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

by Philip W. Blood

  CONCLUSION

  In 1972, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, a lonely and decrepit old man, died in a German prison hospital. Eighty-one years earlier, his uncle was killed in a colonial skirmish that rendered shame on the German army and disgraced his family. In 1911, his father, an East Elbian Prussian Junker, died penniless in Dortmund. Four years later, his “stepfather” chaperoned him into war as a child soldier in the German army. Between 1915 and 1945, the boy was nurtured into a serial murderer and mass executioner. This dysfunctional family bred a man who was encouraged by Hitler to disfigure German history. Bach-Zelewski exploited his past to build a career. He exploited a flair for violence to produce favorable outcomes for his political leaders. In war, he was responsible for mass extermination across continental Europe. In his wake, West Germany suffered serious bouts of political violence. The challenge of the student revolution of 1968 inspired the Baader–Meinhof gang to acts of terrorism and crime. In 1972, during the Munich Olympic Games, a Palestinian terrorist hit squad killed Jewish athletes from the Israeli team. Detachments of German police and soldiers once again conducted procedures for Bandenbekämpfung to suppress the violence. These conditions seemed a fitting memorial to the godfather of Nazi Bandenbekämpfung, as well as a historical test of German democracy. Eventually, order was restored, Germany found confidence in democracy, and another old Nazi disappeared from memory.

  Current thinking on the SS has rightly focused on its brutal methods during the occupation of Europe in the Second World War. Whether this was caused by Partisanenbekämpfung or Bandenbekämpfung is immaterial to the victims. Words, however, do matter, and the differences between the two concepts were significant. The key to understanding their differences lies in understanding security warfare. Nineteenth-century Western nationalism encouraged the convergence of industrial society with the drive of imperialism and advances in warfare. One outcome saw the rise of the professional soldier; the other saw the formulation of security warfare. The great powers exploited security warfare for different ends: America to build the nation, Britain to expand the empire, and France to recapture Napoleonic grandeur. The German variety had origins drawn from the Thirty Years’ War, but the Franco–Prussian War refined it. Germany institutionalized security to reinforce unification and install a guardianship of national interests. The German army later used the African colonies to hone its security warfare methods; it learned to practice brutality as a routine and extermination as a punishment. In 1914, this system was instrumental in sustaining Germany in total war against five other great powers and their empires. Thus, security warfare was a proven and reliable system in the mindset of professional German soldiers. It was, therefore, logical that Adolf Hitler trusted German security warfare in 1939.

  Taken from another viewpoint, in the years just before the First World War, Germany looked set to craft the twentieth century. German science and industry had overtaken Britain and France. The education system supported Germany’s drive to compete with the British Empire in international management ventures. German philosophy, music, and other cultural exploits were the envy of Europe. The economy had achieved an unusual mix of heavy industry, agriculture, and a fine sprinkling of modern financial and capital markets. Only America represented the greater power, but Germany had become the engine of Europe. Some scholars have argued that Germany took a wrong turn, while others have argued that Germany followed a “special road” that led to calamity. In 1989, after five regimes and two world wars, the much reduced borders of Germany were reunified. This seemed to confirm the “wrong turn” or the “wrong path”; however, which would have been the correct way? In one hundred years, from 1814, Germany followed a road from Napoleonic occupation through the defeat and occupation of France and a renewed invasion of France, along the way threatening the world with its military prowess. Defeat proved its weaknesses, revolution exposed its political frailties, and democratic politics served to shield Hitler until he came to power.

  Bandenbekämpfung played its part in these events, through security warfare, and suited a growing preoccupation with guardianship. In 1870, Bismarck succinctly stated that two hundred years of French aggression had ended, but he failed to mention that it heralded forty-four years of obsessive security paranoia. Germany had been periodically ravaged by wars and, during the Thirty Years’ War, had become a slaughterhouse, which left deep scars. After 1871, Germany joined a select band of great powers but trembled under growing self-doubt. This self-doubt, fixated on Germany’s great power status, was rife in society by 1900. It was exaggerated. However, faced with competing notions of the national ideal, such as America’s “manifest destiny,” Germany responded with control of the population, society, and politics and economics. German Lebensraum in comparison to manifest destiny was reactionary and based on fears of failure or backwardness. Both concepts had tragic consequences for those swept away in their wake, but the American was generated from hope, whereas the German came from the harvest of despair.

  What were the implications for Bandenbekämpfung? The two prominent features—an absence of technical “modernity” and the preponderance of “old school”–trained operatives—made Bandenbekämpfung that soul mate of Lebensraum. By 1872, Bandenbekämpfung was synonymous with countering guerrillas, or the franc-tireur. This idea was still being flaunted by Field Marshal von Rundstedt in 1944 to disqualify the French resistance from humane treatment. Small war principles were also drafted onto Bandenbekämpfung techniques to formulate the pursuit as a routine of security warfare. German operational rehearsals in the colonies had long-term consequences. The first was the adoption of search-and-destroy measures into Bandenbekämpfung techniques. The second found the protagonists of guerrilla warfare and their families as the first victims of genocide. There was no external intervention or army of liberation in Namibia (1904–12) to prevent the extermination of the Herero. By 1914, Bandenbekämpfung had established itself.

  The First World War ensured the cruelties of colonial warfare were visited on continental Europe. In 1914, the German army conducted widespread executions of civilians excused on the grounds that the victims were franc-tireur. In East Africa, Germany’s “Lion of Africa,” Lettow-Vorbeck, conducted a sideshow guerrilla campaign. Upon arrival at home, his role in the Freikorps was to conduct an antiguerrilla campaign just as he had in Namibia in 1904–5. Lettow-Vorbeck was proved to be a military anachronism by the exploits of Franz Ritter von Epp. Epp helped develop security warfare beyond the experiences of China (1900) and Namibia (1904–7) and operations from the Great War to Munich (1919). Epp turned Bandenbekämpfung into a political weapon. The First World War ensured that security warfare was the preferred means of occupation, pacification, and intervention. The long-term impact of the security Cannae at Munich led to the continuation of Schlieffen dogma and the eventual adoption of Bandenbekämpfung as mainstream Nazi security policy.

  Research for this book revealed some interesting parallels, the most pertinent being the impact of historical writing on the development of operational doctrines. Two dominating military thinkers of their time—American naval strategist Alfred T. Mahan and German chief of the general staff Alfred von Schlieffen—were reading Theodor Mommsen’s History of Rome around the same time. Both took ideas from Hannibal’s campaigns but arrived at very different conclusions.1 Their interpretations not only shaped their respective national armies but came to influence the direction of the twentieth century. Roman antiquity was a popular means of erecting lessons for the future that were expounded by historians and teachers and left an indelible mark on the men who became the Nazi leadership. They were the product of an education system that stirred them to equal or surpass the past. Who can deny the power of historical writing on the future? The irony of Mommsen’s classical interpretation serving as the engine for German and Nazi ambitions of empire is only surpassed by his continuing influence over the U.S. armed forces. In 1991, General Schwarzkopf, U.S. Army commander in Kuwait, attributed his victory over I
raq to the inspiring example of Hannibal and the Battle of Cannae. One day, soldiers and historians alike will realize the battle was only a Pyrrhic victory and the onset of defeat.

  Where does this leave research into Bandenbekämpfung? As far as evidence, documentary and oral evidence have been interwoven. The documentary evidence was compiled from surviving captured records, including manuals, pamphlets, speeches, and various kinds of reports. The oral evidence was collected from a variety of sources. The SS-Police signals traffic generated decryption, translation, and interpretation. The content of the signals themselves ranged from orders to commit or report mass killings and simple personal family messages. There were also interrogation reports from the British and U.S. armies. Some military personnel had written memoirs of varying quality. Oral testimony included interrogations, expert witness statements, and courtroom testimony from war crimes trials. Because of concerns over the reliability of oral history, signals and interrogation testimony provided the vehicle for “overhearing” the perpetrators.

  In 1979, a former member of the Prinz Eugen Division—witholding his given name—told some stories from his past. Using his nickname, “Bozo” explained that he had been an expert in the use of the flamethrower. He volunteered for the SS when he was eighteen years of age and transferred to the Prinz Eugen Division in 1943. Bozo’s expertise included climbing mountains to reach the caves where members of Tito’s partisan bands might be hiding. In the time of a quick “zap-zap,” he sent two squirts of flame into the cave to “cook” everything. He had to ration the squirts, otherwise he would have had to spend the day climbing up and down the mountain to refuel rather than hunting across the peaks for the partisans. There was no talk of prisoners of war or white flags; just location, arrival, squirt, and on again. The procedure was explained in a snappy way, giving the impression of military precision. The story, although unpleasant, parallels to similar behavior by combatants from other countries during the war. There was one exception. Bozo became an “expert” in turning anyone who ran into a hurtling ball of flame. The effects of his work thirty-six years later caused him nightmares and flashbacks.2 On June 5, 1994, a former member of the 2nd SS Panzer Division entered the German military cemetery of Le Cambe on the Normandy battlefield, walked directly to a particular grave, fell to his knees, and burst into uncontrolled tears. This story raises questions, such as should we be concerned with whether perpetrators suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder? Do we care?

  Where did Bandenbekämpfung go? It is commonly understood that human experiences can pass through generations. It is perhaps conceivable that children who have absorbed the stories from their father’s wartime experiences translate them into games. Two games played by German children have remarkable correlation with Bandenbekämpfung. The first was called Azerlatschen, the aim of which was to destroy the “A.” The “A” represented a prison camp (Arbeitslager), and when it was destroyed, all the inmates were freed. The other game was Bandenkriegen. The aim was to catch as many of the “Banden” as possible to win the game. In contrast, as a child growing up in Britain, I recall playing Robin Hood with my school friends. Could such games be, among other things, a means of historic transfer from one generation to the next?

  Since my first gripping encounter with Christopher Browning’s book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, I have remained deferential to Browning’s expertise. Although a constant companion to my research, Browning’s book began to reveal its limitations. Its greatest drawback is its reliance on testimonies made over twenty-five years after the events. The “ordinary men” thesis cannot explain how Bozo did his job. It cannot rationalize his methods or his motivations. We still know little of where Nazi policy began, how it was implemented, or how it answered questions about resource marshaling, management decisions, and training methods. We need to know much more about the functions within organizations and work routines of German people of that time. This does not make the “ordinary men” thesis redundant. Rather, it forms part of the foundation for a deeper explanation of Nazism.

  What are the implications for the study of post-1945 Bandenbekämpfung themes? It was a deliberate decision on my part to avoid comparisons with other countries and other wars. Counterinsurgency or asymmetric warfare represents a modern adaptation of British, French, and American security warfare traditions. For example, the circumstances of the U.S. Army’s actions in Vietnam around 1968 might contain fleeting moments of patterns of behavior similar to the Germans’ in occupied Russia in 1943, but they were not the same. The German troops differed in so many ways from the American soldiers that a separate book would be required to explain them all. While some American soldiers committed crimes in Vietnam, the majority of German troops committed to Bandenbekämpfung were guilty of heinous crimes. Indeed, they were officially encouraged to commit crimes. Where the study of security warfare beyond 1945 remains important is in how it was scattered into the many strands of modern security and warfare.

  Munich was gripped by revolution in 1919 and by terrorism in 1972. The response of the new Weimar democracy in 1919 was to unleash Bandenbekämpfung. The Federal government’s response in 1972 was to once again turn to Bandenbekämpfung. A nation gripped by terror will overreact. When the September 11 terrorist attacks turned security and insecurity into the key issues of the twenty-first century, we all became a little more imprisoned. The interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan in the name of security have contributed to further global disorder. The impulses to turn to Bandenbekämpfung still resonate. To extend security, raise response levels, stamp an official footprint on civil rights, and exploit the public’s susceptibility to psychological pressure by governments: these are the phenomena that originally gave Bandenbekämpfung release. Scholars of the post-September 11 world, examining our perceptions of security, might examine the military abuse and political manipulation of Bandenbekämpfung.

  DIAGRAMS

  I. Organization of the Kommandostab Reichsführer SS (1941)

  Source: Based upon documents from archives, the Rode testimony, and the KSRFSS diary of 1941.

  II. Chef der Bandenkampfverbände (Ch.BKV) June 1943

  Source: Himmler’s June 1943 order mentioned in chapter 4.

  This diagram shows the establishment of the three HSSPF in the east (the exclusion of Russland-Nord was not explained), with the Bandenbekämpfung command staff and the formation of the Kampfgruppe. Each of the other HSSPF’s were to form command staffs, but not a Kampfgruppe unless their territory was declared a Bandenkampfgebiet (a territory under antibandit warfare).

  III. Nachschubkommandantur der Waffen-SS und Polizei

  Source: Found in chapter 7: NARA, RG242, BDC, A3343-SSO-364A, Rudolf Pannier, Tätigkeitsbericht für den Monat August, 6 September 1943. Military History Archive Prague (MHAP)/USHMM RS-48.004/roll 6, Ic Mitteilungen Nr.4, 5 March 1943. MHAP/USHMM RS-48.004/roll 6, Tätigkeitsbericht, 8 August 1943.

  IV. From Thule Society to Bandenkampfabzeichen

  Symbol of the Thule Society

  The Thule-Gesellschaft (Thule Society) was founded in 1918 by Rudolf von Sebottendorff. He was an occultist, but his membership included Epp and other Nazis. Thule became the symbol for a German empire beyond Germany’s existing borders.

  Bandenkampfabzeichen

  The lineage of the Bandenkampfabzeichen is reveald. This illustrates how Himmler and Bach-Zelewski had sealed Epp’s past and Germanic mythology into a medal for Lebensraum.

  V. Bach-Zelewski’s Chain of Command, Warsaw (1944)

  Source: Bach-Zelewski’s evidence presented at the Polish war crimes trial in 1947, in Warsaw. This model was intended to explain why he had virtually no responsibility for the destruction and killing. His personal war diary tells a different story.

  APPENDIX 1:

  GLOSSARY OF BANDENBEKÄMPFUNG

  AND RELATED TERMINOLOGY

  Allgemeine-SS: the General SS and central part of the SS, composed mainly of part-time
volunteers.

  Arbeitererfassungsaktion: Bandenbekämpfung action to round up labor under the pretext of security.

  Bagration: Soviet name for the 1944 summer offensive.

  Banden: bands.

  Bandenaufklärung: bandit reconnaissance.

  Bandenbekämpfung: bandit fighting or combating bands.

  Bandenfrauen: women working with the band.

  Bandenhäuptling: chieftain or leader of a locally raised and inspired band.

  Bandenkampfverbände (BKV): combating band formations.

  Bandenkampfvorschrift: instructions to combat the bands.

  Bandenkinder: children from destroyed villages.

  Bandenlage: bandit situation report.

  Bandentätigkeit: band activity.

  Bandenunwesen: band (criminal) activities.

  Bandenverdächtige: bandit suspects.

  Bandenverseucht: bandit diseased area.

  Banditen: bandits.

  Barbarossa: codename for the German invasion of Russia, June 22, 1941.

  Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei (BdO): field or regional commander of the uniformed police.

  Befehlshaber der Sicherheitspolizei (BdS): field or regional commander of the security police.

  Chef der Bandenkampfverbände (Ch.BKV): commander of the formations for the combating of bands.