Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe

by Philip W. Blood

  Corps level formations: 34th SS-Police Rifle Regiment and the I SS Flak Detachment (KSRFSS).

  Kampfgruppe Rohr: 10th Mixed Wehrmacht Police Battalion; 906th Artillery Battalion; 944th Security Battalion; 1st Battalion, 17th SS-Police Regiment; and 246th Landesschützen Battalion. Kampfgruppe Reinefarth: SS-Brigade Dirlewanger (with 2 battalions of easterner Muslims), 501st SS-Jäger Regiment, Police Regiment Schmidt, Police Battalion Burghardt, Police Regiment Reck; Sturm-Pionier Regiment Herzog, Police Battalion Sarnow; 3rd Cossack Regiment; 2nd Azerbaijan Battalion; Police Flamethrower Battalion; 302nd Panzer Detachment (and 218th Assault Panzer Company); 2nd Sturmgeschütz Detachment; 1000th Assault Mortar Company; 2nd Battery Heavy Artillery; 201st Heavy Fortifications Mortar Battery; 695th Railway Battery; and the 5th Armored Train.

  Supporting organizations: 25th Panzer Division; Kampfgruppe Bernhard (Korück 532); and 1st Luftwaffe Division. 90

  During the uprising, Bach-Zelewski as a senior force commander was responsible for enforcing discipline and maintaining troop morale. On August 28, he was instrumental in ordering the drumhead court-martial (Standgerichtssitzung) and the execution of Bronislav Kaminski. This self-styled tribal leader of anti-Bolshevik Russians had successfully collaborated with the Germans since 1942. His success in eradicating Soviet partisans in the forests of Bryansk even garnered praise from Hitler. When the German army retreated, Kaminski’s horde and their dependents went with them. In the early days of the uprising, Kaminski and Dirlewanger appeared to compete for the crown of the most abominable behavior, including drunkenness, killings, rapes, and pillage.91 Bach-Zelewski wrote of Kaminski’s trial in his diary mentioning that it was conducted in Litzmannstadt (Lodz, Poland). After the war, Guderian claimed Bach-Zelewski eliminated Kaminski because he was a dangerous witness.92 Under allied interrogation, Bach-Zelewski admitted to spiriting Kaminski away with three of his staff officers in a ruse. An SS court-martial declared Kaminski (an SS-Brigadeführer) guilty of the misdemeanor of failing to obey orders. Bach-Zelewski also admitted that once new and better units became available he could afford to dispense with the Kaminski Brigade.93 Sven Steenberg, formerly a German army interrogator with the Russian émigrés, later claimed the execution was hushed up and a rumor spread that Polish partisans had killed Kaminski. Kaminski’s men demanded a visit to the scene of the supposed incident. Kaminski’s command car was allegedly driven into a ditch, riddled with machine-gun bullets, and liberally daubed with goose blood.94 Evidence also suggests that Kaminski had lost control of his men, and the SS feared a repeat of Gil-Rodionov’s Druzhina mutiny of 1943. Perhaps it was for this reason that they executed him. There again Bach-Zelewski also breached German law four days before on August 24 to overhear his name being announced on the BBC. On September 9, the BBC broadcast that he had joined the list of allied war criminals. “What honour!” he exclaimed in his diary. “Just for Warsaw, where I have shown the extreme humanity before God!”95

  Examining Bach-Zelewski’s actual combat and leadership performance in Warsaw reveals predictable behavior. Since August 29, the SS-Police had been awaiting an assault by the Red Army; that same day, Luftwaffe Col. Gen. Ritter von Greim visited Bach-Zelewski. The Germans were still waiting on August 30 when Bach-Zelewski observed Dirlewanger’s performance clearing houses on the northern bank of the city. He made another inspection of the defenses and discussed the placement of antitank units with his troop commanders. Eventually the Soviet attack came on September 2; Bach-Zelewski was barely left with time to record the events. He later recorded that the German repulse was his greatest success to date, while his command watch period stretched from early morning to late night. He informed Himmler that the northern encirclement of the city was complete and that Kampfgruppe Rohr had captured Czerniakov and advanced to the south of Siedlce. In the message, he boasted having “driven through prisoners of war while standing-up in the car to end the fighting. I guaranteed their lives. This was the only way to control prisoners with so few guards.” Was he implying that at other times the captives were simply executed? He concluded his message by confirming the capture of 60 percent of Warsaw although “he was still in competition with the Bolsheviks.” His written commentary on the fighting over three days from September 5 in the southern part of city was erratic. He confirmed, “The Poles are fighting like heroes.” Then he wrote a cryptic line: “We have to hurry because of the Bolsheviks. Better here than in the west” (no doubt meaning the campaign in France where the Germans were losing). On September 6, he took time out to visit Pruszkow transit camp, which was being used as a collection point for Polish partisans.

  There was a break in Bach-Zelewski’s diary entries until September 13, 1944. Filling that gap is Reinefarth, who took the opportunity to conduct some hearty politicking. Reinefarth wrote to Himmler on September 9, expressing his gratitude for the kind words the Reichsführer had bestowed on his troops through Bach-Zelewski. He explained the reason for the operation’s success:

  Our duty would not have been possible without the reckless and never ending support of SS-Obergruppenführer von dem Bach. We thought highly of him, in spite of his own suffering, he stayed amongst the Kampfgruppe even though gastric flu spread like a plague amongst the troops. He looked after himself only when physically forced to do so.96

  Prior to the uprising there had been little contact between the two men, but Reinefarth wanted to redress this with his version of events:

  After 12 years as an old colleague, Bach remained in the front line providing motivation to the troops. The SS-Obergruppenführer is not able to tell you about his reconnaissance flights over Warsaw, because you will prohibit his flying. I am sorry for writing this way, but I thought it was my duty because von dem Bach is owed recognition for his efforts in the harsh fight for Warsaw.97

  However, Bach-Zelewski was wise to Reinefarth’s shenanigans. On September 21, he held a meeting with Guderian. It seems Reinefarth had also kept Guderian suitably informed about activities in Warsaw. This meeting closed the contact between Reinefarth and Guderian. Bach-Zelewski was also angry that Reinefarth’s Kampfgruppe had “taken ill-deserved laurels.” 98

  During heavy fighting on September 13, the Red Army took the district of Praga. Bach-Zelewski recorded that the fighting was like Kovel, from all directions. He signed off his diary, “I have had enough of Warsaw.” The next day, he reported to Himmler on the occupation of the Siedlce district and the capture of Fort Legionowo.99 On September 16, he transferred quarters closer to the city. The Red Army, having taken control of the riverbank and Praga, exposed his former headquarters to direct attack. He was confirmed a full corps commander (Korpsgruppe von dem Bach), and the 19th Panzer Division passed to his command. He recorded that his new command post was a villa with a vegetable garden. At 5:30 a.m. on September 17, he was awakened by a “Bolshevik” attempt to cross the river with the “Polish-Soviet Berling Army.” That evening the Red Army made another attempt to breach his riverbank defences. The Germans had observed Red Army preparations to arrange pontoons, indicating a large attack.

  All evening Bach-Zelewski led the defense against Soviet assaults and recorded it in his diary on September 18. It was a “night full of excitement,” he declared. The Soviet attempts to breach the riverbank were twice repulsed. One assault of nine hundred Soviet troops in the north, at Zoliborcz, was defeated. A factory site in the south was captured under Bach-Zelewski’s leadership during a lunchtime action. The Germans were frightened when American four-engine bombers approached the city. The bombers, however, dropped supply canisters, and most fell to the Germans, owing to the direction of the wind. Later, Bach-Zelewski met with army commanders to discuss the next Soviet attack. Early on September 20, he attended a conference with Guderian and met with Himmler. Later, serious news arrived from Warsaw, however, interrupting his lunchtime nap. The Soviets released a smokescreen along the riverfront to disguise a large-scale attack. German artillery destroyed twenty-seven assault boats, but still the Red Army
managed to reach the opposite bank of the city center. German reserves were sent in and destroyed the Soviet bridgehead. The counter-attack forced the Soviets back from the west bank. The SS-Police captured 180 Russians and sustained three hundred dead and wounded. The last day, September 21, the heaviest Soviet assaults against the Totenkopf occurred, and this corresponded with events inside Warsaw.

  On September 22, Bach-Zelewski flew around Warsaw signifying total German control of the city. The next day, the southern perimeter and encirclement were finally cleansed. The fighting over the last houses of resistance remained a difficult task because Soviet artillery continued to support the resistance. Among the captive Soviet troops were forty armed women (Flintenweiber). Later, Bach-Zelewski held a meeting with foreign office officials, Luftwaffe division commanders, and Reinefarth. He sent representatives to parley with the last Polish defenders of the Mokotow district and received a positive response. A partial armistice was negotiated, and civilians were evacuated from the combat area. He wrote:

  I save lots of people. Now I know why God saved me! In this time of blood and tears I shall hold high the banner of humanity. It fulfils me with deep happiness to be able to do so much good.

  On September 26, the attacks on the Mokotow district were renewed. The brief armistice had allowed the evacuation of 4,500 civilians. The next day, Bach-Zelewski sat and awaited the final victory. At 1:30 p.m., the capitulation confirmation was sent to Himmler. At 7:30 p.m, Himmler called to confirm Hitler’s award of the Knight’s Cross to Bach-Zelewski and Dirlewanger; Reinefarth, already a recipient of this most coveted medal, received the Oak Leaves cluster. They held a medal party in lieu of the overall capitulation on September 28, but the Poles spoiled the celebrations with sporadic fighting. On September 29, Bach-Zelewski’s comments were deep:

  In these days I become part of history and I am so proud for my sons. I negotiated with the Poles who received instructions from London. This is really big politics!

  On September 30, he reported to Himmler that the 19th Panzer Division had captured Zoliborcz after two days’ fighting. Resistance officially ended at 7:00 p.m. when eight hundred Poles laid down their arms and fifteen thousand civilians came out of hiding.

  The final instrument of Polish surrender was drafted in phrases corresponding to the Geneva Convention of 1929. Bach-Zelewski later alleged that he manipulated events to ensure Himmler did not break this agreement. He also said Hitler confirmed the surrender document. The Poles have a different record of the surrender; their delegation of four officers was driven to Bach Zelewski’s headquarters in Ozarow, a country house full of portraits of the Polish aristocracy. They discussed surrender with Bach-Zelewski and his chief of staff, Oberst der Polizei Göltz. When the document was signed, Bach-Zelewski gave a short speech about how the act would save more lives and then telephoned Himmler with the news. The surrender and subsequent treatment of the Poles had wider implications. Bach-Zelewski’s orders, from Hitler and Himmler, required the killing of all captured insurgents whether or not they were fighting within the terms of the laws of war, the non-combatants (women and children) were to be executed, and the whole city was to be razed to the ground.100 Why had he been allowed to receive a formal surrender? If the Geneva Convention was appropriate for Polish resistors, then it was also applicable to partisans across Europe and allied Special Forces personnel. Bach-Zelewski alleged that he intervened to protect civilians by organizing a Polish commission to run the prison camp, hospitals, and kitchens. The Pruszkow transit camp officially came under the authority of the governor of Warsaw, Dr. Fischer, but Bach-Zelewski said he acted outside Fischer and claimed that he procured provisions. Camp hygiene, he suggested, was handled by the Polish Red Cross, the Swiss Red Cross managed supplies, and the Polish administration, from Kraków, monitored treatment. The insurgents, he said, had been allowed to visit the camp before the surrender negotiations.101 Many Polish POWs were to perish in the coming months. The surrender terms were cosmetic, a means to ending it quickly, so that Bach-Zelewski could be rested for his next political assignment.

  The final results illustrate the true scale of horror behind Bach-Zelewski’s work. Andrew Borowiec estimated the population of Warsaw before 1939 at approximately 1.2 million, with 352,000 Jews and 819,000 of Christian faith; 48 percent were laborers and artisans.102 The industrial workforce was 100,000, with 90,000 listed as professionals and 20,000 unemployed. The population following the 1943 ghetto uprising stood at 974,745, including a total German civilian population of 24,222.103 A final tally for the fighting is taken from Bach-Zelewski’s diary:

  German losses: killed–73 officers, NCOs and men 1,453. Wounded—242 officers, 8,196 NCOs and men.

  Polish losses: killed—1,559 (identified), 100,000 (estimated killed). Wounded—15,000 Prisoners—5 generals, 2,028 officers, and 17,443 others.

  Evacuated (Evakuierte) Poles 309,716: 70,023 (to Germany), 61,856 (unfit for work), 135,830 (unfit for work and kept in the General-Government), 3,503, (others) and 29,504 sick. 104

  Why, if the Germans were being humane, did Bach-Zelewski continue to distinguish between those fit for work and those who were not? The final twist, Bach-Zelewski’s recommendation for the Knight’s Cross, included August 1, 1944, as the date he took command.105 This makes Bach-Zelewski officially responsible for the first twelve days of killing, the worst period, which he never attempted to amend on the citation. After the uprising, a sleeve-shield was manufactured but it proved less popular with the troops than the Bandenkampfabzeichen.

  Himmler believed that Warsaw was the final historic battle between Poland and Germany:

  Warsaw, the capital city, the brain, the intelligence of this 16–17 million strong Polish nation will have been obliterated, this nation which has blocked our path to the east for seven hundred years and since the first battle of Tannenberg, has always been in the way.106

  “It is the hardest battle we have fought since the beginning of the war,” he added. “It is comparable with the house to house fighting in Stalingrad.” According to Heinz Reinefarth, who had spent most of 1942 and 1943 behind a desk in Poland, the Battle of Warsaw was “revenge for Stalingrad.”107 On October 25, 1944, SSPF Warsaw arranged for a party of seventy police officer cadets to ride over the Warsaw battleground.108 The country, however, was in ruins. In October, the SS-Police reported a rash of corruption and black marketing schnapps, bread, and butter as the trade of “banditry.”109 As the Red Army wrestled for control over the last German strongholds, the SS conducted a final act of barbarism with the extermination of the Hungarian Jews, transported to Auschwitz in November. By December, the SS-Police in Poland had dwindled to a single detachment assigned to dubious special cleanup duties.110 Eventually the last pockets of German resistance in Poland were eradicated in February 1945. After the war, the former SS leadership from Poland experienced mixed fortunes. Jakob Sporrenberg and Jürgen Stroop were tried in Warsaw in 1950 and 1952 respectively. Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger committed suicide in May 1945. Julian Scherner was dismissed and posted to the Dirlewanger for corruption and died in combat in 1945. Otto Hellwig died in retirement in Hannover in 1962, as did Fritz Katzmann who died at home in 1957. Heinz Reinefarth died in retirement in 1979 after a political career as a mayor in Schleswig-Holstein.111

  9

  WESTERN EUROPE

  The last years of the war in western and southern Europe have generally not attracted the attention they deserve from scholars of the Third Reich. The law of large numbers has concentrated minds on the Eastern Front. This has distorted our understanding of how Hitler strategized his war. The war in the west and south caused the Germans to implement a complex occupation administration and sweeping security measures. Hitler’s 1943 appeal to defeat Bolshevism and survive the war inevitably meant the rest of Europe had to be not only pacified but also exploited. Hitler also reassured German public opinion that the Axis alliance was strong and that they were not fighting alone. His strategy also involved erecting
a north-south axis of buffer states, including Norway and Italy, connected by strategic corridors. Denmark in the north and the “Alpenland” in the south became lynchpins. These strategic corridors allowed the free movement of troops and materials for “fire-brigade”-like operations. The corridors were also crucial to an east-west Axis, anchored in the west (behind the Atlantic wall and the English Channel) and allowing the movement of troops east to quell troubles. Ultimately these corridors served as escape routes for Hitler’s armies. In conceptual terms, Hitler’s late war strategic gamble was to stoke eastern fires with western fuels. It was highly effective until the allied invasions in Italy (1943) and then France (1944). The threat of collapse in the west forced Hitler to divert key personnel and resources to conduct Bandenbekämpfung in the west and south of Europe. The outcome, although predictable, proves just how far Bandenbekämpfung was open to interpretation at the local level.

  The vast scale of German security operations, conducted in western Europe, means this chapter can concentrate only on key Bandenbekämpfung issues. The central issues, aside from the protection of strategic corridors, were the consistency in the implementation of measures set against a backdrop of command quarrels and institutional rivalry. The character of security operations produced a cocktail of tactical ingenuity and the continued faith in traditional methods. Underscoring all operations were the highest expectations, almost unrealistic, in the results. Hitler’s southern flank was politically troubled with the strategic situation always in constant flux. Whether alliance or occupation, by 1943, it seemed like Germanization in the mindset of the indigenous populations. SS race experts had worked swiftly and systematically to deport or exterminate the Jews of southern Europe.1 Across the region including France, Italy, and Greece, wholesale exploitation of manpower and resources had been imposed by Nazi and collaboration agencies.2 The surge of the SS-Police presence in the west and Italy, in particular, increased Himmler’s influence further. Collectively the SS command in western Europe quickly erected a balanced cross-section of expertise that included policing, covert actions, and Bandenbekämpfung operations. Long after the war, SS apologists alleged atrocities in this region were aberrations and one-off incidents, forced on them by the extremis of provocation. A variety of sources now show, however, that Bandenbekämpfung was widespread in support of Hitler’s western Europe strategy, thus proving the SS apologists incorrect.