SS und Polizei: Myths and Lies of Hitler's SS and Police

by J. Lee Ready

  Himmler also recruited about 250 ethnic Danes into his own SS.

  Another German district taken by Denmark in 1919 housed actual ethnic Germans – Volksdeutsch – and these people naturally thought that the German invasion would liberate them, but they found to their disgust that Hitler permitted the Danish government to continue to rule them. Himmler took advantage of this resentment to recruit several Danish Volksdeutsch into the SS. Hitler’s abandonment of the Danish Volksdeutsch for political reasons, coupled with his refusal to demand that Mussolini hand over the South Tyrol, a Volksdeutsch region taken by Italy in 1919, show that his speeches about uniting the ‘German’ tribe were just so much hot air.

  In Norway the leader of the local Nazis, Vidkun Quisling, attempted to seize political control of the nation as soon as German troops invaded. Not only did the Norwegian people ignore him, but the German Army also ignored him. However, Heydrich was impressed by Quisling’s Norwegian Nazis and their SA-style militia, the Hird, and he sent teams of SD and Gestapo into the countryside to work together with the local Nazis to arrest people on Heydrich’s new hit list. The Norwegian police assisted them.

  The SD had in fact prepared such lists for just about every country including Britain and the United States.

  Meanwhile SS recruiters plied their trade throughout Norway and accepted about 2,000 Norwegian recruits, enough to man two battalions of Norwegian Waffen SS, with sufficient left over to join the SD and Gestapo. Racially speaking they actually fit SS regulations better than most Germans.

  When German troops conquered the Netherlands in five days in May 1940, Adriaan Mussert the leader of the Dutch Nazis pledged that his black-shirted Weer Afdeling [home-grown SA] would aid the Germans to run the country. In fact in secret a few had already aided the Germans during the invasion. If by his proclamation Mussert thought he was going to get a seat at the dinner table, he was sadly let down. Hitler quickly concluded that most Dutch Nazis were anti-German but not anti-Semitic, and as a result he put his own man in charge of the Dutch nation, the Austrian Artur Seyss-Inquart, with fellow Austrians Friedrich Wimmir and Hans Fischboeck as his chief administrator and chief economist. The HSSPF for the country would be Brigadefuehrer Hans Albin Rauter, and soon he would name Obersturmbannfuehrer Wilhelm Harster as his BdS and Polizei Oberst Otto Schumann as BdO. Schumann was a Lorraine German professional policeman and veteran of World War One and the Freikorps. Rauter’s Jewish affairs would be administered by Obersturmbannfuehrer Fritz Schmidt. Thus theoretically the nation would be run by the German Nazi Party, but everyone of these men was an SS officer, so in reality it would be run by Himmler. He had always wanted his own country to play with.

  Schmidt encountered an odd situation. Dutch Nazis not only disliked Germans but accepted Frisians and Jews in their membership. Himmler did not mind the Frisians, but he ordered the Dutch Nazi Party to expel its Jewish members.

  To gain the support of the Dutch people, Hitler released almost all Dutch prisoners of war taken in the short fight. Trading on this goodwill, SS recruiters plied their profession. They offered a flashy uniform, a military life, good pay, good food, access to SS brothels and a chance to join a winning team. Several thousand Dutch and Frisians accepted the offer, becoming members of the Allgemeine SS or SD, Kripo or Gestapo, and enough joined the Waffen SS to form a battalion of the SS Westland Regiment.

  However, there was a Dutch rival to Himmler, J. Hendrik Feldmeijer, who in September 1940 established his own SS. Initially his men were reservists and part-timers. Unlike most Dutch Nazis Feldmeijer agreed that the future of the Netherlands lay with Hitler not Mussert.

  SS recruiters were also busy in Belgium. First of all, that part of Germany [the Eupen district] that had been stolen by Belgium in 1919 was returned to the Reich at once. However, before the German Army could issue conscription papers for the Volksdeutsch men within this liberated district, Himmler’s SS recruiters plied their trade and took in quite a few recruits. They included many who were still in German prisoner of war camps, having been captured while serving in Belgian uniform.

  The remainder of Belgium was divided into two ethnicities: the Flemish who spoke Dutch, and the Walloons who either spoke Walloon (few) or French (most). Himmler judged the Flemish to be racially acceptable to the SS, so his recruiters attempted to gain recruits among them and were ably assisted by Gustav de Clerq, the leader of the VNV -main Flemish Nazi party, and his head of militia, Reimond Tollenaere. Flemings joined the Allgemeine SS, SD, Kripo and Gestapo, and enough joined the Waffen SS to form a battalion of the SS Westland Regiment.

  The other large Flemish Nazi party, De Vlag, formed its own Flemish SS under Ward Hermans and Rene Lagrou. It was divided into three parts: a full-time unit that hunted down anti-Nazis; a part-time unit that provided sentries now and then; and the reservist Vlaanderen Korps manned by men over thirty-five years of age.

  However, Himmler refused to recruit Walloons. There were two reasons for this. First of all there was no sizeable Nazi party among them, their only far right political party being Leon Degrelle’s Christus Rex, a fanatic Roman Catholic group. The second reason was that they were racially Gallic (in theory), so Himmler told his recruiters: ‘hands off”.

  Within months Himmler was so pleased by the Flemish and Dutch recruits of the SS Westland Regiment, that he ordered a second such regiment formed. It would be named SS Nordwest [Northwest].

  One’s initial thoughts are that these volunteers joined because they were hardened Nazis, but that was only one reason for enlisting. Some did so because they always wanted to be on the winning side. Others did so because they had been regular soldiers institutionalized into the military life, and now that their national army was no more they sought whoever was recruiting, and that happened to be the SS. Still others were ashamed of their national defeat and thought that by serving the Nazis in an all-Dutch [or all Flemish] unit they could win back some national pride and eventually gain the status of a sovereign national army. A few had fought the German invaders, were ashamed that they had surrendered and wanted to gain back a modicum of self respect. Certainly some with latent homosexual submissive tendencies wanted to stand in the shadow of the conquerors. Possibly some joined to obey their fathers who were hardened Nazis. And some probably had no deeper thought than to have a flashy uniform to impress girls.

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  France was a different matter. The provinces of Lorraine [Lothringen] and Alsace [Elsass] that had been stolen from Germany in 1919 were handed back to Germany in June 1940. All Germans were happy that these two provinces were reunited with the homeland, especially those who came from there and had been living ‘in exile’, which included such SS officers as Hans Charpentier, Theodore Eicke, Juergen Wagner, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krueger, Johannes Muehlenkamp, Karl Ullrich, Hermann Florstedt, Otto Schumann, Heinz Harmel, Walter Krueger, Karl Brandt and Ernst Damzog.

  This liberation had a darker side, though. The SS Wv and SS HuB arrived to set up several concentration and slave labor camps. Ultimately seventy such sites would be built here controlled from Natzweiler camp.

  SS recruiters drove into Lorraine and Alsace at once, but unfortunately for Himmler so did the German armed forces recruiters, conscripting all men here aged 18-45, even if they were currently in a German prisoner of war camp having been captured wearing French uniform. As a result the SS gained few recruits. Eicke was particularly disappointed, because he had hoped to raise troops here for his Totenkopfverbaende. The remainder of France was theoretically a land of racially impure people that could not be inducted into the SS.

  Heydrich set up a mirror headquarters of his SS RSHA in Paris under thirty year old Standartenfuehrer Helmut Knochen, who would be responsible for fighting anti-Nazi activity within the occupied zone. Knochen’s administrative chief would be Brigadefuehrer Werner Best, who surely must have felt gratified in his new position. Arriving in Paris he reminded the French that they had imprisoned him in 1923 when he had spoken out against their
invasion of Germany. Knochen’s BdS would be Brigadefuehrer Max Thomas, a medical doctor. Arriving with the Jewish affairs section was a twenty-seven year old lawyer, Untersturmfuehrer Theodore Dannecker, who according to Best quickly proved to be far too fanatic in his anti-Semitism. Perhaps Dannecker was outraged that the SS in France had immediately contracted with Jewish companies to purchase supplies, and that two of the leading Jewish businessmen, Joseph Joinovic and Mandel Szkolnikov, were being treated as equals.

  France had a plethora of fascist parties, but they were all anti-German, so initially Knochen received no help from them. With no field ‘troops’ of his own, Knochen had to rely heavily on the French police to arrest those on his hit list. However, this was a much reduced list, because Hitler intended to treat Petain’s government as a partner not as a defeated enemy! Unbelievably the British played right into Hitler’s hands by suddenly attacking the French Navy on 3 July, 1940! The Germans could not believe it. In one fell swoop France was suddenly at war again, but this time on the side of Germany against Britain. As partners the French and Germans began to work together. In fact the French police created their own concentration camps at Gurs and Rivesaltes to house anyone who did not like the new arrangement. The French government also began issuing anti-Jewish legislation.

  Hitler had often wondered if France could solve his Jewish question. He had thought of sending all Jews to the island of Madagascar, a French colony. To test this theory in the autumn of 1940 Himmler organized a temporary SS einsatzkommando to arrest every Jew in Alsace and Lorraine and deport them to France. Moreover the Allgemeine SS arrested 7,500 Jews in Germany right off the street and sent them to France too. The French were outraged. They had enough Jews already, they replied. The French police arrested all of these deported Jews at the border as illegal immigrants and incarcerated them in concentration camps guarded by French police. Among the Lorraine and Alsace Jews were men that had recently served honorably in the French Army, yet they too were incarcerated by the French!

  This violent French reaction told Hitler what he needed to know and it put an end to his Madagascar idea.

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  On 12 February 1941 the SD and Gestapo established a Jewish ghetto in Amsterdam in the Netherlands modeled on those in Poland, and they ordered all Dutch Jews to move there. The perimeter would be patrolled by Dutch police. The Frank family did not go to the ghetto, but went into hiding. Ironically it was a German immigrant who hid them from the Dutch Police. One of the daughters, Ann, began to keep a diary.

  Soon throughout the Netherlands the SD, Gestapo, Weer Afdeling, German police, Dutch SS and Dutch police all began raiding suspected Jewish ‘safe houses’ and hauling off to the ghetto any hidden Jews they found. Periodically they also went into the ghetto and arrested people at random and took them to Westerbork, where a transit camp had been built, guarded by Dutch SS. Transit camps were holding areas for prisoners awaiting transportation.

  Many Dutch Christian workers were appalled at the treatment of Dutch Jews, so they downed tools and went on strike. Gruppenfuehrer Hans Albin Rauter made the workers an offer. If they went back to work he would not execute the people that had been arrested. The strikers went back to work.

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  Meanwhile in France a gangster by the name of Henri Chamberlin, but now calling himself Lafont, had offered his gang’s services to Admiral Canaris’ Abwehr to root out anti-Nazi conspirators in Paris. Canaris had hired the gang, and by December 1940 Lafont was proud to announce that his men had arrested 600 ‘spies and saboteurs’. Heydrich heard good things about Lafont, and was eager to pull a fast one on his friend Canaris. In spring 1941 he got his chance and made Lafont a better offer, and as a result Lafont transferred his entire team to the Gestapo. Heydrich also ignored Lafont’s so-called racial impurity and made him an Hauptsturmfuehrer in the SS.

  Indeed under Heydrich’s orders the SD, Gestapo and Kripo opened offices throughout German-occupied France and began employing French investigators, such as Pierre Bonny, who had been fired from the French police for accepting bribes. As a ‘German policeman’ Bonny would find plenty of opportunities to take bribes now. Owing to the race regulations, most of these French volunteers were not enlisted into the SS, but they did become members of the Kripo, Gestapo and SD. In Paris the Gestapo even had thirteen Jews on the payroll. From now on the French people would live in fear of the approach of Frenchmen in civilian clothes always walking in pairs, who would produce identity cards while uttering the dreaded words: “Police Allemande” [German Police].

  In response to the German occupation French anti-Nazi resistance movements had started to form. Some of their members were Spanish republicans who had fled to France following their defeat in the Spanish Civil War. To counter them the Gestapo and SD employed fascist Spaniards.

  In spring 1941 the French police began arresting foreign-born Jews and incarcerated them in a new concentration camp at Beaune la Rolande. Some of these bewildered victims included elderly people who had lived as French citizens since the age of two. Others were decorated French military veterans. Their children who were born in France were not arrested, unless they were minors, in which case they were placed in state orphanages. However, all of this anti-Jewish activity caused the French government to run afoul of the Roman Catholic Church, which was highly influential in France. The bishops insisted that any racial Jew who professed Catholicism should be set free. Evidently they did not care about the fate of Jews who professed Protestantism. But Jules-Gerard Saliege the Archbishop of Toulouse went even further, denouncing all forms of anti-Semitism. Marie Benoit, a French monk, went further still by organizing a rescue group to spirit Jews out of France to safety.

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  Chapter Ten

  HIMMLER’S CRUSADE

  In late 1940 and early 1941 while the Waffen SS was busy restructuring and retraining, and the SS RSHA [SD, Kripo and Gestapo] was spreading its intrusive tentacles, the SS KZL and SS Wv were busy in Germany establishing yet another major concentration camp: this one at Gross-Rosen. Its inmates would work at a nearby quarry to produce rock for the SS HuB. As time went on over seventy nearby labor camps came under the Gross-Rosen administrative umbrella all commanded by Obersturmbannfuehrer Arthur Roedl, who had learned his trade in Lichtenburg, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald.

  No doubt the SS KZL guards were surprised when Hitler now ordered that a Jew, whose son had been killed in action while serving in the German armed forces, would not be deported or imprisoned. This again is evidence of the lie. If Jews were as dangerous as Hitler said they were, then why the exemption?

  In spring 1941 Himmler made his first visit to Auschwitz. Among his entourage were his chief of staff Gruppenfuehrer Karl Wolff, Standartenfuehrer Hermann Schmauser the HSSPF for Upper Silesia, Gruppenfuehrer Richard Gluecks the Inspector of Concentration Camps, and senior executives of I.G. Farben. These SS officers and businessmen cut a deal. I. G. Farben would pay the SS HuB to build a synthetic oil and rubber plant at Auschwitz, following which the SS Wv would provide slave labor to man it. I. G. Farben would pay the SS Wv four marks a day for every skilled worker, three marks for every unskilled laborer and 1.5 marks for child slaves. The Werkschutz of I.G. Farben and the SS KZL would share the guarding of the prisoners.

  It has to be said that the camp the executives saw was not the ‘real’ camp. All large concentration camps had special buildings only used for inspections, sort of like the show house in a new housing estate. These were clean and spacious. The prisoners the executives saw were new arrivals looking healthy in clean uniforms. Food was adequate. On occasion a small orchestra of slaves played for the guests. Once the inspection was over and the guests had left, the food was taken back to the guards, and the prisoners were sent on to real duties. So again we have an SS lie. If the SS KZL was as proud of its duties as say an infantry regiment, then why the charade? Why hide the realities of Nazi policy if there was nothing immoral about them?

  Later tha
t same day Himmler took Rudolf Hoess the camp kommandant aside and told him he wanted a massive expansion of the facilities to include a new compound at nearby Birkenau big enough to hold 100,000 prisoners. The SS KZL would provide the guards. It was normal for 74 guards to be assigned to every thousand prisoners. However, he made Hoess quite aware that the SS Wv would not provide any funds for the construction, nor would the SS HuB provide the material. Hoess was expected to beg, borrow or steal everything.

  Here was part of the flaw in the so-called racial goal of the Nazi Party. Supposedly this goal was paramount above all else, but as for Himmler, he was more concerned with building up the Waffen SS, his own private army, because he had always wanted to be a ‘general’. His senior SS commanders were for the most part more concerned in advancing their own careers or in amassing fortunes in money, land and goods. Now here was Himmler encouraging Hoess to steal construction material and tools. But from whom? The local Poles and Volksdeutsch had nothing. Obviously Himmler meant he should steal from his fellow Germans: the army, the RAD, OT, perhaps even from a private company like I.G. Farben.

  The racial war was Hitler’s priority, therefore Himmler should have directed sufficient funds for it to be accomplished, but instead he sent funds to the Waffen SS and made the SS KZL run on a shoestring budget.