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The Scourge of the Swastika

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by Lord Russell of Liverpool


  Their methods were sometimes more than even a Gauleiter could stomach. After the SD had been let loose in Lithuania the Gauleiter of Riga wrote to Rosenberg, then Reich Minister for Eastern territories, pointing out rather apologetically that the SD’s behaviour ‘almost bordered on sadism’. From the details contained in the report it would appear that this phrase was something of an understatement.

  ‘To have buried alive seriously wounded people,’ he wrote, ‘who then worked their way out of their graves again is such extreme beastliness that it should be reported to the Führer and the Reichsmarschall. The civil administration of White Ruthenia makes every effort to win the population over to Germany in accordance with the instructions of the Führer. These efforts cannot be brought into harmony with the methods I have described.’

  Special teams of SD and Gestapo were stationed in prisoner-of-war camps to screen prisoners and weed out those who were considered racially or politically undesirable. Such prisoners were then transferred to concentration camps for ‘special treatment’, which in the SS dictionary of death meant killing.

  The SD were also responsible together with the Gestapo, for administering the ‘Bullet Decree’.1 This directed that all escaped officers and NGOs, other than British or American prisoners of war, should on recapture be handed over to the SD. They would then be taken to Mauthausen Concentration Camp and executed by being shot in the back of the neck.

  These organizations were also used by Reichsminister Fritz Sauckel to impress foreign workers for his slave labour programme. They helped to administer the scheme in the occupied territories, and when the wretches whom they had shanghaied arrived in Germany the Gestapo had them under surveillance and were responsible for apprehending those who managed to escape from the labour camps in which they were confined whilst still physically capable of work.

  In August 1942 Keitel issued an order to the effect that immediate counter-measures would be taken by the SD and Gestapo against single parachutists who were dropped in occupied territory or in Germany to carry out special missions. ‘In so far as single parachutists are captured by members of the Armed Forces, they are to be delivered the same day, after a report has been sent to the competent Abwehr office, to the nearest agency of the Chief of the Security Police and SD.’

  Many ‘lone hands’ were dropped in France during the occupation to liaise and co-operate with the French Resistance Movement. It was the business of the SD and Gestapo to track such persons down and deal with them, and if they were captured by the Wehrmacht they were at once handed over to the SD. After interrogation they were sent to a concentration camp from which but few returned. A number of young women who were flown from England and parachuted into France under the auspices of the French Section of the War Office met their death in this way.1

  In October 1942 Hitler personally issued the ‘Commando Order’, which provided that all Allied servicemen who took part in commando raids and were captured by the Germans would be put to death. This order stated that if individual members of commandos working as agents or saboteurs fell into the hands of the Wehrmacht or the civil police in any of the countries occupied by the Germans they were to be handed over to the SD immediately. These men, who wore uniform and landed in enemy country openly, were entitled to be treated as prisoners of war.

  In pursuance of this Führerbefehl, however, large numbers were handed over to the SD by the German troops who captured them. Most of them were then executed within twenty-four hours but a few were transferred to concentration camps.

  The SD and Gestapo were also given power in some occupied countries to execute, or to send to concentration camps on their own initiative, persons who had themselves committed no offences but were related to others who were alleged offenders.

  This characteristic example of Nazi injustice was given the high sounding title of ‘collective responsibility of members of families of assassins and saboteurs’1. In fact it was a typically Teutonic method of wreaking vengeance upon the innocent relatives of members of the Resistance Forces who had so far eluded capture.

  Such powers were given to the Gestapo in Poland in the middle of 1944 because the internal security situation had recently worsened and the ‘harshest measures’ had to be applied to ‘alien assassins and saboteurs’.

  The Reichsführer SS, in agreement with the Governor General (Hans Frank), therefore ordered that in all cases where Germans had been assassinated or attempts had been made, or where saboteurs had destroyed vital installations, not only was the culprit to be shot but all his kinsmen were to be executed and his female relatives above the age of sixteen sent to concentration camps.

  The Gestapo also conducted third-degree interrogations of prisoners of war. The methods used included ‘bread and water diet; hard bunk; dark cell; deprivation of sleep; exhaustive drilling; and flogging’. The removal of finger nails and toe nails was also used to induce unco-operative prisoners to talk.

  Throughout the length and breadth of Occupied Europe and Germany itself there were few war crimes committed against the civilian population in which the SS, the Gestapo, and the SD did not play a leading part.

  They murdered hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children; they shot recaptured prisoners-of-war on the pretext that they were attempting another escape; they established, staffed, and administered the concentration and forced-labour camps; they cleared and burned ghettos and sent their occupants to extermination camps; they impressed many hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to be deported to Germany as slave labour; they executed captured commandos and paratroopers and they protected German civilians who lynched Allied airmen.

  Speaking of them on German Police Day their Chief, Reinhard Heydrich, said: ‘Secret State Police, Criminal Police, and SD are still surrounded with the furtive and whispered secrecy of a political detective story. Brutality, inhumanity bordering on the sadistic, and ruthlessness are attributed abroad to the men of this profession.’

  The third and last branch of the Schutzstaffeln was the Waffen-SS, a fighting force specially trained for aggressive war. Its origin was thus described in an official Nazi publication, Organization Book of the Nazi Parly, (1943):

  The armed SS originated from the idea of creating for the Führer a special long-service force for the fulfilment of special missions. This should make it possible for members of the Allgemeine SS, as well as volunteers who fulfil the special requirements of the SS, to fight in the battle for realization of the National Socialist idea, weapon in hand and in their own units within the framework of the Army.

  It was not, however, until the outbreak of war that this force became known as the Waffen-SS Totenkopf Verbände, or Death’s Head units, later formed into SS Totenkopf divisions which as early in the war as May 1940 earned undying infamy at Paradis in the Pas-de-Calais.1

  The Waffen-SS was ‘Himmler’s Own’. Though under the tactical command of the Wehrmacht higher formations, it was equipped and supplied through the administrative departments of the SS and under their disciplinary control. That it should fight with chivalry was not Himmler’s intention and it was essential, he said once when addressing a conference of SS commanding officers, that the necessity of the SS standing firm and carrying on the racial struggle without mercy should be so thoroughly instilled into every recruit that he became saturated with it.

  In recent years in Germany there has been a host of apologists for the Waffen-SS, and indignant speeches in its defence have been made at Stahlhelm1 reunions by German generals convicted of war crimes but since released as an act of clemency.

  The men of the Waffen-SS, these generals say, were simple upright soldiers who fought with chivalry for their Fatherland and Führer and to stigmatize as criminal the force in which they had the honour to serve is an insult to the living and the dead.

  Such was not the considered opinion of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremburg who in their judgment said:

  There is evidence that the shooting of unarmed prisoners
of war was the general practice in some Waffen-SS Divisions … units of the Waffen-SS were also involved in the widespread murder and ill-treatment of the civilian population of the occupied territories. Waffen-SS Divisions were also responsible for many massacres and atrocities in occupied countries such as the massacres at Oradour-sur-Glâne and Lidice … the actions of a soldier in the Waffen-SS who in September 1939, acting entirely on his own initiative, killed fifty Jewish labourers in Poland whom he had been guarding were excused by the statement that as an SS man he was ‘particularly sensitive to the sight of Jews’ and had acted ‘quite thoughtlessly in a spirit of adventure’, and a sentence of three years imprisonment imposed on him was dropped under an amnesty.

  All that is true; but this much may be said of the Waffen-SS. To this extent the Waffen-SS differed from the SS proper. They were mere amateurs in crime. Their profession was soldiering, it was their business to fight, and affairs like Oradour-sur-Glâne were in the nature of a side-show.

  The professional criminals were the Allgemeine SS, the Gestapo, and the SD. Although the simile sounds singularly inappropriate and not a little distasteful, it would be correct to say that the Waffen-SS were the Gentlemen and the others were the Players.

  No account of these criminal organizations would be complete without some mention of the Hitler Jugend1 which was the forcing house for future SS men.

  This body of adolescent fanatics was raised by Baldur von Schirach in the early days of the Nazi movement. They were subjected to an intensive programme of Nazi propaganda, stuffed full of the iniquity of the Versailles Treaty, the need for Lebensraum, the theory of the Master Race, the Führer principle, and much other indigestible Nazi doctrine, and were imbued with what the Nuremberg Tribunal described in its judgment as ‘the noble destiny of German Youth—to die for Hitler’, von Schirach ‘planted into the young generation the great tradition of death for a holy cause, knowing that with their blood they will lead the way towards the freedom of their dreams’.2

  von Schirach travelled all over Germany, during the years before 1933 when the Nazi Party was at its nadir and the wearing of its uniform illegal, calling on German youth to join the HJ. ‘It was at this time’, he said, ‘that the HJ gained its best human material. Whoever came to us during this illegal period risked everything … with pistols in our pockets we drove through the Ruhr districts while stones came flying after us.’

  In those days there were still many who saw in Adolf Hitler only the upstart Schickelgruber. Among the older Germans who remembered and missed the traditions of Hohernzollern Germany there would remain many who, even if they did not actively oppose it, would not enthusiastically collaborate with the new regime. It was therefore most desirable that there should rise up a new generation who had known no Germany but Hitler’s.

  But the HJ was not merely used to train the young in the aims, ideology and objectives of the Nazi Party pari passu with their scholastic education; it was organized in 1938 so as to form a natural recruiting ground for the SS. This was begun by the creation of the Streifendienst,1 which was in effect the organization’s own police force.

  In a document entitled ‘Organization of the Streifendienst’ which was drawn up by Himmler and von Schirach, it was agreed that as the Streifendienst in the HJ was to perform tasks similar to those carried out by the SS, it would be organized as a special unit for the purpose of securing recruits for the Allgemeine SS. Furthermore, the document provided that recruits for the Death’s Head units of the Waffen-SS and for officer cadet schools should also be obtained from the Streifendienst.

  From then onwards the militarization of the HJ proceeded apace. It was organized on military lines with uniforms and quasi-military ranks, and by August 1939 Keitel noted that ‘thirty thousand HJ leaders are already being trained annually in field service. An agreement with the Wehrmacht will make it possible to double the number.’

  The object of this training was, in the words of von Schirach’s deputy, to ensure ‘that a gun feels just as natural in the hands of a German boy as a pen’.

  During the war which followed quickly on the heels of this agreement, thousands of former Hitler Youth members, now in the Waffen-SS, committed war crimes throughout the occupied territories, such as the massacres at Oradour-sur-Glâne and Paradis. Many thousands more blood-thirsty young ruffians were waiting impatiently to take the places of those who fell.

  Such were Hitler’s instruments of tyranny. Throughout this book their names and their misdeeds will appear and reappear. They were the threads in the vast tapestry of Nazi war crimes. They were at the bottom of every beastliness, behind every brutality. Himmler had good reason to be proud of them and Europe to fear them.

  1 A Nazi euphemism for murder.

  1 Ordnungspolizei—uniformed police.

  2 Sicherheitspolizei—security police.

  1 Kriminalpolizei—C.I.D.

  2 The SIPO and SD consisted of the Gestapo, KRIPO and SD. Although the total strength of the SD proper was, between 1943 and 1945, only about 3000 the initials SD were generally used as an abbreviation for the term SIPO and SD, and in the occupied territories members of the Gestapo frequently wore uniforms with the SD insignia.

  1 Filthiness.

  1 Obergruppenführer Müller. Chief of Amt IV of RHSA.

  1 See Chapter II.

  2 The ‘final solution’ of the Jewish question meant the extermination of the Jews and was a definite part of the Nazi policy.

  3 Thousands of civilians were killed by these Einsatz kommandos in specially constructed gas vans.

  1 The ‘Kugel erlass’ of 4th March 1944.

  1 See Odette by Jerrard Tickell (Chapman and Hall, 1949) and The Natzweiler Trial (William Hodge and Co.)

  1 Sippenhaft.

  1 See Chapter II.

  1 The Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet), purporting to be an old comrades association, was first formed about 1920. However, it soon became an extreme Nationalist body and supported Hitler from his early days, very shortly becoming affiliated to the NSDAP. Many members of the NSDAP were, like Goring, members of both organizations. As the NSDAP became more powerful the Stahlhelm lost its importance and later became absorbed in the SA (the Sturmabteilung, Hitler’s Brownshirts).

  1 The Hitler Youth, often designated by the initials HJ.

  2 These words are from a speech by Admiral Raeder on German Hero’s Day, 1939. The freedom referred to was stated in another part of the speech to be the ‘freedom to rearm’.

  1 Patrol Service.

  CHAPTER II

  ILL-TREATMENT AND MURDER OF PRISONERS OF WAR

  IN the Dark Ages prisoners of war were either butchered or enslaved. In the Middle Ages they were imprisoned, exchanged or liberated for ransom. It was during the seventeenth century that they were first regarded as captives of the State, and not the personal property of their captors, but even then they were often treated with great cruelty, enduring grievous privations and being subjected to many indignities.

  It was not until the eighteenth century, however, that it became generally recognized that the object of captivity, unlike ordinary imprisonment, was merely to prevent prisoners of war from rejoining their own forces and again taking up arms.

  The basis of International Law in relation to the treatment of prisoners of war as it stood at the outbreak of war in 1939 was the Prisoner-of-War Convention of 1929. This was signed at Geneva on the 27th of July, and subsequently ratified by all the belligerents save Russia.

  The Preamble of the Convention stated that the signatories desired to mitigate the inevitable rigours of war, as far as possible, and to alleviate the condition of prisoners of war.

  Nevertheless, during the Second World War, the Convention’s provisions were repeatedly disregarded by Germany. Prisoners were subjected to brutality and ill-treatment, employed on prohibited and dangerous work, handed over to the SD for ‘special treatment’, lynched by German civilians, sent to concentration camps, shot on recapture after escaping, and even mas
sacred after they had laid down their arms and surrendered.

  On 26th May 1940, sixteen days after Hitler had launched his great offensive against the West, the British Expeditionary Force was in general retreat. Some of the British troops were still in the Pas de Calais covering the Channel Ports.

  By nightfall the 1st Battalion of the 2nd SS Totenkopf Regiment of the SS Totenkopf Division had crossed the La Bassée Canal and taken up a position near Mont Bernechon. The following morning they attacked through Le Cornet-Malo and before noon had reached the hamlet of Paradis where remnants of the 2nd Battalion The Norfolk Regiment were still holding out, including Battalion Headquarters.

  At 11.30 a.m., the senior surviving officer, Major Ryder, who was then commanding the battalion received a message from Brigade Headquarters. This told him that the Norfolks were cut off and could thereafter expect no assistance or Communication from Brigade. By noon, ammunition had run out and further resistance became impossible so Major Ryder called his outlying troops in and decided that an attempt to surrender would be made.

  A first attempt was unsuccessful. It had been made by three Norfolks walking out into the open without firearms and holding a white towel. These men, however, were at once shot down by the Germans. A second attempt was then made. This was successful and the surrender was accepted.

  From the churchyard and surrounding houses about a hundred survivors were collected and made prisoners by the Germans. A number of seriously wounded were left in the cellars of Battalion Headquarters in the care of the medical officer and the remainder were paraded on the Rue Paradis and marched away in a westerly direction.

  After going but a short distance the prisoners were halted and searched. During the search they were subjected to various indignities and severe ill-treatment. Many were hit on the head with the rifle butts of the SS soldiers whose officers were present but did not interfere.

 

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