The Einsatzgruppen and Ordnungspolizei: ‘Ordinary German men’ or hardened SA/SS?

 

The Einsatzgruppen and Ordnungspolizei: ‘Ordinary German men’ or hardened SA/SS?

Introduction

In the years leading up to the death camps of the Holocaust, a majority of the 2 million Jews murdered in Poland and Russia was done by the ‘Schutzstaffel’ (SS) and members of the ‘Ordnungspolizei’ (Order Police: Orpo). The killing was done not by gas, as in the death camps of Auschwitz, Treblinka or Sobibor, but by bullet. And of those who were pulling the trigger, many were middle aged reserve police officers from rural Germany.

In 1939, the ‘Wehrmacht’ (German Armed Forces) invaded Poland. Following closely behind the German Army were the newly formed ‘SS-Einsatzgruppen’ (special deployment groups) specifically charged with mass killings of ‘undesirables’ to include Jews, members of the Polish intelligentsia, leftists, Romani (Gypsies) and invalids. The persecution of Jews and other undesirables was undertaken not only by members of the (SS) but members of the ‘Ordnungspolizei’ (Order Police: Orpo). Recruitment into the SS and the Orpo, has often been assumed to have targeted those Germans who were the most ardent supporters of Nazism and the racial hierarchy proposed by the ‘National-Socialist German Workers' Party’(NSDAP). The members of the ‘SS-Einsatzgruppen’ and Orpo included both, Nazi fanatics and, surprisingly, ordinary average Germans.

Fanatic Nazi’s or Ordinary Men?

Outside of historians, researchers, and students of World War II Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, many assume that those who executed the barbaric plans designed by Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich, were ardent and fanatic supports of Nazi racial policies and the ‘Final Solution.’ Indeed, the beginning of the ‘SS-Einsatzgruppen’ (deployment groups) were all drawn from the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the notorious ‘Geheime Staatspolizei’ (Secret State Police: ‘Gestapo’) and the ‘Ordnungspolizei’ (Order Police). These SS-Einsatzgruppen and Order Police continued to operate well past 1939 Poland. The SS, under Heinrich Himmler, planned and ordered the mass murder of European Jews. His deputies were all hardened anti-Semitics who had joined the Nazi party early. As such, they all shared a history of anti-Semitism, were in violent agreement with the ideology of the Nazi Party, and felt no compunction in using whatever measures they thought necessary for making Germany ‘Judenfrei’ (Free of Jews).

In the 1939 Order Police (Orpo), the composition of their police battalions often contained men who had sought to avoid military conscription and were from some of the least politicized elements of German society.  Most surprisingly, and in glaring contrast to the SS, the members of the Order Police, willingly participated in the genocide of Poland and Russia during the German Army’s advance eastward. 

The Key Personalities

With the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party in Germany during the 1930’s a separate organization for security was established outside the Army and the Police, the ‘Schultzstaffel’ (SS). Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS, oversaw the implementation and absorption of all police formations that had existed in Germany prior to 1933 (Hitler’s Chancellorship). “In 1936 all police forces were centralized under direction of the SS security department, and made independent of all outside authority.”  Himmler separated the SS functions from the police. Both reported to Himmler and in time, both mutually supported the others in activities.

SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei Reinhard Heydrich was the head of the SS, the ‘Gestapo’ and criminal investigators. He reported directly to Himmler and was the key figure in the ‘1942 Wansee Conference’; the meeting that brought all the various Nazi ministerial representative together to formulate the “die Endlösung der Judenfrage“ (The Final Solution to the Jewish Question). Heydrich was specifically responsible for creating, recruiting and directing the SS-Einsaztgruppen.

Himmler selected SS-Obergruppenführer Kurt Daluege, another loyalist Nazi and SS functionary who eventually rose to be the head of the Order Police from 1936 until 1943. Daluege was central to the expansion of the Orpo and implemented a culture modelled on the SS. SS operations within Poland also saw the need for infrastructure to be used for detaining the Jews and undesirables. Initially, labor camps were to be established. They would eveolve in time and the Orpo would assist in the expansion of operations there. Within the Orpo Himmlers found the key figure with whom aspects of the ‘Final Solution’ would be centered; the establishement of the death camps. SS-Brigadeführer  Odilo Globočnik was identified by Himmler and Heydrich to construct such a camp. As the SS and Police Leader in Lublin, Poland, Globočnik oversaw the construction of the Bełżec extermination camp which served as the model for future camps. 

The SS and the Orpo were mutually supporting and intertwined in their actions and day-to-day activities. Himmler oversaw both and the Orpo provided the critically needed manpower for the SS-Einsatzgruppen as they operated across Poland in 1939. Eventually, the Orpo would become as synonymous with the genocide of European Jews as the SS were.

Initially, the Orpo was quite different in composition and function when compared to the SS in 1936. In time, things would change and save for differences in outward appearance of their uniforms (SS in black Orpo in green) they would operate collectively and mutually support the implementations of Himmler’s plan for the mass murder of Jews and others in the East.

 

SS-Brigadeführer  Odilo Globočnik

The Order Police (Ordnungspolizei)

The Order Police (Orpo) “was composed of the Uniformed Police (Schutzpolizei), under which police battalions operated, and the Gendarmerie (Rural Police).”  Initial recruitment appears to simply have been the blanket order for all police, active and reservist, being assigned to the Reich security services. The Orpo were certainly attracting ardent supporters of the Nazi regime as they expanded their size and operations. However, a good number of these police battalions simply drafted average rank and file policeman for service across Germany. In addition, numerous ‘reserve’ police members were called to active service and many such members were not the atypical Nazi SS member.

In 1938 the Orpo “had over 62,000 policemen” and by “1939, the Order Police had reached a strength of 131,000.”  The Orpo would continue to grow as Germany’s possessions across both Eastern and Western Europe increased. The Orpo would indeed recruit military age members as well as more mature and as in the case of the ‘reserve battalions,’ those unable to serve in the Wehrmacht.

The Orpo, in marked contrast to the SS and Einsatzgruppen, contained many pre-war detectives and career police officers. Further, many of the Orpo were drawn from remote or non-industrialized regions of Germany. The age of the Reserve Police ‘volunteers’ called up to augment the Orpos were typically between 30 and 40 years in age. In total, the Orpo seemed like average German men from all over Germany.

Typical Order Police, many of whom were from simple rural communities in Germany.

The Orpo’s who constituted the police battalions were not screened for their ideology, as the SS were, nor were there any actual requirements as these men were the least desirable in age. The Wehrmacht and the SS typically recruited those in their late teens or early twenties.  As such, the Orpo’s consequently received poor training in arms, tactics, logistics and fieldcraft. They were poorly equipped in the late 1930s to 1939, the eve of their participation in the invasion of Poland. Lastly, the Orpo’s were not terribly indoctrinated in the Nazi or SS ideology per se. They did receive ‘political orientation’ and an indoctrination in the SS ethic and in time this would evolve.

 

The SS and Orpo Officer Corps

The composition of the officer corps across from all the security services charged with implementing the ‘die Endlösung der Judenfrage‘ (‘The Final Solution to The Jewish Question’ eg ‘The Final Solution’) included many educated (Post-Doctoral) individuals and professionals such as lawyers, theologians and educators. Himmler and Heydrich were after hardcore loyalists to the Nazi party. They were an ‘elite,’ answering only to Himmler and Hitler.

The Order Police, however, was essentially created out of the existing pre-war police members from across Germany. They were divided between three groups of police; the Schutzpolizei (‘Protection Police’), the Gendarmerie, and the Gemeindepolizei (‘Community Police’). All were absorbed into the Order Police by 1936. The Gendarmerie worked in rural and small communities whereas the Gemeindepolizei worked directly for the mayor of towns and municipalities.

Recruitment during the expansion of the Orpo saw all the Wehrmacht and Security Services competing for resources. “In a subsequent ministerial meeting on September 18 (1939), Göring notified those in attendance that Hitler specifically prohibited the enlistment of men between the ages between seventeen and nineteen into the police, year groups reserved for the Wehrmacht.”  The initial composition of the Orpo includes thousands of ordinary and middle-aged policemen from Germany drafted into the police and reserve police battalions in 1938 through 1939. The initial police battalions deployed to Poland in 1939, for example, saw the highest concentration of older policemen. The first phase of expansion of the Order Police was indeed composed of ‘ordinary men.’ These men were assembled into battalions of 500 officers, Non-Commissioned Officers, and rank and file members. Roughly one hundred police battalions were organized during the Second World War and they operated in Norway, France, Italy, as well as Poland, the Baltic States and Russia.

 

The Einsatzgruppen

The composition of the ‘SS-Einsatzgruppen’ was first determined by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich had selected and ordered the initial members to report to a police academy in “Pretzsch, a town on the Elbe River” in 1941 for organization and training for a special assignment. The Eiensatzgruppen were recruited from the SS and included some of the most notorious personalities from the SS and SD (Security Service). The officers were hand selected by Heydrich himself. They were often young, early Nazi party members, and had distinguished themselves in Poland when the first five groups had deployed.

The Einstazgruppen were typically arranged in groups of 100 or so members. They would be augmented by Police and Reserve Police Battalions who provided the manpower.

The SS and the Orpo were not necessarily the same organization and each had specialized authorities and law enforcement duties. However, the arrangement between the SS and the Orpo saw the SS provide the ‘leadership’ or directions by way of tasks to the Orpo, who in turn, provided the necessary manpower to locate, organize, secure, and transport those to be shipped to labor camps or murdered. The execution of Himmler’s and Heydrich’s orders saw that “The Einsatzgruppen worked together with the more numerous German units known as the Order police.”

Thematically, the Order Police, or ‘men in green’ (their uniforms had green piping) adopted many of the characteristics, traits, and culture of the SS. The SS, who wore black, were the ‘soldier elites’ of the Nazi party. The Wehrmacht operated specifically as the German Armed Forces and thus, were quite separated from command or control of the independent Security Services.

 

Evolution and Change

In 1939, after the initial expansion of the Orpo, battalions were formed from rural Germany, assembled, hastily trained, and deployed to Poland behind the Wehrmacht. If one merely focuses on the Orpo in Poland, one would be astonished at the ‘ordinariness’ of those early police battalions. But if one looks again at the police battalions in 1942, for example, they would then see a very changed organization. That the police battalions, and specifically, the reserve police battalions contained older, more established and less politically motivated members does not appear to be surprising. Germans were drafted by various year groups with the 17- to 19-year-olds being targeted for the Heer (German Army).

In time, due to the exigencies of war, the year groups were expanded and older Germans were indeed drafted. The Orpo, operating within the Security Service organizations, sought to model themselves after the SS. Daluege, the head of the Orpo, embraced Himmler’s concentration on young, fit, and politically motivated members. The recruitment took time and the changes were slow in coming. But on balance, the vast majority of the Orpo were not over aged policemen but looked much like the Wehrmacht.

What is not to be argued, is that the rank and file still represented the average German civilian. They came from all walks of life and were, in comparison to the SS, the least politically active. The Officers who led the Orpo desired Nazi party membership, wore the ‘SS’ runes on their uniform with pride, and competed for leadership positions. They were older on average, and much more so when compared against the SS officer Corps. However, the rank-and-file Orpo battalion member were nowhere nearly as politically motivated as either their own Orpo officers or the members of the SS. In addition, the Orpo officers Nazi party membership was no higher than the officer corps of the Wehrmacht of whom the top tier officers claimed 29% membership. Interestingly, as the war progressed, younger service- members were more and more indoctrinated in the Nazi ideology. But not so of the Orpo in 1939.

 

Diverging Views of the Orpo

Daniel Goldhagen who published Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust in 1996 shook historians and professional researchers of the Holocaust with his premise that ‘ordinary’ Germans constituted the Order Police.  Goldhagen stated that “the men in police battalions could not have expected to be particularly Nazified, and their institution had not prepared them in any purposive way to become more Nazified, let alone genocidal killers.” 

Christopher Browning, in his work, Ordinary Men, on the other hand, takes a different approach in his research. Browning and Goldhagen have engaged in an open debate as to the motivation of the ‘ordinary men’ who became genocidal killers. For Goldhagen, his thesis has rested an idea that German anti-Semitism was abundant across all sections of civil German society. As to the motivation; the Nazi regime allowed the ‘space and time’ for these anti-Semites to act out on their innate desires to exact some form of punishment on German and European Jews further fueled by Himmler, Heydrich and others.

Browning does agree that “first, the participation of numerous ‘ordinary’ Germans in mass murder of Jews” and that second, the killers, themselves, weren’t necessarily a select group of men specifically recruited for killing. Browning takes issue with the categorization of German civil society as predisposed to anti-Semitism and disagrees with Goldhagen’s two major points.

It is yet another researcher, who provides a far clearer picture with respect to the police battalions. Westermann wrote extensively on the entire structure and organization of all the security services associated with executing the ‘Final Solution.’ Both Goldhagen and Browning wrote on a specific police battalion, reserve police battalion 101, which was indeed composed of many middle aged officers and basic policemen. But Westermann in his Hitler’s Police Battalions provides this statement: “of the approximately one hundred police battalions mobilized during the Nazi dictatorship, only twenty came from the ranks of overage reservists.”  Twenty battalions equates to roughly twenty percent of the Order Police being beyond the ideal military age of 17 to 19.

 

Conclusion

The Einsatzgruppen were absolutely hardened fanatic and loyal Nazi party members; recruited from the SS and Gestapo, they ran the full range of age and social classes. On average, they were younger than the early Orpo police battalion members who followed behind them as they murdered hundreds of thousands in Poland and Russia. Of the SS, they were the ‘Nazi party’s soldiers.’ Ideologically trained, anti-Semitic, and fanatically loyal to both Party and Hitler.

The Order Police, in contrast, was absorbed into the security service infrastructure that was Nazi Germany, and by 1936, worked directly for Himmler, the Reich Security Chief. Their early composition, in 1939, saw average, middle aged membership who were drafted from the rural and less populated regions of Germany. The 1939 Orpo’s that saw service in Poland were, politically, the very opposite of their SS handlers.

By 1942 the Orpo had undergone tremendous change and turnover in personnel. Kurt Daluege saw the implementation of political orientation, SS ethics, and the embracing of SS culture within the Ordnungspolizei. The Orpo evolved, changed, and experienced the ‘exigencies’ of war. As such, they represented the length and breadth of the German civil populace. Many observers of the history Holocaust remain incredulous in believing the Orpo who appear to be ordinary men, were willing executioners, and genocidal killers.

The history and research to date clearly presents the image of the politically motivated Nazi anti-Semitic ‘storm trooper’ dressed in black as the organization most culpable for the mass murder of Jews and the Holocaust. Incomprehensible is the participation of the Order police members, especially in the 1939 deployment to Poland. Those Orpo members were the least similar to the SS. However, even after turnover, changes, and a retreating German Army by 1943-1944, the Orpo was still participating in operations against the European Jews. And despite their ‘younger composition,’ they still appeared to be average Germans; ordinary men.

 

 

 

Bibliography

 

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