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

by J. Lee Ready

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  Chapter Eighteen

  YUGOSLAVIAN CAULDRON

  In Yugoslavia Tito’s partisans were not only still active, but if anything were stronger, so another international offensive was organized in the spring of 1942, this time by General Baader who had at his disposal three Italian divisions, the German 718th Security Division and ten Croat battalions of army and Ustaci. The fighting lasted a month and ended when the attackers became exhausted. The Titoists escaped.

  In June Tito proved he was alive and well when he and his partisan army invaded Bosnia. Yet another international coalition had to be formed against him. Initially the brunt of this assault was borne by the German 714th Security Division and Croat 1st Mountain Division plus Croat policemen and Ustaci, while Croat, German and Italian aircraft pounced on the partisans in the mountains like eagles picking off rabbits.

  At the beginning of July as the Titoists approached Sarajevo, the Croats counterattacked with their III Corps. The Titoists fell back under this onslaught.

  Still the Titoists had not been crushed. Hitler was angry, because troops that could have been fighting in Russia were tied down in this backwater conflict. To occupy Yugoslavia the Axis had to set aside an equivalent of over forty divisions, broken down into: four security and two infantry divisions of the German Army; sixteen divisions of the Italian Army; one division of the Hungarian Army; six divisions of the Bulgarian Army; the entire Croat Army [but for two regiments on the Russian Front]; the Croat Ustaci militia; the Serb Army; the Cetnik guerilla army that was a de facto Axis partner by now; several Italian-sponsored militias raised from Slovenes, Bosnian Moslems and Montenegrins; the German-raised Wehrmannschaft of Slovenian Volksdeutsch; the German-raised Heimwehr of Serb [Banat] Volksdeutsch; and the 15,000 man Russian Self-Defense Corps. The latter, recruited from Russians, Ukrainians and Cossacks that had settled in Yugoslavia over the previous twenty years, was commanded by the Russian Oberst Anatole Rogozhin, and was given the job of protecting the Belgrade-Nis rail line using infantry and horse cavalry. In addition to the above military formations, there were field units of the German, Serb and Croat Police. Yet with all this firepower and manpower the Axis could not destroy the Titoists. Most of the militias could not have been used on the Russian Front, it is true, and Bulgaria was not at war with the Soviet Union. But this still left a hefty chunk of the Axis forces tied down here that could have been fighting Stalin. No wonder Stalin continued to send orders to Tito to ‘keep up the good work’.

  In fact the Axis commanders in Yugoslavia were asking for reinforcements, and Hitler acquiesced, ordering Himmler to send his 7th SS Prinz Eugen Mountain Division to southwest Serbia. One of the Prinz Eugen’s new officers was Hauptsturmfuehrer Richard Kaaserer from Trieste. Following Austrian Army service in World War One, he had refused to live in Trieste under Italian occupation, and moved to Austria proper. There he had been imprisoned for his Nazi attitude. He had then entered the SS RuSHA.

  Himmler authorized the 5th Police Regiment, currently patrolling for Titoists, to raise a battalion of Yugoslavian Volksdeutsch.

  Within those districts of Slovenia annexed to the Reich the German authorities were experiencing a low-key guerilla war against Titoists that was growing in intensity. The SA-controlled Wehrmannschaft militia was on constant alert. In 1942 the German Orpo gave Polizei Oberst Hermann Franz the mission of hunting down these ‘bandits’ with his new 18th Police Mountain Regiment raised from local Volksdeutsch. This regiment contained three light infantry battalions, an artillery battalion of packhorse guns, an intelligence section and a horse cavalry company. They began patrolling the forested mountains, and were soon joined by other Orpo units from Germany: the 3/24th Police Regiment, 3rd Police Battalion [now renamed 3/1st Police Regiment] and the 13th Police Regiment. One third of the latter was the 301st Police Battalion that had spent the last three years as an execution unit in Poland.

  Various methods were used to try to stamp out partisan activity. Sometimes captured guerillas were publicly beheaded by the Gestapo. Some small Slovene villages that were suspected of harboring guerillas were surrounded and the entire population deported to a village in German-occupied Russia!

  In August 1942 the SS RSHA asked the Croats to hand over their tens of thousands of Jews for ‘special treatment’. The Croats complied, but could only produce 9,000 emaciated starving wretches, all that could be found of the country’s Jewish population after the Ustaci death squads had done their work. These pitiable survivors were shoved aboard freight trains guarded by SS KZL and taken away to an extermination camp. Some Croat Jews were in hiding, others had joined the Titoists, and those lucky enough to escape to Italian territory were protected by Mussolini!

  Himmler’s SS recruiters were by now persona non grata in the Volksdeutsch communities of Banat, because Himmler had reneged on his promise when he forcibly confiscated the SS Einsatzstaffeln to fill up the SS Prinz Eugen. This was bad enough, but it also left the communities bereft of any protection except for the locally raised part-time Heimwehr. Ironically it was Himmler who came to the rescue. He sent police recruiters to the region, and they raised three regiments and ten independent battalions of full-time policemen to protect the communities. This well-paid and well-equipped force enabled a lot of Volksdeutsch to sleep easier.

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  Chapter Nineteen

  THE OTHER SS WAR 1942

  Considering the grotesque casualty lists of the Waffen SS in Russia it is understandable that whenever the other branches of the SS described their ‘war’ it really got under the skin of the Waffen SS. In beer halls and train stations there was many a fistfight between a healed Waffen SS soldier on his way back to the front and some SD or SS KZL member complaining about the inconveniences of being stationed at Kulmhof or Auschwitz or Warsaw.

  There is no doubt that some young recruits to the SS believed the claptrap about the ‘war against the Jews’ and the ‘enemy behind the wire’, but once they had completed their training and had reached their duty station in the SD or Gestapo or SS WVHA or SS KZL they soon realized the truth. Members of these branches fought tooth and nail to keep from being sent to front line duty with the Waffen SS. The last thing they wanted was to risk their own lives. Indeed the mere suggestion that one could be sent to the Russian Front was enough to bring a rebellious fellow into line.

  This attitude can be epitomized by Heydrich, who liked to inform magazines and newspapers that he was a ‘soldier’, and he described fictitious exploits. He even let his publicity department describe his actions as a fighter pilot [as a Luftwaffe major]! His flying was short lived, as the Luftwaffe regarded him as an embarrassment. His disregard for personal safety, which he flaunted in Prague, was phony. If he was that brave why was he not at the Demiansk Pocket, some SS Totenkopf soldiers might have whispered?

  In December 1941 Heydrich introduced forced labor in the Czech Protectorate. All males aged 16 to 65 and all females aged 17 to 45 were to be sent to Germany to work, unless they were already performing useful work in their hometowns. There were in fact some major war-related factories in the Protectorate, and of course the towns required policemen, sewage workers, civil servants, technicians and the like, so the new forced labor law did not actually affect that many people. Moreover, the Margarine Germans - those who signed on the dotted line as ‘Volksdeutsch’ - were exempt.

  Nonetheless about a quarter of a million Czechs were sent to Germany, but they were paid well, had time off, often lived in private apartments and were allowed one week’s leave per year. Their status was little different than volunteer workers, and they could usually alter their status to ‘volunteer’ by signing some piece of paper somewhere or asking for extra duty such as becoming a part-time fireman.

  One of the more comical acts was the racial census taken by the SS RuSHA in the Protectorate and the Sudetenland. The vast majority was found to be racially acceptable, but the figures were confusing. Within the Czech Protectorate 45% we
re deemed to have Germanic or Nordic blood and 15% had Alpine Celtic blood, with the remaining 40% having Slavic blood. Jews and Gypsies were not part of the study. Within the Sudetenland 25% had Germanic or Nordic blood and 70% Alpine Celtic blood, with 5% Slavic. Yet the Sudetens were all given German citizenship, whereas the Czechs were not. Moreover, within the Nazi ideal the ethnicity of Alpine Celtic was the least desirable of the three acceptable ethnicities. In other words according to this census the Nazis would have been better off to liberate the Czechs and conquer the Sudetens, not the other way around!

  Since March 1939 there had been a Czech government in exile in London, a group of politicians who had much ambition and absolutely no power whatsoever. Their armed forces consisted of an armored brigade training in Britain, an infantry battalion that fought the Germans and Italians in North Africa, and a few aircraft squadrons. But these politicians had no influence in the Protectorate. Moreover, spies informed them that the Czech people were actually beginning to feel secure under Nazi rule. Heydrich had just introduced old-age pension systems and sick pay. This latest report caused these exiled politicians to do something drastic. They put together a team of paratroopers to go to Prague and kill Heydrich. Their hope was that the Nazis would blame the Czech people and oppress them bloodily, so that the Czechs would turn away from the Nazis and towards these politicians in London for their future hopes.

  It is ironic that the man who organized the extermination of the Jews was to be assassinated not because he was despised, but because he was liked.

  The Czech paratroopers chosen for the mission were under no illusions. Of the sixteen agents flown into the Protectorate in the previous three years only two were still at liberty.

  On 27 May 1942, as Heydrich rode to work in his open top chauffeur-driven touring car, two of these paratroopers waited at a hairpin bend. When the car slowed down for the turn they threw a bomb into it. The explosion stopped the car, but the wounded Heydrich jumped up and fired a pistol at his assailants, and his chauffeur chased them with a drawn pistol. The two agents wounded the chauffeur, then ran off, but bumped into two Czech policemen. They gunned down one cop before he could draw his weapon. They escaped. A passing bread van driver picked up Heydrich and rushed him to a hospital.

  Hitler went into a rage. He ordered every member of the security forces in the Protectorate to surround Prague. This included German troops, the 108th Infantry Regiment of the Allgemeine SS, Czech policemen, German policemen including members of 20th Police Regiment Boehmen and 21st Police Regiment Maehren, SD, Gestapo, Kripo, SA [raised from local Volksdeutsch] and some Waffen SS stationed at a military school, plus Waffen SS recruits from a nearby training ground commanded by Oberfuehrer Bernhard Voss. They were all drafted in for the manhunt under the command of Polizei Generalleutnant Paul Riege They combed every building in the beautiful city. They nabbed several wanted men and found plenty of illegal goods, but no hint of the assassins. Meanwhile Czech doctors were fighting to save Heydrich’s life.

  Over the next week 157 of those arrested in Prague were shot.

  On 4 June 1942 Heydrich died. The Czech politicians in Prague proclaimed a state of mourning. The Czech politicians in London celebrated.

  Himmler named Gruppenfuehrer Kurt Daluege as Heydrich’s successor in the Protectorate, with Gruppenfuehrer Alfred Wuennenberg taking Daluege’s job as head of Orpo. As predicted Hitler did blame the Czech people and he and Himmler decided to retaliate. On Himmler’s orders a group of Gestapo, SD and Czech policemen surrounded the small village of Lidice and removed all the women and children. Then twenty-three hand-picked SD and Gestapo personnel went back into the village and shot all 196 men. The women and children were sent to a concentration camp, except for eight small children who appeared to be ‘Volksdeutsch’ so they were sent to be adopted by German parents. The buildings were then burned to rubble and the rubble was bull-dozed into dust.

  When a member of the anti-Nazi resistance was discovered hiding in the village of Lezaky, the SD and Gestapo shot every man and woman in the community and carted the kids off to a concentration camp.

  All told 1,357 Czech civilians were murdered in retaliation for the assassination.

  On 16 June 1942 a Czech resistance fighter defected to the police and told them everything, and the police swooped in to arrest most of the ‘gang’ of assassins. But seven of the ‘terrorists’ were still hiding out in a stone church in Prague. No fewer than 759 Waffen SS troops from the military school were sent to arrest these seven. They fought a gun battle for hours, and in desperation the SS pumped water into the basement to literally flush the men out. Only after several Waffen SS soldiers had been killed and wounded was the last of the ‘terrorists’ killed. Actually two committed suicide rather than be captured.

  Two events turned the Czech people completely around. One was the murder of innocents by the Nazis at Lidice, Lezaky and other places. The other was this heroic stand by the assassins. Suddenly the people began to hate the Germans again. Thus the whole sordid affair was a ‘victory’ for the politicians in London.

  Another result of the inability of the SS to control the Czechs was that the Ministry of Armaments run by Albert Speer began to take a serious look at the factories in that nation to see if production could be improved. They found that Himmler had been sitting on several inventions and innovations in the weapons, munitions and vehicle industries, especially at the great Skoda-Brno complex. Run by Wilhelm Voss, an honorary SS standartenfuehrer, that company was designing big, but producing little owing to the incompetence of the SS WVHA that presided over the necessary investment capital. Once Speer had Hitler’s ear he changed this situation and soon marginalized all SS production in the nation, so that within months the German armed forces was reaping major rewards, such as the manufacture of the new Marder 38t self-propelled gun.

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  In March 1942 in the General Government Hauptsturmfuehrer Christian Wirth established Belzec extermination camp. Polish slave labor built the camp and Wirth experimented with permanent gas chambers using carbon monoxide piped in from truck engines - Nebe‘s method. Satisfied, he declared his corpse-producing factory open for business. His staff consisted of just two dozen SS KZL men, most of whom had worked in the T-4 program, and to make sure the victims did not run away he had a hundred Ukrainian guards, most of whom had either been hiwis for the SS einsatzgruppe or had been trained at Trawniki. The Ukrainians were not SS members, but were hiwis in black uniforms with their own rank structure. One of them was Samuel Kunz.

  Once the camp was up and running, Himmler promoted Wirth to Inspector-General of three camps: Belzec and two new ones - Sobibor and Treblinka. Each of these would become a complex of camps with its own extermination center. Wirth’s immediate superior would be Odilo Globocnik, who despite being fired for corruption from his position as Gauleiter of Vienna, was promoted by Himmler to SSPF for the Lublin district. Another example of the ‘good character’ rules of the SS being ignored.

  Globocnik picked Franz Stangl to build and run Sobibor, about 100 miles east of Lublin. Stangl would only have a small German staff of a dozen or so and a couple of hundred Ukrainian hiwis. Stangl started out using carbon monoxide from truck engines piped into a cellar, i.e. Nebe’s method, but he soon switched to Fritsch’s method whereby the victims thought they were entering large public showers to be disinfected. Instead of water, Zyklon B gas came out of the showerheads. This not only made it simpler to get the victims into the killing rooms, but as they stripped off first and were shaven it meant that their clothing and hair would not be polluted by the gas, so that they could be sold. Stangl had been given a low budget.

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  In April 1942 Heinrich Mueller the chief of the Gestapo decided that German 1st degree Mischlings who were being treated in hospitals or sanatoriums should be arrested and sent for ‘special treatment’. This would even include those who had been wounded fighting for Germany.

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&
nbsp; By April 1942 Rumkowsky’s Jewish policemen at Lodz ghetto had supplied 55,000 Jews to the death camp at Kulmhof. The SS RSHA leadership, including the new Lodz Gestapo chief, Sturmbannfuehrer Otto Bradfisch, was well pleased with Rumkowsky. Bradfisch, a lawyer, had just spent several months with SS Einsatzgruppe B.

  However, the SS RSHA concluded that the Jewish policemen at Lwow ghetto were not efficient enough to handle a round up on their own, so in March 1942 Oberfuehrer Fritz Katzman the local SSPF sent SD and Gestapo members and Ukrainian hiwis into the ghetto to round up 15,000 Jews and entrain them for ‘special treatment’ at Belzec.

  In July at Rovno the authorities received the order to eliminate the local ghetto of 5,000 Jews. Once again Hermann Graebe the German businessman pleaded to exempt his own employees, and once again the SD agreed. The SD and Ukrainian schumas set Graebe’s workers aside, while they rounded up the remainder of the ghetto populace and crammed them aboard a train, but just minutes outside of town in a wood the train was stopped, the passengers ordered off, taken into the woods and in a frenzy of calculated gunfire they were all shot.

  The 101st Police Battalion of Polizei Major Wilhelm Trapp arrived at Lublin to serve in Globocnik’s district. These members of the Police Reserve had recently been resting at home in Hamburg, but while there they had been rushed to Luebeck in Germany to rescue trapped civilians following a particularly nasty British bombing raid. Seeing so many mutilated bodies of German women and children had naturally unnerved them, and many vowed revenge. Globocnik welcomed them and explained that their immediate prime duty would be to roam from village to village to arrest all Jews and take them to one of the camps. Any Jew who could not be moved, e.g. the bedridden, handicapped and elderly were to be shot there and then. For this mission he would reinforce them with Ukrainian hiwis. Trapp announced that anyone who wanted to back out of this horrible duty could do so. As the remainder of the battalion and its hiwis roamed from village to village and ghetto to ghetto the policemen often found there was insufficient transportation for their prisoners. In such cases only the fittest were sent off, and the rest were shot at makeshift execution sites. Often hundreds were shot in one day. Many of the dumber policemen took revenge on these Jews for the bombing raid on Luebeck. A pattern soon developed in which only a few actually did the shooting, and even then some of the shooters refused to kill women, and others refused to kill babies and toddlers. But out of every one hundred policemen there was always someone, a German or a Ukrainian, who would shoot anyone. Again, as had happened countless times before, many of the police and hiwis became outrageously drunk before each ‘aktion’, and as a result the shooting was often wildly inaccurate.