Hitler's Bandit Hunters (42 page)

Prior to the Bandenbekämpfung directive, killing Jews in security operations was usually phrased as “Jew-hunts,” while in 1943, Kutschera warned the troops to accept the justice of dealing with the Jewish members of bands.
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Generally, the terminology settled on the presumption that all Jews were bandits and vice versa, and when Jewish bandits (
Juden-Banden
) were encountered, they suffered excruciating death. A Luftwaffe sergeant reported the details of one cleansing action (Säuberungsaktion): “we had orders to kill all persons over 5 years of age.” He added, “we found a bunker in the forests. They were destroyed.”
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Later, “on June 28, 1943, three houses with Jews inside were set on fire. We sensed the Jews had munitions in the top floor, because explosions were heard.” The following day, a further report stated, “on 29 June we searched a larger area of forest where fifty bandits had escaped. At 7:00 p.m., the wood was encircled and the Luftwaffe companies began a search. By 8:00 p.m., the Luftwaffe and police forces had joined signifying the destruction of all the bandits.”
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There were many cases of assassination in Russia. In November 1942, Himmler’s pilot was killed in what Bach-Zelewski coolly described as a “serious day for the Reichsführer.”
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The capture of assassins and agents led to execution after brutal interrogation. Captives not killed in the field but subject to execution were brought into the towns for public or secret execution. The public execution in Russia was hanging. This entailed makeshift gallows. The use of lampposts, telegraph posts, and even balconies has been recorded. There is little evidence to show how long the bodies were left to hang. The bodies sometimes had placards fixed to them to deter would-be bandits. The British codebreakers found that captured parachutists were killed with drugs or gas. There appear to be only snippets of evidence as to the instructions for executing these prisoners in the field. An interception from May 1942 indicated that the police were warned to have the gas equipment prepared for handling enemy air-landing troops.
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The SSPF Dnjepropetrowsk made a request to the SS-Sanitätsdienst in Berlin:

Experiments to date of injecting parachutists with scopolamine were successful. Therefore experiments with mescaline are to be undertaken, since three injections produce an enhanced effect
through intoxication. The principal experiment is to be carried out with from 0/4 up to 0/6 grams in equal measure with an interval of half an hour. The effect lasts up to 5 hours. For the experiment with 50 to 100 persons, 50 grams of Mescaline Hydrochloride in solid form are needed.
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French MacLean located an example where Dirlewanger and his men gathered an audience around groups of captive Jewish females. The females were made to remove their clothes and then injected with strychnine while the onlookers watched them die.
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After the war, Squadron Leader Vera Atkins located missing women SOE operatives and discovered their fate:

It has now been definitely established that the four women who were killed at Natzweiler … were killed on 6 July 1944. They were given a narcotic injection, probably Evipan, and were immediately cremated. They were unconscious but probably still alive when thrown into the oven.
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Birn discovered the registration process was not purely a rounding-up of potential laborers or deportees to Germany. There was a screening process that distinguished those able to work (
arbeitsfähig
) and those incapable of work (
arbeitsunfähig
). This classification included their fitness, health, age, and suitability. Birn identified that the handicapped, the infirm, and the aged were subjected to “special treatment,” the euphemism for execution. Many people were isolated from the mass of deportees and sent to concentration camps. In June 1942, Himmler instructed Rösener to conduct the first Bandenbekämpfung operation in Slovenia, and children from the cleanup were ordered sent to Austria for their assessment as racially suitable for resettlement. Very soon the child victims of Bandenbekämpfung, separated from families or orphaned, became under SS terminological orthodoxy “bandit children” (
Bandenkinder
). In January 1943, Himmler ordered plans for schooling and training Bandenkinder. They were to be assessed for this schooling on grounds of their racial and political potentials. The children were to be trained in all manner of field and manual work. Their schooling was to be limited to the basic needs: count to a hundred, know the traffic code, and be prepared for field and manual labor. From this initial planning, the intention had been to erect special camps for children under sixteen. The rest of the appraisal report outlined the decision-making process, which indicated that the SD-Einsatzgruppen was rounding up the children to be transported to the camps.
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We can now begin to understand the real meaning of Säuberungsaktion. The first concerned the seemingly minor point that burial teams were never part of the organization plans. With such comprehensive and detailed sets of plans and instructions, it seems such a small matter to deal with. The other
involved the perception of “bandit-diseased” communities or localities. Once measures were completed, with everything of economic value stripped away, villages were set on fire with the evidence, the dead or dying disappearing in the ashes. Was this what Curt von Gottberg meant by his instructions for “Hornbung,” which pointed toward the real purpose behind the action? “With regard to the treatment of persons and villages I refer to the verbal instruction of February 7, 1943. The recording of the agricultural products is carried out simultaneously with the cleansing.”
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Following “Cottbus,” the Reichskommissar Ostland wrote to his Nazi boss complaining about SS methods. He noted that during cleanup operations it was difficult to “distinguish friend from foe.” “Nevertheless,” he continued, “it should be possible to avoid atrocities and to bury those who have been liquidated.”
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Säuberungsaktion was quite literally cleansing through fire.

The roundup and killing of so many adults for labor had a subsequent effect on the children (Bandenkinder). The SS found a solution. Himmler initially told Pohl,

The Higher SS and Police Chiefs will arrange the shipments with the Chief of Security Police, the Chief of SS Main Economic and Administrative Office and the Inspectorate of the Concentration camps. The chief of the SS main economic and Admin Office in agreement with the Chief of the Security Police and SD, suggest the establishment of collective camps for children and adolescents in Lublin.
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Another paper trail, involving Bach-Zelewski, Kaltenbrunner, and Himmler, makes it possible to glimpse the policy management for Bandenkinder. Their primary concern was to relocate the children to a purpose-built camp where they would become labor for agriculture. The trail began when an order was transmitted from Himmler’s offices on July 10, 1943, demanding that the senior SS officers manage the problem and make it work.
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In a memo from July 23, Kaltenbrunner was instructed to ensure that all females and orphans in the detention center (
Auffangslager
) at Konstantynow worked on the state farms, tending and gathering kok-sagys rubber plants. Further instructions came from Himmler on July 28, concerning the minimum treatment of Bandenkinder, again referring to the original letter of July 10 and stating that the matter had to be resolved. Himmler declared that the presence of Russian activists operating in the Warthegau did not affect the intention to erect buildings for the education of Bandenkinder. The erection of buildings to accommodate Bandenkinder in the General Government was linked to the order to use the children on the state farms in the Ukraine. Himmler insisted that Russian Bandenkinder had to be separated from the Latvian children’s homes and the
Russian families. These children should also be employed on state farms. The rules applied to children under fifteen years of age. Accommodating the children was not considered an SD responsibility.
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Communication was then established between Bach-Zelewski and Kaltenbrunner on the subject of Bandenkinder through a cable of September 22, 1943. The building of refugee camps for “bandit women” (
Bandenfrauen
) and Bandenkinder had been agreed to by Bach-Zelewski. Kaltenbrunner confirmed that Konstantynow camp had been erected as an SD center, so that the process of moving the children could begin. Bach-Zelewski had been asked to establish stores and conduct the collection of Bandenfrauen and Bandenkinder. The processing of the children was meant to be accelerated as collecting them on to state farms had not happened. On February 9, 1944, an SS-Obersturmbannführer on Himmler’s personal staff, at the KSRFSS, wrote to SS-Sturmbannführer Werth reminding him “of this issue as it has become topical again. I would like to reopen communications on this subject as it has developed further since 9 September 1943.” On that day, Kaltenbrunner informed Himmler that the SD concentration camp of Konstantynow had been erected and transfers were to begin soon.
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There the correspondence ended with full compliance to the codes and regulations, but little interest in the conditions in which the children lived.

Report writing in Bandenbekämpfung was an administrative art form, blending petty German bureaucracy and SS stereotyping. For all manner of reasons, the accounting process could make or break careers. Reporting procedures married Hitler’s political soldiers to the regulatory habits of public servants (
Beamten
). The rigid application of the ubiquitous 5:00 p.m. daily limitation on returns smacked of bureaucratic petty-mindedness (
Beamten-mentalität
). In such circumstances, it was, therefore, predictable that this task became the most controversial aspect of Bandenbekämpfung. The question turned on the accuracy of the figures. Scholars have taken considerable interest in the Nazi’s statistical records. “The considerable discrepancy between the number of ‘bandits’ killed and the German casualties on the one hand,” Jürgen Fórster has written, “and the minor difference between the number arrested and those later executed, point to the dialectical dimension of the Wehrmacht’s reprisal policy.”
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When Himmler took control of Bandenbekämpfung, he introduced a new reporting system. This system represented his plan to force attrition of the bandits, and so casualties were recorded and accounted in a form since known as the body count. Himmler wholeheartedly believed every act of the partisan had to be countered by greater firepower, greater manpower, and harsher measures. Himmler depended on the expertise and abilities of his lieutenants, as well as their truthfulness, to determine
levels of success. Himmler also relied on body counts: simple data of enemies killed, rounded-up labor, and plunder. Instead of using this data, he endeavored to guarantee its accuracy.

Since the beginning of the war, German combatants had accounted for their victories with set rules and criteria. Within the administrative routine of the Bandenkampfverbände, the collection of numbers continued beyond purely “bandit” casualties. There was a listing of everything, prescribed through the introduction of a masterpiece in the bureaucracy of security bookkeeping.
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The numbers of “bandits” killed in combat, “bandits” killed after combat, and suspects dispatched, and even on occasion details of the animals killed deliberately, were all recorded. After the numbers of killed came the number of prisoners and laborers rounded up, divided by men, women, and children. Finally, the numbers of farm animals taken in the “registrationaction” (Erfassungsaktion) were then formally accounted.
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One issue that arose was whether the “bandits” were armed. On February 13, 1943, following the completion of “Sternlauf,” the operations officer of the SS-Cavalry Division issued a report that contained a huge booty list. Alongside the dead–654 partisans, 119 civilians, and 32 women—there was a list of captured booty, including rifles, cannons, tractors, field kitchens, machine guns, pistols, maps, and papers. There was also a sack of hats, 2 sacks of salt, 100 kilos of flour and 300 kilos of bread, 10 wooden mines, explosives, 4 cows, 45 horses, and so forth. The number of prisoners was 126 partisans, 142 civilians, and 241 women and children.
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To conform to strict bureaucratic reporting and for the sake of efficiency, the same list was typed again for the divisional tactical report and again for the OKW. On February 8, the Wehrmacht’s XXXXI Panzer Corps, under which the SS-Cavalry division was serving, recorded 1,317 “bandits” killed; 566 “bandit suspects,” including 96 women, finished off (
erledigt);
and 150 “bandit” prisoners, 40 deserters, and 917 civilians (623 women) deported. The corps also recorded 220 bunkers destroyed; they captured tons of equipment, including horses, ski shoes, field guns, and mortars.
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Following “Draufänger II,” SS-Sonderkommando Dirlewanger posted an after-action report. During May 5–6, they had destroyed 33 bunkers, killed 386 “bandits,” and “finished off” 294 “bandit-suspects.” They “harvested” 3 men, 30 women, 117 horses, 248 children, 140 sheep, 14 pigs, and 120 tons of foodstuffs. They had suffered 4 wounded men and captured 1 machine gun, 110 rifles, and 16 mines among all the equipment listed as booty. Dirlewanger recorded the villages of Starzynki, Brygidowo, Lubon, Baturyn, Krzeminiec, and Januszkowicze as destroyed.
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Extended reporting allowed Dirlewanger to accumulate his figures from a two-week period. He itemized 14,000 dead and 39 prisoners accounted for by encirclement and extermination. His losses included a German officer and 2 men killed with 12 wounded. For his Hiwi collaborators, the losses were 7 dead and 21 wounded.
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