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

by Philip W. Blood

  76. Bley, Namibia under German Rule, 167.

  77. Krumbach, Franz Ritter von Epp, 179.

  78. John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001); and John Horne and Alan Kramer, “War Between Soldiers and Enemy Civilians,” in Roger Chickering and Stig Förster, Great War, Total War: Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 16.

  79. Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Land on the Eastern Front (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 7; and Norman Stone, The Eastern Front 1914–1917 (London: Penguin, 1975).

  80. Carl von Clausewitz, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret, On War (London: Penguin, 1993), 233.

  81. Horne and Kramer, German Atrocities, 74.

  82. Reichsarchiv, Schlachten des Weltkrieges: Die Eroberung von Nowo Georiewsk (Berlin: Lodz, 1925).

  83. Paul Hechler and Walter Kunrath, Ehrentafel der im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 gefallenen Angehörigen des Preussischen Landwehr–Infanterie Regiments Nr. 6 (Berlin, 1931).

  84. NARA, RG242, OKH, T78/6/677220–677309, Heeresarchiv, Kommandierenden General der Sicherungstruppen, der Deutschen Okkupation, 1917–18.

  85. IWM, GAFWW, box 13, file number 34848. The Mobile–Etappenkommandantur 140, in Buseigny (France).

  86. IWM, GAFWW, box 13, file number 34903.

  87. Charles Townsend, The Oxford History of Modern War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 225.

  88. Ernst Jünger, trans. by Michael Hoffmann, Storm of Steel (London: Penguin, 2003), 55.

  89. Gempp papers, book 40, 21.

  90. Gottfried Benn, “Wie Miss Cavell erschossen wurde. Bericht eines Augenzeugen über die Hinrichtung der englischen Krankenschwester,” in Friedrich Felger (ed.), Was wir vom Weltkrieg nicht wissen (Berlin: Andermann, 1930), 113–7; and Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand, 1914/1939: German Reflections of the Two World Wars (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 22–36.

  91. Holger H. Herwig, “The Immorality of Expediency: The German Military from Ludendorff to Hitler,” in Mark Grimsley and Clifford J. Rogers, Civilians in the Path of War (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 167–7.

  92. Helen McPhail, The Long Silence: Civilian Life under the German Occupation of Northern France, 1914–1918 (London: IB Taurus, 1999), 37–54.

  93. BA MA, PH30 I/ Deutsche Ortskommandantur und Passabteilung im Kortyryk and Wytschaede in Flanders, Belgium.

  94. McPhail, The Long Silence, 38–54.

  95. Liulevicius, War Land, 7.

  96. Paul Roth (ed.) Die politische Entwicklung in Kongress-Polen während der deutschen Okkupation (Leipzig: K.F.Koehler, 1919), 140–181.

  97. BA MA, PH30II/61/62/63, Kaiserliches Generalgouvernement Warschau.

  98. Gempp papers, book 42.

  99. Ibid., book 45, 175–363.

  100. Ibid., 157.

  101. Ibid., 155.

  102. Liulevicius, War Land, 8–9.

  103. IHR, lecture, February 25, 1999; and Margit Szöllösi-Janze, Poison Gas, Lice and Mites: Fritz Haber (1868–1934) and the Uses and Abuses of Science (Munich and St. Antony’s: Oxford University Press).

  104. Gempp papers, 387.

  105. Ibid., 308.

  106. BA MA, PH3/410, GFP in Russia, “Die Arbeitsweise des russischen Nachrich-tendienstes nach den Erfahrungen der geheimen Feldpolizei Ob. Ost, August bis Oktober 1916.

  107. Gempp papers, book 1.

  108. Alex Vanneste, Kroniek van Een Dorp in oorlog Neerpelt 1914–1918 (Antwerp, The Netherlands: Universitas, 1998).

  109. Martin Herzog and Marko Rösseler, “Der groβe Zaun,” Die Zeit, Nr. 17, April 16, 1998.

  110. IWM, GAFWW, box 13, file 34900, Etappen-Inspektionen 1, April 5, 1917, Zusatzbestimmung der Etappen-Inspektion zu AOK 1, file 37648 vom, March 28, 1917, Betr: Organisation der Arbeitskräfte der Zivileinwohner.

  111. IWM, GAFWW, box 3, file 43799, order Ic. Nr. 170, Hauptmann Freiherr von Ende, February 4, 1918.

  112. Verhey, The Spirit of 1914, 219–33.

  113. Ibid., 63–81.

  114. Ibid, 12.

  115. J. R. Sibley, Tanganyikan Guerrilla: East African Campaign 1914–18 (New York: Ballentine, 1971).

  116. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, Meine Erinnerungen aus Afrika (Berlin: K.F. Koehler, 1926).

  117. Adolf von Bomhard, Das K. B. Infanterie-Leib-Regiment: Nach d. amtl. Kriegstagebüchern bearb. im Auftr. d. ehem. Infanterie-Leib-Regiments (Munich: Selbstverl., 1921).

  118. Münchener Stadtmuseum, München-“Hauptstadt der Bewegung” (Munich: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1993), 54–5.

  119. Nigel H. Jones, Hitler’s Heralds: The Story of the Freikorps 1918–1923 (London: Murray, 1987), 138–41. Details of the operation can be found in Friedrich von Oertzen, Die Deutsche Freikorps 1918–1923 (Berlin: Spaeth & Linde, 1937), 337.

  120. Oertzen, Die Deutsche Freikorps, 246. See also Felix L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics, 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966).

  121. Krumbach, Franz Ritter von Epp, 60.

  Chapter 2: The New Order

  1. Hans Grimm, Volk ohne Raum (Munich: Albert Langen, 1926).

  2. Karl Haushofer, Geopolitik Des Pazifischen Ozeans: Studien Über Die Wechselbeziehungen Zwischen Geographie und Geschichte (Berlin: Kurt Vowinckel, 1927), 96.

  3. Martin Schmitz, “Schülerzahlen der gewerblichen kaufmännischen Schulen von 1923 bis 1933,” Diplom. essay, RWTH-Aachen, 2001.

  4. H. W. Bauer, Kolonien im Dritten Reich (Köln: Gauverlag, 1936).

  5. Hayes et al. (eds.), Namibia under South African Rule, 97.

  6. Fraenkel, Military Occupation and the Rule of Law.

  7. Henry T. Allen, My Rhineland Journal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1923), 405.

  8. Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939–45 (Navato: Presidio Press, 1964); and Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army.

  9. Detlev Peukert, trans. Richard Deveson, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity (London: Penguin, 1991).

  10. Thomas G. Mahnken, Uncovering Ways of War: U.S. Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002), 89.

  11. NARA, IRR319, German Army, vol. 1, 01-FIR/25, The German General Staff 1804 to 1934, Walter Warlimont, December 28, 1945.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Hermann Geyer, “Kriegserfahrungen und Cannae im Weltkriege,” Militär-wissenschaftliche Mitteilungen, Heft, August 5, 1924, 24.

  14. NARA, T78/368/6330495–706, Oberleutnant von Ziehlberg, Berlin, May 1, 1930.

  15. Bruno Ernst Buchrucker, Im Schatten Seeckt’s; die Geschichte der “Schwarzen Reichswehr” (Berlin: Kampf, 1928); Craig, The Politics of the Prussian Army, 402–4; Jones, Hitler’s Heralds, 227–30; and BZ-IMT, December 17, 1945.

  16. The following were instructive: Alf Lüdtke, Police and State in Prussia, 1815— 1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); Frank Thomason, “Uniformed Police in the City of Berlin under the Empire,” in Emilio C. Viano and Jeffrey H. Reiman (eds.), The Police in Society (Lexington, Mass: D.C. Heath, 1975); Jürgen Thomaneck, “Police and Public Order in the Federal Republic of Germany,” in John Roach and Jürgen Thomaneck (eds.), Police and Public Order in Europe (London: Croom Helm, 1985); Herbert Reinke, “‘Armed as if for a War’: The State, the Military and Professionalization of the Prussian Police in Imperial Germany,” in Clive Emsley and Barbara Weinberger (eds.), Policing Western Europe: Politics, Professionalism and Public Order, 1850–1940 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1991).

  17. NCA document 2050-PS, Reichsgesetzblatt, August 1919.

  18. NARA, RG319, IRR, box 6, CINFO reports 2, Political analysis of the Weimar Republic, December 10, 1945.

  19. Stadtarchiv Aachen (StaA), Regierung Aachen, Akte 4/7/I, Arbeiter und Soldatenrat 1918–1923, Das besetzte Rheinland; and Ulrich Kluge, Soldatenräte und Revolution: Studien zur Militärpolitik in Deutschland 1918–1919 (Göttingen: Vandenh
oeck & Ruprecht, 1975).

  20. Otto Loening, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte (Leipzig: Hirschfeld, 1929), 30.

  21. Fricke, Bismarcks Prätorianer, 23–30.

  22. Richard Evans, Rereading German History 1800–1996: From Unification to Reunification (London: Routledge, 1997), 65–86.

  23. Richard Bessel, “Policing, Professionalization and Politics,” in Emsley and Weinberger (eds.), Policing Western Europe, 187–217.

  24. Ibid., 202.

  25. Ibid., 187–8.

  26. Loening, Deutsche Rechtsgeschichte, 40.

  27. James M. Diehl, “No More Peace: The Militarization of Politics,” in Roger Chickering and Stig Förster (eds.), The Shadows of Total War: Europe, East Asia and the United States 1919–1939 (Washington, D.C.: German Historical Institute, and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 97–113.

  28. Münchener Stadtmuseum, München-“Hauptstadt der Bewegung” (Munich: Klinkhardt & Biermann, 1993), 52.

  29. HStaD Regierung Aachen, file 22757, documents 34, 86, and 87.

  30. HStaD Regierung Aachen, file 22757, document 71.

  31. HStaD Regierung Aachen, file 22757, document 97, Bericht March 1933, Hilfspolizei Ausbildung. This training was divided between the practical (Praktische Ausbildung), rudimentary weapon skills and the conduct of police patrols, and the theoretical (Theoretische Ausbildung), providing a basic knowledge of German law and penal code.

  32. Franz Seldte, Der Stahlhelm: Erinnerungen und Bilder aus den Jahren 1918— 1933 (Berlin: Stahlhelm, 1932).

  33. Gerald Reitlinger, The SS: Alibi of a Nation 1922–1945 (London: Faber & Faber, 1956); and Robert Koehl, The Black Corps: The Structure and Power Struggles of the Nazi SS (Madison: University of Wisconsin, 1983).

  34. The relationship between the SS and Hitler has been extensively covered by Martin Broszat, The Hitler State (London: Longman, 1983); Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (London: Penguin, 1990); Joachim C. Fest, Hitler (New York: Knopf, 1977).

  35. Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s SS (London: Penguin, 1969), 135.

  36. Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham, Nazism 1919–1945: A Documentary Reader, III (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998), 185, hereafter referred to as Noakes & Pridham and volume.

  37. Blood, “Kurt Daluege and the Militarisation of the Ordnungspolizei,” 95–120.

  38. Hans Speier, “Ludendorff: The German Concept of Total War,” in Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, 306–21.

  39. Erich Ludendorff, Der totale Krieg (Munich: Ludendorff, 1935).

  40. Hew Strachen, “Total War in the Twentieth Century,” in Arthur Marwick, Clive Emsley, and Wendy Simpson, Total War and Historical Change: Europe 1914–1955 (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2001), 255–83.

  41. Wilhelm Deist, “The Road to Ideological War: Germany 1918–1945,” in Williamson Murray, Macgregor Knox, and Alvin Bernstein, The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States and War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 359–60.

  42. NCA document 2284-PS, SS-Standartenführer Gunter d’Alquen, History, Mission and Organization of the SS, 1939.

  43. Ernest K. Bramstedt, Dictatorship and Political Police (London: Routledge, 1945); Helmut Krausnick, Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen: Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges 1938–1942 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1985); Robert Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991); and George Browder, Hitler’s Enforcers: The Gestapo and SS Security Service in the Nazi Revolution (Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press, 1996).

  44. Koehl, The Black Corps, 46.

  45. Andersch, Der Vater eines Mörders; and Peter Padfield, Himmler: Reichsführer-SS (London: Heinemann, 1990), 3–19.

  46. Robert Koehl, RKFDV: German Resettlement and Population Policy 1939–1945, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957).

  47. Koehl, The Black Corps, 48.

  48. NARA, RG242, A3343-SS0-023, Bach-Zelewski.

  49. Kurt Ernst Gottfried von Bülow, Preussischer Militarismus zur Zeit Wilhelm II (Schweidnitz: Scweidnitz, 1930).

  50. Bülow, Preussischer Militarismus, 229–30.

  51. IWM, IMT, interrogation, No. 2599, June 27, 1947.

  52. BZ-USMT, January 17, 1946.

  53. BA, SS personnel file, Bach-Zelewski. On the side of the SS family tree (Ahnentafel), the SS Race and Resettlement Office (RuSHA) representative inscribed the date in pencil and spelled his name in the Polish form, “Zelewsky.”

  54. NARA, RG242, A3343-SS0-023, Bach-Zelewski, letter to Himmler, October 23, 1940.

  55. BZ-IMT, October 25, 1945.

  56. NARA, RG242, A3343-SS0-023, Bach-Zelewski, report from Daluege, March 16, 1933. The word hemmungslos could also mean wild and unscrupulous.

  57. BA, SS personnel file, Bach-Zelewski.

  58. NARA, RG242, A3343-SS0-023, Bach-Zelewski, document Nr. 26335, Himmler’s list of birthday presents included toys, ice cream, and a dog, from 1935 to 1944.

  59. Tuviah Friedman, Bach-Zelewski: Dokumentensammlung (Haifa: Institute of Documentation, 1996), 2–6.

  60. John Weitz, Hitler’s Bankier: Hjalmar Schacht (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1998), 257. Recalling the incident years later, Schacht said that when Bach-Zelewski got up to protest, he wanted to say, “The men’s toilets are along the corridor, second door on the right.”

  61. NARA, RG242, OKW T-77, roll 795, report from Roschmann of Kriegsmarinedienstelle, Königsberg, Prussia, to Oberbefehelshaber der Kriegsmarine, August 20, 1935; report from the Chief of Staff of Wehrkreiskommando I, Königsberg, Prussia, to Oberbefehelshaber des Heeres, August 20, 1935; and Hjalmar Schacht, Reichsbankpräsidenten und beaufragten Reichswirtschaftministerium, zur Eröffnung der Deutschen Ostmesse, August 18, 1935.

  62. BA-ZNS, L 85247, pension file, Georg Liedl.

  63. Terry Charman, The German Home Front 1939–45 (New York: Philosophical Library, 1989), 114.

  64. Kershaw, Hubris, 249. See Derwent Whittlesey, “Haushofer: The Geopoliticians,” in Earle (ed.), Makers of Modern Strategy, 388–411. See also Murphy, The Heroic Earth.

  65. NCA document 1708-PS, National Socialist Yearbook 1941, edited by Robert Ley.

  66. In 1934, Epp attended Josef and Magda Goebbels’ wedding as an official witness, alongside Hitler.

  67. Hermann Weiss, Biographisches Lexikon zum Dritten Reich (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch, 2002), 112.

  68. Alan Wykes, Himmler (New York: Ballentine, 1972), 51–4.

  69. Peter H. Merkel, Political Violence under the Swastika: 581 Early Nazis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 108–9.

  70. Krumbach, Franz Ritter von Epp, 245–64.

  71. Bauer, Kolonien im Dritten Reich, 56.

  72. Noakes & Pridham, III, 667–75.

  73. Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining ethnic cleansing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 308–11.

  74. PRO, WO208-4300, Report on the interrogations of PW LD 1136 SS Gruppenführer Jakob Sporrenberg.

  75. NARA, RG 319 IRR Case Files: U.S. Army Intelligence papers, list number 544, Kurt Daluege, source document, “Nazis in the News” May 25, 1942.

  76. BA R19/414, Rheinische Landeszeitung cuttings from the May 14–15, 1937, Kolonialtagung in Düsseldorf.

  77. HStA Düsseldorf. Denazification prozess. Virtually 100 percent of Rhineland industrialists joined the RKB.

  78. Richard J. Overy, War and Economy in the Third Reich (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 188–204.

  79. Ibid., 191.

  80. BA R19/414, Letter from Major (Schupo) Kummetz nach Düsseldorf (Kolonialpolitische Schulung der Polizei), May 19, 1937.

  81. Gellately, The Gestapo and German Society, found the Gestapo complements for Düsseldorf–126; Essen–43; Duisberg, 28.

  82. Krumbach, Franz Ritter von Epp, 270–1.

  83. Ibid, 300. The commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the colonial association (Kolonial Gesellschaft) fueled the atmosphere of rejuvenating political interest in
the colonies.

  84. Woodruff D. Smith, The German Colonial Empire (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1978), 233.

  85. NCA, document 3058-PS, letter from Heydrich to Göring: Subject: Action against the Jews, November 11, 1938. Heydrich reported 191 synagogues on fire, 76 destroyed, and many subsidiary buildings damaged. The Nazis had 20,000 Jews arrested and 36 killed. Looting had broken out and the police had arrested 174 persons.