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

by Philip W. Blood

  In the case of reprisals and revenge killing, however, Bach-Zelewski’s replies were less consistent. He thought reprisals were not efficient. They only worked if the local populace was forced into submission. Troops actually required the population to be well meaning for their own protection. In October 1945, in regards to revenge actions, he stated that there was no central order, that they were purely a reaction to German losses, and although Schencken-dorff had declared no revenge actions, he had not formally issued an order. In Bach-Zelewski’s opinion, revenge actions were on the conscience of field commanders. He alleged that he had tried to prevent them through conferences with commanders but he was not very successful. Then he said, “there were thousands of cases like that.” The interrogator immediately responded, “what you mean is there were thousands of cases where people suspected of partisan activity were executed?” “Yes,” said Bach-Zelewski, “there have been numerous cases. Looking at all Europe … I am quite convinced of that.” Then he added that the guilt remained, not with the soldiers, but with the men hanging around Hitler who did not tell him what was going on.37

  During one trial, Bach-Zelewski introduced the categories of the “house partisan” and the “wild partisan.” They had no military training. This “partisan movement,” he said, “was a people’s insurrection…. Such people’s insurrections, of course, being unrest not only the noble motives of a nation.” They asked him if all partisans were combated in the same manner. Bach-Zelewski’s answer in full was,

  No. The partisans, to the extent to which they were organized, were combated according to military and tactical concepts. This combating according to military regulations was a matter of the operations. Apart from those there were, however, the “house” partisans and the so-called “wild partisans,” who made use of the whole of the whole of the partisan fighting. These were small groups or individual personalities which were active on the fringes of the area of the original partisan movement. These so-called “house” partisans were not combated according to military tactical aspects, but instead this combating was a matter carried out according to police and security principles.38

  Did this mean the strategic profiles were wider than first realized or was this just a ploy to quash the question with a plausible answer?

  The issue of foreign labor placed Bach-Zelewski in the position of having to contend with the question of the treatment of Slavs. He employed his Polish ancestry to dodge the question with political and racial rhetoric:

  My family comes from Western Prussia. They have been living there for centuries. It is of course natural that, based on the Versailles treaty, many of the members of my own family who remained in Western Prussia at the time became Poles. That is to say, they became Polish citizens. Therefore, I realize that I felt that in the individual national groups, even my own family, some of the families were found to be racially superior or of value and they were permitted to keep their property and were declared Germans upon my instigation with the Reichsführer-SS.39

  He stated that beginning in 1943, captured partisans were to be sent to the Reich as labor. He said he was ordered by Sauckel to go to Minsk to receive the directives on labor. He did not mention the agreement he made with Sauckel during their meeting (see chapter 6). Bach-Zelewski explained that the idea was to resolve the partisan problem by removing civilians from a trouble zone. This also led to so-called antipartisan operations being used as a disguise for collecting labor. Many thought this policy would reduce the bloodthirsty state of affairs. SS and army alike were used to round up labor. This led to a rise in the numbers of partisans. The problem of shortages of guards at rail centers led many to escape to become partisans.40 Bach-Zelewski was able to remove the issue of labor from his responsibility, but in regards to the Jews, he faced a greater challenge.

  The Roots of Holocaust Denial

  During one interrogation, Bach-Zelewski made a curious remark regarding the Holocaust: “The thing that most touched me in all this terror was the fact that they just let themselves be led to the slaughter like cattle, entirely without opposition.”41 Bach-Zelewski dismissed the victims as livestock. This raises the question of Bach-Zelewski’s denial as a mass murderer. His statements were loaded with pathos, sentimentality, and nostalgia. He was a self-confessed serial killer and faced his interrogators with his need for a father figure and his craving for attention. During the courtroom proceedings, Bach-Zelewski turned himself and his family into victims. A clash manifested itself between his quest for reputation, which had dominated his life, and the development of his newfound victimhood. From January 1946, he changed his name again to Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski. This allowed him to reflect with detachment on Erich von dem Bach as a different person with a different past.42 Three impressions of his family emerged from these performances. His family roots were Hohenzollern, neither Prussian nor German-Polish, which made him a neutral.

  His father was responsible for a large family, and they lived on an East Elbian estate built by his grandfather. Poverty was a perennial problem for the family, and his father became an insurance salesman to bring in cash; he died in Dortmund in 1911 while working as an insurance clerk. As nobles, Bach’s family lived a hand-to-mouth existence until army success allowed Bach-Zelewski to be at one with his peers.43 He also acknowledged his colonial connections, claiming that “the brother of my father was the first commander of the German Protection Troops under Dr. Karl Peters.”44 He did not mention Emil Zelewski’s defeat and disgrace. He further told his interrogators that he left the army because of a boycott set against him when his sisters wedded Jews.45 He repeated over and over again, “I had to give up active service in 1924 when two of my sisters married Jews.” He alleged that one sister, a saleswoman in Wertheim near Berlin, had “married a poor Jew.” The other sister married a successful Jewish businessman who had the appearance of a “Nordic” man.46 They allegedly lived in Bialystok.47 This reconstruction of his life even wrapped up the events of 1935, albeit amended to fit the new purpose. The disagreement with Gauleiter Koch was turned into a matter of combating corruption and maladministration, and Schacht’s presence became incidental. It is noticeable that at no time did Schacht refer to the incident during the trial process. Turning to 1939, when he was the central figure in the SS race and resettlement process in Poland, he told the interrogators of his fundamental opposition to Himmler and Heydrich. Working with the Gauleiter of Silesia, Josef Wagner, he said he composed a paper on the inadvisability of erecting Jewish ghettos. Himmler, however, dashed their hopes because of military security concerns, Jewish opposition to National Socialism, and the Jewish predilection for resistance.

  The worthlessness of Bach-Zelewski’s evidence and his cynical manipulation of his interrogators were already present in November 1945. He declared,

  I was opposed to Himmler’s exaggerated racial and Germanic ideas as early as 1934 when his pronouncements were becoming clearer and clearer. At the beginning of the Polish campaign and after Himmler’s speech at the Wewelsburg I was filled with the profoundest misgivings because I saw that my national status would be questioned by reason of my half-Slav descent and my Jewish relations.48

  Focusing purely on this interrogation transcript, we can see how he embellished his story. He qualified Himmler’s extermination policy of the Jews of Europe by saying “not the Jews but the Slavs.” Every crime became an alibi for everything else. “Moreover,” he said, “the fight against partisans was gradually used as an excuse to carry out other measures, such as the extermination of Jews and Gypsies … the systematic reduction of the Slavic peoples by some 30,000,000 souls [in order to ensure the supremacy of the German people], and the terrorization of civilians by shooting and looting.” The decision to exterminate the Jews, he alleged, came after the failure at Moscow and the Katyn discoveries. “It certainly came late and all SS and Army generals confirm this,” he alleged. “Today, I am of the opinion that the order must have originated from Hitler himself.” He first heard rum
ors in 1943, and then he alleged that a commission came to build a gas plant to make gas in his area. They wished to use a factory complex repairing captured weapons in Mogilev. The “rumors of gas vans in Posen were quite strong,” he said.49

  Bach-Zelewski was shown a copy of Meldung 51a (see chapter 3). He denied responsibility for the numbers of Jews shot, admitting that he tried to discriminate between the “Jewish question” and the “bandit problem.”50 According to Bach-Zelewski, the Pripyat marshes killing actions of 1941 went against his original plans. He explained to the interrogators that his Jewish brother-in-law and family happened to live in Bialystok. He tried in vain to get them to leave, which they did, but then they returned a month later believing the killing was over. This, he explained, was the common belief among the Jews, that the Nazi actions were like Russian pogroms—short and deadly. The Jews, he decided, were reluctant to leave, especially those with money or wealth; only the working-class Jews left with the Red Army. He said he went to the chief rabbi of Bialystok to explain that the reprisals were Himmler’s response for Soviet scorched-earth policies. His recommendation was for the Jews of Bialystok to escape. Bach-Zelewski embellished the tale by asking the interrogator, “why have no Rabbis been giving testimony?”51 He had offered to the rabbi keeping the front lines open on either side of the Pripyat marshes. The Jews could then flee through the marshes without worry of encountering German soldiers and could reach the safety of the Red Army lines. This would have involved a months-long trek in the middle of the security campaign. The proposed escape failed on account of a surprise Red Army cavalry counterattack that attempted to destroy the German rear areas. Bach-Zelewski was forced to close the gap, and the killings began under Einsatzgruppen commander Artur Nebe. Bach-Zelewski then explained that by revealing the Pripyat marshes incident, he had turned traitor to the German people, but he also recognized that some day the story would surface. Not content to leave the story alone, he explained that Rabbi Barnovdez’s house became his headquarters. He even added that “a Jew” worked for him in the Minsk hotel, another headquarters. This person made the fires and did other menial tasks and was denounced by a Russian chambermaid (presumably Helena Bashina) because he received “special benefits.”52

  The truth was less palatable and involved familiar characters. In 1939, Bialystok came under the Soviet occupation following the Nazi-Soviet dismemberment of Poland. The Jewish population swelled with refugees from Warsaw. On June 27, 1941, Field Marshal von Bock and Heinz Guderian led the German invasion through Bialystok. On the first day, the Great Synagogue was set on fire with eight hundred Jews locked inside. On July 11, the Germans rounded up four thousand males, led them into the forest, and shot them. The ghetto was established on August 1, housing upward of fifty thousand persons.53 From 1941, Bialystok was a central supply center for HSSPF Russia-Centre. On July 1, 1941, Bach-Zelewski received the first reports of the encirclement battle of Bialystok. A week later, he joined Bock and Schenckendorff for coffee. That evening, for their parting dinner, Bach-Zelewski supplied prawns.54 On July 14, he began the preparations for the cleanup of the forest area of Biaełowiea, near Bialystok. Preparations involved questioning Schenckendorff and Oberst der Polizei Montua as to how this might be best achieved.55 In 1943, resistance in Bialystok led to six days’ fighting and marked the end of Globocnik in Poland. Bialystok served as a jumping-off point for killing actions in the surrounding communities. The total number of Jews killed from this region reached 240,000.56

  In terms of the treatment of Jews as partisans and vice versa, Bach-Zelewski was quite equivocal; some Jews were partisans but they were not in significant proportion to the whole number. He referred to the resistance by the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto but dismissed it, stating that fifty German casualties did not make a strong case. He said he was sacked by Hitler and Himmler for not deporting the Hungarian Jews when he was in Budapest, in 1944. He then launched into a tirade in which he said he was a victim of the “Dagger” proposition. The interrogator corrected him, “the stab in the back?” Bach-Zelewski replied, “yes, the stab in the back.” He then explained that everyone was blaming Himmler because he was dead and they could exonerate themselves. The “Jewish problem,” he said, was not handled by a single policy but by many, some of which were in conflict. Bach-Zelewski then explained how in 1944–45 Schellenberg had tried to save the last remaining Jews under Himmler’s sanction. They had all worked together with a “General Franz Schenckendorff.” The only other general in the German army with a similar name was Heinrich von Schenckendorff. 57

  Bach-Zelewski’s argument over the wider treatment of the Jews delved into Nazi economics and the exclusion of the Jewish communities from their livelihoods. This meant they were deprived of food. By forcing the Jews to build camps, Bach-Zelewski astounded the interrogator by suggesting, Himmler was in fact offering them a livelihood, the opportunity to work for Germany and food. He assumed the “free” (presumably he meant Aryan) population would never buy anything Jewish, and for this reason, the Jews had to be made to work for Germany. He had established watchmakers’, tailors’, and shoemakers’ workshops and granted Jewish unions under Oberpräsident Schmeldt. The Jews repaired all the broken watches from the Reich; German watchmakers were particularly happy because they no longer had access to skilled manpower because of conscription. Bach-Zelewski rounded off his story by adding that the “Eastern Jews were a passive people.”58 Bach-Zelewski was an unrepentant Nazi. After 129 Nuremberg interrogations, countless more by West German Federal prosecutors, and numerous courtroom and written statements, he never once accepted his guilt for the thousands of murders he was responsible for.

  The Warsaw Debacle

  One of the most detailed collections of interrogations and documents of pre-trial preparations were those concerning the Warsaw uprising of 1944. The significance of the uprising lay with the possible defendants and witnesses. With the exception of Hitler, Himmler, and Dirlewanger, all the leading German participants were in allied custody; some in Poland, but the majority at Nuremberg. The single most important military personality was Col. Gen. Heinz Guderian. The SS was of course represented by Bach-Zelewski, and the Nazi civilian administration by General Governor Hans Frank. On the next level, there was General Vormann, the army commander in Warsaw; Ernst Rode, the chief of staff of the KSRFSS; and Heinz Reinefarth, the Kampfgruppe commander at the center of the street fighting. Waiting in the wings with due trepidation were Warlimont, Hitler’s dynamic advisor; Wolff, Himmler’s former adjutant; and Dr. Ludwig Fischer, the Nazi governor of Warsaw. There were a host of field officers and operatives of varying ranks, including the SS commander of the Warsaw security police. Telford Taylor chose to focus the case on German army responsibility for the destruction of Warsaw rather than to place the key defendants on trial for war crimes. This led to perhaps the most bizarre example of what happened when expert witnesses were granted too much leeway.

  On July 20, 1944, hours after the bomb plot against Hitler, Guderian became chief of the General Staff of the Army. The former armored warfare specialist “Fast Heinz” Guderian cut a shabby picture in Nuremberg. Confinement did not call forth his finest hour. He spent much of the first part of his incarceration with other senior army defendants attempting to form a united and Nazi defense. When his coup failed, he broke ranks and elected a legal defense of denial. Guderian denied everything, concocting implausible stories especially about his part in Warsaw.59 His vehement denials caused his complexion to become puce or to redden with severe palpitations, indicating that perhaps Hitler had taught him something after all. His subsequent 1952 memoirs failed to mention his dramatic performances.60 Guderian’s bizarre behavior continued when on January 29, 1946, he was interrogated by a Polish army officer. It seems Guderian attempted to locate a “mutual understanding” by suggesting his old family home had been within 1919 Polish borders. He said he rarely passed by Poland, meaning the General Government, preferring to visit his family in the Warthegau, a terr
itory of western Poland annexed to the Reich in 1939. Unable to grasp the insensitivity of his remarks, he then changed tack and stated that he came from a long family line of German Junkers with a homeland that had been Prussian for hundreds of years. The Polish officer’s reply was calm but firm, reminding Guderian that the area had been Polish long before it had been German.61 On this footing the less than cordial interrogations concerning the Warsaw uprising proceeded.

  Guderian denied any planning responsibilities and claimed that he had only met Hitler on a few occasions, “none of which had any political significance.” This was interesting for the interrogators because his promotion to chief of the general staff was made by Hitler personally, after the July 20, 1944, bomb plot. Guderian stated that Bach-Zelewski received orders from Hitler to destroy Warsaw. Bach-Zelewski’s units were of doubtful quality, “highly evil,” and conducted “ruthless actions.” Guderian claimed that the implementation of the Geneva Convention in the surrender negotiations was his idea. Regarding the razing of the city and the shooting of civilians, he said, “this order concerning human beings is not known to me. The order concerning the razing of the town I heard from Hitler myself.”62 Guderian was then presented with a section of Hans Frank’s diary. On August 3, 1944, at 9:10 p.m., Guderian had called Frank on the telephone and said, “in the city of Warsaw a verdict is to be accomplished with all ruthlessness.” He denied that any such discussion had taken place and suggested that the phone call in the diary entry concerned the Luftwaffe’s bombing of Warsaw. Again, Guderian blamed Bach-Zelewski for the destruction of Warsaw. The interrogator then referred to a telegram Bach-Zelewski received from Guderian on October 11, 1944, ordering him to “raze Warsaw to the ground…. I notify you of this since this new Führer order about the destruction of Warsaw is of the greatest importance for any further policy in Poland.”63 Contrast this with his 1952 memoirs: “I requested that Warsaw be included forthwith in the military zone of operations; but the ambitions of Governor-General Frank and the SS national leader Himmler prevailed with Hitler.” 64