Hitler's Foreign Executioners

by Christopher Hale

  In Estonia, however, the proposal to form a national legion was welcomed. The German Commissar Litzmann replied warmly to Professor Kant’s letter and, in defiance of Lohse, backed his proposal to recruit ardent young Estonians who wished to fight the Soviets. To begin with, Rosenberg refused to support Litzmann, claiming feebly that he was too busy struggling to fend off the aggressive commissar of Ukraine, Erich Koch. But Litzmann soon won the backing of Field Marshall Georg von Küchler, the commander of Army Group North, who ‘shared’ Estonia with Litzmann and then, more surprisingly, the German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. Litzmann’s refusal to submit to Lohse, his immediate boss, and his active encouragement of Professor Kant heralded a decisive step change in German occupation policy.

  By mid-1942, the SS had already set up scores of Estonian police and Schuma battalions, and managed 40,000 Omakaitse men. But the service contracts signed by the Estonian recruits would run out on 1 September 1942. The Estonian police commander, Dr Heinz Jost, met Litzmann to discuss the impending crisis and the following day sent an urgent message directly to Himmler, who was on board his mobile headquarters, the Zug Heinrich. Jost revealed that many of the Estonians had made it clear that they would not sign another service contract. Many had come to regard their service as auxiliary Reich policeman as shameful. But Jost had a solution. The Estonian policemen would, he believed, almost certainly agree to join an SS legion, especially if pay and conditions were improved. Jost rounded off his appeal by stressing that at least 70 per cent of the Estonians were ‘racially suitable’.23

  A week later Himmler replied to Jost. He refused to make an immediate decision, but ordered Litzmann to proceed with preparations to form an Estonian SS legion. Himmler’s involvement now set off alarms at German army headquarters. Major General Hans Kruth, who feared that Jost’s plan was the thin end of an SS wedge, soon called on Litzmann and urged him to persuade the Estonians to renew their contracts, thus retaining the auxiliary police as part of the shaded SD/Wehrmacht administrative apparatus and fending off the SS. Alarmed by Kruth’s ploy, Jost sent a second telegram to Himmler, urging him to make an immediate decision. The next day, Berger informed Rosenberg that following a meeting with Hitler, Himmler had agreed to form an Estonian SS legion.24 On 28 August 1942, a rally was organised in Tallinn’s central square. Litzmann called on the young men of Estonia to volunteer to join the new SS legion. He added a powerful enticement: anyone who accepted his challenge would be exempted from compulsory labour service in the Reich.

  In January 1943 Himmler arrived at an SS training academy to meet the first Estonian Waffen-SS NCOs. He was pleased to discover that ‘racially they could not be distinguished from Germans’ – the Estonians, he reported, were one of the few races that can ‘after the segregation of only a few elements be merged with us without any harm to our people’.25 Himmler had crossed the Rubicon.

  In Riga, Latvian army officers closely followed developments in Estonia. All were ardent nationalists but also fervently pro-German. They did not regard Latvians as any less deserving of Himmler’s favours than their Estonian comrades. In 1940, many Latvian army officers had fled the Soviet terror to Germany. Among them were Generals Rūdolfs Bangerskis, Artūrs Mihails Silgailis and Oskars Dankers. In Berlin, Silgailis and a few other Latvian officers had been recruited by the Abwehr and received training at a camp in East Prussia. At the end of June 1941, Abwehr head Admiral Canaris promoted Silgailis to Sonderführer (special leader), outfitted his men in German uniforms and, as the Wehrmacht rolled into Lithuania, dispersed them among various German units to pursue clandestine missions behind enemy lines. One of the most devoted pro-Nazis in the Latvian administration was Lt Col Voldemsrs Veiss, who had formerly served as the Latvian military attaché in Finland. Veiss was a fanatical anti-communist. The ‘Jewish’ NKVD had, he claimed, murdered members of his family; he thirsted for revenge. In the volatile period immediately following the German invasion, SD commander Walther Stahlecker depended on both Veiss and Viktors Arājs to recruit Latvian auxiliaries to push forward anti-Jewish ‘cleansing’ operations. By mid-July, Veiss and his equally brutal henchman Lt Col Roberts Osis had seized control of all Latvian militia in the Riga area with the exception of the Arājs Commando. Armed with captured French and Czech weapons, these Schuma battalions, like the Arājs men, scoured the countryside, hunting down Jews and communist ‘bandits’. At the end of October, the SS began deploying their Baltic Schuma men on the front line – first of all on the Leningrad front, near the Staraya Russa province, then in Ukraine and southern Russia to combat partisans. Veiss and the other Latvian commanders hatched up a plan to traffic volunteers for political favours. In December 1941, Rosenberg inadvertently handed the SS a useful recruitment tool. As Eastern Minister, he issued a decree making labour service in the Reich (RAD) mandatory for all Latvian men and women. Latvian students who wanted to continue university studies would have to rack up a year of labour service. When Latvians reported to RAD offices, the SS and SD pounced, offering young Latvian men a ‘choice’ between hard labour in Germany or service with a police unit or Schuma battalion.

  It was increasingly evident that for many young Latvians the Schuma battalions had lost their allure. Since the majority of Latvian Jews had been killed, and the process of mass murder reallocated to the camps, security duties had become mundane. By the same token, the SD had less need of their services as man hunters. In these new circumstances, military service appeared much more attractive. In June 1942, HSSPF Friedrich Jeckeln, who had masterminded the Rumbula massacre, hinted to Latvian army officers that if they provided enough recruits for a Latvian SS legion they might be rewarded with some level of political autonomy. Himmler rapped him sharply on the knuckles for taking this initiative: ‘political bargaining’, he insisted, was ‘fraught with danger’. But it was not long after slapping down Jeckeln that it became known in Latvian military circles that Himmler had ratified the formation of the Estonian SS Legion. It seemed that the stable door was, at the very least, ajar. In November, a delegation from the Latvian puppet administration led by Dankers, Veiss, and Silgailis met with Jeckeln’s subordinate, the SS and Polizeiführer (SSPF) Walther Schröder in Riga. He was known to be sympathetic to their cause, and the Latvians again urged the Germans to consider authorising a Latvian SS legion. But Schröder’s boss Jeckeln, now wary of antagonising Himmler, flatly turned them down and repeated his demand for more Latvian police recruits.

  It was stalemate. But the changing fortunes of war would soon strengthen the Latvian’s hand. In the summer of 1942, well-organised partisan armies in the occupied Soviet Union and the Balkans, acting on orders from Moscow, began to escalate their struggle against the German occupiers. Frequent and often highly effective attacks on German supply lines began to wreak havoc in army rear areas. In August, Hitler finally recognised the scale of the problem. He issued Führer Directive 46: ‘Instructions for Intensified Action against Banditry in the East’, which formally criminalised partisan attacks and handed control of ‘bandit warfare’ to Himmler and the SS.26 On 9 September, Himmler called the architect of the Pripet Marshes mass slaughter, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, to his headquarters for lunch, and appointed him Chief Inspector of Bandit Warfare.27 Both Himmler and his chief bandit hunter had used anti-partisan warfare as a means to camouflage racial mass murder. Where there is a partisan, there is a Jew, Bach-Zelewski often proclaimed, and where there is a Jew there you will find a partisan. In German thinking, the Soviet Union was a Jewish bandit state. The new partisan armies that now plagued the German war machine were, however, multinational militias. Many Polish and Ukrainian partisans hated Jews, and often murdered Jewish refugees. Many thousands of Jews, to be sure, fought the Germans as partisans, but after the summer of 1942 anti-bandit warfare was necessarily directed at genuine militias that had no explicit racial identity. Nevertheless, the equation between ‘The Jew’ and the ‘The partisan’ continued to infest SS anti-bandit strategy. According to German army repor
ts on anti-partisan actions, the number of Jews executed ‘as partisans’ frequently outweighed any other ethnicity.28

  Just as the renewed partisan war erupted, and Himmler tightened his grip on security, the massive German offensive against Stalingrad which had begun that summer, began to bog down. In November, the Russians launched Operation Uranus with the intent of encircling the German 6th Army. As the brutal Russian winter began to grip, the entrapped and starving German troops buckled under relentless Soviet attack. As this catastrophe began unfolding in south-east Russia, Soviet partisans stepped up their campaign in the region near Minsk in Belorussia, on the border with Latvia.

  It was at this critical juncture that Alfred Valdmanis, the former Latvian Minister of Finance and the most outspoken member of the Latvian puppet self-administration, came up with a fresh proposal which would open the way to the formation of an SS legion in Latvia. Even today Valdmanis evokes ambivalent responses among Latvians.29 Was he hero or villain? A shrewd manipulator of mightier powers or an abject Quisling? Or all of these? Valdmanis (a superbly skilled chess player) was, to be sure, a survivor. He was born in Liepāja in 1908, then part of the Imperial Russian Empire, and from his student days he would pursue careers in three different nations and under no less than ten regimes: Tsarist, Imperial German, liberal democratic, Latvian authoritarian, Soviet and German National Socialist. He was both political chameleon and a charismatic manipulator of enemies and allies alike. In 1940, he cut his political cloth to fit the Soviet occupation – then in 1941, turned that coat inside out and joined the Latvian self-administration.

  Following a series of frustrating meetings with SSPF Schröder, Valdmanis came up with a new initiative that he set out in an informal document ‘The Latvian Problem’.30 He reminded the German occupiers ‘With what love the German soldiers were received and guided on in Latvia’. But in return, he went on, Latvians had been insulted and humiliated: ‘Have the Germans really come as liberators?’ Valdmanis insisted that Latvians desperately wished to join the war on Bolshevism, but as citizens of a free, autonomous state. As a model, Valdmanis proposed Slovakia: a free nation, he asserted, but closely bonded with Nazi Germany. Since the Slovakian government was dominated by the anti-Semitic Hlinka Guard, Valdmanis was clearly signalling that Latvian would continue to play a part in the ‘solution to the Jewish problem’. Valdmanis proposed that in return for ‘Slovakian style autonomy’, he and the SA would offer up at least 100,000 Latvian volunteers to serve in a new national legion. He warned Schröder: ‘All of Latvia is in the grip of a sullen paralysis … Many don’t seem to care whether they are swallowed up by the Bolsheviks or sucked up by the Germans … From where shall we procure volunteers?’ In other words, if the Germans wanted Latvian recruits they would have to make some serious concessions in return.

  As it turned out, both Himmler and Rosenberg had already discussed granting limited autonomy to the Baltic states, and Himmler had brought the matter up at a meeting with Hitler. This meant that when Schröder met Valdmanis and the SA he could truthfully tell them that Latvian autonomy was being considered at the highest levels. In Berlin, Berger also flicked through Valdmanis’ The Latvian Problem. He scorned the ‘Slovakian option’ and, in any case, was unconvinced that Valdmanis could come up with the promised 100,000 volunteers. But he urged Himmler to consider the propaganda benefits of a recruitment campaign apparently led by Latvians.31 We cannot be sure, but Berger may have believed that if Latvians, say, were seen to join the German side, other Eastern Europeans, who might have thrown in their lot with the Soviet partisans, would follow their example. In January 1943, Himmler paid a rare visit to the front line near Leningrad and watched Latvian Schuma battalions in action with the 2nd SS Motorised Infantry. They fought well. Himmler made a snap decision to reorganise the three Schuma battalions as a single Latvian SS Volunteer Brigade. On 23 January, Himmler met Hitler in Posen and commended the Latvian units. Their discussion took place just as Soviet forces commenced their final decisive move against the German 6th Army trapped at Stalingrad. On 31 January, General Field Marshall Friedrich Paulus surrendered to Soviet forces, ‘besmirching’, Hitler spat, ‘the heroism of so many others at the last moment’.

  On 10 February, as 91,000 German and Romanian soldiers and twenty-two German generals, including the shattered Paulus, were marched into captivity, Hitler formally signed an agreement ordering the formation of a Latvian SS Volunteer Legion: ‘Ich befehle die Aufstellung einer Lettischen SS Freiwilligen-Legion.’32 But in Riga, skirmishing between the Latvian SA and the Germans was far from over – and according to an SD report ‘The people [of Liepsja, Latvia’s second largest city] are all talking about a general mobilization of Latvian men. The common talk is that the Germans want to get Latvia’s younger generation into the army, seemingly with good reason, just to use them as cannon fodder at the front and eliminate them.’33 The Latvian negotiators showed signs of getting cold feet; but immediately after receiving Hitler’s order, Berger formally announced the formation of the 15th SS Latvian Volunteer Division, and appointed a German SS-Brigadeführer, Peter Hansen, as commander. This naturally further dismayed the Latvians who had been led to believe that General Rudolfs Bangerskis would be appointed as a matter of course. As Dankers and Valdmanis bickered with Jeckeln and Commissar Lohse, the Germans cynically went ahead with plans to start inducting Latvians into the legion. To circumvent the Hague Convention of 1907, which proscribed drafting citizens of occupied nations, they used the old trick of decreeing obligatory labour service and then forcing the Latvian Department of Labour to act as a conscription agency. Once Latvians had registered with the department and been declared fit, they had to declare a choice between labour and military service. If they chose the latter, they had to sign a form declaring that they had made a voluntary selection.34

  In March, after recruitment had begun, Hitler rejected the proposal for a ‘Slovakian solution’ – and Valdmanis, its most outspoken advocate, was sent off to Berlin, where he enjoyed the comforts of the luxurious Adlon Hotel and was effectively neutralised. In Riga, the Germans continued to run rings round the confused and compromised Latvian leaders. Himmler grudgingly agreed to appoint General Bangerskis as ‘Legion-Brigadeführer und General Major der Lettische SS Freiwilligen Legion’. So Hansen stood down, and it seemed as if the Latvian negotiators had won a round. But on 7 April, Jeckeln recalled Bangerskis and informed him that a mistake had been made. Since he was not a Reich citizen, he had no legal authority to command a German division. So Hansen was brought back and Bangerskis demoted to ‘Inspector General of the Latvian legion’. To muddy the water still more, Berger promoted Bangerskis to SS-Gruppenführer. For the rest of the war, the outsmarted old man sat at a desk in an office in Riga, doing what he could to promote the cause of the Latvian SS legions.35

  On 26 February the SS-Führungshauptamt in Berlin, Wilmersdorf, issued a final memorandum: ‘Formation of the 15th Latvian SS Volunteer Division’. Although it preserved a few of the concessions demanded by the Latvian SA, the oath vitiates any kind of ‘autonomy’: ‘I swear by God this holy oath, that in the struggle against Bolshevism I will give the commander of the German Armed Forces, Adolf Hitler absolute obedience and as a fearless soldier, I will lay down my life for this oath.’36

  What about numbers? Despite the cynical tactics of the Germans and ‘negative propaganda’ promoted by a few Latvian dissidents, 67,584 Latvians reported and registered. Of these some 27,000 were assigned to the RAD; the rest signed up for military service in the proposed legion. But the SS could still afford to be fastidious recruiters. The German race inspectors passed as fit less than 3,000 men. Notwithstanding the application of such rigorous admission criteria, Himmler made clear to General Dankers and Inspector General Bangerskis that the legion must be referred to as a ‘Waffen-Grenadierdivision der SS’. This meant that it was not strictly an SS division (‘die SS’), but ‘belonged to’ the SS. Latvian officers could not be designated as ‘SS-Scharführer’
, say, but as ‘Leg. Scharführer’. Himmler denied Latvian recruits any of the normal privileges enjoyed by his German officers: SS social clubs and brothels were off limits. In October and November, further mobilisations were demanded, and on each occasion Himmler refused to consider any concomitant ‘political concessions’.

  Visvaldis Mangulis, who observed some of the meetings between the SA and the Germans, tried to rationalise the dilemma of the Latvian SA: ‘If they did not mobilize and the Germans won the war, then the Latvians would have a weak claim to independence … If they did not mobilize and the Germans lost the war, then surely Latvia would be occupied by the Reds once more.’37 Mangulis’ analysis is hardly logical, but it is repeated every year by the organisers of the ‘Latvian Legion’ commemorations in Riga. If the Soviet army could crush the mighty German war machine, how could a single Latvian division resist its bulldozer-like advance into the Baltic? The fact of the matter is that the Latvian self-administration ‘directors’ had been ‘hoisted by their own petard’. Collaboration made Latvians more, not less, vulnerable to any renewed Soviet terror. By agreeing to recruit young Latvians, the SA condemned an entire generation to certain death on the battlefield and decades of persecution as ‘traitors’ by the Soviets who would successfully reoccupy the Baltic after 1945. The dirty mirage of national autonomy, of ‘Latvia for Latvians’, led Valdmanis and the other SA stooges into a foolish trap. In return for an illusory share of power, they gambled away Latvian lives. The Germans, for their part, took a completely cynical view of the Latvian self-administration. The Mayor of Riga, Hugo Wittrock, writing to his close relative Alfred Rosenberg, disparaged the insatiable appetite of the Latvian ‘clique’: ‘First “Volkshilfe”, then directorate general, now protectorate, then á la Slovakia … The end, I don’t want to spell it out! The arrogance of these well known gentlemen [Valdmanis et al. ] … has now reached its peak.’ Wittrock had no doubt about the appropriate solution: ‘once kicked in the teeth, that gang quickly takes cover, which is what actually happened.’38 Many ordinary Latvians, Abwehr intelligence revealed, regarded the German occupiers more realistically as incompetent, corrupt, selfish, narrow-minded, conceited and uncultured. Collaboration was a one-way, dead-end street.