The new HSSPF was SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln.
Himmler admired Jeckeln a great deal. Sometime between 11 and 12 November, he summoned the inventor of the ‘sardine packing’ method of mass murder to Berlin. The time had come, he informed the new HSSPF, that every Jew in the Ostland Commissariat must be liquidated, ‘bis zum letzten Mann’ (‘to the last man’). ‘Tell Lohse that it is my order, and also the express wish of the Führer.’36 Jeckeln returned to Riga. On 25 October, he ordered that the Jewish ghetto in Riga be sealed – and so too was the fate of some 33,000 Jews who ‘lived’ behind its walls.
The ‘wish of the Führer’ was no rhetorical flourish. In the autumn of 1941 Hitler had begun racking up anti-Jewish rhetoric with a barrage of public speeches and private harangues; it was, says historian Saul Friedländer, ‘an explosion of the vilest anti-Semitic invectives and threats’. By September 1941 the German armies had pushed over 600 miles into the Soviet Union along a front line that extended 1,000 miles from north to south; they had occupied the most heavily industrialised Soviet regions – home to over half the Russian population and extending over an area the size of Britain, Spain, Italy and France rolled together. Millions of Soviet soldiers had fallen into German hands, along with many tens of thousands of tanks, guns and artillery pieces. But by the end of September, the German military behemoth was beginning to run out of steam – and Hitler and his generals squabbled bitterly about future strategy, in particular when, and in Hitler’s mind if, to attack Moscow. Goebbels’ diaries provide many insights into Hitler’s fluctuating state of mind, and that autumn it would appear that his moods were extremely volatile. At the end of September, Hitler finally resolved to go all out for Moscow. In the first weeks of October, Operation Typhoon achieved spectacular success. Hitler was, it was reported, euphoric. Panic gripped the Soviet capital, and the communist elite and other big wigs began fleeing the city. A special train was put at Stalin’s disposal and after considerable vacillation, he decided not to join the flight east. It was the most important decision the Soviet dictator ever made. Sometime after 17 November, as it reached the outer suburbs of Moscow, the German attack unexpectedly faltered. Hitler’s war had exhausted his troops. As the German divisions rumbled ever closer towards the great prize, the capital of Jewish-Bolshevism, abysmal roads, chronic food, fuel shortages, and, worst of all, rapidly deteriorating weather sapped morale. As his war machine stumbled, Hitler’s public invective against the Jewish ‘World Enemy’ intensified. The records show that he referred obsessively to the ‘extermination of the Jews’ on 19 October, 25 October, 12 December, 17 December and 18 December.37 This poisonous flood of invective seeped down through the German high command. Field Marshall Walther von Reichenau urged his men to exact ‘just atonement from the Jewish sub humans’. General Hermann Hoth preached the extermination of the ‘spiritual supporters of Bolshevism’ and Erich von Manstein urged German soldiers to avenge all ‘atrocities’ perpetrated by ‘Jewry, the spiritual bearer of Bolshevism’.38
On 14 November 1941 HSSPF Friedrich Jeckeln descended through thick fog towards a landing strip on the Gulf of Riga. He was preoccupied not with Operation Typhoon, but the Führer’s order to escalate the war against the Jews. As soon as Jeckeln had settled into Stahlecker’s old headquarters, the Ritterhaus (where he liked to sit fondling purloined jewellery), Jeckeln began searching for a suitable location where he could begin carrying out Himmler’s new orders.
German execution sites pockmark the great belt of sand that stretches from East Prussia to the Urals.39 In Riga, Jeckeln had one special requirement. He knew that in the autumn water seepage could wreak havoc with his ‘sardine packing’ methods. He would need to find and select a site situated on raised ground. Shortly after his arrival Jeckeln and his aides drove out of Riga in their gleaming Mercedes, along the right bank of the Daugava where the Jewish ghetto was situated, to inspect a new concentration camp under construction at Salaspils. They had just left the city boundary when, a few hundred metres to the left side, Jeckeln spotted a few low, rounded tumuli, dotted with birches sandwiched between the highway and the main railway line that linked Riga to Daugavpils. The place had a name – Rumbula Pines. Although it was not especially secluded, the site had many advantages since it was located next to both the main road and railway. Himmler had ordered Jeckeln to liquidate the ghetto – and that meant he needed to ‘process’ more than 30,000 ‘pieces’ in a very short time. He was also aware that transports of ‘Reich Jews’ had already been dispatched from Germany to Riga for his attention. Jeckeln made a decision: the site of the ‘great action’ would be Rumbula.
Jeckeln commenced detailed planning. Like modern German management practice, his system depended on breaking down every operation into manageable segments, run by different specialist teams. Jeckeln assigned SS-Untersturmführer Ernst Hemicker, who had been trained as an engineer, to supervise the excavation of an appropriate number of pits. Hemicker testified that he was ‘shocked’ by the number of people Jeckeln planned to do away with, but ‘chose not to protest’. Jeckeln drafted in 300 Russian prisoners to dig the pits, each one the size of a small house. Temperatures had fallen below zero so the sandy ground was frozen hard. Work was back breaking. Jeckeln often visited Rumbula Pines to check that construction work was proceeding according to his precise instructions. He was often observed staring down intently into the pits.
In Riga, Lange and Kirste liaised with Arājs and other Latvian SD recruits. On 27 November, Jeckeln invited all units to police headquarters in Riga to finalise the liquidation schedule. This may have been the first time he met Arājs and the other Latvian commanders. So far he had avoided having any contact. It was essential, Jeckeln declared, that everyone ‘obtain and maintain a German character’: the action had to be carried out in an orderly manner. He had calculated that with only seven hours of daylight available, his men would have to march the ghetto Jews in columns of 1,000 and ‘process’ at least 12,000 people every single day. Two days later, Jeckeln called another meeting at the Ritterhaus. He insisted that all Germans stationed in Riga must come to Rumbula to observe the action; it was a patriotic obligation. Anyone who refused would be considered a deserter.40
On 28 November, the Germans issued a ‘resettlement order’ and dispatched Latvian police to enter the ghetto to begin preparations. The news of ‘resettlement’ ‘hit like a thunderclap’, survivor Frida Michelson recalled.41 For Latvian Jews, the Riga ghetto had become a fragile refuge. Now they would be moved out the next day for an unknown destination. That night snow fell on the ghetto and on the Ritterhaus, where Jeckeln and his officers made last-minute refinements to their plans. The snow fell too on trains pulling into Skirotava Station near Rumbula and bringing ‘Reich Jews’ from Germany. German SD squads killed them all while it was still dark.
At 4 a.m. on 30 November, a hundred Arājs men led by Herberts Cukurs and Arājs himself entered the ghetto accompanied by a small, unsuspecting Jewish guard unit. The Latvians were already intoxicated. Arājs and his men strutted through the ghetto streets, ordering the terrified Jews to be ready to leave in half an hour. Some refused. Shooting broke out in houses and on stairwells. Soon enough, Frida Michelson watched an ‘unending column’ filing through the ghetto; she could see young women, women with infants in their arms, handicapped people assisted by their neighbours, young children – ‘all marching, marching’. A German guard began firing an automatic weapon into the crowd. As confusion spread, Latvian guards cried ‘Faster! Faster!’ People began trotting, running, stumbling … falling.
By noon, the Latvian commandos had already killed between 600 and 1,000 Jews inside the ghetto walls. The frozen ground was streaked with blood. Corpses, suitcases, toys, furniture and prams lay scattered. The road that led from the ghetto to Rumbula led past small wooden houses in which ethnic Latvians were enjoying a quiet Sunday morning. A few ‘noble’ citizens dashed into the road and began beating Jews. Those who walked too slowly or collapse
d were shot. Many abandoned suitcases in front gardens. The road to Rumbula was fast becoming a scene of carnage. ‘We were no longer people, only shadows,’ Ella Medale wrote. ‘Everything around us reminded us of a butchery.’ Herberts Cukurs appeared on horseback. He reached down from the saddle to seize small children and kill them on the spot. Michelson went on: ‘a German SS man started firing with an automatic gun point blank into the crowd. People were mowed down by the shots, and fell on the cobblestones … The Latvian policemen were shouting “Faster, faster” and lashing whips over the heads of the crowd.’
At 9 a.m. the head of the first column reached the execution site. ‘At the entrance,’ Frida Michelson recalled, ‘stood a large wooden box. An SS man armed with a club stood next to it and shouted over and over “Drop all your valuables and money in this box!”’ Now the Jews filtered through a succession of human funnels that stripped them of their clothes and finally their lives. Standing at the highest point overlooking the pits, Jeckeln watched, impassive. Alongside him stood his officers and honoured guests, including the Commissar Hinrich Lohse and Franz Stahlecker who had returned to see the Jeckeln’s ‘sardine packing’ system in action. Ella Medale remembered that people ‘overcome by a sense of irreversibility and inescapability rushed forward in a quick stream without protestation’. It was this stripping of both dignity and human will that was most cunning about Jeckeln’s industrialised killing system. ‘Mechanically I took off my coat,’ Ella wrote. When all hope seemed to be lost ‘the head executioner Arājs fastened his eyes on me. His face was disfigured, beast like, and he swayed back and forth, horribly drunk. A shriek broke out of me: “I am not a Jew!” … Arājs waved me away. “Here are only Jews! Today Jewish blood must flow”.’
Jeckeln halted the slaughter on 8 December. He reported to Berlin that his men had used up over 22,000 rounds of ammunition. If we add to that figure the Jews killed inside the ghetto and on the road to the execution site, as well as the numbers of ‘Reich Jews’ killed on the first morning, the Germans and their Latvian auxiliaries murdered at least 24,000 people. A report issued by the RSHA in Berlin stated flatly: ‘The number of Jews who remained in Riga – 29,500 – was reduced to 2,500 as a result of the Aktion carried out by Higher SS and Police Leader Ostland.’42
On 12 December, as heavy snow fell steadily on the mutilated earth of the Rumbula Pines, Himmler issued secret instructions to his SS commanders. He had become concerned that the ‘heavy duty’ of mass murder might ‘brutalise’ SS men. He recommended organising ‘comradely evenings’: hard-working SS killers should ‘sit around the table and eat in the best German domestic tradition’. Officers must organise music and special lectures to ‘introduce our men into the beautiful domains of German spiritual and emotional life’.
As Jeckeln and his guests enjoyed the gruesome spectacle unfolding at Rumbula, Japanese aircraft attacked the American Pacific Fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor. On 11 December, Hitler declared war on the United States – and the following day reiterated a warning first uttered in 1939, that a global war would provoke the destruction of world Jewry. Pitted against the most powerful capitalist nation, Germany now faced certain defeat. Few of the men fighting Hitler’s war understood the catastrophic implications of his decision – least of all SS Chief Heinrich Himmler and his busy collaborators in the east.
By the end of 1941 the Arājs Commando had, as Ezergailis puts it, ‘run out of work’. A stunning frenzy of killing had extinguished the lives of all but a few thousand Jews in the former Baltic nations. Jeckeln may have briefly contemplated ‘sardine packing’ Arājs and the Latvian Schuma leaders to silence them. Instead, they made Arājs an SS-Hauptsturmführer and transferred his core staff, now called the Latvian Security Police and SD Auxiliary Force, Riga, to the Military Academy of Latvia. Soon afterwards, Himmler agreed to send small groups of Schuma veterans to the SD training school in Fürstenberg. Early in 1942, the head of the SD school arrived at the Military Academy to select the first class of Latvians; about 300 men travelled to Fürstenberg for a two-month course in ‘intelligence, counter intelligence and national socialist ideology’. When the first graduates returned to Riga, Dr Lange welcomed them back: ‘After the liberation of Riga, you fought shoulder to shoulder with the German security police for further liberation [sic] and cleansing the land from the remnants of Bolshevism.’
Now Hitler’s foreign executioners would be moulded into true SS warriors.
8
Western Crusaders
A Jew in a greasy Kafkan walks up to beg some bread, a couple of comrades get a hold of him and drag him behind a building and a moment later he comes to an end. There isn’t any room for Jews in the new Europe, they’ve brought too much misery to the European people.
Danish Waffen-SS recruit1
Historians of the Second World War tend to split German occupation strategy into eastern and western modes. Each mode of occupation produced different species of collaborator. There are good reasons to make this distinction between east and west. The Germans deliberately situated the apparatuses of mass murder in the east and, as we have seen with the Rumbula massacre, deported Jews from Western Europe to the killing grounds of the east. Security forces that collaborated with the German occupiers in France and the Netherlands, for example, rounded up and arrested French Jews for deportation. They did not, in strategic terms, murder them in situ as their Lithuanian and Latvian counterparts did. In other respects, German occupation plans in both Eastern and Western Europe shared fundamental common grounds. In the long term, the German architects of the New Order looked forward to abolishing the older European national entities just as they planned to do with more recent manifestations of nationalism in the east. When it came to the ethnic restructuring of Europe, German planners simply regarded Norwegians or Netherlanders as having a racial head start over say their Estonian counterparts. In the long term, all Europeans would be remoulded as Germanics. This meant that, as we will see in this chapter, the recruitment of Western Europeans by the SS was driven by the same racial imperative.
In Western Europe, German foreign recruitment had been launched in 1940 with high hopes but negligible results. On 20 April, the SS ‘Nordland’ regiment was established ‘from Danish and Norwegian volunteers’, and on 25 May the ‘Westland’ began recruiting Dutch and Belgian-Flemish volunteers. Waffen-SS recruitment chief Gottlob Berger set up offices in Oslo, The Hague, Copenhagen and Antwerp – and turned an old French barracks in Sennheim, Alsace, into a training centre. Himmler had high hopes. He was fascinated by the Nordic races and had cultivated the far right in the Netherlands and Flanders. But on 6 June 1941 an abject Berger reported to Himmler that only about 2,000 foreign volunteers had so far been ‘harvested’ by the Waffen-SS.2
The German attack on the Soviet Union changed everything. Hitler’s war was recast as an international crusade against Bolshevism. After 22 June, Goebbels’ propaganda machine began churning out a torrent of newsreels and newspaper stories about the ‘pan-European war of liberation’. Hitler could muster tremendous forces to throw against Stalin’s armies, but he still needed coalition allies and the veneer of legitimacy. Operation Barbarossa would appear to be a joint European action against the ‘World Enemy’; a war waged by civilised peoples against barbarians. Krieg als Kreuzzug, war as crusade, was for Hitler mere window dressing, a hoax designed to entice unwilling allies. But Hitler’s public statements did not completely mask German intentions. As historian Jürgen Förster points out,‘the propaganda attempted to exploit feelings of being under threat, the desire for revenge, ethnic prejudices, and ideological resentment’.3 Hitler described Bolshevism as ‘the bestial degeneration of humanity’ – and in 1941 there were many other Europeans who fervently agreed with the German Chancellor. They understood too that when Hitler referred to Bolshevism he implicitly meant a Jewish political ideology. The equation that added together ‘Jews’ and ‘Bolshevism’ provided the lingua franca for European ultranationalists.
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p; The crusade swindle worked. After 22 June, as German troops and armoured divisions threw back Stalin’s armies, German consuls and other agencies reported a flood of requests to join Hitler’s assault on Bolshevism. Berger had already established recruitment offices in occupied Europe and Scandinavia – and the post-invasion flood of eager western crusaders caught the German Foreign Office and the Wehrmacht on the back foot. They feared, rightly, that Himmler would exploit the foreign volunteers to massively expand the Waffen-SS. On 30 June, representatives of the Foreign Office, the foreign department of the German High Command (OKW) and Berger’s SS met to thrash out guidelines for what one delegate termed ‘crusade foreign legion-gathering’.4 A few days later, the OKW issued ‘Guidelines for the employment of foreign volunteers in the struggle against the Soviet Union’.5 This first effort to categorise and regulate foreign volunteers distributed recruits crudely between ‘Germanics’ like the Danes, Flemings and Dutch, who would be allocated to the SS, and ‘non-Germanics’ like the French, Croats and Spaniards, who would be allocated to the German army. Although, as we have seen, Himmler was already intrigued by ethnic diversity in the east, there is no suggestion yet that Eastern Europeans would be recruited by either the German army or Waffen-SS.
Hitler's Foreign Executioners Page 27
