Once the invasion was in progress, plans and policies rapidly became redundant as the conditions fluctuated. Within weeks of the campaign, Hitler provided another example of his First World War consciousness. During a heated moment caused by Stalin’s declaration of a general guerrilla uprising, Hitler invoked memories of the franc-tireur complex of 1914. “This partisan war,” he declared, “has some advantage for us; it enables us to eradicate everyone who opposes us.” Ignoring the fact that he had unleashed a surprise attack of Russia, Hitler suggested they cloak their territorial ambitions and appear as the guardians of the Russian people. “We shall emphasise again,” he added, “that we were forced to occupy, administer, and secure a certain area; it was in the interest of the inhabitants.” Hitler wanted to disguise his real intentions: “Nobody shall be able to recognise that it initiates a final settlement. This need not prevent our taking all necessary measure— shooting, resettling, etc.—and we shall take them.” In an absurd remark, totally out of proportion with the program of mass killing and slaughter already in progress, Hitler said, “We do not want to make people into enemies prematurely and unnecessarily.”139 Typically for Nazi polycracy, Hitler ranted while the army struggled to find a suitable answer to the Soviet partisans. It wrestled over directives and guidelines, even tampering with the soldiers’ conduct. Characteristically, the army concentrated its efforts on controlling ground and targeting strong-arm blows against all incursions. On October 25, the Wehrmacht released its last major regulatory guidelines for combating partisans in the east. They proved ineffectual and took until November for Otto Winkelmann to relay them as binding on police troops.140
The decision to absorb Slav collaborators into the police was part of the calculated plan to raise a colonial police department within the SS-Police. The hurdle to raising Slav collaborationist manpower might appear to have been Hitler himself following one of his racist outbursts during the July 16 meeting:
We must never permit anybody but the Germans to carry arms! [translator’s italics] This is especially important; even when it seems easier at first to enlist the armed support of foreign subjugated nations, it is wrong to do so. In the end this will prove to be to our disadvantage unconditionally and unavoidably. Only the German may carry arms, not the Slav, not the Czech, not the Cossack nor the Ukrainian!141
However, within days Himmler and his cohorts had moved in an opposite direction. There is evidence indicating that the army was at least thinking about the colonial situation in the late 1930s:
The Schutztruppe had 260 Germans and 2,470 coloureds. In support there was a Polizeitruppe of 55 Whites and 2,140 coloureds. The proportion of coloureds and military protection troops [Schutztruppen] is in strong relation to the proportion to the population. The proportions in [Southwest Africa] were different where there were no coloured in the Schutztruppe whereas in the Polizeitruppe the coloureds represented 40% of all operatives.142
Himmler moved first and announced, on July 25, 1941, the formations of Russian collaboration police forces, the Schutzmannschaft (Schuma).143 These Schuma formations were organized under the inspector of Colonial Police. On November 4, 1941, the Schuma formations received official regulation through the Reich Ministry of Interior and were granted legal status as a regular branch within the police.144 This decision came after the Nazis had implemented a policy of killing millions of Soviet prisoners of war and citizens. Martin Dean found that the first duty of the Schuma was to man small outposts (Einzeldienst) erected by the gendarmerie, connecting towns and districts to a network of security.145 British intelligence made an early assessment of the Schuma:
[Police] units formed of local inhabitants are being enlisted in the central sector. But a good many difficulties are arising in the process: officers to take charge of the units cannot be released; and while questions of provisioning and pay are settled, that of their uniform and footwear is not. Russian uniform is ruled out as impossible, besides being difficult to procure. The units have been waiting “for weeks.”146
By December 1941, Georg Jedicke (BdO Ostland) could write to the Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei with precise muster numbers for Schuma battalions. He suggested 140 men per company, with three companies per battalion, and a battalion staff of forty. The desired strength for each battalion was expected to total seven hundred, and only under special circumstances or for local reasons were the numbers to drop below seven hundred.147
The language and terminology of the campaign was old and included many terms used against the Herero and in previous actions. No SS leader appears to have thought about the subject of secure communiqués prior to the campaign. The explicit nature of the language sprinkled throughout police signals included combating partisans (Partisanenbekämpfung), cleansing (Säuberung), and destruction (Vernichtung) consistent with operational terminology adopted from earlier conflicts.148 Victor Klemperer noted that, since his days in the Ober Ost, new words, such as “liquidated” (liquidiert), “executed” (exekutiert), and “shot” (erschossen), had been added to the Nazi lexicon to reflect the semi-automation of actions.149 This can be seen from messages in August 1941 that referred to combating “bandits” (Banden), the killing of 3,274 partisans (Partisanen) and Jews and 260 irregulars (Freischärler). The executions were attributed to the Police Battalion 309. In a message from August 24, references were made to the presence of “bandits,” irregulars, and parachutists, which resulted in the shooting of 70 Jews, 294 Jews, 61 Jews and 113 Jews, and 65 Bolshevik-Jews, respectively. These killings concluded a series of tasks, designated a cleansing action (Säuberungsaktion), commonly used in Namibia.150
Eventually it dawned on Daluege that someone other than the SS might be listening, and he warned against the use of overly explicit reporting:
The danger of decipherment by the enemy of wireless messages is great. For this reason, only such matters can be transmitted by wireless as can be considered open …, confidential or secret; but not information, which is containing State Secrets, calls for especially secret treatment. Into this category fall exact figures of executions (these are to be sent by courier post).151
The British tracked the change in transmissions language. “The effect of this was that situation reports from September 14 onward contained the enigmatic phrase ‘action according to the usage of war’ under the heading which had formerly contained the figures of executions.”152 By December, others were discussing the effects of the killings on the progress of the war. General Thomas, chief of the Economics and Armaments Office within OKW, received a report from his representative in the Ukraine. The report explained that the killing of the Jews took place publicly. Men of the Ukrainian militia and German army volunteers participated in the mass killing of more than one hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and children. The report summarized the effect of the killings. There had been a partial extermination of “superfluous eaters,” liquidation of those most hateful toward the Germans, removal of badly needed tradespeople, negative effects on foreign policy, and undermining of troop morale. The report also noted a “brutalising effect on the formations which carry out the executions—regular police—[Order Police].”153 Thus, camouflaging the evidence after its release and undermining the morale of the troops were only two of the strategic lapses in planning.154
The greatest strategic errors made by the SS-Police planners had been to place too much faith on the Wehrmacht and to assume it would be a short, successful campaign. There was little provision if the Soviet Union continued to fight. There were no instructions of how to respond to a complete breakdown in the infrastructure resulting from Red Army scorched-earth methods. The planners overlooked the problem of the weather and failed to prepare a contingency plan that addressed simple human requirements. As early as August 1941, the Police Regiment Centre received orders to take up positions east of Slutsk in Belorussia, and remain there for seven days. Being out of action exposed the regiment’s weakness of the relatively simple task of collecting their fuel ration. Because of
rules and regulations, the SS ration system procured and collected on an individual unit basis, rather than by convoy, from supply dumps. Release of the regiment’s fuel reserves could only be granted in times of combat. Further, the poor condition of the roads forced light loading procedures for vehicles and increased the number of trips to collect reserves and supplies, causing serious wear and tear. This Catch-22 situation caused unit deterioration. These problems were aggravated as regimental staff vehicles suffered breakdowns and were unable to receive maintenance or replacement.155
With the onset of severe weather, conditions deteriorated further. “We’re slowly sinking in mud,” Hermann Fegelein, the commander of the SS-Cavalry Brigade, cabled a friend in Berlin on September 4. “Be a good fellow and release two tractor-cars for the Brigade. You’ll really be doing us a good turn.” The British collected evidence of a virtual collapse of all SS-Police transportation. “The badness of the roads is the Leitmotiv of these decodes.” The road conditions led to a shortage of drivers exhausted from battling against the severe conditions.156 The strains on the system grounded courier flights, while trains departing east from Warsaw were limited to sixty per day. Men on leave, about to go on leave, or waiting for mail from home were stuck, and this further undermined morale.157 The calls for warm clothing became frantic as the troops began to freeze.158 The complications associated with disease took their toll. Medical officers requisitioned inoculations for Typhus and para-typhus, and in particular they requested cholera serum.159 In July, all SS depots were ordered to carry stocks of mineral water. The SS had not addressed the question of drinking water and had failed to deploy distillation facilities. Himmler’s adjutant urgently requested a courier flight to bring as much bottled water as possible to the KSRFSS. At the same time, the SS authorities in Riga requisitioned thirty thousand bottles of mineral water for the Polizei Division. In September, the Waffen-SS geological detachment was ordered to locate fresh-water sources. Fresh water had become so critical that trainloads of water traveled under convoy and special guard.160
During “Barbarossa,” Bach-Zelewski behaved like the champion of all the Nazi rhetoric and dogma that punctuated the SS cult. He was a driven man motivated to exterminate Jews and Communists in the name of Lebensraum.
Jeckeln and Prützmann were able to construct significant SS empires in their respective zones, but Bach-Zelewski’s command was ruptured by the intensity of fighting on the central front. To comprehend the extent of Bach-Zelewski’s performance in “Barbarossa” involves recognizing that he was not only an SS officer under orders but also someone desperate to restore his family honor after Zelewski’s African debacle. The significant period of Bach-Zelewski’s criminal actions was between July and October 1941. In that time, he traveled extensively, and his diary’s itinerary matches the progress of mass slaughter. In July, he was in Bialystok, Warsaw, Grodno, and the Pripyat marshes, each scenes of terrible slaughter.161 In August, his travels included Baranovichi, Minsk, Breslau, Turov, Starye Dorogi, Pinsk, Biaełowiea, Mogilev, and Starobin, an area of fifteen hundred thousand miles and all significant scenes of mass killing. In September, he traveled another thousand miles but, in October, confined himself to Vitebsk and Mogilev. His first communiqués on arrival at killing sites incorporated population demographics. “Baranowicze: roughly thirty-five thousand people; of these roughly seventeen thousand Jews, nine thousand Russians and nine thousand Poles.”162 In one signal, he placed a claim on his killing score: “Thus the figure in my area now exceeds the thirty thousand mark.” British intelligence judged,
The tone of this message suggests that the word has gone out that a definite decrease in the total population of Russia would be welcome in high quarters and that the leaders of the three sectors stand somewhat in competition with each other as to their “scores.”163
If a competition existed between the HSSPFs, then Bach-Zelewski was determined to win. On August 18, he requested the use of the mobile gassing units.164 That same month, he met with Daluege to discuss further actions. On September 1, together they observed the killing of nine hundred Jews from Minsk.
On July 20, Himmler issued a bizarre set of orders. He ordered the SS-Cavalry Brigade to drive Jews into the Pripyat marshes and swampland to drown.165 This derivation of Trotha’s plan of mass extermination replaced the desert with the watery wastes and included the ultimate madness of calling on Zelewski’s nephew to atone for the past debacle with a successful killing spree. Bach-Zelewski’s diary only recorded that he led the 1st and 2nd SS-Cavalry Regiments into combing through (Durchkämmung) the Pripyat marshes.166 However, a captured report from 2nd SS-Cavalry Regiment stated, “We drove women and children into the marshes, but this did not yield the desired result, as the marshes were not deep enough to drown them. In most places the water was not more than three feet deep.”167 On August 1, the 2nd SS-Cavalry Regiment received a message from Himmler instructing them to reinstate the practice of shooting Jewish women.168 We can only speculate what inspired Himmler and Bach-Zelewski to contemplate such a plan. In October, he entered Mogilev to kill another 2,208 Jews.
In September 1941, Schenckendorff approved a list of medals for SS and police troops under his command. Since the opening of the campaign, Bach-Zelewski had been forming a clique (Klüngel) of men who would remain close to him throughout the war. Included on the list were Pail, Lombard, Montua, Fegelein, Diekmann, Magill, and Charpentier (the son of a former regimental commander).169 In October, Bach-Zelewski’s health began to deteriorate, and this was directly attributable to the lack of fresh water. It was probably during the swamp operations that he contracted his intestinal problems. The British noticed that his pleas for fresh water became desperate. “Demand for space on the plane is very heavy, and even so high an official [as Bach-Zelewski] is unable to get bottles of his favorite vintage sent to him by this means.”170 To compensate for his failing health, he turned to addictive drugs to reduce his sensitivity to pain and need for fresh water.
Bach-Zelewski claimed an unusual relationship with the army. He came under the command of the Rear Area Army Centre and partly under Himmler. Schenckendorff was well aware of Bach-Zelewski’s political tasks of population control and mass executions. When the security situation deteriorated, Bach-Zelewski tended to side with Schenckendorff in moving police troops forward to support the army. The peak of their cooperation culminated in an antipartisan field course (Bekämpfung von Partisanen) in September 1941 (further discussed in chapter 5).171 Bach-Zelewski’s participation in the conventional warfare of the campaign alongside the army proved his ability in tactical operations. A Russian cavalry division broke into the rear area of Army Group Centre but was halted and destroyed by Bach-Zelewski.172 He was a practitioner of encirclement as one signal confirmed:
1st Regiment has formed a ring (“Kessel”) north and north-east of Lake Sporowskie to tackle troops reported there. Up to August 3, 1941 the SS cavalry Brigade has “liquidated 3,274 partisans and Jewish Bolsheviks.” Their own losses nil.173
In the process of a cleaning up exercise, another signal reported that
Police Battalion 306 shot 260 guerrilla fighters. Russian cavalry north of the railway is ringed in and faces destruction; south of the railway they appear to have crossed the [River] Petsch after continual sniping matches with the army and SS.174
On August 3, 1941, Bock passed on his personal congratulations for the defeat of the breakthrough. Bach-Zelewski immediately wired Himmler and Daluege boasting of this recognition of his military prowess.175 On August 8, Bach-Zelewski made his way to Borisov with the SS-Cavalry Brigade and joined the army’s 162nd Infantry Division to combat further Red Army intrusions. The 252nd Infantry Division and Police Regiment Centre combined their efforts to destroy a breakthrough of the 12th Russian Infantry Division.176 Two weeks later, Bach-Zelewski received a letter of thanks from the commander of the 252nd Infantry Division, praising the cooperation between the “SS-Polizeiverbände” and the army.177
In mid-November 1941, at the height of the Germany’s las-gasp drive on Moscow, the Russians began desperate counter-attacks and incursions. This was the clinching moment of the first year. Hitler ordered more encirclements of the Red Army, but the German armored thrusts gradually wore down, hindered by poor weather, lack of reserves, and the deteriorating maintenance system. On December 3, the British intercepted the first message saying that the lead formations were considering forming a defensive line. The British intercepted another signal on December 7, confirming that the police had advised retreat. The many different parts of the German armed forces on the central front seemed incapable of making joined up decisions. The SS-Police continued to conduct antipartisan operations, while their battalions gradually plugged the front lines. By mid-December 1941, ad hoc units littered the Russian landscape like little islands, forming the German front lines.
Red Army counter-attacks continued through December; one had the objective of encircling the German armored forces around Smolensk. The chaos on December 27 was such that Bach-Zelewski thought it had parallels to the failure of the Ludendorff offensives in 1918.178 Bock, in his last days as army group commander, requested police battalions to plug gaps in the line. Police Battalion 307, under the temporary command of Hauptmann Binz, and Police Battalion 131, under Major Orth, deployed to contrasting fortunes. The Soviets landed six thousand paratroops and air-landing forces on the airfield southeast of Viazma. Police Battalion 307 assisted in fending off this attack and made a significant contribution in saving the situation. Bach-Zelewski recommended that the commander receive the Knight’s Cross (Ritterkreuz) and added to the report that Binz had ridden on a tank shouting, “Look here you swine, you can’t shoot German police.”179 The contrast with Police Battalion 131 was dramatic. The British decoded a signal stating that the battalion had collapsed in the face of strong Red Army offensives during the battle of Kaluga. A situation report to Himmler stated, “The battalion failed completely, officers and men alike; would not attack and gradually crumbled to pieces.” A subsequent report that the battalion had failed explained that the commander (Major Orth) and the battalion doctor (Dr. Rotlauf) had suffered “heart failure” (Herzkollaps) and fled in the medical vehicle homeward. They had taken all the battalion’s medical supplies with them.180
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