Hitler's Bandit Hunters (36 page)

The recruits of the SS-Jäger Battalion joined the 1st, 7th, 8th, and 9th companies. The 2nd and 6th companies became the collection points for older recruits, initially identified as difficult cases. Their morale improved once language problems were recognized and resolved. Each company reached their full complement of NCOs of all ranks. At the end of August, the 1st Company, 50 percent of its strength German, had nearly completed its training. They were honed (
vertieft
) for Bandenbekämpfung. Pannier viewed their first experience of that kind of fighting as proving their potential as a professional cadre. The other 50 percent were ethnic Germans (Rumanian), with three weeks’ training behind them. The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th companies had completed three weeks training and were assigned to harvest security duties. The 6th Company had completed five weeks training and eight days of tactical shooting exercises. The troops reached the halfway stage of training and gave every indication of becoming “useful” soldiers. They had absorbed advanced skills training and tougher drilling. In contact with the enemy, they had remained focused and unemotional. Pannier compared their combat temperament with farmers tilling the land—persistent, rugged, and determined.

The 7th, 8th, and 10th companies had received only two weeks training primarily because of the overall lack of weapons. They served on guard duty for the complex, which allegedly sapped their morale and further reduced available training days to only two or three days a week. The 9th Company had become the collection point for all the “useless” men. They included the incapable, wounded, unhealthy, and intellectually deficient. According to Pannier, most of these men failed basic cognitive tests and were plainly clumsy. Many had been deformed through permanent hard labor. The men formed a company for hard labor and camp construction duties, building defenses, command bunkers, and barrack blocks as laborers or as artisans.

Pannier noted that shortages of weapons had only caused a brief interruption in the training, while the older recruits had reached the average standard required after four weeks’ training. The equipment manifest listed 326 rifles, 320 bayonets, 9 MG 08s (machine guns), 5 MG 34s (machine guns), 1,058 gas masks, 326 cleaning kits, and 205 shovels. Pannier’s August report recorded an improvement in weaponry with 480 rifles, 641 bayonets, 30 MG 42s (machine-guns), 270 shovels, 600 gas masks, 479 cleaning kits, 15 telescopic sights, and 15 sniper rifles. Shooting skills improved dramatically after the second and third exercises. The men had gained trust in their weapons, further raising their level of expertise; Pannier saw the real issue as the poor quality of the Czechoslovak training rifles. From August 20, a new course in the use of antitank weapons was introduced for instructors.
⁷⁴
The differences
in duties and priorities led to confusion and differential levels of training between companies of the battalion. Those troops deployed to sub-camp duties remained on the battalion’s strength.
⁷⁵

In his September report, Pannier provided more details of the content of training. The recruits were given three to four days practice with machine guns, while the platoon and company training took forty days. There were courses in using antitank (PAK) guns, flak artillery, and heavy machine guns. The 6th Company had undertaken eight days of combat shooting training and had then participated in harvest protection and Bandenbekämpfung. A combat engineer (
Pioniere
) platoon formed for mine-laying, mine-construction, and mine-clearing duties. The base had confiscated more than one hundred horses, enabling the SS-Jäger Battalion to become a horse-drawn unit. There were still problems with equipment such as missing sighting devices and safety catches from weapons. Pannier had discovered that some of the recruits required constant visual training because they did not have the ability to understand lectures and were deemed
Augenmenschen
, literally, “eye people.” This forced the SS to conduct constant and repetitive drilling. The situation worsened by the absence of post from home and concern for the families, which had left the recruits in a downcast mood. The food supplied was tasty and the commissariat was efficient in handling rations. The men received sightseeing days when off duty.
⁷⁶
Pannier referred to two cases of ill discipline, respectively disobedience and drunkenness on duty; these were minor infractions but important enough to be recorded at the time.
⁷⁷
The question of discipline and mass killing has had some prominence in the debates over Nazi crimes. In one case, a police officer was sent back to Berlin from Russia, after having been found guilty of stealing clothes and food.
⁷⁸
There were, in fact, considerable numbers of cases of theft and passing fraudulent documents.
⁷⁹
In the town of Pantschowa, a local police official was charged with embezzlement and fraudulent accounting practices.
⁸⁰
In 1976, a Hamburg court ruled that Josef Aig. and Wilhelm Eic. from the Nachschubkommandantur Waffen-SS Russland-Mitte were guilty of shooting around fifty Jews and were sentenced to two and twelve years imprisonment, respectively.
⁸¹

In May 1936, a hypothetical textbook exercise for senior police officials of a police school envisaged an air defense-police battle (
Luftschutz-Polizeikampf
) in the Potsdam-Gröben area.
⁸²
The exercise depicted a situation in which, under the distraction of an air attack, the area of Potsdam came under attack by “bandits.” The lecture identified three levels of attack, from the air, plundering, and “banditry.” This was the perception of total war in 1936: heavy and low-level air attacks, criminal action of looters and plundering, and terrorist gangs working against the government. The Nazis represented the gangs as left wing and erroneously referred to them as the “misled
people of Mr [Karl] Severing.” The police were expected, under the circumstances of decision making in a time of total war, to act against enemies from the sky, plunderers, and bandits. A night attack by forty bombers was envisaged. Emergency conditions were to be rehearsed in case of bomb damages and duds, fires, or breakdown of social services. The plundering was expected to be for valuables such as gold and jewelry. Meanwhile the bandits, 150 strong, were to be countered by all means and methods available to the police. The bandits were operating either en masse or in small splinter groups of three. To prevent these small groups from infiltrating the city, the police were expected to employ their motorized assets to the full for rounding them up. Mounted police units were to take up positions across the farmlands and countryside, while the Wasserschutzpolizei were expected to patrol the rivers. The radiotelephone system was expected to be used to coordinate the forces participating in the exercise. The police were divided into groups: those formed to combat bomb damage included members from the technical branches, while a team was formed to handle hospital cases, and several units were deployed as security units. Liaison officers coordinated with air defense personnel.

The 1940 police regulations offered the approved methods for shooting; described as the army way in the correct handling methods for carbines, pistols, and machine pistols. Good performance in shooting was a critical precondition to the police officer’s “power to act” (
Schlagkraft
) in both peace and war. These skills were to be maintained through regular exercises in the depots or in ranges while on duty. Weapons competence was expected even from administrative officials and staff.
⁸³
Daluege wrote special missives in the police regulations warning officers to heed their contents, while praising the police for its progress and general improvement. The ideological content of the training programs included race and political awareness classes up to the end of the war. Most of this centered on a National Socialist interpretation of history, philosophy, and culture,
⁸⁴
and Daluege placed considerable attention on a planned ideological training in which “the fundamentals of National Socialist ideology are taught.”
⁸⁵
Specialist training for serving police personnel was a particular feature with officers and men encouraged to attend training courses to raise their skill levels and potential for command.
⁸⁶
They were sent to academies that specialized in advanced training like the 3rd Police Weapon School or the Alderhorst Training Battalion based in Holland. In 1942, Police Battalion 256 was typical in enrolling its men in a variety of classes including a sniper course, army engineering, and NCO school. Later, in August, men were sent to a mountaineering course. The police regulations extolled the virtues of maintaining training. In 1940, Himmler indicated his intention to combine formation building with ideological training: “I shall form guard-battalions and put them on duty for 3 months only—to fight the inferior being
[Untermenschen]
… it will be the best indoctrination on inferior beings and inferior races.”
⁸⁷

In September 1941, General of Infantry von Schenckendorff, chief of Army Group Centre’s rear area, initiated the first field conference on “combating partisans” (
Bekämpfung von Partisanen
). The participants were battalion commanders or above, from both the SS-Police and Wehrmacht.
⁸⁸
The proceedings were held in the Mogilev casino over a three-day period. Schenckendorff was the product of the Schlieffen military system, an authority on security, and a virulent anti-Communist. He endorsed the measures of total eradication of the “partisans” as the only solution. The conference organizer was Bach-Zelewski’s capable police commander, Oberstleutnant der Polizei Montua, from Police Regiment Centre of HSSPF Russia-Centre. The itinerary covered operational procedures from the commanding general to battalion level. Information presented to the attendees included an evaluation of Soviet “bandit” organization and tactics. Talks and presentations included two from Bach-Zelewski. His first paper was on the “partisan” and the political commissar and why it was necessary to execute them immediately after capture. His second paper explained the importance of gaining collaborators among local Russian communities and agents behind Russian lines as an effective means of gaining intelligence. SS-Gruppenführer Artur Nebe, commander of Einsatzgruppe B, charged with killing operations in Bach-Zelewski’s area of central Russia, presented a paper on the role of the SD in the common fight against “partisans” and the “Jewish question.” There were two actual exercises on each afternoon of the conference. On the first day, the attendees observed the 9th Company of Police Regiment Centre conduct a security exercise in a village near Mogilev. The company performed cordon and control point exercises and distributed propaganda leaflets to villagers. The troops conducted a search-and-destroy exercise for bunkers in a nearby forest and then practiced the methods for hunting insurgents. On the final afternoon, they traveled by omnibus to the army’s 2nd Security Regiment to conduct an antipartisan operation. The plan included the “digging out” (
Aushebung
) of partisans, commissars, and Communists from a preplanned area.
⁸⁹

In March 1942, the Order Police issued a combat training ordinance titled, “New Regulations for Training Police Formations in Police Warfare.”
⁹⁰
The primary concern behind the ordinance was to increase the combat readiness of the police. The police battalions endured combat training in case the army employed them in frontline combat. The proscribed methods of combat contrasted with those of the army because the enemy were largely “bandits” and parachutists. The essential training for police action assumed strong fire support from a heavy machine gun. The training had to be conducted in small groups, under live rifle and machine-gun fire. Additionally, the assault forces (
Stosskräfte
) were taught to maintain cohesion and secure flanks and the rear. Reconnaissance was considered crucial because the “partisans” were not identifiable like conventional enemy soldiers. Scouts were trained to operate in groups rather than individually. Experience had taught the police that in this
kind of warfare individual scouts never returned from a mission. Experience had also taught that the combination of reconnaissance expertise and veteran troops worked well together. Dividing the search area into small sections was the proven method. Scouts warned troops to thoroughly search trees for snipers and the crowns of larger trees for machine-gun nests. The scouts had to cover every possibility including assessing their own rear when in enemy-occupied territory. In the event of a partisan breakout, scouts were taught to take immediate cover.

In the main exercise, troops were trained to eradicate resistance from houses and woods. The troops were taught how to defend against close-quarter counter-attacks near concealed positions and other “vicious behavior.” Instilled into the troops through ceaseless exercises was the principle that even in quiet moments there was the potential of sudden close-quarter action or sniping. The notion of constant watchfulness during operations, the ideas that the “front is everywhere” or the “enemy is all around,” were internalized into police standard operating procedure. Security from the opening march route was implanted into the collective mindset of all the troops. Instructions for supply troops, for example, stated that all small war methods could be applied, as there were no rules for combat in darkness, in woods, or in towns. The fundamentals of police combat also absorbed a wide variety of tasks, and training officers needed to accommodate all possibilities. Success was gauged as bringing the partisans into a position from which they could not escape. To achieve this, officers and NCOs were told to apply sensitive orders and patience. In the event of cooperation with the armed forces, they were guided by the Wehrmacht military code. In the event of combating “partisans,” they were warned to use strictly controlled fighting squares and chain firing. To understand cooperation and coordination, the officers and NCOs were to learn through table-top war-gaming in what the Germans called sand training boxes (
Sandkästen
). The regulations assured officers that in times of severe combat, the police could expect Luftwaffe dive-bomber “stuka” and army heavy weapons and engineers support, which would open the way for the police to perform as combat infantry.