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

by J. Lee Ready

  The Dutch home-grown WA - Weer Afdeling were the stormtroopers of the NSB - Dutch Nazi Party, and following the German occupation they recruited more stormtroopers and were issued firearms. But not enough recruits came in to suit Adriaan Mussert, the Dutch Nazi leader, so he ordered all men aged 18 to 40 that had registered as NSB supporters to ‘volunteer’ for the WA. Anyone who refused had to answer to the police. This brought the WA to a strength of twelve brigades serving on a part-time basis in the Netherlands and one full-time brigade serving in Germany. Their only real value was as sentries.

  Once war broke out between Germany and the Soviet Union, the Germans increased recruiting in the Netherlands. The various German paramilitary organizations, such as the OT, NSKK and the Werkschutz, began taking in Dutch volunteers, in some cases paying more than they paid Germans. The SD, Gestapo and Kripo had already taken on some Dutch employees, many of whom had joined the SS as reservists, and now they recruited more. The German Orpo recruited more schumas. Plus a 300-man Kontrol Kommando was created to help round up forced labor. The Netherlands Legion was raised to fight on the Russian Front and when it needed replacements Mussert ordered some members of the WA to ‘volunteer’.

  In January 1942 the Dutch SS guards at Amersfoort, St. Michielsgestel, Vught and Haaren camps were combined into an umbrella organization, the SS Nordwest Guard Battalion, commanded by Sturmbannfuehrer Helle. Actually Helle had trouble finding sufficient people to perform this distasteful business and he resorted to lowering the physical and age restrictions and even recruited Ukrainians currently working in the Netherlands as forced labor.

  At Clingendael training ground the Dutch SS formed a small anti-tank unit.

  However, by May 1942 Himmler and Gruppenfuehrer Rauter, HSSPF for the Netherlands, had become exasperated with the autonomy of the Dutch SS, and to solve this problem Himmler suddenly announced he was commandeering the whole force and placing it within the German Allgemeine SS. Any Dutch SS man that refused to take the new oath would find himself in a concentration camp, but this time as a prisoner. So much for the ‘volunteer spirit’ of the SS. Yet another example of the lie.

  As the ‘terrorist’ situation in the Netherlands became worse, the German BdO [head of the Orpo in the Netherlands] asked for reinforcements. He received the 12th Police Regiment [but the 3/12th went to the 3rd Police Regiment.]. He also gained some Ukrainian schumas. And he recruited more Dutch schumas, one thousand alone from Amsterdam. In addition the WA formed a mobile strike unit. Other Dutchmen were recruited to form a new railroad guard formation, known as the Wachdienst. A Dutch airfield security force was raised. The Special Service Corps of the Dutch SS [now part of the German SS] even established a Jewish section, i.e. Jewish volunteers, who were paid a bounty for every hidden Jew they arrested. The Gestapo also created a unit of Dutch Jews for a similar purpose known as the Heinnecke Column.

  The Judenrat that controlled Amsterdam ghetto never knew what was going to happen next. On 6 August 1942 Dutch schumas arrived to arrest 2,000 Jewish men, women and children at random. But days later some were released!

  On 2 October 1942 Gruppenfuehrer Rauter ordered a major round up of Jews inside the ghetto, and that morning his men entered the narrow streets: 120 German policemen, 250 German and Dutch members of the SD, Gestapo and Kripo, 400 Dutch schumas and 50 Dutch Allgemeine SS. By day’s end they had arrested 13,000 people, but the Gestapo noticed that the schumas had only hauled in 700 of these. Obviously the schumas had no stomach for this kind of operation. Therefore the WA was temporarily activated and brought in to help. To make it legal, the WA stormtroopers were given the status of auxiliary members of the Dutch police.

  On 11 March 1943 the NSB placed all male members of the party aged 17 to 50 into the new Landwacht, a reservist territorial militia. Theoretically this meant that some Dutch Nazis were now members of the WA, Dutch auxiliary police and Landwacht all at the same time, while still maintaining a normal civilian job. To complicate matters several members of the SS Nordwest Guard Battalion were transferred to the Landwacht to be full-time members and others were transferred to the Dutch Water Police [responsible for river and sea coast policing].

  Anti-Nazi guerilla activity grew throughout the country in 1943, the most high profile incidents being the assassinations of the chief of the Dutch Police and two members of the Dutch government, one of whom, Dutch General H. A. Seyffardt, had helped form the Netherlands Legion. When assassins almost succeeded in killing Gruppenfuehrer Rauter, he ordered 250 hostages shot as a reprisal.

  However, Rauter did not want people to think he was all bad, so he announced that any Jew married to an Aryan could go free if he/she agreed to be sterilized. Heartbreaking as this was thousands volunteered for the procedure. The Dutch doctors who performed the process had to do it for they were terrified of reprisals against their families. Ironically the chief German doctor in charge, E. W. P. Meyer an SS officer, was appalled at this order and he issued phony sterilization certificates to many.

  In July 1943 the Dutch members of the Werkschutz [factory guards] and the airfield security detachments were amalgamated into the new Wachtabteilungen.

  The NSKK was well pleased with its Dutch members, so much so that it came up with an idea of how to gain more Dutchmen: they conscripted the chauffeurs and truck drivers of the NSB and WA.

  The OT recruited upwards of 14,000 Dutch members to perform construction on the coastal defenses in case of an Anglo-American invasion. Some Dutchmen entered the Schutzkommando, the OT section that guarded slave workers.

  In October 1943 the Landwacht was renamed the Landstorm, while a new Landwacht was formed of male NSB members aged 51-55.

  Thus some men that had signed up to vote NSB, had been conscripted into the WA, then conscripted into the Landwacht, then conscripted into the Netherlands Legion and then conscripted into the Waffen SS 4th SS Nederland Panzergrenadier Brigade. And the Germans still had the gall to call these men ‘volunteers’.

  In late 1943 Himmler decided the 12th SS Police Regiment was no longer needed in the Netherlands and he broke it into its components of the 103rd, 104th and 105th SS Police Battalions and sent them to the Eastern front.

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  Norway

  Once the violence of the two month battle for Norway was over in June 1940 the Norwegians settled down under German occupation. The SD, Gestapo and Kripo were able to recruit plenty of Norwegians to track down Communists, black market gangsters, anti-Nazi guerillas and Allied spies and saboteurs. The Hird, i.e. the stormtroopers of the NS - Norwegian Nazi Party, increased their force to seven part-time regiments and were issued firearms.

  The German Orpo set up two administrative bodies in the country, one in the north and one in the south, which later became the 26th Police and 27th Police Regiments. To augment these policemen Eicke sent several Totenkopfverbaende regiments. However, Norway quickly proved to be a placid backwater, so the 26th Police Regiment was soon sent to Poland, and the Totenkopfverbaende units were also shipped out.

  There were anti-Nazi incidents and in response the Gestapo burned the entire village of Televaag to the ground and hauled away the male population to a concentration camp. In Trondelag Henry Rinnan’s Norwegian team of the Gestapo was responsible for literally thousands of arrests. Norway soon had six concentration camps.

  Of great help to the Germans was Jonas Lie’s Norwegian Police. E. g. they put a stop to a schoolteachers’ strike by apprehending a thousand teachers and forcing them to perform manual labor for the German Army in the Arctic Circle. The remaining teachers swiftly scurried back to the classroom.

  Over a period of months Vidkun Quisling convinced Hitler to allow him to rule Norway on a day-to-day basis, and in imitation of Himmler he formed his own SS, calling it the Germansk SS Norge. Himmler appreciated the flattery, but would rather have had his own greedy paws on them himself.

  The OT recruited many Norwegians, but not enough to construct all the shore defenses and submarine pens tha
t were planned, so forced labor was introduced.

  In June 1941 the Norwegian Legion was raised to fight in Russia. Later Norwegian police units were sent to the Russian Front.

  In September 1942 Himmler ordered the arrest of Norway’s Jews. The streets were suddenly flooded with gangs of Hird, Norwegian policemen, SD, Gestapo and Kripo and the Germansk SS Norge, who together rounded up as many Jews as they could find, but in many towns someone had tipped off the Jews, so that in fact only half the nation’s Jews were caught. The other half either went into hiding or walked across high mountains into neutral Sweden.

  Lie was suspicious that some of his policemen had warned local Jews and that indeed some of them were linked to the ‘terrorists’. In August 1943 following an investigation by ‘internal affairs’ the Gestapo picked up 470 Norwegian policemen and incarcerated them in concentration camps. One police inspector was executed for having helped two women avoid forced labor.

  To replace the lost police manpower the Germans brought in their own 7th SS Police and 15th SS Police Regiments to add to their 27th SS Police Regiment already stationed here. The original 15th had been destroyed in Russia. This new regiment did not stay long, being rushed to Italy within a month. Note that in 1943 police regiments added the designation ‘SS’.

  In November 1943 a thousand university students were arrested by the police and sent to concentration camps for their anti-Nazi opinions.

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  Denmark

  Denmark was in a different position than the other victims of Nazi aggression. Though conquered in April 1940, the Danish government insisted on maintaining the ridiculous notion that the Germans were ‘guests’. The Danish armed forces remained in being, including the powerful battleship, the Niels Juel. Within weeks business was soon booming as German war-related companies placed orders in Denmark, and 103,000 Danes volunteered to work in Germany for better pay.

  By July 1941 the Danish police had doubled in size, but ironically this was not in response to anti-Nazi resistance, but rather because of the need to control the bullyboys of the Storm Afdelingr, the stormtroopers of the Danish Nazi Party. Yet at the same time the government sent the Danish Frikorps, in effect a unit of the Danish Army, to fight alongside the Germans in Russia. In November 1941 Denmark became a formal Axis partner. All of this was based on the premise that a war to destroy Communism was not necessarily a war to extend Naziism. To citizens of the Allied nations this seems crazy. But it is quite logical. After all, the Americans and British did not consider their war against the Nazis to be a war to extend Soviet Communism.

  The first hint of change came on 2 November 1942 when a new German representative arrived, Doctor of Law Werner Best. Initially the fact that he was a brigadefuehrer in the SS and thus took orders from Himmler did not alert the Danish people. They were naive. Yet only a week later Prime Minister Vilhelm Buhl resigned and Eric Scavenius took over the reins of government. Had Best forced Buhl out, some asked?

  Two men who were quite put out by this move were Frits Clausen and Jens Moeller. The former had hoped to be made prime minister because he led the Danish Nazi Party, and Moeller, who led the Volksdeutsch community, had expected some sort of autonomy for his people if not outright annexation by the Third Reich. This Volksdeutsch district had been part of Germany until 1919 when it was stolen by the Danes. Moeller and his people could not understand why Hitler still permitted the Danes to rule them. Obviously Hitler’s speeches about liberating all Volksdeutsch were just so much rhetoric. More lies.

  Himmler sympathized with Moeller and he formally acknowledged Moeller’s militia, the Nordschleswig Kameradschaft [North Schleswig Comrades Formation], which by January 1943 had 1,761 members.

  By 1943 exactly 363 Danes had joined the German Army, Luftwaffe or Kriegsmarine, while 1,393 had enlisted into the SS in Denmark, and 2,179 had joined the SS reserves while working in Germany.

  Then in the spring of 1943 the Danish Frikorps was confiscated by Himmler and reborn as the 1st SS Danmarck Regiment. This theft of a Danish Army unit was an obvious slap in the face to the Danish government. Indeed the increasing arrogance of the German government won them few friends in Denmark, and in the May 1943 parliamentary elections Clausen’s Nazis won only three seats out of a possible 148. Scavenius remained prime minister.

  The embarrassed Danish Nazis turned on themselves, dismissing Clausen, and choosing Knud Martinsen as their new ‘fuehrer’. He was a war hero of the Danish Frikorps and currently led 700 veterans and supporters in an association known as the Schalburg Corps, one section of which led by Eric Spleth was devoted to hunting Communists inside Denmark.

  However, some Danish Nazis were disillusioned by their party, so they formed their own new Nazi party led by Max Johannes Arildskov. They had a 700 strong militia, the Landstormen.

  Clausen refused to be dismissed from politics, so he formed his own party, thus the Danish Nazis were now split into three distinct factions.

  Buoyed by his popular support Scavenius began to baulk at certain German ‘requests’ and by August 1943 the German-Danish arrangement had gone sour. On the 28th the Danish cabinet including Scavenius resigned in protest at German interference. There was now a power vacuum in the country.

  At 4 am the next morning German troops left their barracks and surrounded the various barracks of the Danish Army and Navy and took every one prisoner. But some Danish warships managed to get away with the intention of reaching a neutral Swedish port. Most of them made it, but Stuka dive-bombers found the battleship Niels Juel at sea, and their accurate bombing shattered the integrity of her hull. Her captain beached her and his crew was taken prisoner.

  German troops also tried to arrest the King of Denmark, a monarch whose position was purely ceremonial, but his lifeguards put up such a good resistance that the Germans pulled back and accepted his offer of remaining under house arrest.

  Brigadefuehrer Werner Best was now undisputed ruler in Denmark and he ordered the police to get tough. He brought in more German SD and Gestapo, who in turn hired more Danes to help them crush the small and largely passive anti-Nazi resistance movement.

  However, on 28 September this anti-Nazi movement was secretly approached by a German diplomat, George Duckwitz, who informed them that Himmler intended to arrest all Jews in the country. In an unbelievable feat of administration almost all the nation’s Jews were bundled up and spirited away by ship to neutral Sweden over the next forty-eight hours. Duckwitz himself met with the Swedish government to assure their welcome. It is possible that Duckwitz knew of the intended deportations because he had been told by Admiral Canaris, the boss of the Abwehr, for in addition to his diplomatic face, Duckwitz was also an Abwehr intelligence agent. When the Danish and German policemen and SD and Gestapo launched their round up of Jews, they managed to net only 400 people, who had been left behind because they were too ill or too elderly to travel. Of these only 51 died in captivity, an impressive survival record considering the circumstances. There is evidence that it was Best himself who alerted Duckwitz, and that Best insisted on good care for the few Jews that were caught.

  With the Germans in complete control they could now recruit Danes at will. Moeller established his own Volksdeutsch SS unit, the Selbstschutz. Knud Martinsen and Paul Sommer created the 800-man Wachtkorps to guard Luftwaffe airfields. The Luftwaffe organized their own Danish-manned Airfield Defense Companies. The German Werkschutz organized the Schwerin Kompanie of Danish factory guards. The German Kriegsmarine organized the Danish-manned Marinevaegtere to guard naval bases. The fire service established armed guards to protect them when they fought fires caused by sabotage and Anglo-American bombing raids. Clausen saw the writing on the wall; he retired from politics and joined the Waffen SS.

  Obersturmbannfuehrer Peter Schwerdt of the SD established the Peter Group with himself in charge under the alias Peter Schaeffer. Only the dunces of the SD could come up with this beauty. This group of Danes and Germans went around blowing things up and as
sassinating decent people, hoping that the Danish public would assume the real anti-Nazi resistance had done these foul deeds. Otto Skorzeny was ordered to train them in explosives so that they could blow up cinemas packed with people etc. This whole operation was the brainchild of the SD officer Alfred Naujocks.

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  Belgium

  Following the conquest of Belgium in May 1940 the nation was split asunder. The Eupen region of Belgian Volksdeutsch was returned to Germany and its people were welcomed as Germans. The German Army governed the remainder of the nation, but because of Nazi race prejudice the Dutch speaking Flemish gained favor easier than did the French speaking Walloons.

  The Germans did not allow Belgium any armed forces, but they did retain the police and the gendarmerie [a military police force]. The Flemish VNV Nazi party had a militia [Dietsche Militie] and once the Germans had taken over the country Joris van Steenlandt began expanding this militia by conscripting all male VNV members under age 40, and soon he had 12,000 men serving in the Zwarte Brigade [Black Brigade] and 3,000 in the Wacht Brigade [Guard Brigade]. The former were used as part-time sentries to protect VNV property and were also on call for riot control if needed, and the Wacht Brigade was formed to guard slave workers. Additionally all VNV men aged over 40 were notified they might be conscripted in case of emergency. With German guns backing van Steenlandt there was little argument against this move, and with the Gestapo watching everybody it was not a good idea to simply resign from the VNV.

  There was another Flemish Nazi party, Devlag [The Flag], and it already had its own SS.

  The Walloons did not have a Nazi party, but their Christus Rex, an extreme Roman Catholic political party, soon organized its own militia of about 5,000 men under Leon Degrelle.

  Once the Germans had conquered the country, the OT arrived to launch a massive coastal defense construction project, and recruited 80,000 Belgian workers to build it. The NSKK also recruited Belgians, placing the Walloons into the Rex Regiment to service the Luftwaffe throughout Europe and the Flemings into its Flanders Regiment to service the German Army. Most of the recruits in the Flanders Regiment were already members of the Devlag’s SS.