Hitler's Bandit Hunters (35 page)

Basic training for the police was conducted at Koepenick or Fürsten-feldbruck training academies. Four weeks were devoted to fitness, bodybuilding, and self-defense; six weeks were set aside for weapons training (
Waffendienst und Waffenkunde
), which expressed itself in terms of love for the rifle, marching into battle, tactical methods, and marksmanship. Two weeks were devoted to ideological training essentially revolving around a dogma about people and territory titled
Volk ohne Raum—Raum ohne Volk
. The questions of blood and the Nuremberg Laws of September 15, 1935, and an overview of the new Reich and the new leadership were also integral to the tuition. The aim of this part of the course was to build “the police official as a shining example and propagandist” and “the organisation as the highest order of the era.” Four weeks were set aside for the study of the police organization and its work. This essentially covered the legal process, policing and taking criminals, as well as the legal system and the prisons; this was followed by five weeks of practical training in the field.
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By September 1944, the academy was training recruits in the use of rifles and pistols.
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Four specialist police weapons training schools (
Polizei-Waffenschule
) were established. The first was in Dresden-Hellerau (designated I) and had a capacity to train 300 candidates; Laon (designated II) had a capacity of 200 candidates
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; Hague (III) had a capacity for 451 recruits; and Maastricht (IV) for 230. On July 30, 1943, the police wanted to erect a weapons school for ethnic Germans from Siebenbürgen, although the records do not indicate if this happened.
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The three academies of police officer training were Mariaschein, Fürstenfeldbruck, and Eberswalde.
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By 1943, the basic training schedule wove politics, security, and Bandenbekämpfung into a single program.
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The schedule
of training began with classes in National Socialism and was followed by tactical and leadership classes. The training instructions stated, “The objective of training must be to achieve ability in fighting capability…. The experience of the eastern campaign and the Bandit warfare has to be intensely analysed.” Company leadership training, fitness and bodybuilding, air raid protection, laws and legal process, police law, precinct life (
Revierkunde
), and survival techniques were also part of the program. Training continued until December 22, 1944.

To facilitate the rationalization of manpower, the Order Police adopted a city “twinning system” to regulate assignments and deployment. The system linked the precincts of German and Russian cities so that the limited human resources of the police shared administration; this smoothed police duties between German home-front districts with occupied precincts. A report by the BdO Ukraine placed a ratio of Russian homesteads to police officials, and the German twin police department. Kiev, the largest city with 856,000 accounted homesteads, received an Order Police command and a gendarmerie command (denoted as KdO/KdG) of 35 staff officers and 217 Schutzpolizei. Kiev’s German twin police home station (
Heimatstandort
) was Hamburg. The next was Dnepropetrovsk, accounting 500,000 homesteads, assigned a KdO/KdG of 35 staff and 123 Schutzpolizei and twinned with Weimar. Krivoi Rog with 197,000 homes was assigned a KdO/KdG of seven staff and 51 Schutzpolizei and twinned with Potsdam. The town of Vinnitsa with 93,000 homes received a KdO/KdG of 7 staff and 26 Schutzpolizei and was twinned with Kaiserslautern.
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Twinning reduced routine administrative duty within overall operations. The system continued throughout the war and helps explain why the police were able to respond rapidly to strategic emergencies.

Specialist police formations such as the Wasserschutzpolizei (WSP), which took up duties in the east, were also incorporated into the system.
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WSP-station Bobruisk was formed under HSSPF Russia-Centre with two Wachtmeister and six reservists. Its supply line led to Police Regiment Warsaw. WSP-Kiev had four Wachtmeister and twelve reservists and received its supplies through BdO-Kraków. On February 1, 1944, WSP-Pripyat was dissolved under the instructions of the senior commander of the WSP. These instructions explained how units were broken up and redistributed. Personnel without boats were sent to a troop collection camp in Czechoslovakia. The unit commander and officials reported to WSP-Oder in Breslau. The adjutant and ten reservists returned to their home station in Berlin. The boats were handed over to WSP-Bromberg and then passed on to WSP-Warte/Netze. All motor vehicles and weapons were registered and stockpiled. The men received ten to fourteen days’ leave prior to new postings.
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Welfare in the SS-Police was the responsibility of officers and senior commanders. Officers, many reservists like their men, ranged across a coterie
of demands from finding quarters to arresting a gendarme for the crime of attempted suicide.
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The troops were issued with cigarettes, vodka (at the cost of RM 5.60 per liter), and wine (free).
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Official entertainment programs were an important aspect of life for troops in the occupation sectors and rear areas. After-work parties and musical gatherings were a regular feature in Bach-Zelewski’s diary. The troops received visits from theater companies or were allowed to attend entertainment programs. The cinema and regular cabaret or variety acts proved popular. In Bobruisk, Pannier recommended historical or training films at the end of a day’s work. The HSSPF Russia-Centre brought the SS-Music Corps into Minsk on August 9, 1941, while Police Regiment North encouraged its own war artist, to exhibit his work on July 26, 1941.
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The troops received the corporate propaganda piece (
SS-Leitheft
) and daily newspapers, and OKW situation reports were displayed on notice boards.

Questions regarding sexual outlets are more difficult to answer or explain. The surviving records do not include sexual details. In the east, the men were forbidden from having free contact with Russian women on racial grounds:

Ostminister Dr. Wilhelm states that the problem of Ukrainian women who are having children by Germans will be solved by abortion. Men proved to be guilty in this respect will be brought before the party tribunals for forbidden intercourse with Ukrainians. The total number of these children does not amount to 10,000.
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Military brothels were organized and administered for all soldiers and troops. Signals intercepts revealed some sexual misdemeanors; for example, an SS man ran off with a prostitute, and they chose to hide in Hamburg’s Jewish quarter.
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Another communiqué referred to sexual orgies committed by SS men of a cavalry squadron in Cholm. Given the social elites who joined the SS-Cavalry, it is not surprising that an official SS lawyer was assigned to defend them.
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In February 1968, the Wiesbaden county court (
Landesgericht
) heard a case in which the defendant, a former member of Police Battalion 314, was charged with shooting a dancer called “Vera,” allegedly the defendant’s mistress, during his posting to Kharkov in March 1942.
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Reams of signals traffic concerning holidays, sick leave, and bombed-out families in Germany were decoded by the British. The police received leave perhaps more regularly than the army. The operational staff of HSSPF Russia-South found that delays in traveling back to Germany took six days out of ten leave furlough, which they thought left too short a period. The recommendation was fourteen leave days with the added allowance of six traveling days, making twenty days in all. From March 23, 1942, two leave trains twice a week were scheduled to arrive and depart between Germany and the rear area of Army Group South, carrying twelve hundred places.
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The
families of men killed in action were notified through Nazi officials in their hometown. Troopers with relatives killed at home, especially by the bombing, were advised while on duty and were not always granted compassionate leave. In all cases, the bodies of police officers killed in combat were not returned to Germany for burial. By 1943, signals traffic criss-crossed Germany and the occupation sectors advising of death. These messages clearly affected troop morale, and men lived in perpetual fear for their loved ones. The police regiments were mustered from the same neighborhoods and the magnification of their psychological effect perhaps explains, but does not condone, random acts of revenge killings.
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Serious losses to disease and sickness had not been planned for by SS-Police operations in Russia during 1941. By 1942, the KSRFSS issued regular monthly casualty returns, including the numbers of those afflicted by common and fatal diseases.
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An order posted in 1943 by Gottberg’s medical officer circulated advice on preventative troop hygiene. Orders about hygiene were read aloud at troop assembly by the duty officer and then were individually issued to each trooper. Troops were ordered to wash regularly and construct steam saunas to combat personal lice. They were advised to repair damaged footwear, warning that small changes in cold and wet weather could lead to frostbite. The men were warned not to wear their boots too tightly and preferably to wear one pair of socks at a time but to change them regularly, especially during very cold weather. In winter, the consumption of alcohol was permitted only inside warm rooms because it caused men to fall asleep and die when outside. The troops were advised to build latrines close to quarters and sheltered from the wind. The battle against vermin (
Ungezieferbekämpfung
) was conducted with traps for rats and disinfectant (
Kresolseifenlösung
) against lice. The troops were warned against entering Russian houses to shelter from the cold because it was believed this was a major cause of contracting disease.
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Sudden outbreaks of typhoid and spotted fever led the HSSPF Russia-Centre operations officer to make urgent requests for large doses of inoculations in March 1942. Malaria was prevalent in the south, especially in the mining districts.
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Dysentery plagued police units in Grodno, while typhus blighted the central theater.
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There were plagues of summer flies and constant calls for delousing equipment and smallpox vaccine.
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The troops brought their diseases home to Germany, with Frankfurt, Bochum, Lübeck, and Darmstadt particularly badly affected by typhus.
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In July 1943, the first recruits arrived at the SS-Waldlager Bobruisk. They were initially assigned to serve with the Order Police in May, but in July, after some indecision, they were sent to the SS.
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Pannier’s reports pieced together explain why they were unwanted and had drifted. The first impression was pathetic. The recruits were divided evenly between German nationals
and ethnic Germans from Rumania. Pannier explained that the recruits were inoculated for smallpox, typhus, dysentery, cholera, and diphtheria, all prevalent in the east.
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By August, the troops showed some “satisfactory” improvement to the men’s fitness. Pannier used hard, energetic training to remove the softness in the men, and this led to a reduction in sick calls. He recorded the overall strength of the complex on July 31 as 11 officers, 102 NCOs, and 2,007 men. This increased in August to 15 officers, 247 NCOs, and 1,972 men. The base had also increased with a company of Latvian Schuma and a number of SS female auxiliaries. There was no indication of any segregation routines.
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The average age of the recruits stood at twenty-eight, and according to Pannier, they had overcome their personal faults through their strength of character.

The ethnic Germans arrived in the poorest condition. Many had served with the Rumanian army, some with eight years’ service and prior combat experience. They were aged between seventeen and forty and carried little or no equipment. They were mostly farm laborers, dull-witted, and inept with formal German (
Hochdeutsch
) because of their local dialects. More than two-thirds of the men were suffering from bad teeth, which caused 166 to suffer stomach and bowel sickness. In Pannier’s opinion, approximately 20 to 50 percent of the men were not fit for the demands of soldiering. The most acute problem was untreated illnesses, such as hernias. Many men were previously wounded, or handicapped, and had kept silent about their conditions when signing their recruitment papers. The poorest physical specimens were all collected together into one company. Some recruits required the removal of as many as ten teeth, and in one case sixteen, because of their appalling condition. Pannier proposed dental restoration work because, in his opinion, poor teeth could lead to “upset stomachs and bad testicles.”

SS NCOs were brought in from the SS Field Recruit Depot Debica to transform the men into an SS-Jäger Battalion. The perpetual shortage of trained NCOs plagued both the SS and Wehrmacht throughout the war. The NCOs had not served in the field; they were all from administrative branches as a result of Unruh’s initiatives.
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The assessment of the recruits on reception was shaped by the style of military bureaucracy. The reports oozed pathos, masculinity, and indications of military comradeship. Pannier was resigned to the poor quality of NCOs without frontline experience or even the temperament for combat. The arrival of training staff relieved Pannier’s NCO shortages.
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Some NCOs temporarily joined the ranks for retraining. One of the complex’s battalion commanders had started the special battle training course for senior NCOs on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays (evening), and Sundays (morning). An eight-day special NCO training program on each evening and Sundays was expected to raise their performance in giving orders, leading under fire, and understanding basic principles of military penal codes. Overall training suffered from the shortage of trained platoon leaders, however; the
senior NCOs were very young and inexperienced, capable only of garrison duty. Pannier saw little possibility of intensifying training to remove these inconveniences. In September, Pannier reported that he could only rely on nine NCOs for all NCO duties.
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