Hitler's Foreign Executioners (76 page)

  
6
   
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/10/europe-far-right-cameron

  
7
   
http://www.am.gov.lv/en/latvia/history/legion-kalnins/

  
8
   
http://www.am.gov.lv/data/file/e/HC-Progress-Report2001.pdf

  
9
   G. Swain, ‘The Disillusioning of the Revolution’s Praetorian Guard: the Latvian Riflemen, Summer–Autumn 1918’, in
Europe-Asia Studies
, Vol. 51 No 4 (1999).

Introduction

  
1
   Quoted in Ezergailis (1996), p. 194.

  
2
   NARA, T–175, 104/2626381, Gruppenführerbesprechung am 8 Oktober, 1938.

  
3
   Between 1941 and the end of the war, SS divisional nomenclature underwent a succession of often confusing changes. I have used the most common terms.

  
4
   See K. Farrokh,
Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War
(2007).

  
5
   A. Zamoyski,
1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow
(2004), pp. 84–7.

  
6
   Domarus (ed.),
Hitler
(1990), p. 1146.

  
7
   Weale (2010), p. 307.

  
8
   Quoted in ‘Viking and Wehrbauer: SS Ideology and the Recruitment of Norwegians into the Waffen-SS’, unpublished paper by Terje Emberland.

  
9
   Karel C. Berkhoff, ‘The Mass Murder of Soviet Prisoners of War and the Holocaust: How Were They Related?’,
Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History
, Vol. 6 No 4 (Fall 2005; New Series), pp. 789–96.

10
   Siedlung Rasse,
Deutsches Blut: das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas
(Heinemann, 2003), pp. 533–5.

11
   Daluege directive, USHMMA, RG 06.025.63, KGB Archive, Box 59.

12
   See list of Waffen-SS divisions on p. 387.

13
   Goldhagen (1996), p. 162. There is a substantial literature in English and German about ‘Hitler’s Foreign Executioners’: see bibliography.

14
   Ibid., p. 389.

15
   Quoted in Boog et al. (2000), v4, p. 445. Hoepner would be executed in 1944 as a conspirator in the plot against Hitler.

16
   See Timothy Snyder’s important essay, ‘Holocaust: the Ignored Reality’,
New York Review of Books
, Vol. 56 No 12. This book was completed before the publication of Snyder’s monumental
Bloodlands
(2010).

17
   Foreword to
Tapping Hitler’s Generals
(Frontline Books, 2007).

18
   Bartov (1991), p. 102.

1  The Polish Crucible

  
1
   For accounts of the Berghof meeting: Nuremberg Documents 798-PS and 1014-PS, included in TMWC, Vol. 26, pp. 338–44, 523–4; shorthand notes were taken by General Franz Halder: see Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, Series D Vol. 7, pp. 557–9. See also Longerich (2010), pp. 143ff.

  
2
   Quoted in Rossino (2003), p. 7.

  
3
   IMT, xxxix: 425ff, 172-USSR, 2 October 1939.

  
4
   Kersten,
Memoirs
(1957), p. 54.

  
5
   For an up-to-date account of Himmler’s role in the SA purge, see Longerich (2008), pp. 180ff.

  
6
   See Browder (1990), Chapter 14.

  
7
   
Gesichtspunke fuer einer Uebernahme der Leitung der deutschen Polizei durch den RFSS im Rahmen des RuPrMdl
, BA/Schu 464.

  
8
   A caveat is appropriate. Frick insisted that Himmler’s office was ‘in’ the Interior Ministry – which was in any case countered by Himmler’s inclusion of a ‘concurrently’ (zugleich) which implied that the relationship with Frick was an equal one.

  
9
   See Browder (1990), pp. 225ff.

10
   Quoted in Longerich (2010), p. 144.

11
   ZStL, 1 Js 12/65 RSHA; see also Steinbacher (2000), p. 54.

12
   ZStL, 1 Js 12/65 RSHA.

13
   Burleigh (2010), pp. 124ff.

14
   ZStL, VI 415 AR 1310/65 E16: cited by Rossino, p. 15, testimony of Lothar Beutel, July 1965.

15
   For an exhaustive account of the part played by the ethnic German Self-Defence Corps, see C. Jansen & A. Weckbecker,
Der ‘Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz in Polen 1939/40
(Munich, 1992).

16
   There are many accounts of the attack on Poland. One of the best is the most recent Burleigh (2010), pp. 119ff. I have also used Weinberg (1994), Mazower (2008) and the
Penguin History of the Second World War
(1972).

17
   Despite an aggressive wooing, both Lithuania and Hungary refused to join the German attack on Poland.

18
   See Kosyk (1993), pp. 52–61.

19
   See Blood (2006), passim.

20
   Ibid., p. 46.

21
   ZStL, 1 Js 12/65 RSHA ASA 179, p. 360;see also NARA RG 242, T–580, BDC File of Kurt Daluege. Cited by Rossino, p. 259.

22
   See A. Rossino (2003), pp. 153ff.

23
   The Ostrów incident was the subject of a post-war criminal investigation and reports and eyewitness accounts are now held by the Bundesachiv Ludwigsburg (Zentrale Stelle für Landesjustizverwaltungen) in 8 AR-Z 52/60, 201 AR-Z 76/59, 205 AR-Z 302/67, 206 Ar-z 28/60, 211 AR-Z 13/63.

24
   Quoted in Browder (1996), p. 163.

25
   Browning (2004), p. 16.

26
   Rubenstein (2008), p. 5.

27
   The best single account of the Waffen-SS is B. Wegner,
Hitlers Politische Soldaten: die Waffen-SS 1933–1945
(München, new edn, 2008).

28
   IWM, AL 2704 E313.

29
   Wegner (2008), p. 252 (BDC: PA Eicke).

30
   This account of Eicke’s campaign is based on Sydnor (1977) and Rossino (2003).

31
   
Tätigkeitsbericht während des Einsatzes
, vom 13. Bis 26.9.1939, BA Koblenz, Einsatzgruppen in Polen. See also
The Black Book of Polish Jewry: an Account of the Martyrdom of Polish Jewry under Nazi Occupation
(New York, 1943).

32
   Accounts held by USHMM, cited by Rossino (2008), pp. 157ff.

33
   See USHMM Photo Collection WS 50414: a series of photographs depicts the murder of Jews in Konskie, an atrocity provoked by the actions of Reserve Lieutenant Bruno Kleinmischel. Hitler had appointed Leni Reifenstahl to make an official documentary about the Polish campaign. That day, she was working in Konskie and witnessed the murders as they took place. Reifenstahl can be seen in the background of one photograph, apparently distraught. The documentary was never completed.

34
   Wette (2006), pp. 100–2.

35
   See Domarus, ‘Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations 1932–1945 …’ Vol. 3, p. 1836.

36
   Noakes & Pridham, Vol. 3 (2001), p. 319.

37
   Ibid., p. 323.

38
   BA NS 19/1791: SS Befehl. See also Ackermann (1970), appendix 4.

39
   NARA, T175, Roll 37.

40
   Hitler’s speech is quoted in Friedrich Heiss,
Der Sieg im Western
(Prague, 1943).

41
   Goebbels,
Tagebucher
, p. 273.

42
   For an account of this meeting, see Halder,
Tagesbuch
, p. 49.

43
   NARA T–175, 104/2626163ff.:
Ansprache des RFSS an das Offizierskorps der Leibstandarte SS ‘Adolf Hitler’ am Abend des Tages von Metz
.

44
   Capitalised, the Diaspora refers to the historic exile of the Jewish people. Without a capital
diaspora
(from the Greek ‘scattering of seeds’) can be attached to the large scale movement of any people, and was first used to refer to the consequence of the nineteenth century Irish famines.

45
   See Lumans, passim; and Ferguson (2006), pp. 36ff.

46
   See Lumans (1993), pp. 23–5.

47
   See Doris L. Bergen, ‘The Volksdeutsche of Eastern Europe and the Collapse of the Nazi Empire, 1944–1945’, in
The Impact of Nazism: New Perspectives on the Third Reich and its Legacy
, ed. Alan E. Steinweis & Daniel E. Rogers (Lincoln and London, 2003).

48
   Mazower (1993), pp. 223–32.

49
   F. Umbrich & A. Wittmann,
Alptraum Balkan
(Böhlau, 2003).

50
   See Nuremberg documents NO–1605, NG–1112, NO–3362; USMT IV Case 11, PDB 66-G and PDB 43.

51
   See Hague II: Article 44: Any compulsion of the population of occupied territory to take part in military operations against its own country is prohibited; and Article 45: Any pressure on the population of occupied territory to take the oath to the hostile Power is prohibited.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/hague02.asp

52
   See A. Estes,
European Anabasis
(Gutenberg, 2002).

53
   Boog et al. (1983, 1990), pp. 1052ff.

54
   These were small towns with large Jewish populations, mainly found in the Russian ‘Pale of Settlement’ – the region where the Russian tsars allowed Jews to settle permanently in their empire. Shtetl culture became a distinctive expression of Jewish culture and learning.

2  Balkan Rehearsal

  
1
   Nuremberg Documents, VI, 1746-PS, Part II, pp. 275–8.

  
2
   Zuroff (2010), pp. 146ff.

  
3
    ‘Crimes in the Jasenovac Camp’, the State Commission of Croatia for the Investigation of the Crimes of the Occupation Forces and their Collaborators, Zagreb, 1946.

  
4
   According to Albert Speer: ‘For reasons of safety, the train was drawn by two heavy locomotives and had a special armoured car with light antiaircraft guns following behind the locomotives. Soldiers all muffled up stood on this car … Then came Hitler’s car … The walls were panelled in rosewood. The concealed illumination, a ring running around the entire ceiling, threw a bluish light that gave a corpse like look to faces; for that reason the women did not like staying in that room … Then came the guest cars, a press car and a baggage car. A second special car with antiaircraft guns brought up the rear of the train.’ The train was destroyed in November 1944.

  
5
   Ruth Mitchell,
The Serbs Chose War
(Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1943).

  
6
   Kershaw, p. 362.

  
7
   Quoted in Mazower (1993), p. 16.

  
8
   This brief account of the German occupation of Greece borrows details from Mark Mazower’s
Inside Hitler’s Greece
.

  
9
   See D. Czech, ‘Deportation and Vernichtung der Griechischen Juden im KL Auschwitz’,
Hefte von Auschwitz
, 11 (1970), pp. 5–37, cited by Mazower.

10
   See Tomasevich, op.cit., p. 345.

11
   See Hoare,
The History of Bosnia …
pp. 190ff.

12
   E. Serotta,
Survival in Sarejevo: Jews, Bosnia and the Lessons of the Past
(Vienna, 1994).

13
   NARA, CIC Report APO 512.

14
   Quoted in Tomasevich, p. 44.

15
   See Ciano, Diaries, p. 200.

16
   DGFP, 12: 425.

17
   DGFP, 12: 513–7.

18
   It is noteworthy that in the early 1990s, a recently reunified and aggressive Germany under Chancellor Helmut Kohl took a similar position as Ribbentrop – again with bloody results. The German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher, responding to intense anti-Serbian sentiment in Germany, and disdaining the views of better informed peace negotiators, pushed hard for recognition of Slovenian and Croatian independence. In January 1992, Genscher bulldozed through an agreement. Kohl proclaimed ‘a great triumph for German foreign policy’. Croats sang a new song
Danke Deutschland
. The consequences, as many had feared, proved catastrophic.

19
   YA Mil. Hist. Reg. No 51/6–2, box 155.

20
   Quoted in Tomasevich (2001), p. 344.

21
   Yeomans,
Of ‘Yugoslav Barbarians’ …
and Burleigh (2006), pp. 262–70.

22
   To bolster his case, he argued for example that the word
Hrvat
(meaning Croat) derived from the Persian word for friend,
Hu-urvatha
. His other evidence was equally as flimsy. Iranians and Croats, he noted, both had a passion for equestrian skills.

23
   Breitman et al.,
US Intelligence and the Nazis
(2005), p. 206.

24
   DGFP, 12: 605–6.

25
   Hoare (2006), p. 21.

26
   YA Mil. Hist. Reg. No 29/15–3, box 85.