The Himmler's SS (19 page)

From 18 to 22 February 1939, Himmler paid a fact-finding visit to Warsaw as a guest of the chief of the Polish Police. His next visit, seven months later, was to inspect and congratulate SS troops who had participated in the conquest of Poland.

Basking in his impressive new title, which had to be abbreviated in official correspondence to RfSSuChdDtPol, Himmler was now the undisputed head of two important but separate organisations: the SS and the national police. The police, however, by far the more powerful and intrusive agency, affecting the daily lives of the entire German population, consisted of individuals who were not racially screened and, more importantly, not always politically reliable. Consequently, one of Himmler's first actions on assuming command was to expel twenty-two police colonels, hundreds of junior officers and thousands of NCOs who were considered to have socialist sympathies. The end result, in terms of lost experience, was catastrophic. Those dismissed had been professionals, and totally outclassed the SS men brought in to replace them. Many had to be reinstated after a hastily arranged programme of Nazi indoctrination.

The Nazification of the existing police membership was a short-term expedient, however. Himmler now began to formulate his greatest project, the complete merger of the SS and police into a single Staatsschutzkorps, or State Protection Corps, so that the conventional police forces could be done away with altogether. This was to be achieved first by reorganisation and then by the absorption of police personnel into the SS. Acceptable members of the uniformed police would join the Allgemeine-SS, forming interim SS-Police units in the major cities, while security policemen who fulfilled the various racial and ideological requirements of the SS would enrol in the SD. In autumn 1936, as the first stage in this process, various SD leaders were appointed Inspectors of Security Police and charged with promoting the gradual fusion of the Gestapo, Kripo and SD. A year later, the SS Oberabschnitte commanders became the first Höhere SS- und Polizeiführer, assuming responsibility for all SS and police formations in their regions. Most important of all, a great recruiting drive was set in motion at the beginning of 1938 to encourage young members of the Allgemeine-SS to join the police as a full-time career. The ultimate intention was to replace the older and retiring police officers with ‘new blood' so that, through a progression of selective recruitment, accelerated promotion and natural wastage, the Staatsschutzkorps would be in full operation and the police disbanded by 1955.

The Berlin Schutzpolizei parade along the Wilhelmstrasse past Daluege, Himmler and Hitler, 20 April 1939.

With the object of picking only the most reliable serving members of the police for acceptance into the SS, Himmler issued a Rank Parity Decree on 26 June 1938, which laid down the following provisions:

The effect of provision (i) of the decree was that only racially and physically suitable and politically reliable members of the police would be accepted into the SS and, thereafter, into the intended Staatsschutzkorps. However, provisions (ii) to (v) threatened to swamp the Allgemeine-SS with police officials who were to be automatically given SS ranks corresponding to their status in the police, even though they had never held any junior SS positions before. For instance, a police Oberwachtmeister would enter the SS as a Hauptscharführer, an Inspektor as an Obersturmführer, an Oberst as a Standartenführer, and so on. Consequently, a practical ceiling had to be put on the number of police men who could be incorporated into the SS each year, and competition for places became fierce. Successful applicants were normally taken into the SS Stammabteilungen, without any real powers of operational SS command, and were permitted to wear the SS runes embroidered on a patch below the left breast pocket of the police tunic.

The outbreak of war in 1939 dealt a mortal blow to the steady progression towards a Staatsschutzkorps, for the majority of the finest potential police recruits from the Allgemeine-SS were suddenly swallowed up by the Wehrmacht. Nevertheless, the acceptance of serving police men into the SS organisation continued apace. During October 1939, no less than 16,000 members of the uniformed police were called up
en masse
to form the Polizei-Division, a combat unit affiliated to the Waffen-SS, which fought on the western front and in Russia. Its soldiers were not obliged to pass the SS racial and physical requirements and so were not initially considered to be full SS men, although by February 1942 they had distinguished themselves sufficiently in battle to be completely integrated into the Waffen-SS. Over 30 heavily armed police regiments also served under SS command as occupation troops throughout Europe, and in February 1945 an SS-Polizei-Grenadier-Division was raised with cadre personnel from the police school at Dresden. The Staatsschutzkorps idea was ultimately overtaken by events and never came to fruition. However, while the German police always managed to retain its position as a technically separate entity, its operational independence was rapidly eroded in real terms through continual SS infiltration. By the end of the war, Himmler had inevitably succeeded Frick as Reich Minister of the Interior, and he and his SS generals completely dominated all branches of both the uniformed and security police forces across the Reich.

Kurt Daluege in the uniform of SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer und Generaloberst der Polizei, 24 August 1943. From this time on, he was continually ill and was, in fact, only semi-conscious when hanged at the end of the war.

By far the larger of the two main divisions of the German police was the Ordnungspolizei or Orpo, the so-called ‘Order Police', which comprised all uniformed civil police personnel. From its inception in 1936, Orpo was commanded by Kurt Daluege, whose powerful position qualified him to become one of the first three SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer in April 1942, the other two being Franz Xaver Schwarz and ‘Sepp' Dietrich. The following year he was made Deputy Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, and the day-to-day running of Orpo fell to SS-Obergruppenführer Alfred Wünnenberg, formerly commander of the SS-Polizei-Division. By that time, the Allgemeine-SS had permeated every aspect of the uniformed police system. SS-pattern rank insignia were sported by police generals, SS-style swords were worn by police officers and NCOs, and SS-type flags and standards were carried by police units on ceremonial occasions. A department known as the Hauptstelle der Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei had been set up within the Reichsführung-SS to advise Himmler on all matters concerning the uniformed police and, as Chef der Deutschen Polizei, he made policy decisions regarding its operations and deployment. In effect, the massive Orpo organisation had become subordinate to, and took its instructions from, the leadership of the Allgemeine-SS.

By the end of the war, the Ordnungspolizei had expanded to include a large number of distinct police formations, each with its own purpose and often its own series of uniforms. These groups are listed below.

1. T
HE
S
CHUTZPOLIZEI

The Schutzpolizei, or Protection Police, comprised the regular municipal ‘beat bobbies' of the Third Reich and numbered around 200,000 men in 1943. This branch was itself subdivided into the Schutzpolizei des Reiches, whose jurisdiction extended throughout Germany, and the Schutzpolizei des Gemeinden, who operated only within their own towns. In addition, companies of Schutzpolizei were organised into Kaserniertepolizei or Barracked Police, equipped with armoured cars, machine guns and grenades. Their function was to act as a mobile reserve to back up the local police when additional manpower was needed in times of mass demonstrations or similar events. After 1936, recruits for the Schutzpolizei were taken primarily from the Allgemeine-SS and the Wehrmacht. Their initial training by SS lecturers emphasised political indoctrination and was followed by specialised instruction at one of the thirty police schools scattered across Germany, the main ones being at Berlin-Köpenick and at Fürstenfeldbruck near Munich. The Inspector-General of Police Schools was an SS-Gruppenführer, Adolf von Bomhard.

2. T
HE
G
ENDARMERIE

The Gendarmerie or Rural Police, under SS-Gruppenführer August Meyszner, covered landward districts and small communities of less than 2,000 inhabitants. They were particularly adept at combatting poaching, detecting black market slaughtering of animals, and the like. In those areas of the Reich, including the occupied territories, that were of a mountainous nature or prone to heavy snowfall, members of the Gendarmerie skilled in skiing and mountaineering were employed. They had to undergo rigorous training at the Hochgebirgs Gendarmerie Schools at Oberjoch bei Hindelang, Sudelfeld am Wendelstein and Kitzbühel in the Tirol. In January 1942, a separate branch of the Gendarmerie known as the Landwacht or Rural Guard was set up by Himmler to supervise prisoners-of-war engaged in agricultural work. It was recruited from older policemen and disabled SS ex-servicemen. After 20 July 1944, military prisoner-of-war camps themselves were put under the administration of the SS and police, with responsibility for running them being placed in the hands of SS-Obergruppenführer Berger.

3. T
HE
V
ERWALTUNGSPOLIZEI

The Verwaltungspolizei, commanded by SS-Obergruppenführer August Frank, was the administrative branch of Orpo, units of which were attached to each police headquarters. Their various duties included record keeping, the enforcement of statutory regulations affecting theatres, factories and shops, the registration of foreign nationals, and the issuing of firearms licences, travel permits, etc. This administrative force took in the former Gesundheitspolizei (Health Police), Gewerbepolizei (Factory and Shops Police) and Baupolizei (Buildings Police). Many Verwaltungspolizei employees were civilians, who had been given extensive periods of training at the SS and police administrative schools.