Hitler's Bandit Hunters (29 page)

The concentration of security forces had been a problem for the Germans since 1941. The desired level of total occupation security was impossible to achieve with only a partial occupation of Soviet Russia. The rear-area armies had failed to impose order, while the security divisions had lacked the flexibility in fighting power and the SS-Police battalions and regiments were too small and thinly spread. The introduction of Directive 46 stipulated the allocation and, to a certain extent, the concentration of security forces. This involved the deployment of the SS, the army, the Luftwaffe, the Reserve Army (
Ersatzheer
), and civilian organizations to a common purpose unusual for German regulations. The most significant structural changes caused by the directive were borne by the Reserve Army. This homeland command was responsible for mobilization, replacements, and training. The establishment was known as the military districts system (Wehrkreis), based in the German
Länder
. The rear-area armies were reorganized and renamed. The rear-area army of Army Group Centre became Wehrmachtbefehl-shaber Weissruthenien and received a total manpower displacement of 37,640 men, which was reduced to 30,609 in April 1944.
²⁸
According to one report from February 1944, the Oberfeldkommandantur 400 deployed three security regiments indicating the dispersal of security forces into the communities.
²⁹
The directive also ordered the Reserve Army to detail soldiers and units under training to the east and to release reserve divisions for security zone duties. This dramatically
reduced the age of the troops committed to security.
³⁰
After the war, a senior officer commented, “The reserve division was however made up of younger, more dynamic men. Their enthusiasm made up for their lack of experience. Their time on duty (reservists) was between two and three months.”
³¹
OKH and the Reserve Army had also extended the Wehrkreis system into the occupied or annexed territories, including Wehrkreis-XX (Danzig) and XXI (Posen), Wehrkreis-General Government, Wehrkreis XVIII (Salzburg), and Wehrkreis-Bohemia and Moravia (Prague), in effect extending German borders through the presence of military organizations.

By 1943, Himmler’s interpretation of the Staatsschutzkorps seemed to have encompassed classical paradigms. He adapted the ancient Roman system of securing empire through rigid centralization and a network of regional power centers. The three key features of the Roman system were the emperor, his regional representative, and the legion. Himmler imitated this system through his HSSPF system, strengthened by SS-Police troops. The June order designated each HSSPF, within an occupied zone, to receive an Order Police regiment. These regiments were similar to those of the Roman legion; both were lightly armed but more powerful than the bands they were expected to combat. The legions were highly maneuverable, the professional backbone of a military organization that also relied on foreign auxiliaries and the centralization of support weapons. In ancient times, the legion served as a political tool of conquest, pacification, Romanization, and the maintenance of law. The SS system performed in the same way for Lebensraum, with pacification, Germanization, and imposition of German rule. The legions policed the empire through a two-tier frontier system that distinguished between the unsettled eastern provinces along the Rhine and the colonized southern territories. The SS lacked the time of the Romans but the impression they have left represents a caricature of antiquity. Lawrence Keppie has suggested the Roman system worked well for two centuries; Himmler expected his system to last a thousand years.
³²

Individually, the three HSSPF in Russia led large formations, but their respective organizational structures were very different. The HSSPF Russia-North, under SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, organized a highly regimented structure. The total forces under Jeckeln’s command, in October 1942, were 4,428 Germans and 55,562 Schutzmannschaft, of whom 23,758 were serving with Schuma battalions.
³³
HSSPF Russia-South came under the command of SS-Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann and was a particularly large region. The establishment was organized bureaucratically but suffered under continual border changes. Prützmann’s forces in November 1942, mustered 4,228 German police troops and 15,665 Ukrainian Schuma forces in battalions and regiments; there were a further 5,966 German gendarmerie and 55,094
Ukrainian Hilfspolizei and part-time guards.
³⁴
Eventually, this region raised more than sixty Schuma battalions of at least thirty thousand men, and by July 1943, it commanded thirty-five thousand German police troops. The HSSPF Russia-Centre, the most unstable organization, one that lagged behind other SS security structures, turned out to be the most effective model of Bandenbekämpfung. This region had suffered the most war damage, killing, and exploitation, as Christian Gerlach revealed.
³⁵

Table 5.1: Prützmann’s Formations

Himmler’s September order stipulated that each HSSPF, in an area designated a Bandenkampfgebiet, was to raise a Kampfgruppe and a Bandenstab. Prützmann issued an example of the internal instructions on the formation of a Bandenstab. His instructions itemized seven points that opened with his justification for doing something this time under Directive 46, the Kampfanweisung of November 11, 1942, and Himmler’s orders. In the second and third points, Prützmann’s appraisal was for the staff to conduct a thorough analysis of “bandit” combat. The staffs were to introduce protocols for analyses, preparations, plans, and command chains. This “leadership staff” was to enhance the SS-Police command system. In point 4, Prützmann listed ten officers and their jobs. The top three positions followed the known pattern of SS and police staffing: Oberstleutnant der Polizei Engelhaupt was chief of staff, SS-Obersturmführer Schmitz was the Ic, and the Ia was Hauptmann der Polizei Schaufler. There were liaison officers to HSSPF Northeast: Reichskommissar Koch, the Wehrmacht commander in the Ukraine to HSSPF Russia-Centre, and an unnamed officer from the Wehrmacht Ukraine command
staff. The next three points explained that assistants would be assigned to field operations located from among available police troops. Prützmann ordered that cooperation with the HSSPF Russia-Centre be conducted without complications. He also explained that Bomhard, the former chief of staff of the Order Police, was assigned to undertake Bandenbekämpfung operations.
³⁶

Signals officers from the army, the SS, the railways, the Luftwaffe, and civilian authorities achieved the highest form of cooperation. After the war, while under interrogation, Karl Wolff was questioned regarding how the SS officers involved in extermination received their orders. His response was, “Whatever these persons had to do with each other was always taken care of by telephone.”
³⁷
Through the employment of liaison officers and the telecommunications network, Himmler was able to control his organization very effectively. The British made a study of this system after the war.
³⁸
In 1938, the police constructed an integrated telegraph and radio network. The majority of its operators were women under the command of an inspector-grade police officer.
³⁹
The commander of signals was Generalmajor der Polizei Robert Schlake, who also held the rank of SS-Standartenführer. By June 1941, this network had expanded into a complex structure finally completed in May 1942.
⁴⁰
The network depended on large transmitters of 20 kilowatts, located in Berlin. Each regional center had a radio station (
Funkstelle
) that used an 800-watt machine and 5-kilowatt machines with ranges of up to 1,000 kilometers. The local stations (
Leitfunkstellen
) used 100-watt transmitters with ranges of up to 100 to 150 kilometers. The Leitfunkstellen and the Funkstellen could cross-communicate within a region. As telephone cables came increasingly under attack through bombing or the partisans, the radio transmitters were sometimes the only form of telecommunications. The radios used both long-and short-wave frequencies, and in the field, officers carried short-wave radio sets, known as tank sets (
Panzergeräte
). The army supplied 10- to 20-watt-powered, voice-operated sets, requiring the minimum of training and pedal-power. The Water Police (
Wasserschutzpolizei
) had special 15-watt sets built into their patrol boats. Mobile communications were organized into companies for battalions and battalions for regiments. The police used radio vans (
Funkwagen
), which were originally designed for emergencies in the cities but which proved valuable in field operations. The motorized gendarmerie used voice-operated sets with a range of up to 150 kilometers. Eventually, the SS-Police regiments, formed from 1942, received a signals company of sixty to seventy men, deployed in close proximity to the commander and staff.
⁴¹

The armored trains (
Panzerzug
) came within the military railway system, under the chief of transportation, and were regarded as critical in Bandenbekämpfung with the emphasis on railway security. The railways formed a unique role within German military traditions: they were the basis of the Etappe
system and the single feature of occupation from 1871 to 1945. There were eighty-five armored trains in one configuration or another, with three regimental staffs and a headquarters command.
⁴²
The armored trains were employed in large operations and in independent combat missions within enemy territory, for artillery support and participation in rapid-reaction operations requiring armored cars, an infantry platoon, mortars, and the engineer soldiers.
⁴³
They were deployed to prevent partisans from escaping across railway lines. The radio and signals equipment made armored trains particularly suited for headquarters functions and for serving as the command staff in large operations. They also carried out small and independent security sweeps. The Germans believed they were effective in keeping “bandits” in a permanent state of “nervousness” through their reconnaissance and ambush patrols. Their duties included convoy guard, replacing crews in strongpoints, evacuating wounded, aiding damaged trains, bringing medical assistance, relieving stations under attack, securing construction sites and labor, and distributing propaganda material along the line.

During the July 16, 1941, meeting discussed in
chapter 2
, Göring suggested the Junkers JU52 transport planes could be configured as bombers to attack the partisans, just as they had been in Spain. The Luftwaffe ground attack airplanes were the Henschel HS126, Junkers JU87, and the Henschel HS129. These airplanes achieved a fearsome reputation for inflicting destruction and panicking civilian refugees. The most important airplane to Bandenbekämpfung was the close liaison Fieseler Fi156, designated Storch (Stork). Designed in 1935, the Storch first saw operational service with the Legion Kondor in Spain. William Green described the special features of this monoplane, which included its high degree of cockpit visibility and the special undercarriage to absorb the shock of short stretch landings from “high vertical descent rates.”
⁴⁴
The few Luftwaffe records to survive the war indicate that the 54th Fighter Group flew round-the-clock missions on the Eastern Front, against partisans. In one report from July 8, 1942, the flyers in fighter-bombers were ordered to angle their bombing precisely. The type of bombs included the single 50- and 10-kilogram fragmentation antipersonnel bombs (
Splitterbomben).
⁴⁵

The Luftwaffe conducted interdiction, strafing, and close air support and also supplied signals and communications monitoring capabilities. Bombing was recommended against fortified strongpoints and camps and to breakup strong concentrations of partisans (
Bandenansammlungen
). In cases in which the “bandits” had only weak anti-aircraft capability, the air force flew strafing attacks against “living targets” (
lebende Ziele
). Dropping propaganda material by air was assumed the best means for turning the population against the bands. All aircrew were instructed to fly with hand weapons to help evade capture and almost certain execution in case of being shot down. Employing parachute troops or air landing forces to encircle the “bandits” or box them in was accepted in special cases.
⁴⁶

Cooperation between ground and air forces was also heavily emphasized in the Bandenbekämpfung regulations of 1944. Points 129–139 explained close support from the air force. The physical use of air assets in security operations has received little attention in the copious histories of the Luftwaffe.
⁴⁷
The guidelines for liaison between ground troops and the air force in Bandenbekämpfung were collected in instructional pamphlets titled “Cooperation Air Force-Army on the Battlefield” (
Zusammenarbeit Luftwaffe-Heer auf dem Gefechtsfeld
). Gerhard Weinberg identified the influence of the Luftwaffe in operations and, in particular, interdiction raids against the bands.
⁴⁸
For the Luftwaffe, rapidly free-falling into decline, the introduction of Directive 46 was opportune.
⁴⁹
Tactical air support, in the form of ground-to-air liaison, had been fundamental to mechanized Cannae.
⁵⁰
German prowess in tactical operations and especially the coordination of combined arms were refined during the Spanish civil war. The German expeditionary force, the Legion Kondor, was an integrated Kampfgruppe of bomber squadrons, armored units, and signals troops.
⁵¹
In operational methods, air superiority was regarded as a prerequisite for close liaison operations. The Germans facilitated air-to-ground communications allowing instructions to pass between ground troops and fliers. Luftwaffe liaison officers took to the air to coordinate the signals and strike missions. They mapped and identified the partisans, marked them with colored flares or smoke markers, and directed air strikes.