Hitler S Police Battalions

When the German Wehrmacht swarmed across Eastern Europe, an elite corps followed close at its heels. Along with the SS and Gestapo, the Ordnungspolizei, or Uniformed Police, played a central role in Nazi genocide that until now has been generally neglected by historians of the war. Beginning with the invasion of Poland, the Uniformed Police were charged with following the army to curb resistance, pacify the countryside, patrol Jewish ghettos, and generally maintain order in the conquered territories. Edward Westermann examines how this force emerged as a primary instrument of annihilation, responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of the Third Reich's political and racial enemies. In Hitler's Police Battalions he reveals how the institutional mindset of these "ordinary policemen" allowed them to commit atrocities without a second thought. To uncover the story of how the German national police were fashioned into a corps of political soldiers, Westermann reveals initiatives pursued before the war by Heinrich Himmler and Kurt Daluege to create a culture within the existing police forces that fostered anti-Semitism and anti-Communism as institutional norms. Challenging prevailing interpretations of German culture, Westermann draws on extensive archival research—including the testimony of former policemen—to illuminate this transformation and the callous organizational culture that emerged. Purged of dissidents, indoctrinated to idolize Hitler, and trained in military combat, these police battalions-often numbering several hundred men-repeatedly conducted actions against Jews, Slavs, gypsies, asocials, and other groups on their own initiative, even when they had the choice not to. In addition to documenting these atrocities, Westermann examines cooperation between the Ordnungspolizei and the SS and Gestapo, and the close relationship between police and Wehrmacht in the conduct of the anti-partisan campaign of annihilation. Throughout, Westermann stresses the importance of ideological indoctrination and organizational initiatives within specific groups. It was the organizational culture of the Uniformed Police, he maintains, and not German culture in general that led these men to commit genocide. Hitler's Police Battalions provides the most complete and comprehensive study to date of this neglected branch of Himmler's SS and Police empire and adds a new dimension to our understanding of the Holocaust and the war on the Eastern front.

Holocaust Perpetrators of the German Police Battalions is the first comprehensive English-language study of the structures and actions of German Police battalions in Poland and Ukraine between 1940 and 1942. Using these case studies, Ian Rich draws attention to the actions and motivations of individual lower-ranking policemen who participated in the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. He illuminates their pivotal roles as organizers, educators and role models, and the ways they were able to influence their subordinates to carry out these atrocities. This book transcends anonymous group portraits and provides a micro-historical portrait of individual killers that offers broader insights into the overall actions of the SS and police under Heinrich Himmler. Rich's comprehensive analysis of SS and police personnel records and post-war trial investigations reveals the method by which police battalions were transformed into instruments of mass murder in the occupied east during the Second World War. This book is essential to all students and scholars of Holocaust studies, Jewish studies and the Second World War.

Of all the controversies facing historians today, few are more divisive or more important than the question of how the Holocaust was possible. What led thousands of Germans – many of them middle-aged reservists with, apparently, little Nazi zeal – to willingly commit acts of genocide? Was it ideology? Was there something rotten in the German soul? Or was it – as Christopher Browning argues in this highly influential book – more a matter of conformity, a response to intolerable social and psychological pressure? Ordinary Men is a microhistory, the detailed study of a single unit in the Nazi killing machine. Browning evaluates a wide range of evidence to seek to explain the actions of the "ordinary men" who made up reserve Police Battalion 101, taking advantage of the wide range of resources prepared in the early 1960s for a proposed war crimes trial. He concludes that his subjects were not "evil;" rather, their actions are best explained by a desire to be part of a team, not to shirk responsibility that would otherwise fall on the shoulders of comrades, and a willingness to obey authority. Browning's ability to explore the strengths and weaknesses of arguments – both the survivors' and other historians' – is what sets his work apart from other studies that have attempted to get to the root of the motivations for the Holocaust, and it is also what marks Ordinary Men as one of the most important works of its generation.

The shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews.

Babi Yar, Rumbula and Stanislaviv. And then Charkov, Berdiev, Kamenec Podol'skij, Rovno... These are some places where apocalyptic slaughters were perpetrated during summer 1941. Maybe it would be enough to remember these names, to give an idea of the involvement of the police battalions in the ideological war broken out on the eastern front. From June 27, 1941, this war erased, like a hurricane, most of the Jewish communities in the Baltic area, in Galicia, in Belorussia and in Ukraine, with hundred thousands of victims. But round-ups in the ghettos and the persecution of Jews were not the only tasks in which the Ordnungspolizei was involved. All along the eastern front, police units were steadily engaged in a fierce anti-partisan warfare, as well as in security activities behind the lines and in the surveillance of prisoners of war. In several occasions and in adverse conditions, police battalions were moved to the front line, where they ended up suffering heavy losses; moreover, many policemen were involved in activities that, using a current term, we could define as "civil defense", especially in the German cities targeted by air bombing.All these roles required the involvement of dozens of thousands of policemen. But the most unsettling aspect is the way - efficient and scrupulous - in which these men acted, whether they were called to carry out a reprisal or to remove the debris after a bombing, perpetrate the round-up of a ghetto or accomplish guard services, burn down a village or perform ordinary garrison tasks.The Ordnungspolizei did not have all those characteristics needed to become a symbol of the Nazi regime; it was instead a versatile and ruthless instrument, mostly formed with reservists: "ordinary men" very similar to the people that we meet in our everyday life, very similar to each of us, yet capable of unspeakable atrocities. The book has 500 pages, in which every police battalion formed in the period September 1939 through July 1942, has been examined. Each chapter deals with a single battalion, so there are 145 chapters with 145 battalions, including the Series "200" and the "esoteric" territorial battalions in the Protectorate Böhmen und Mähren (Polizei-Bataillone "Prag", "Klattau", "Jung Bunzlau" and so on). Two "special" battalions are also examined: that is, the Reserve-Polizei-Bataillon "Leipzig" and the Polizei-Bataillon "Ostland."The text has 3,867 footnotes and 42 tables, a bibliography with more than 200 volumes, the index of the peoples with about 800 names and the index of places, with more than 1,500 entries. Moreover there are 100 pictures, including 33 never-published pictures of the PB 72 in Slovenia, taken from the massive photo-album of a platoon leader of the 2/72.

This groundbreaking international bestseller lays to rest many myths about the Holocaust: that Germans were ignorant of the mass destruction of Jews, that the killers were all SS men, and that those who slaughtered Jews did so reluctantly. Hitler's Willing Executioners provides conclusive evidence that the extermination of European Jewry engaged the energies and enthusiasm of tens of thousands of ordinary Germans. Goldhagen reconstructs the climate of "eliminationist anti-Semitism" that made Hitler's pursuit of his genocidal goals possible and the radical persecution of the Jews during the 1930s popular. Drawing on a wealth of unused archival materials, principally the testimony of the killers themselves, Goldhagen takes us into the killing fields where Germans voluntarily hunted Jews like animals, tortured them wantonly, and then posed cheerfully for snapshots with their victims. From mobile killing units, to the camps, to the death marches, Goldhagen shows how ordinary Germans, nurtured in a society where Jews were seen as unalterable evil and dangerous, willingly followed their beliefs to their logical conclusion. "Hitler's Willing Executioner's is an original, indeed brilliant contribution to the...literature on the Holocaust."--New York Review of Books "The most important book ever published about the Holocaust...Eloquently written, meticulously documented, impassioned...A model of moral and scholarly integrity."--Philadelphia Inquirer

The role that the German Police Battalions played in the destruction of the Jews and the Eastern European nationalities that the Third Reich had deemed superfluous or dangerous is little known. Only in the last fifteen years with the opening of the Soviet archives has their role in the deaths of millions become known. The German Police, often aided by local auxiliaries shot at close range over a million people in less than two years. Later in the war the battalions were formed into regiments and absorbed into the SS where they were active in the hunt for partisan bands behind the front lines. In this book you will find a history of each battalion and the men who participated in these actions. Many of these men who survived the war were never tried. Instead they continued their careers in law enforcement with many retiring with pensions from positions of importance.

The German Police were an essential arm of the Nazi regime; as soon as Hitler achieved power the previous decentralized provincial system was unified into a single state apparatus, integrated at the command levels with the SS. While it may have been centrally controlled, it was still separated into a bewildering range of different departments and functions, many with their own uniform distinctions. This book offers a concise introduction to the organization, responsibilities, uniforms and insignia of the various branches of this machinery of repression, from Police generals to rural constables, transport policemen and factory watchmen.