On April 24, Himmler wrote to Bach-Zelewski, “The general without luck does not hold true for you; that Kovel could be held was partly down to Gille and partly down to you.”58 Former Waffen-SS veterans liked to extract their battle of Kovel, from Bach-Zelewski’s battle. The working notes of the operations officer from the office of the Chef der Bandenkampfverbände, for March 20, 1944, prove that Kampfgruppe Gille received drawing materials to produce its Bandenbekämpfung maps for Himmler’s collection in keeping with other Bandenkampfverbände.59 In April 1944, Gille was awarded the Knight’s Cross from Hitler, the highest military award Germany could bestow. Bach-Zelewski received the Bandenkampfabzeichen in Bronze, for twenty-eight days in combat, from Himmler on July 3, 1944. It was scant consolation.60
Collapse in the General Government
By January 1944, the Germans were reporting many cases of Polish “bandits” in the Danzig-West-Prussian forests.61 The assassination of SS-Brigadeführer Franz Kutschera on February 1, 1944, by a twenty-year-old resistance fighter was a shock for Himmler and Bach-Zelewski.62 On July 19, 1944, an SS liaison officer informed the German Foreign Office that the HSSPF East had issued an order enforcing the collective responsibility of family members of assassins and saboteurs.63 The deteriorating situation forced the SS to act. The execution of all male relatives of assassins and saboteurs was ordered, and females were sent to concentration camps. This situation rapidly escalated as the Polish will to resist increased and Nazi officials became assassination targets. According to Richard Lukas, these attacks reached more than six hundred assassinations per year by 1944.64
Military intelligence monitored the resistance and their links with Polish governments in exile. Gehlen maintained a detailed and meticulous analysis with comprehensive organization charts of the resistance and their controlling authorities. His assessment of the Polish resistance movement in February 1944 identified categories of political allegiance. Gehlen’s analysis of the communist resistance focused on the Polish Workers Party, which he estimated had seventy-five hundred volunteers. They were organized through a rigid hierarchical structure and controlled from Moscow. The central cadre was in Warsaw with eleven cells, and there were a further seven cells within its city districts. However, Gehlen’s information concerning the Polish People’s Army (Armja Ludowa) with its regional offices across Poland was sparse. He located their headquarters in Biala Podlaska and guessed that their combat units were each formed into five cells organized into companies 120 fighters strong, but that was all.65
The German intelligence services also monitored the possibility for a Polish revolt. A few weeks before the Warsaw uprising, Gehlen warned of an impending revolt. On July 1, 1944, he identified the Polish resistance movement as encouraging the population to employ all means hostile to the Germans. His report stated that the forests were swarming with splinter groups in hiding. As was his habit, Gehlen concentrated on the political motivations within the resistance movement. He advised of tensions between the Polish government-in-exile (in London) and the Soviet-sponsored Lublin government that splintered the rank-and-file membership into factions. The peasantry was judged to have sided with the English-backed anti-Communist movement. The Germans confirmed the growing enmity between Polish and Ukrainian populations within Galicia and their political diversities. Gehlen summarized the situation: “In our judgement the plans for revolt, given the Polish character, inclines toward a strong but not over-estimated possibility, given the general political and military situation.”66
Lower in the intelligence hierarchy, resistance monitoring became the responsibility of German army district commanders. Major General Haseloff, chief of staff of the General Government’s military district, regularly circulated security reports that itemized incursions, summarized casualties, listed wireless interceptions, identified propaganda issues, and recorded security operations. Haseloff’s reports from December 1943 to July 1944 began as monthly releases but increased to weekly with the upsurge of “banditry.”67 In December, there were 6,392 incidents conducted by 6,050 resistance units organized into groups of 100 insurgents. The balance of casualties was 39 Germans killed against 1,016 Poles killed. At least thirteen main railway lines were attacked, especially from Warsaw to Minsk, Radom, and Demblin.68 By April 1944, insurgents had attacked thirty-four main railway routes. There had been 6,322 reported attacks, carried out by 5,897 operatives. Haseloff’s report confirmed 4,961 “bandits” captured and 1,000 shot, while the Germans suffered 267 killed and more than 560 wounded.69 The resistance groups, it was confirmed, were standing and fighting.
This rising level of resistance was recorded elsewhere in a miscellaneous collection of reports that covered various levels of army command. A report on behalf of the OKW Operations Staff assessed the overall situation from the perspective of the central sector.70 On July 10, 1944, considerable numbers of attacks occurred along the railway lines between Kraków and Warsaw. Further deterioration in the General Government was indicated by sporadic shootings against German vehicles in the area of Lublin on July 17, 1944. Around Sparozew, the Germans identified an eight-hundred-man “bandit” group but could do little about them. Northeast of Lublin, a band of more than one thousand operated with impunity, as did the “bandit” group “Stalin,” three hundred strong, operating around Bilgoraj. Reports from “trusties” flooded in from the Lemberg area. One reported the presence of a “bandit” group of Polish Jews, two thousand strong and reputedly air-landed into the area. Another group, eight hundred strong, was operating in the south, while the police were combating yet another group of four hundred “bandits,” the so-called Tschepigia-Bande.71 The evidence of the scale of the Polish threat also emerged from a report by the rear-area commander of Army Group Centre that stated,
Since the opening of Operation “Frühlingsfest” from the Naliboki forest along the route Minsk–Baranovichi, and also the Slutsk district was an area dominated by concentrations of bands. Unlike the Soviet bands, the entire Polish strength has tripled in a few weeks to about 4,500 men. The procurement of arms for the greater Polish bandit movement is their major problem. Further growth in the Polish resistance movement can be depended upon.72
Warsaw Uprising
On July 31, 1944, Gen.Tadeusz “Bor” Komorowski, commander of the Polish Home Army (Armja Krajowa), known as the AK, agreed to start the uprising to liberate Poland. On August 1, 1944, at 5:00 p.m. fighting broke out in the streets of Warsaw. The uprising was set just as the Soviet offensive ran out of steam. The German “victory” over Warsaw has become another lost battle having virtually disappeared from the annals of German military history.73 After the war, the prolific writings of German generals collectively disowned or at least marginalized the battle. A collective malady of amnesia afflicted former SS and Wehrmacht veterans of the battle. Yet the suppression (Niederkämpfung) of the uprising by Bach-Zelewski, and his lieutenants was the zenith of Bandenbekämpfung. The German order of battle through the disposition of units to destroy the uprising indicated a more complex theater-wide operational plan. It came at a time of intensive German intelligence warnings. Strategically, the Germans were not surprised. Rather, Germans were prepared and wanted to exploit the uprising. It remains unclear whether Hitler or his generals manipulated German forces for a drive against the Soviets, but the possibility changes the given interpretation of events surrounding the uprising.
The crushing Soviet offensive, Operation “Bagration,” opened on June 22, 1944, and caused wholesale collapse of Army Group Centre followed by pursuit of its remnants through Poland. Losses included twenty-eight divisions, three hundred fifty thousand men, and mortal wounding of the Wehrmacht in the east. German centers during the occupation of Soviet Russia such as Vitebsk, Orsha, Mogilev, Bobruysk, and Minsk were overwhelmed and liberated. Hitler’s faith in static fortifications proved illusionary as the “Panther line” crumbled. After strenuous efforts, Field Marshal Model wrestled to stabilize the Central Front before Warsaw.74 He ordered the 3r
d SS-Panzer Division Totenkopf to hold a line 50 miles east of Warsaw. This division held long enough to allow the 2nd Army to escape Soviet encirclement. On July 28, the division gradually withdrew while conducting a series of punishing counterattacks. On August 11, the division crossed the River Vistula northeast of Warsaw and took up positions on the western bank. During the next seven days, the Totenkopf along with the Wiking held off repeated Soviet assaults,75 actions that paralleled the Waffen-SS-inspired victory at Kharkov in April 1943 because of the number of panzer divisions. On June 22, 1944, there were few armored reserves available to Army Group Centre to counter “Bagration.” However, by August 1, eight panzer divisions had gathered around Warsaw.76
The Soviets encountered a dilemma. To seal off Warsaw, assaults across the River Vistula would involve facing German siege artillery and intensive defensive firepower, thus sustaining serious losses. The Soviet predicament, therefore, was either securing the front line and allowing the Polish resistance to collapse or capturing Warsaw and placing the Soviet central front inside the jaws of Germany’s armored forces. Hitler had metaphorically placed Stalin under the “Sword of Damocles” since the Red Army’s finest assault troops, committed to capturing the city, would be left exposed to the German armored forces concentrated against their flanks. The conditions offered the Germans a classic Cannae with the Red Army pressed against a river. The Soviet dilemma had diplomatic implications; Stalin faced growing allied suspicions over Soviet territorial ambitions. Strategically the overall military situation, since the opening of “Bagration,” had lost momentum as the Germans forced a stalemate through vicious counter-attacks and probes. Stalin also faced another problem—the Germans held the advantage of shortened internal lines and could use the telephone system instead of military signals. “Ultra” and the German police signals went silent causing the Allies intelligence gaps.
The German response in 1944 compared to the 1943 uprising appeared slow more so because Himmler had received warnings within a half hour of the opening shots. Richard Lukas rhetorically asked why the Germans were so unprepared.77 His explanation of the slow response came from German testimony after the war. These testimonies generally confirmed that the uprising triggered a crisis among the Nazis. Norman Davies relied on evidence from former SS-Untersturmführer Gustav Schielke given in 1949.78 Schielke told his Polish interrogators that the Germans expected the uprising but were physically unprepared. In 1972, Günther Deschner suggested that the Germans had left Warsaw largely unprotected, having withdrawn or evacuated bases and depots.79 The situation was frantic; German troops were hastened to the front, while rear-area formations were withdrawn. According to most sources, the Germans had approximately two thousand troops of differing caliber garrisoned in Warsaw at the time of the outbreak. The experience of the Warsaw ghetto uprising taught Himmler that the way to defeat armed resistance was to support a garrison in place, using it to divide the attention of the resistance. Thus, instead of a necessarily rapid response, Himmler’s response was measured and predictable. He had complete confidence in the capability of the SS-Police. The SS evidently believed that they had contained the uprising within ten days of its start. The SS reaction, therefore, was party to the Wehrmacht’s operational intentions of an armored Cannae.
From the beginning, the Germans adopted widespread “kill and destruction” tactics. Hans Frank notified Berlin that “Burning down the houses is the most reliable means of liquidating the insurgents’ hideouts.”80 Himmler told a gathering,
I simultaneously gave orders for Warsaw to be totally destroyed. You may think I am a fearful barbarian. If you like I am one, if I have to be. My orders were to burn down and blow up every block of houses. As a result, one of the biggest abscesses on the eastern front has been removed.81
The Allies, after the war, believed August 5 was the day the brutalities officially ended. Joanna Hanson found the killing continued until at least August 12 before the Germans attempted more subtle methods to defeat the Poles.82
In this context a couple of questions need to be asked: what were Bach Zelewski’s movements prior to the uprising, and when did he receive the command? Virtually all accounts accept that he took command on August 5, 1944, which correlates his version of the events. His diary, however, makes interesting reading. The week prior to the uprising he spent visiting East Prussia defenses and formations. On July 30, 1944, he lunched with Himmler and von Gottberg. On July 31, he joined Himmler (recently promoted to commander of the reserve army) to meet with Col. Gen. Heinz Guderian. The latter was promoted to chief of the General Staff of the Army on July 20, 1944, following the bomb plot against Hitler. Bronislav Kaminski, leader of the Russian National Liberation Army, was also present. On August 1, Bach-Zelewski’s diary referred to a meeting with Katzmann in Danzig, which was plausible because the latter had become HSSPF Weichsel. His diary referred to the events in Warsaw on August 2, a day he spent relaxing, swimming, and reflecting by the sea at Zoppot. He recalled with sentimentality that thirty years earlier he had been in the same place with two friends, both killed in the First World War. In 1934, while visiting Zoppot, he received orders to travel to Berlin to participate against the “Röhm putsch.” Thus it was that, while in Zoppot, he heard of the “great mess” (grosse Schweinerei) in the General Government.83 On August 3, he took his airplane through stormy weather to reach the KSRFSS in Lötzen. This appears a strange move, not because the offices of the Chef der Bandenkampfverbände and the KSRFSS had been relocating to southern Germany since March 1944 but because, by staying where he was within Reich borders (East Prussia), there was complete access to Hitler, Himmler, and any SS facilities via telephone.84 Then, according to his diary, on August 4, he traveled to Kraków to meet Himmler and, while en route, received word that he had been ordered to take command. Bach-Zelewski added that he later received official notification from Himmler by telephone. Bach-Zelewski wrote down that it was a suicide mission (Himmelfahrts-kommando), as in Kovel earlier that year.85 After the war, Bach-Zelewski told interrogators that he had made representations to the KSRFSS but was told Himmler had gone to Posen to conduct operations personally. Not wishing to be ignored, Bach-Zelewski said he spoke directly with Hitler’s headquarters. Fegelein told him the situation was being contained by Himmler and Luftwaffe Lt. Gen. Rainer Stahel. They expected an early collapse, but some days later, Fegelein telephoned Bach-Zelewski.
I was told furthermore that the full power which I had requested of the Führer was granted, and that I should put down the uprising quickly and forcefully. Replacements could not be counted upon, because the Russian breakthrough at Minsk tied up all forces as far as the Vistula River.86
Not surprisingly, therefore, Bach-Zelewski’s diary and his post-war testimony record his command beginning on August 5. The general lack of urgency also did not change with Bach-Zelewski’s command. He established his command post outside the city in Sochaczew to the west. On August 6, he observed the street fighting in Warsaw and wrote that he saved many Polish civilians through deportation. He observed that one of his Kampfgruppe commanders, SS-Gruppenführer Heinz Reinefarth, was fighting with “stronger nerves” than himself. The next day, following Luftwaffe air raids, Bach-Zelewski witnessed scenes of vicious street fighting, masses of corpses, and burning buildings. He ordered assault guns to reduce Polish barricades. One intercepted signal requested flamethrowers and incendiary bombing of the city by Luftwaffe.87 On August 8, Bach-Zelewski met Gen. Nikolas von Vormann, commander of the 9th Army and the Wehrmacht commander for the city. He then drove to Warsaw, took a nap before lunch, met with Dirlewanger, and received report updates. The Germans regarded the situation contained by August 9, and that same day, Bach-Zelewski again met with Vormann. In his notes, however, he seemed more concerned over the loss of his chief of staff Gölz in a traffic accident. The measured pace of life continued. On August 21, Bach-Zelewski received a message from Himmler to meet with Guderian. He arrived in Lötzen early so he went swimming in the nearby
lake. At 5:30 p.m., as he awaited Himmler, he decided to go to the cinema. The next day, while still waiting for Himmler’s arrival, he went off to the hairdresser. Senior command of this political-military battle meant regular politicking with Nazi bosses. Bach-Zelewski complained in his diary that, until 4:00 p.m. each day, he was under hostile enemy fire and was then forced to brave a dangerous flight, in foul weather, to meet with party bosses. On August 23, he noticed blood in his stools for first time since his operation. He was concerned was about inflamed hemorrhoids or possibly cholera, then spreading among his troops.
Bach-Zelewski’s command gradually increased the size of its order of battle during the pacification. Initially two Kampfgruppen were formed, the smaller under Major General Rohr and the larger under SS-Gruppenführer Reinefarth. Kampfgruppe Reinefarth was further broken down into three attack groups (Angriffsgruppe) under SS-Oberführer Dirlewanger, Major Reck (from the Infantry School in Posen), and Colonel Schmidt (commander of 608th Security Regiment). Each attack group was assigned eight flamethrowers.88 Bach-Zelewski’s reputation for achieving solid performances from mixed-quality troops enabled the Germans to economize their efforts. It allowed the gradual release of frontline formations from the wasting effects of street fighting. The Germans employed a massive array of specialist units whose purpose was wholesale destruction. An interrogation report of Lt. Eduard Kunze, an engineer, on May 1, 1945, revealed that the Germans had released a gas into airtight buildings or tunnels and ignited it. This gas he claimed was called “A-Stoff” and was odorless and colorless.89 On October 5, 1944, the final order of battle of Korpgruppe von dem Bach was,
Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe Page 36