This was not the end of the matter. The arrival of 8,000 former SS men could not be kept secret – and a journalist called Felix Wirth got in touch with the maverick Labour MP Tom Driberg. Wirth insisted that the Ukrainians had played a ‘terrible role as Germany’s faithful and active henchmen in the slaughter of the Jews of [L’viv] and other towns’. The ‘notorious Ukrainian SS division’ had perpetrated ‘monstrous outrages’. In the House of Commons, Driberg tabled a question as to whether the Ukrainians had been properly ‘checked’ and somewhat tamely accepted Foreign Office assurances that they had. Soon afterwards, the first shiploads of Ukrainian SS men began arriving in British ports. ‘Westward Ho!’ officials in the Home Office began to prepare to ‘civilianise’ the DPs and began negotiations with Ukrainian lobby groups to allow some to move on to Canada.
As ‘Westward Ho!’ gathered momentum, more Eastern European DPs flooded into Great Britain. Many had originated in the Baltic nations and, as they passed through various screening processes, doctors noted that some had distinctive tattoos (i.e. ‘blood group markings’) under their arms. This was unique to Waffen-SS men; it had been customary for Allied officers to get POWs to lift up their left arms. At a DP hostel in Hans Crescent, London, a Polish doctor, who was all too familiar with the tattoo’s significance, began asking unwelcome questions and provoked a minor riot. When the ‘SS tattoo affair’ threatened to escalate, an influential Latvian based in London called Karlis Zarins, aka Charles Zarine, sprang to his fellow citizens’ defence. He launched a campaign to defend the Latvian Legion and bombarded the Foreign Office with memoranda and letters. He insisted that the ‘Latvian Legion’ had been ‘taken over’ by the Germans and that recruits had wanted only to fight the Russians. Zarins’ defence sowed the seeds of the obfuscation that still blights discussion about the occupation of Latvia. Like its Ukrainian counterpart, the Balt lobby was well organised and supported by some influential anti-Soviet right wingers, like the Duchess of Atholl. When, in November 1945, the Russians tried to arrest former SS-Standartenführer Arvids Kripens, who was held in the British POW camp at Zedelghenin, Belgium, they were sent away empty handed. Echoing Zarins’ relentless stream of propaganda, the British asserted that ‘the fact that he belonged to an SS formation’ did not justify handing him over to the Soviet authorities. The Russians had not troubled to assemble much evidence since in Soviet-ccupied Latvia; the fact that Kripens had been an officer in the ‘Latvian Legion’ would automatically have been enough to have him executed or deported. In one of his diatribes, Zarins alluded to one ‘Arājs’: ‘a great national patriot … I should feel very relieved if His Majesty’s Government would allow them to come to the safety of this country.’ Our first Labour government did not choose to offer refuge to that self-proclaimed ‘killer of Jews’, Viktors Arājs.19 That honour would go to West Germany.
In this way, Britain and Canada became a refuge for many thousands of individuals who joined a ‘war of annihilation’ that targeted a bogus ‘Jewish-Bolshevik’ foe.
That naturally brings us back to the question posed at the beginning of this book. Was Daniel Goldhagen’s proposal in Hitler’s Willing Executioners right? Was the Holocaust a consequence of German ‘exterminatory anti-Semitism’? Can his argument account for the tens of thousands of non-German executioners who willingly took part in mass murder operations against Jews? Was the Holocaust a European rather than a German crime?
The answer to that question, on the basis of available evidence, must be yes. Following the invasion of Poland in September 1939, many non-German Europeans actively sought the destruction of Jews in German-occupied regions of the Soviet Union. After 1933, German agencies like the Abwehr and the SS promoted the cause of ultranationalist factions in most European nations. Every one of these factions broadly accepted that Soviet Communism was a manifestation of Jewish power, and must be eliminated. The mythical notion of a ‘Jewish head’ on a ‘Slavic body’ that Hitler and his followers had adopted from Russian anti-Semites became the shared ideological language of the European far right and was sanctioned by a powerful nation state: Germany. But Hitler had no interest in promoting the cause of any nationalist movements and remained suspicious of ‘arming foreigners’.
SS Chief Heinrich Himmler went much further. He imagined a future ‘SS Europa’ which had dispensed with the NSDAP and its leader Adolf Hitler and was chopped up into SS-ruled provinces. Jews and other undesirables would be liquidated and a massive programme of ‘Germanisation’ would redraw the ethnic map of Europe. This master plan depended on SS recruitment of non-German ethnic groups: in Himmler’s words, ‘harvesting German blood’. The unfolding of this master plan commenced in 1940 with the Nordic peoples of Scandinavia and the Netherlands, but as German race science adapted to new data gathered in POW camps, Himmler’s scheme would draw in other peoples, beginning with Estonians. Himmler believed that loyal service in SS police battalions and the Waffen-SS military divisions could fast track the process of ‘Germanising’ ‘suitable elements’ in occupied Europe, raising non-Germans up to the level of ‘Germanic’ peoples over time. The service he demanded as the price of a future place at the Aryan high table was mass murder. This was congruent with the political ambition of radical nationalists like the Lithuanian LAF and the Romanian Legion of St Michael, who had long sought the destruction of their fellow Jewish citizens.
When the Reich was defeated in April 1945, just a single stage of Himmler’s master plan had been completed, at least in part. That is not to belittle the worst genocide in recorded history. Himmler’s foreign executioners played a murderous part in the destruction of European Jewry between 1941 and 1945. The German SS learnt how to manage their auxiliary murderers. They wanted to recruit, as the governor of occupied Poland put it, surgeons not butchers. SS top brass conceived and built Trawniki and the Reinhardt camps for a single wicked purpose: to murder every Polish Jew. They recruited men like John (Ivan) Demjanjuk and many thousands of other Eastern Europeans to help realise this master plan. These men had been brought up to hate Jews. But the lethal application of this hatred was managed by Hitler’s willing German executioners.
Appendix 1
Maps
1 The political division of the Balkans following the German invasion, April 1941.
2 SD Einsatzgruppen followed German army groups across Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (top). Along each route, the Germans recruited local collaborators to form auxiliary police squads that facilitated mass murder, as shown by the recorded percentages of Jewish communities who fell victim to the genocide (bottom).
3 The German political division of Eastern Europe and the occupied Soviet Union following the 1941 invasion. Puppet administrations in each new administrative region assisted with the recruitment of non-German police and Waffen-SS units.
Appendix 2
Foreign Divisions Recruited by
the Third Reich
Arab Nations
Deutsche-Arabische Bataillon Nr 845
Deutsche-Arabische Lehr Abteilung
Albania
21. Waffen-Gebirgs-Division der SS Skanderbeg (albanische Nr. 1)
Belgium
27. SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division Langemarck (flämische Nr. 1)
28. SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division Wallonien
SS-Freiwilligen Legion Flandern
SS-Freiwilligen-Standarte Nordwest
SS-Freiwilligen-Sturmbrigade Langemarck
6. SS-Freiwilligen-Sturmbrigade Langemarck
5. SS-Freiwilligen-Sturmbrigade Wallonien
SS-Freiwilligen-Verband Flandern
SS-Sturmbrigade Wallonien
Wallonisches-Infanterie Bataillon 373
Bulgaria
Waffen-Grenadier Regiment der SS (bulgarisches Nr 1)
Croatia
17. Air Force Company
369. (Kroatische) Infanterie-Division
373. (Kroatische) Infanterie-Division
392. (Kroatische) Infanterie-Division
>
Croatian Air Force Legion
Croatian Air Force Training Wing
Croatian Anti-Aircraft Legions
Croatian Legion
Croatian Naval Legion
Polizei-Freiwilligen-Regiment 1 Kroatien
Polizei-Freiwilligen-Regiment 2 Kroatien
Polizei-Freiwilligen-Regiment 3 Kroatien
Polizei-Freiwilligen-Regiment 4 Kroatien
Polizei-Freiwilligen-Regiment 5 Kroatien
Polizei-Freiwilligen-Regiment Kroatien – See Polizei-Freiwilligen-Regiment 1 Kroatien
13. Waffen-Gebirgs-Division der SS Handschar (kroatische Nr. 1)
23. Waffen-Gebirgs-Division der SS Kama (kroatische Nr. 2)
Denmark
Danish volunteers in Waffen-SS
Frikorps Danmark
Estonia
Estnische Grenzschutz Ersatz Regiment
Estnische Grenzschutz Regiment 1 (Polizei)
Estnische Grenzschutz Regiment 2 (Polizei)
Estnische Grenzschutz Regiment 3 (Polizei)
Estnische Grenzschutz Regiment 4 (Polizei)
Estnische Grenzschutz Regiment 5 (Polizei)
Estnische Grenzschutz Regiment 6 (Polizei)
Estnische SS-Freiwilligen-Brigade
3. Estnische SS-Freiwilligen-Brigade
Estnische SS-Legion
20. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (estnische Nr. 1)
Finland
Finnisches Freiwilligen-Bataillon der Waffen-SS
France
French forces during WW2
French Volunteers and Collaborationist Forces
Französische SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Regiment
Französische SS-Freiwilligen-Sturmbrigade
Légion des Volontaires Français (LVF)
Légion Tricolore – see Légion des Volontaires Français
Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS ‘Charlemagne’ (französische Nr. 1)
33. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS ‘Charlemagne’ (französische Nr. 1)
Hungary
22. SS-Freiwilligen-Kavallerie-Division Maria Theresa
1. Ungarische-SS-Schi-Bataillon
1. Ungarische SS-Sturmjäger Regiment
25. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS Hunyadi (ungarische Nr. 1)
26. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS Hungaria (ungarische Nr. 2)
33. Waffen-Kavallerie-Division der SS (ungarnische Nr. 3)
Waffen-Schi Bataillon der SS 25
Waffen-Schi Bataillon der SS 26
India
Indische Freiwilligen Legion der Waffen-SS
Infanterie-Regiment 950 (indische) (Legion Freies Indien)
Ireland
Irish volunteers in the Waffen-SS
Italy
Italienische-Freiwilligen-Legion
Karstwehr-Bataillon
Karstwehr-Kompanie
1. Sturm-Brigade Italienische Freiwilligen-Legion
Waffen-Gebirgs-(Karstjäger) Brigade der SS
24. Waffen-Gebirgs-(Karstjäger-) Division der SS
Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS (italienische Nr. 1)
29. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (italienische Nr. 1)
Latvia
Lettische Freiwilligen Polizei Regiment – See Lettische Freiwilligen Polizei Regiment 1 Riga
Lettische Freiwilligen Polizei Regiment 1 Riga
Lettische Freiwilligen Polizei Regiment 2
Lettische Freiwilligen Polizei Regiment 3
Lettische Grenzschutz Regiment 1 (Polizei)
Lettische Grenzschutz Regiment 2 (Polizei)
Lettische Grenzschutz Regiment 3 (Polizei)
Lettische Grenzschutz Regiment 4 (Polizei)
Lettische Grenzschutz Regiment 5 (Polizei)
Lettische Grenzschutz Regiment 6 (Polizei)
Lettische SS-Freiwilligen-Brigade
2. Lettische SS-Freiwilligen Brigade
Lettische SS-Freiwilligen Legion
15. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (lettische Nr. 1)
19. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (lettisches Nr. 2)
Lithuania
Litauische Polizei Regiment 1
Netherlands
Landstorm Nederland – See SS-Grenadier-Regiment 1 Landstorm Nederland
SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Brigade Landstorm Nederland
SS-Freiwilligen-Legion Niederlande
SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Brigade Nederland
4. SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Brigade Nederland
34. SS-Freiwilligen-Grenadier-Division Landstorm Nederland
23. SS-Freiwilligen-Panzergrenadier-Division Nederland (niederlandische Nr. 1)
SS-Freiwilligen-Standarte Nordwest
SS-Freiwilligen-Verband Niederlande
SS-Grenadier-Regiment 1 Landstorm Nederland
Norway
Freiwilligen Legion Norwegen (Den Norske Legion)
SS-Schijäger Bataillon Norwegen (Skijegerbataljon Norge)
Romania
Romanian volunteers in the Waffen-SS
Waffen-Grenadier-Regiment der SS (rumänisches Nr 1)
Waffen-Grenadier-Regiment der SS (rumänisches Nr 2)
Serbia and Montenegro
Polizei Freiwilligen-Regiment Montenegro
Polizei Freiwilligen Regiment 1 Serbien
Polizei Freiwilligen Regiment 2 Serbien
Polizei Freiwilligen Regiment 3 Serbien
Polizei-Selbstschutz-Regiment Sandschak
Serbische Freiwilligenkorps – See Srpski Dobrovoljački Korpus
Srpski Dobrovoljački Korpus
Spain
Esquadron Azul
250. Infanterie-Division (División Azul)
Spanische-Freiwilligen-Kompanie der SS 101
Spanische-Freiwilligen-Kompanie der SS 102
Soviet Union
Armenische Legion
Azerbajdzansche Legion
Böhler-Brigade
Freiwilligen-Stamm-Division
Galizische SS Freiwilligen Regiment 4 (Polizei)
Galizische SS Freiwilligen Regiment 5 (Polizei)
Galizische SS Freiwilligen Regiment 6 (Polizei)
Galizische SS Freiwilligen Regiment 7 (Polizei)
Galizische SS Freiwilligen Regiment 8 (Polizei)
Georgische Legion
162. (Turkistan) Infanterie-Division
600. (Russische) Infanterie-Division
650. (Russische) Infanterie-Division
Kalmücken-Kavallerie-Korps – See Kalmüken Verband Dr. Doll
Kalmücken-Legion – See Kalmüken Verband Dr. Doll
Kalmüken Verband Dr. Doll
Kaukasischer Waffen-Verband der SS
Nordkaukasische Legion
Osttürkischen Waffen-Verbände der SS
Russkaya Ovsoboditelnaya Narodnaya Armija (RONA):
Waffen-Sturm-Brigade Kaminski
Waffen-Sturm-Brigade RONA
Sonderverband Bergmann
Tataren-Gebirgsjäger-Regiment der SS
Turkestanische Legion
Waffen-Gebirgs-Brigade der SS (tatarische Nr. 1)
Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS (weißruthenische Nr. 1)
14. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (ukrainische Nr. 1)
29. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (russische Nr. 1)
30. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS (weissruthenische Nr. 1)
Wolgatatarische Legion
United Kingdom
Britisches Freikorps (British Free Corps)
Appendix 3
Officer Rank Conversion Chart
Army Waffen-SS English Rank
Reichsführer-SS
Generalfeldmarschall Field Marshal
Generaloberst Oberstgruppenführer General
General Obergruppenführer Lieutenant General
Generalleutnant Gruppenführer Major General
Generalmajor Brigadeführer Brigadier
Oberst Oberführer
Standartenführer
Colonel
Oberstleutna
nt Obersturmbannführer Lieutenant Colonel
Major Sturmbannführer Major
Hauptmann Hauptsturmführer Captain
Oberleutnant Obersturmführer Lieutenant
Leutnant Untersturmführer Second Lieutenant
Appendix 4
Terms & Abbreviations
Abteilung department, battery, battalion
Abwehr department of army intelligence
Allgemeine-SS the main or general SS
Auslandsorganisation NSDAP agency responsible for Germans in foreign countries
Auswärtiges Amt Foreign Office, Reich Minisitry for Foreign Affairs
Einsatzgruppe Special Task Force or special squad commanded by the SD or SIPO
Einsatzkommando detachment of Einsatzgruppe
Feldgendarmerie military police
Freiwillige volunteers
Gau NSDAP territorial entity in Reich and occupied or annexed territories, each with a Gauleiter
Gebirgsdivision mountain division in the army or Waffen-SS
Geheime Staatspolizei Gestapo, secret state police, department of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo)
Generalgouverment General Government, German-occupied Poland
Germanische Leitstelle attached to SS Main Office, responsible for Germanic SS and propaganda
Hilfspolizei auxiliary police
Höhere SS und Polizeiführer (HSSPF) Higher SS and Police Leader
Kreis district
Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Nationalist Socialist German Workers
Arbeiter Partei (NSDAP) Party, Nazi Party
Oberkommando das Heeres (OKH) High Command of the Army
Oberkommando Der Wehrmacht (OKW) High Command of the Armed Forces, including army, navy and airforce
Ordungspolizei (ORPO) Order Police. Regular uniformed Reich police, including Schutzpolizei and Gendermerie
Rasse und Siedlungshauptamt (RuSHA) Race and Settlement Main Office, responsible for establishing and monitoring racial norms in SS and Waffen-SS, and among ethnic German settlers
Reichsarbeitsdienst (RAD) Reich Labour Service: agency exploiting foreign nationals in occupied countries
Hitler's Foreign Executioners Page 55
