Hitler's Bandit Hunters (39 page)

In June 1943, the HSSPF Russia-Centre deployed its Kampfgruppe for Operation “Cottbus.” The total number of troops committed to “Cottbus” was 8,709 men, with 3,632 officers and men from the Schuma, and 753 officers and men from the gendarmerie. The SS-Police headquarters and support functions left to continue regular duties were 4,324 men.
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Table 7.1: HSSPF Russia-Centre during “Cottbus”

The Kampfgruppen were not limited to working under the HSSPF. They could be raised either locally for an operation or an action or simply through bringing disparate troops together to form a line. The police continued to raise combat groups for a variety of missions; Kampfgruppe Hannibal was raised in April 1944 and continued in frontline action until its surrender in Königsberg.
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From July 1944, this particular Kampfgruppe absorbed the police regiments formerly assigned to HSSPF Russia-Centre.

To take the example of the reports from Operation “Hornung,” it is noteworthy how forces drawn from the immediate security zone were merged with units brought in purely for the operation. The plans for “Hornung” were drawn up by SSPF Weissruthenien in Minsk, with 9,031 troops. The German element accounted for 6,991 men, including units brought in from the central reserves, including the 2nd SS-Police Regiment, the 31st SS-Police Rifle Regiment, the SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, an SS-Police armored company,

Table 7.2: SS-Police Formations Assigned to “Cottbus

Table 7.3: Gendarmerie Formations Assigned to “Cottbus’

Table 7.4: Schuma Battalions Assigned to “Cottbus’

and the mandatory SD detachment. The balance of forces included 2,040 men drawn from Schuma battalions and the motorized gendarmerie sections. This ratio of Germans to Schuma requires explanation. The balance might suggest German manpower dominated operations, but this is the wrong impression. German forces only dominated the opening moves in a prestige operation, or by ensuring the successful completion of encirclement, or by conducting the vigorous fighting required against well-armed bands. The Schuma and collaborator forces then were filtered into the encirclement or replaced the stronger combat units when the fighting had tailed off. The system worked on shifts, enabling local troops and visiting units to rest and refit regularly. This also allowed the enforcement of the required level of policing in a region. In Operation “Hornung,” the troops at the disposal of SSPF Weissruthenien were assigned to compass-point combat commands (Ost, Nord, West, Süd). This was the prerequisite for an encirclement operation.

Kampfgruppe Ost:
under the commander of the 2nd SS-Police Regiment, with the Russian collaboration Battalion Rodjanoff, field battery Borissow from the 1st SS-Infantry Brigade, and a tank section from the 18th SS-Mountain Police Jäger Regiment.

Kampfgruppe Nord:
under the commander of 1st Battalion 23rd SS-Police Regiment, with SS-Kommando Dirlewanger, Schuma Battalion 57, Police Signals Company 112, and the 12th SS-Police Tank Company.

Kampfgruppe West:
under the commander of the 13th SS-Police Regiment (less the 3rd Battalion), Schuma Battalion 18, a field battery from Schuma Artillery Detachment 56, and the mine-clearing and bridge-building Technische Nothilfe Detachment II.

Kampfgruppe Süd:
under the commander of the 10th SS-Police Regiment (less the 1st Battalion), with a detachment 11th SS-Police Regiment (originally from Schuma battalion 103), Balten Battalion 1, and heavy company Kohlstadt.
Kampfgruppe Südost:
two battalions from the army’s 101st Infantry Regiment.

Gottberg’s command:
detachments from the Bomber Flying School Bobruisk, SS-Police Signals Company 11. An SD-Sonderkommando was attached to each battalion.
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Following the organization of the tactical order the commanding officer issued the tactical instructions necessary to meet the demands of an operation. A set of instructions issued by Otto Hellwig, SSPF Shitomir, illustrates their format.
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The instructions opened with a warning that there could be no departure from their strict application. There was no opportunity for interpretation, deviation, or equivocation. Operations had to conform with official channels of reporting, with daily situation reports passed to the regional police commander, either the KdO or BdO. They in turn would issue an overview report for the district commissar (
Gebietskommissar
) belonging to the Nazi civilian administration. The reports had to contain simple details of which bandit bands had been located and attacked and the German (plus allied) formations that had participated. The report should list the villages subjected to actions and the reasons for their treatment, as well as those villages destined for destruction on the grounds of preventative action (
Präventivgründen
). Hellwig stressed in point two of his instructions that preventative burning of villages containing nests of bandits could only be carried out with prior approval of the Gebietskommissar. When it was decided to destroy a village, the entire population was to be subject to registration (Erfassung) for deportation and forced labor. Villagers found with weapons that had fired on the police were executed on the spot. The registered civilians were led to the nearest town where the local police conducted their dispersal to work details or transportation to Germany. Raising transportation was the responsibility of the general commissioner (
Generalkommissar
), and police officers not already committed to Bandenbekämpfung operations assisted him. All the troops were instructed to “leave the people with something,” although precisely what was not stipulated. The Germans accounted for items removed from the villagers through a billing system (
Behandigungsschein
) and handed out a receipt (
Quittung
) to the “former” owner. Hellwig warned the troops that wanton acts of destruction imperiled the Reich’s war effort. Plundering and
serious breeches of the instructions would lead to the death penalty. Hellwig expected disciplined behavior and threatened regular checks and enforcement by the police. He also warned that the instructions were also binding on the Lithuanian, Latvian, Ukrainian, and other auxiliary troops, stressing this point by underlining the text.
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Hellwig’s instructions conformed to the Bandenbekämpfung directive and the 1942 guidelines. The process of the collection of goods and the roundup of labor (Erfassungsaktion) was articulated as the correct form of punishment for disloyal civilians.

Ruth Bettina Birn’s study of operation “Winterzauber” concluded with the opinion that the SS-Police concept of professionalism was the strongest motivation in the performance of operations.
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In arriving at this conclusion, Birn dismissed the notion that ideological pressures, whether political, economic, or social, applied to antipartisan operations warfare, as had been suggested by Hannes Heer.
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She also disagreed with Christian Gerlach’s argument that economic and agricultural exploitation largely determined the application and intensity of Bandenbekämpfung operations.
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In 1941, the response to the partisan was subject to competing priorities such as the outright defeat of the Soviet Union. In this period, the level of response fluctuated. In the period leading to the introduction of Directive 46, the army employed large-scale operations to eradicate the “bandits” during the campaign season. After Directive 46 was introduced, large-scale operations were continued but the target range was widened to include civilians. In practice, this policy was directed toward wrestling the initiative away from the bands and reducing their effectiveness by causing them attrition losses.

Bach-Zelewski became associated with large-scale operations beginning with “Adler” (July 15–August 7, 1942). This operation offered all the promise of new ideas and based on experience gathered since June 1941. “Adler” was followed by Operation “Greif” (August 14–20) and then by Operation “Sumpffieber” (August 22–September 21), completing a string of operations that heralded the issue of the Bandenbekämpfung directive. The first indication was the success of employing large bodies of formations committed to a single operation. From August 1942, Hitler received Bandenbekämpfung reports compiled by Himmler. In effect, they were a summary of the after-action reports sent to the KSRFSS. One of the first reports to Hitler concerned Operation “Greif,” which listed ninety-eight “bandits” killed, twenty prisoners, with six “bandit” deserters. This list included large quantities of material captured from the “bandits,” including several field guns. The German losses were one dead and three wounded. A subsequent report for “Greif” accounted seven dead “bandits” and ten prisoners and the death of two Germans.
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Irrespective of losses, Stalin was prepared to accept such attrition if it denied the Germans freedom to rule. The following case studies of Bandenbekämpfung
operations from 1943 provide an indication of the range of actions involved in forming a Bandenunternehmungen.

The police specialized in the application of close-order tactics in towns and cities. With their Weimar experiences, they were long-time exponents of armed street fighting. The use of close-order tactics was a police expertise confined to villages, conurbations, and cities. In 1943, the incumbent HSSPF Russia-Centre, SS-Obergruppenführer Gerrett Korsemann, planned Operation “Zauberflöte” for the city of Minsk. The plan entailed rooting out “bandits, Bolshevik terror and saboteur troops, operatives and helpers, signallers and deserters” through the systematic search of 130,000 homes and the war ruins of the city.
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The operation, timed for April 17–22, 1943, was supposed to permanently cleanse the city through the eradication of resistance, the arrest of German deserters, and the mass deportation of laborers to Germany, by winkling them out of their hiding places (
Schlupfwinkel
). This complex operation envisaged the coordination of simultaneous cordons systematically sweeping all six-city districts, with an outer security encirclement collapsing onto an inner security ring. This operation contained two generic components: the search for or hunting of fugitives and the criminal registration and punishment element.
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