Order Police battalions

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Order Police battalions
SS
command

The Order Police battalions were militarised formations of the Nazi German

mass murder of the Jewish population and were responsible for large-scale crimes against humanity
targeting civilian populations.

Operational history

The Nazi German

Invasion of Poland

Order Police unit conducting a raid (razzia) in the Kraków ghetto, 1941.

Police troops were first formed into battalion-sized formations for the

Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland (the internal ghetto security issues were managed by the SS, SD, and the Criminal Police, in conjunction with the Jewish ghetto administration).[4]

Invasion of the Soviet Union

Twenty-three Orpo battalions were slated to take part in the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union,

death squads of the SS, and the Organisation Todt, the military construction group. Twelve were formed into regiments, three battalions each, and designated as Police Regiments Centre, North, South, and Police Regiment Special Purpose.[5] The goals of the police battalions were to secure the rear by eliminating the remnants of the enemy forces, guarding the prisoners of war, and protecting the lines of communications and captured industrial facilities. Their instructions also included, as Daluege stated, the "combat of criminal elements, above all political elements".[6]

Comprising about 550 men each, the 300-numbered battalions were raised from recruits mobilised from the 1905–1915 year groups. They were led by career police professionals, steeped in the ideology of

Higher SS and Police Leader (HSS-PF) for the respective Army Group Centre Rear Areas.[8]

Occupied Western and Southern Europe

Units

Wehrmacht propaganda photograph of the Jewish women in Mogilev, July 1941. Mogilev Jews were murdered by Police Battalion 322 of Police Regiment Centre in October 1941.[9]

Regular police battalions

Reserve police battalions

Aftermath

The Order Police as a whole had not been declared a criminal organisation by the Allies, unlike the SS, and its members were able to reintegrate into society largely unmolested, with many returning to police careers in Austria and West Germany.[10]

References

  1. ^ a b Showalter 2005, p. xiii.
  2. ^ Browning 1992, p. 38.
  3. ^ Rossino, Alexander B., Hitler Strikes Poland, University of Kansas Press: Lawrence, Kansas, 2003, pp 69–72, en passim.
  4. ^ Hillberg, p 81.
  5. ^ Westermann 2005, pp. 163–164.
  6. ^ Westermann 2005, p. 165.
  7. ^ Westermann 2005, p. 15.
  8. ^ Breitman 1998, pp. 45–46.
  9. ^ Breitman 1998, p. 66.
  10. ^ Westermann 2005, p. 231.

Bibliography

Further reading