts. One of Rasch’s officers was Standartenfuehrer Erhard Kroeger, who had been born in Latvia.

  To protect SS Einsatzgruppe C from partisan attack Himmler sent them units of the Police Reserve: Polizei Hauptmann Franz Zipperling’s Company of the 5th Police Battalion and Polizei Hauptmann Walter Krumme’s Company of the 9th Police Battalion. Thus protected SS Einsatzgruppe C could get on with its mission without hindrance, shooting 80 Jewish men at Dobromil, 300 in Chmielnik, about 800 in Vinitsa, 300 at Sokal, 2,000 near Lutsk and a thousand or so at Zhitomir.

  SS Einsatzgruppe D commanded by Gruppenfuehrer Otto Ohlendorf, a thirty-four year old economist and lawyer, expected a different experience, for they had to drive through Romania and then follow the Romanian Army into Ukrainia before reaching their operational zone. Naturally they kept their mission secret from the Romanians. However, their experience was in fact similar. They found that the invading Romanians were also butchering Jews randomly, sometimes displaying their corpses in butcher shop windows as a joke. In one incident Romanian troops locked 8,000 Jews in stationary freight rail cars without food or
water. A week later they opened the cars and shot the few survivors. Tens of thousands of Romanian soldiers were Volksdeutsch, but there is no evidence that they were more anti-Semitic than their ethnically Romanian fellow soldiers. In fact the worst offenders were members of the Iron Guard and the Blueshirts, two fanatically Christian ethnically Romanian political parties.

  At Storozhinets and at Chernovtsy Sturmbannfuehrer Paul Zapp’s Sonderkommando [of SS Einsatzgruppe D] including Ukrainian hiwis shot 12,000 Jews in a few days. They were accompanied by a Romanian police unit. Then this traveling circus moved on to Kishinev and shot 12,287 Jews, Communists and other undesirables over a two-week period in July.

  Though Cracow was part of the General Government, and therefore not part of the ‘special aktion’ authorized by Himmler, Oberfuehrer Eberhard Schoengarth the BdS of the Cracow district decided to imitate the mass murder taking place further east, and he created his own SS einsatzgruppe from SD, Gestapo and Kripo personnel. Over the next few months this einsatzgruppe hunted down Jews and Polish intellectuals, killing approximately 10,000 people. There is no evidence that the local police [commanded by Polizei Generalleutnant Paul Riege and later by Polizei Oberst Rudolf Mueller] provided any assistance, but neither did they interfere.

  Traveling behind Army Group Center was another such unit with the mission of sending undesirables to ‘special treatment’. Commanded by Standartenfuehrer Franz Six it had the rather ambitious title of SS Moscow Vorkommando.

  As early as 30 June on a visit to Grodno Himmler and Heydrich had expressed their dissatisfaction with the executions. The killers were just not aggressive enough, they felt. On 9 July while visiting Artur Nebe at Bialystok Himmler and Heydrich emphasized that all Jews were to be treated as captured partisans, meaning they were to be shot. Following such urging, the killers of the einsatzgruppe began to include Jewish men too old for military service. They were told again to kill ‘all Jews‘. So in time they expanded their list of victims to include Jewish teenage boys. They were told again: ‘all Jews‘. So, after a while they began shooting women, and eventually even small children. It was as if they had to test the legal waters by putting their toe in the bloodbath first, before wading and then swimming in it. The 316th Police Battalion would massacre almost 4,000 Jewish men, women and children at Baranovice and Mogilev.

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  Chapter Twelve

  NEW RECRUITS

  When the Finns fought the Soviets 1939-40 many foreigners came to fight for the Finns, including Swedes, Americans and Estonians. Come June 1941 some of these Swedes, Americans and Estonians were still in the Finnish Army and thus became involved in this new venture against the Soviets. The Finns were not anti-Semitic and Jewish Finns fought alongside their Christian brothers.

  Once the German invasion of the Soviet Union had begun many young men in Western Europe expressed an eagerness to join the crusade. They had become disgusted by the atheism and brutality of the Communists, and they were eager to fight the anti-Christ, i.e. Stalin. Their religious leaders were highly influential in this decision-making process.

  For example, upon hearing of the invasion of the Soviet Union, Leon Degrelle’s Roman Catholic Christus Rex Party of Belgian Walloons formed an infantry battalion to fight on the Russian Front. Degrelle insisted on joining as a grenadier, as he had no prior military experience. The Netherlands raised a legion of 2,500 anti-Communist infantry. The Belgian Flemings recruited 875 men for the Flanders Legion. One of them was Rene Lagrou, a founder of the Flemish SS, and another was Reimond Tollenaere, erstwhile commander of the Fascist VNV militia. In Norway 1,200 anti-Communists formed the Norwegian Legion. The Danish Frikorps, a battalion-sized infantry unit, was raised to fight on the Russian Front. The French created a 2,642 strong legion, and it began preparations to fight alongside the German Army 7th Bavarian Division. About 200 of these Frenchmen were in fact Moslem Algerians. [Algerians were French citizens, not colonial subjects.]

  None of these foreign troops listed above were members of the German or their own national armed forces, whereas the foreigners serving in the SS Wiking and other Waffen SS units were bona fide SS members. E.g. the French Legion was raised by private political parties, but did have the blessing of the French government. A legionnaire, such as eighteen year old Eugene Vaulot, only had authority within his unit, whereas a German NCO or officer assigned to the unit to train it retained his army or SS authority. This became confusing, especially if the ‘German’ was in fact a foreigner.

  However, Himmler had his paws on every one of these legions in some fashion or other. In fact he insisted that the Flanders Legion and Netherlands Legion had to have SS cadres.

  The Danish Frikorps was the sole exception as this unit was raised by the Danish government and included serving soldiers and volunteers who would receive Danish Army service credit. Its commander would be General Christian Kryssing. In other words it was as much a part of the Danish Army as any unit. And the Danish government was certainly under no pressure to raise the force. Thus Denmark had voluntarily become a de fact ally of Germany.

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  Despite all of this help, the Germans were still desperate for manpower to keep the partisan menace at bay. Therefore in Byelorussia they created the BNS - Byelorussian Popular Self-Defense Corps of full-time, part-time and reservist militiamen. In the Ukraine the UNS - Ukrainian Popular Self-Defense Corps was formed in an almost identical manner. Byelorussians and Ukrainians volunteered for these formations for several reasons. For one thing it prevented them from being deported to work in factories and mines in Germany. Hundreds of thousands of their fellow countrymen had been given orders to report for work in Germany. Almost a half million Ukrainian women had been sent to Germany to work as housemaids for Nazi Party members!

  According to official Soviet propaganda the partisans were made up of the ordinary people, i.e. the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Byelorussians, Ukrainians and Russians. However, looking deeper one finds that in those areas conquered by the Soviets since 1939 and then ‘liberated’ by the Germans in summer 1941 [Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Eastern Poland and the eastern districts of Romania] few partisans belonged to the majority ethnic group. Indeed the majority welcomed the arrival of the Germans and Romanians as liberators. However, there were three ethnic groups indigenous to these lands that did not see the Germans as liberators: the Gypsies, the ethnic Russians and the Jews.

  The Gypsies of eastern Europe bore no resemblance to the tramps and fortune tellers of northwestern Europe, who excused their lifestyle with the name ‘Gypsy’ that they had no right to use. Real Gypsies were ethnically different, spoke their own Romany language and lived apart from society and mistrusted everyone. The ethnic Russians were descended from people who had lived in these locales for generations during the time that the Russian Empire controlled it all, and the end of that empire in 1917 had not changed their allegiance. When the Soviet Russian armies invaded in the 1939-40 period these Russians collaborated with the Soviet invaders to various degrees. But in June 1941, when the Soviet Army fled ahead of the Axis invaders, many of the Russians fled with them, their Russian language, culture and religion holding far more weight than their Lithuanian or Polish passport.

  Religious Jews did not welcome the arrival of the Soviets, because atheistic communism held no allure for them, nor did the prospect of being ruled by Jew-hating Russians appeal to them, but they could live with it if they kept their noses clean and were willing to sacrifice the intellectuals among them to the voracious appetite of the ‘monster’ Stalin. However, they were quite surprised to find that many of the Communist commissars and NKVD officers were Jews, so there was little evidence that the old days of serious Russian anti-Semitic pogroms would return. [Pogrom, celebrating an event by beating up Jews - even killing a few.] With the Nazi invasion in June 1941, however, the Jews soon realized that under the Nazis they were headed for slavery at best, extinction at worst. They had no choice but to flee along with the Soviet ar
my if they could.

  And here Stalin saw his opportunity. He wanted to tell the world he had established all-Lithuanian and all-Latvian units etc to convince the world that the peoples he had conquered since 1939 preferred him to Hitler. But he found few men of these ethnic groups willing to serve him. However, he did have some conscripts from these ethnic groups already serving, so he placed them into their own units and beefed them up with ethnic Russians and Jews and Gypsies who had grown up in these lands. He fooled no one, especially when journalists visited the units expecting to hear the Latvian and Lithuanian languages at the campfire and instead heard Russian, Romany and Yiddish.

  Soon Stalin went one better and decided to send many of these ‘Latvians’ and ‘Lithuanians’ back to their homelands to fight as partisans. After all, they knew the geography. Some of them infiltrated the front line, which was never contiguous, while others dropped by parachute or sailed by boat. Once they arrived home they began to recruit their Russian, Jew and Gypsy friends and relatives.

  Thus whenever a Latvian policeman or a Lithuanian Siauliai militiaman was killed by partisans, his friends and family did not look upon this as the regrettable result of a clash between soldiers of Communist versus Nazi ideologies, but rather as a crime in which their Christian crusader was murdered by atheist Russians and Christ-killing Jews. And this is exactly how the priests described such deaths at the funerals. As a result anti-Semitism in these lands actually increased in ferocity. The offshoot of this was good for the SS and police, because it meant more and more Lithuanians and Latvians volunteered as hiwis or militiamen or schumas.