Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe

by Philip W. Blood

  The loss of lands under the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles accentuated German national uncertainty and insecurity over territory. The concept of “living space” (Lebensraum) became a popular political theme. This geopolitical picture of Germany’s international status and the long-term perspective of national survival was shared across class and party boundaries. Long before 1914, the opinion that great nations had plentiful land for population growth and were rich in raw materials for industrial development had taken hold. The book People without Land (Volk ohne Raum), which popularized the word Lebensraum, was in fact a work of fiction, but it nonetheless created a national political slogan.1 Karl Haushofer had a more significant influence on Hitler. His voluminous works included an in-depth study of the Pacific Ocean, an examination of the movement of indigenous populations. His work leaned toward anthropology, and he dismissed Darwin as a mere sociologist trained in the natural sciences. He also published a short pamphlet on Lord Kitchener, which examined him in the context of a supreme empire builder.2 Today, Haushofer’s work retains some interest for the scholar, but at the time, it made an important contribution in the political debates over land and self-determination in Weimar Germany. In the Rhineland, where suspicions of French schemes for separation were rife, the reading materials for schools, apprentice and training colleges (Berufschulen), universities and state academies were filled with questions of land.3 Weimar did not neutralize this subliminal nationalistic agenda, which served to politicize several generations of young Germans. The land question also absorbed the hangover from the period of international rivalry before 1914. In particular, Anglo-German rivalry was turned into land benchmarking; the British Empire with its small population set against the landless German masses.4

  The question of race became a central political question after 1918. In 1919, Britain sponsored a commission to investigate allegations of brutality in Namibia was under German rule. Germans criticized the British commission not because they were embarrassed of their ill-treatment of the Herero but because they assumed that Britain coveted the colony.5 Another race issue became a political crisis, inflaming German public attitudes toward the French. The French had detailed black soldiers from its colonial regiments to occupation duties of the Ruhr in 1923. It became known as the “black disgrace” (schwarze Schmach) and proved to extremists groups that there were votes in harnessing race and security.6 The commander of the U.S. occupation forces recorded in his diary that French methods had set Germans on the road to revenge.7 The Nazis turned Ludendorff’s “stab-in-the-back” myth and the Freikorps sentiment of combating Jewish-Bolshevism into effective slogans that amplified these questions of race and space. By the mid-1930s, the Jews took the brunt of hostile racism that blamed them both for the corruption of capitalism and as the agents of Bolshevism. These contradictions appealed to a large cross-section of the German populace who preferred ideological slogans that amplified Germany’s plight rather than commonsense policies to alleviate the national predicament.

  Herein lay the path to the Holocaust and the origins of Hitler’s empire building. In power, Hitler manufactured struggles between institutions and individuals to erect a national security state. All sides in the territorial debate craved revenge on France and Poland, but only hard-liners comprehended the meaning of Lebensraum for Jews and Slavs. The early Nazi banner of guardianship and “blood and soil” (Blut und Boden) policies called for the forcible acquisition of territory and the purification of race. However, few in 1936 recognized the subtle transfer from community guardianship policing to the administration of state security. With the onset of war, the priority was for the prevention of another “stab-in-the-back.” The euphoria of conquests turned caution into aggression. Hitler unleashed his ultimate drive for Lebensraum.

  The Marriage of Militarism and Guardianship

  During the interwar years, the armed forces went through a process of change. The old “state within a state” was reduced and reconfigured. The Great General Staff, in the guise of the Heeresleitung and the Truppenamt, was reduced to the minimum but retained its essential functions. The key task it set itself was evaluating the First World War, a memorial exercise to Schlieffen’s principles. Publicly, this evaluation covered the origins and causes as well as the strategic and tactical progress of the war during the many campaigns and battles. Less publicly, the army conducted in-depth research into non-military factors such as industry and mobilization, military technology, and foreign armies study. The other tasks involved organization, training, and regulations formulation.8 The first military objective of the Reichswehr involved securing the eastern frontiers against Polish incursions. The army manipulated the threat to border security (Grenzschutz) in ways that resembled the global powers’ maneuvers during the Cold War. Open conflict broke out in Silesia in 1919 and lasted until 1921. The army exploited the presence of a military dictatorship in Poland as grounds for a reorganization of the Grenzschutz. The Cold War conditions returned on the German–Polish border but an unofficial shooting war continued beyond the Silesian plebiscite until 1930. The militarization of politics extended the pernicious form of militarism of the Kaiserreich Weimar. This process began in 1916 when Ludendorff became supreme commander of the German war effort and passed his responsibilities to General Groener. Ludendorff was an expert of Etappen administration and the politics of occupation in the east. In 1918, he assisted in the birth of the Weimar republic, while protecting the interests of the army. Gradually, military-led coup d’etats came to blight Weimar. Kapp, Buchrucker, and Munich were not the wildcat coup d’etats of a banana republic. Even a mature democracy would struggle to maintain its cohesion under such attacks. Weimar’s progress was crippled from within. The public desire for stability was answered when Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg assumed the presidency in 1926, and the coup d’etats subsided as the officer corps was reminded of its to higher authority. 9 The end of putschism enabled the army to undertake in-depth foreign military studies. In 1929, Hauptmann Walter Warlimont traveled to America to learn about industrial production and mobilization.10 In later years, Warlimont confided to his interrogators that the army’s priority under Weimar was “maintaining the military spirit of the German people.”11

  Findings from the study of the war were adopted into training and planning. Schlieffen had tried to perfect the supreme military mechanism by rigid professionalization. The war had proved that the drive for perfection was impossible and “that politics pervades all military operations and [has] unremitting influence over them.”12 The army regarded Schlieffen’s doctrines as tactical masterpieces but shelved his strategic outlook. In 1924, Maj. Hermann Geyer, one of Ludendorff’s most capable staff officers, published an article on the future of Cannae in war. Geyer had joined the army under Schlieffen and served with Ludendorff’s staff during the capture of Liège in 1914. In 1916, he published the German infantry combat guidelines, and from 1919, he served in the Reichswehr. His article addressed the broad question of Germany’s preparations for war and its lack of technical ability as compared with the Allies. He was dismissive of the value of colonial warfare in modern European war and critical of the overemphasis on Cannae in training before the war. He found no congruency between the overtraining and the absence of Cannae during the war. Geyer praised Hindenburg for the Battle of Tannenberg, the only example of a Cannae in the war. He cautioned his readers to recognize the real failings, namely the inadequate technical ability of the German officers. He was critical of the growing tendency toward specialization and the rise in overorganization. Geyer believed these factors prevented officers from applying initiative and taking risks. He believed officers were not prepared to take the risk of gaps in their lines to attempt Cannae. They feared an enemy infiltration. This, he argued, had turned officers into “straight-rule strategists” (Linealstrategie) who had forgotten that

  Striving for the greatest possible victory, the victory a la Cannae, in the strategy of extermination was prospective, but mor
e risky. Attack and defense, advance and retreat, economical and excessive use of force needs to be balanced carefully, according to time, place and scale. It was the military mistake of the world war that we did not follow this path, as Schlieffen had taught us.13

  The army also conducted research into occupation. A lecture by Oberleutnant von Ziehlberg delivered May 1930 typified the scrutiny into civil-military issues. His theme examined the extent of the damage caused to civilians and livestock in East Prussia, from the Russian invasion of 1914–15. The Russians inflicted 1,620 deaths and 433 injuries and “evacuated” 5,419 men, 2,587 women, and 2,719 children into their rear areas. The total number of refugees who tried to escape was 870,000, of whom 400,000 crossed the River Vistula. In the subsequent invasion, preplanned German transport evacuated 175,000 civilians west. Ziehlberg recorded that the invasions cost large numbers of livestock including 600,000 horses, 1,400,000 cattle, 200,000 pigs, 50,000 sheep, and 10,000 goats. Destruction of the infrastructure affected thirty-five towns: 3,400 buildings were destroyed, 1,900 villages attacked, and 27,000 homes lost. In four days (March 18–21, 1915), the Memel area suffered intense damage. Losses included the forcible evacuation of 458 men, women, and children by the Russians. The total cost of destruction and plundering was estimated at RM 5 million. The lecture was not intended for public consumption, drew conclusions from Ludendorff and Geyer, and was a portent for the future.14

  One particular problem for the army in the 1920s was finding a working alternative to the intricacies of the Etappen system. The Imperial Army system relied on reservists and Landwehr, which was undermined by the by Versailles limitations on length of service and manpower. The Reichswehr was forced to dispense with the traditional system of reserves. This further restrained strategic thinking toward a single offensive, reduced to the single knockout blow, but left the ongoing problem of security. One solution was the “Black Army” (Schwarze Reichswehr). Oberst Fedor von Bock, chief of staff of Wehrkreis III, ordered Maj. Bruno Buchrucker to build a reserve disguised as work teams (Arbeitskommando). The system rapidly mobilized more than eighty thousand men. Recruitment exploited the old Krümper system devised by Scharnhorst to expand or contract the army. As an army reserve, they expected reinforcement with cadres of regular troops. The scheme concentrated on discipline and training. When Bock ordered the scheme closed, Buchrucker and Hauptmann Walter Stennes attempted a putsch in September 1923. The army arrested its rebellious officers, cashiered them, and had them imprisoned. Buchrucker received a ten-year sentence for high treason, served two, and joined the Nazis. Stennes was cashiered and also joined the Nazis.15

  A unique feature of Weimar society was the coexistence of republican democracy and militarized politics. The allied control commission had forced Germany to dismantle its military power base and monitored Weimar’s efforts to solve the question of national security with a seemingly ineffective army.16 Weimar introduced a catchall federal constitution and raised a professional police force, but the states retained their uniform regulations and codes. Weimar police authority came under Article 7 of the constitution, which listed fourteen categories of law and order. The application for greater police powers, including the maintenance of public order, came from statutory instruments addressed under Article 9. The most controversial Article 48 granted the government the authority to suspend civil rights fundamental to the constitution in times of emergency and to employ the armed force to restore order.17 In convoluted form, Article 48 legitimized the Freikorps experience.18 A major weakness of Weimar, in this context, concerned the manner in which the new republic coupled with the remains of the former system. Individual German Länder (states), in common with other federal systems of government, retained their legislative rights over law and order. This legal belt and braces was more a hangover from 1871 than the establishment of a sinister police state. The notion of the Rechtsstaat, a state contrived in pure law, had taken hold in Germany long before the Weimar constitution. The old regulations had proved their value in the immediate aftermath of war. Border cities like Aachen overwhelmed by war, occupation, and social collapse, resorted to Prussian ordinances from 1851 as their only legal remedy for the restoration of order.19 According to Otto Loening, Weimar had introduced a police force on democratic principles but attempted to overcome its opponents, including the German Länder, by relying on secret political policing, methods incompatible with democracy.20

  The former military caste returned to the state under Weimar as police officers and public servants. The character of the uniformed police inclined toward internal security rather than simple beat policing. Policing within Germany consumed a broad interpretation of regulation and supervisory functions in the service of the state. It was a by-product of internal security. Richard Evans’ essay on the historical development of German policing, a compact survey of the period from 1800 to 1945, viewed this period as one of increased policing without a proportional reduction in crime. The contrasts in the development were profound but led to bureaucratization. French influence on German policing included the introduction of the gendarmerie in 1812, effectively containing the roving bands of robbers. Wilhelm Stieber’s undoubted performance on behalf of securing the Great General Staff was not matched in his handling of domestic policing. His underhand methods, including bribery, deception, and fraud, caused widespread corruption to develop within the Prussian police. Long after Stieber’s death in 1882, the German press continued to refer to political policing as Stieberschen Art.21 The gradual militarization of the police, so often used to explain away its inherent brutality, was an expression of Germany’s internal regulation through the dictatorship by state bureaucracy service and its inherent self-protectionism. Retiring professional soldiers then, like German public servants today, were a protected occupation with the right to permanent employment. Former army NCOs took up police employment on retirement, becoming military bureaucrats (Militäranwärter) within the national civilian administration.22

  According to Richard Bessel, the Weimar police were “modern and democratic,” in contrast with the militarized police and “bureaucratic-soldier” of the Kaiserreich.23 Weimar followed the conventional path toward police professionalization through recruitment, training, and technology. The deployment of a professional police force depended on significant numbers of trained troopers and officers, although neither existed in 1920. The lack of available and untainted manpower was, in one form or another, a critical factor in policing until 1945. Attracted to the police as uniform body, former Kaiserreich police officers, veteran soldiers, and Freikorps bonded to form an inner “old school.” The Prussian Schutzpolizei, what Evans called a republican guard, had to contend with the ongoing pressure from within its ranks to adopt militaristic tendencies. Bessel thought the recruitment of younger men in the final years of Weimar gave a fleeting glimpse of what might have been. He identified the police relationship with new technology and confidence in comprehensive training programs. The utilization of motor vehicles and advanced telecommunications indicated a corporate inclination for specialization. Police training schools and academies, including the School of Technology and Communications, trained cadets in a range of advanced skills and techniques.24

  Weimar politicians, like politicians the world over, brandished slogans to encourage public acceptance of their protégés. The police force was not an exception when it was called the “guardian of public order and security, servant of the general public in selfless, devoted activity.”25 Carl Severing’s catchphrase, “The Police—Your Friend and Helper,” the official police motto, was, by today’s standards, a soundbite without substance. Legal scholars like Otto Loening were sceptical of these slogans. Loening believed they were poorly conceived, lacked authority, and were without adequate definition under the law.26 He accepted that the constitution granted the police the right to conduct interrogations and place listening devices for the sake of law and order. He, however, was not distracted by what he thought was thinly veiled poli
ticking. He concentrated on the issue of ill-defined ordinances within police regulations that circumvented the constitution. Loening pointed out the growing inconsistency between federal and state policing. The police stood between soldiers and civilians and found solace in their exclusivity. Entrenched social distinctions between the police and the civilian world in Weimar came to resemble the distinction between soldiers and civilians in the Kaiserreich. Effectively, civil-police relations had superseded civil-military relations during the interwar years.

  While police regulators and practitioners made uneasy bedfellows, Weimar society began to distill alternative forms of organized protection, more appropriately labeled guardianship. In terms of total policing, the federal and state police left a discernible vacuum that unsettled the public. Weimar was committed to national policing while the states were concerned with preventing anarchy on the streets. Under these circumstances, the middle class (Mittelstand) believed they went unpoliced. The rise of community self-policing and self-protection schemes reflected this perception. The political challenge of communal guardians undermined the case for professional policing. James Diehl has argued that the rise of radical militarized politics in Europe proved that Germany was not the only country affected by para-militarism. However, Diehl suggests that when the “respectable” middle classes endorsed the civic guards (Einwohnerwehre), Germany became the exception.27 Diehl explained that this was the by-product of Bismarck’s power politics, rooted in the hearts and minds of law-abiding citizens’ fear of enemies of the state (Reichsfeinde). The Kapp putsch was, in Diehl’s opinion, the catalyst for the growth in civic guards. In Munich, Epp raised the civic guards and the Technical Emergency Police (Technische Nothilfe), abbreviated as TN) to secure public utilities.28 Armed bands (Wehrbände) and the political combat leagues (politische Kampfbünde) sustained militarism in German politics. In the first months of Hitler’s rule, volunteers to the Aachen police included members of the Deutschenationalen Kampfringes.29 These volunteers were mostly war veterans, patriots, and middle-class professionals including foresters and influential businessmen.30 They also aspired to professionalism through regular training.31