HITLER’S
Bandit Hunters
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HITLER’S
Bandit Hunters
The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe
Philip W. Blood
Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Copyright© 2006 by Potomac Books, Inc.
Blood, Philip W., 1957–
Hitler’s bandit hunters: the SS and the Nazi occupation of Europe / Philip W. Blood.—
1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-59797-021-2 (alk. paper)
1. World War, 1939–1945—Occupied territories. 2. World War, 1939–1945—
Destruction and pillage—Europe. 3. Internal security—Europe—History–20th century.
4. Waffen-SS. I. Title.
D802.A2B66 2006
940.54’1343—dc22
2005032891
ISBN-10 1-59797-021-2
ISBN-13 978-1-59797-021-1
Printed in Canada on acid-free paper that meets the American
National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard.
Potomac Books, Inc.
22841 Quicksilver Drive
Dulles, Virginia 20166
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Geh nicht nach Norden, und hüte dich
Vor jenem König in Thule,
Hüt dich vor Gendarmen und Polizei,
Vor der ganzen historischen Schule.
Don’t go North and beware
of the king in Thule,
Beware of gendarme and police
of the historic school.
From the poem “Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen”
by Heinrich Heine (1844)
in Atta Troll: Ein Sommernachtstraum,
Deutschland: Ein Wintermärchen.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Bibliographic Abbreviations
PART ONE: ORIGINS AND IMPLEMENTATION
1. Security Warfare
2. The New Order
3. Hitler’s Bandenbekämpfung Directive
PART TWO: BANDENBEKÄMPFUNG
4. Bandenbekämpfung Operational Concept
5. Die Bandenkampfverbände
6. Das Bandenkampfgebiet
7. Die Bandenunternehmungen
PART THREE: CLIMATIC DECLINE
8. Poland
9. Western Europe
10. Deniability
Conclusion
Diagrams
Appendix 1:
Glossary of Bandenbekämpfung and Related Terminology
Appendix 2:
German Rank Structures
Appendix 3:
The Perpetrators
Appendix 4:
The Mixed Fortunes of Former Bandenkampfverbände in 1965
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Author
FOREWORD
This book does not make for comfortable reading. It is a meticulous examination of Bandenbekämpfung, a term that has much broader and more pervasive meaning than simply “antipartisan warfare” and that characterized the German approach to security in occupied areas during the Second World War. Philip Blood demonstrates that the concept predated this conflict and actually stretched into Germany’s colonial past and its conduct in France in the Franco–Prussian War of 1870–71. Indeed, by its conception of “bandits” as microbes hostile to the very existence of the body politic, its roots go deeper, to the Thirty Years’ War or even to the Roman Empire. But on September 16, 1941, a decree under Keitel’s signature established Bandenbekämpfung as the strategic doctrine behind the Germanization of Europe. It affirmed that immediate and drastic action was imperative at the first sign of trouble, and the death penalty was to be used lavishly as a reprisal: this was how “great peoples restored order.” The implementation of this doctrine was eventually to become the responsibility of an SS officer who occasionally changed his name but is best known as Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. He had served as an infantry officer in the First World War and by 1942 was the higher SS and police leader in the region of Russia-Centre. In August 1942, he became inspector of Bandenbekämpfung for the entire eastern area and was speedily appointed “plenipotentiary” that autumn, representing Himmler in all relevant matters and providing a key link between the SS and the Wehrmacht. But, in a way so typical of the rival fiefdoms that characterized the Nazi state, there were numerous squabbles and overlaps, and Bach-Zelewski’s appointment in mid-1943 as Chef der Bandenbekampfverbände, responsible, as he put it “for all partisan reports for the whole of Europe,” was intended to produce overall coherence.
Philip Blood describes Bandenbekampfverbände as “an exceptional form of information warfare and the driving force of an asset-stripping strategy that encompassed extermination and enslavement.” The details of the process and the troops involved, including formations that combined SS Police with Waffen-SS units, a variety of non-German units, and even the Dirlewanger brigade recruited from criminals serving prison sentences, are carefully cataloged. For instance, in 1943, Operation “Nasses Dreiek” (“Wet Triangle”) near Kiev, involved an ad hoc battle group supported by river police, a Luftwaffe signals regiment, pro-German Cossacks, and Hungarian supporting troops, with support from dive-bombers, which attacked a village “to cleanse it of enemies and return to its legal standing.” Although 843 “bandits” were killed and another 205 summarily executed, only ten rifles were recovered. The operation’s commander explained that this was because the bandits either buried their weapons or dropped them in swamps, but it is hard not to discern the wholesale brutality that characterized such operations. In another case, a Luftwaffe noncommissioned officer reported that “we had orders to kill all persons over five years of age.” In contrast, Operation “Wehrwolf,” which used Germans, Russians, Italians, Ukrainians, Poles, and Hungarians against a well-organized force under Major General Kovpak in 1943, saw substantial casualties on both sides.
Philip Blood uses abundant documentary and oral evidence to take us beyond the verdict of Christopher Browning’s ground-breaking Ordinary Men, his study of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in Poland, by examining the policy and structure that enabled ordinary men to do such extraordinarily dreadful things. Both historians observe the phenomenon, which still gives us pause for thought: men capable of carrying out deeds that might make us doubt our common humanity were themselves subject to the whole gamut of human emotions. Finally, Dr. Blood concludes by warning us that the events that he describes may not simply be confined to history, for he suggests that in the post-September 11 world “the impulses to turn to Bandenbekämpfung still resonate
.”
RICHARD HOLMES
JANUARY 2006
PREFACE
This book is the offspring of doctoral and post-doctoral research started in November 1997. Following a brief survey of literature and broad discussions with Professor Richard Holmes, I decided to focus my research on the Nazi implementation of Bandenbekämpfung—“the combating of bandits”—in the period 1942–45. In keeping with most students, I raised a suitably vague and general question to get the process under way: Why did the Nazis discard the term “antipartisan warfare” (Partisanenbekämpfung) and adopt Bandenbekämpfung, if the words meant the same thing? The original plan called for a typical analysis of the origins, formulation, and implementation of Bandenbekämpfung. I thought this analysis might extend the existing historiography by only a small step, but all the same, it would fulfil the requirements of a doctorate. In the immortal words of Robert Burns, “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” and so they proved. Early in the research process, it was apparent that Bandenbekämpfung was a highly complex subject. It was not a simple case of antipartisan warfare dressed up in Nazified language but rather a completely different approach to the administration of security, opening up a new perspective on Nazism. Instead of pinpointing the origins of Bandenbekämpfung in the recent past, it appears that generations of German soldiers acquired their blueprints from antiquity. The formulation of Bandenbekämpfung into an operational concept was complex with several stages of development. It was no surprise, therefore, when the implementation was neither confined to a single theater of operations nor directed toward one enemy. Right up until the very end, the character and shape of Bandenbekämpfung proved very illusive, and the subject is far from being closed with this book.
Nazi Bandenbekämpfung was not Partisanenbekämpfung as it is so often assumed. After the war, it was convenient for allied war crimes prosecutors to adopt simple translations in the proceedings. The German defendants trying to avoid responsibility for war crimes preferred sweeping translations. Thus Bandenbekämpfung was officially treated as Partisanenbekämpfung. The first impression one should take from this is that words, translations, and interpretations play a significant part in history. Many German words do not translate well into English or lose their power when translated; Bandenbekämpfung is one such example. It was derived from two words: Banden, which means criminal bands(s) or gang(s), and Bekämpfung, to combat or to fight. The members of such bands or gangs are called bandits (Banditen) or gangsters, and collectively they conducted banditry or gangsterism. In effect the compound form of Banden and Bekämpfung meant combating banditry or gangsterism to its absolute eradication or extermination. The subtlety of this wordplay lies in its influence on the interpretation of legality and illegality in combatant classification. The tradition of the partisan, under German military law and in the general professionalization of warfare, was a legally recognized combatant function. The bandit or gangster has always been treated as an outcast and a criminal. Therefore, the implementation of Bandenbekämpfung was first concerned with the reclassification of certain enemy combatants and second, with their extermination.
Nazification was the final stage of a long process of militarization of Bandenbekämpfung. During and after the Thirty Years’ War, Bandenbekämpfung was practiced to eradicate roaming bands and organized by local communities. Prior to the Napoleonic age, Bandenbekämpfung was a purely civilian law and order issue. The first cases of the modern militarized form of Bandenbekämpfung, adopting small unit tactics to restore order, was introduced by the French gendarmerie during the occupation of the Rhineland, in the effort to combat banditry. German states adopted Bandenbekämpfung methods as a matter of course, especially in 1848 to counter revolution. During the Franco–Prussian War (1870–71), German troops resorted to Bandenbekämpfung as a means to eradicate French resistance (the francs-tireurs) but mostly to combat random acts of French armed civil disobedience against the occupation. During this campaign, the German army began the process of institutionalizing and internalizing a broad security apparatus. The Etappen, originally concerned with rear-area support functions in the Prussian army, was transformed after 1872. The purpose of this security establishment was to support the army at the front while securing its rear. Between 1871 and 1919, with a burgeoning security establishment, the German army collected together practices that can be loosely termed security warfare (refer to chapter 1). Operationally, this form of warfare embraced colonization, occupation, pacification, and intervention, of which Bandenbekämpfung was one facet.
Race, Space, and War
All said and done, Bandenbekämpfung was only a tool of the state. The reason it was adopted and adapted by the state is an altogether different issue. The race for space and space for race, purified by a perpetual state of war—these fundamental abstractions represented Hitler’s ideological trinity, from which he never wavered. For public consumption, he dressed them up with political slogans for a greater German empire, the purity of the Aryan race, and short wars of revenge and retribution. Hitler’s ambition was to bequeath German “living space” (Lebensraum), a concept not conjured up by him and incorrectly assumed to mean only the acquisition of territory. Hitler’s Lebensraum was about German existence, in its broadest meaning, in a Germanic world. There had been other versions. Woodruff Smith argued that Lebensraum was a product of nineteenth-century agrarian-based anti-industrialism. 1 During World War I, according to Fritz Fischer, Lebensraum came to shape Germany’s long-term occupation ambitions.2 After 1918, Germany’s grand exponent of Lebensraum, Karl Haushofer, a retired army general and professor at Munich University, was a prolific scholar who advocated the science of space (Raumwissenschaft) or geo-political studies.3 Ian Kershaw thought Hitler met Haushofer, through Rudolf Hess, before 1922.4 Whatever the circumstances, by the time Mein Kampf was published, Hitler’s spatial politics were cast in stone along with his racism. Hitler wrote, “When we speak of new territory in Europe today we must principally think of Russia and the Border States subject to her.” His scheme was not confined to land; Hitler’s expansion envisaged racial cleansing. He synthesized his idea for space in the East with a parody of Karl Marx’s “Jewish question” prophesying, “The end of the Jewish domination in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state.” From the outset, Hitler’s grandiose ambitions demanded a foundation of destruction. His vision became Germany’s fate: “We are chosen by Destiny to be the witnesses of a catastrophe which will afford the strongest confirmation of the nationalist theory of race.”5
Bandenbekämpfung, in the context of race, space, and war, had a longer pedigree than Lebensraum. By the time Hitler’s protégé, Heinrich Himmler, proposed it, it had undergone numerous makeovers. Before World War II, the history of banditry in Germany was presumed to have been the residue of the apocalyptic Thirty Years’ War. Bandits in bands, deserters and stragglers from the war, ravaged German towns and countryside.6 The paranoia of that time still resonates deep within the German consciousness today. According to Uwe Danker, it was in the interests of the state and church to depict banditry as a threat to society. The church and state complex denounced criminal banditry as the vile act of immoral and ungodly men and outlawed bandits as robbers and murderers.7 From the outset of state-sponsored education, banditry was portrayed as the antithesis of an ordered society of lawfulness. Criminal banditry, however, was not the only form of banditry rooted in the consciousness of pre-1939 German society. Political banditry, defined in antiquity as an early form of terrorism or guerrilla warfare, was passed down through the Bible and ancient texts. Banditry or brigandage was as an endemic problem for ancient Rome. Classically educated Germans were tutored against the evils of political banditry and its social consequences. For generations of Germans, Bandenbekämpfung came to mean the restoration of law and order. Himmler was not, therefore, the first to exploit security for political ends.
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche warned Prussia again
st the manipulation of history and the emulation of the past. His words proved prophetic. The distortion of history played its part in German security culture. When Victor Klemperer accused Hitler’s “Jewish war” of lacking any familiarity with Flavius Josephus’s book, he overlooked the classically educated Himmler.8 Gebhardt Himmler, Heinrich’s father, was a classical scholar and court teacher.9 He read excerpts of Josephus’s classical text to young Himmler, and there is every reason to believe this subject was discussed in the Himmler home, especially once the new translation by Dr. Heinrich Clementz was published in 1900.10 In the “Jewish war” of antiquity, Roman soldiers “admired the nobility” of the mass suicide of Jews at Masada. By stark contrast, in Hitler’s Jewish war, the SS showed only contempt and loathing for its Jewish victims. Hitler drew parallels with ancient Rome in his table talk. He once explained to Himmler that Rome paid for its mastery in blood and the employment of mercenaries.11 Martin Van Creveld noted that underpinning the Roman system was the principle of lex talionis, making the punishment fit the crime, a law for retaliation. The Romans exploited the law to suit their purposes.12 The Germans, in the name of Roman law, did much the same, and Himmler applied a form of lex talionis through so-called revenge actions (Vergeltungs-massnahmen). Himmler understood the meaning of Josephus and the dire implications for Germany if Hitler’s war against the Jews failed. After the war, in a state of utter collapse, one leading Nazi reflected in his Nuremberg cell that the collapse of Germany was synonymous with the fall of Carthage. In 1945, he was presumably alluding to the surrounding piles of rubble.13 These classical influences were instrumental in shaping the character of Bandenbekämpfung.
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