Warsaw 1944: Hitler, Himmler and the Crushing of a City

Bast was one of the many from Sonderkommando B who under Artur Nebe had worked closely with von dem Bach, and who would flee Byelorussia in the face of the advancing Red Army in 1944. He ended up in Warsaw in August, just in time for the uprising.

It is almost beyond belief that von dem Bach would declare at Nuremberg: ‘The whole crowd – Hitler, Himmler, Göring, Frank, Rosenberg, just to mention those who were responsible in the east alone – have blood on their hands. But I have none.’ Bach saw himself as a humanitarian family man who called his wife ‘Mutti’ and was close to his six children, to one of whom Himmler was godfather. And yet to mark his first Christmas in Minsk in 1941, this proud father sent 10,000 pairs of babies’ and children’s socks, and 2,000 pairs of shoes, as a gift to children of the SS in Germany, items which had been stolen from the condemned children of the Minsk ghetto.

Some measure of his personal ‘hands-on’ participation is revealed in his own medical record. In early March 1942 he suffered a nervous breakdown, and had to be taken to the SS hospital in the erstwhile tuberculosis clinic at Hohenlychen, where he was treated by Ernst-Robert Grawitz, the SS chief medical officer and head of the German Red Cross. In his report to Himmler, Grawitz stated that Bach was ‘suffering particularly from hallucinations connected with the shootings of Jews which he himself carried out and with other grievous experiences in the east’. When Grawitz asked him why he was under such strain, Bach replied, ‘Don’t you know what’s happening in Russia? The entire Jewish people is being exterminated there.’ By the end of 1942, the Germans had killed at least 208,089 Jews in Byelorussia, and Bach had participated fully.

The ‘successful’ treatment of Russian prisoners of war, and the mass murder of the Jews in Byelorussia, led to von dem Bach’s next major promotion. As German brutality increased, so did resistance. The Germans had lost their chance to be treated as liberators, and had quickly turned themselves into loathed conquerors. As such, they were increasingly under attack by partisans. Something had to be done.

Von dem Bach and the Partisan War

The first partisans in Byelorussia were Red Army soldiers who had become trapped behind enemy lines in the first months of Barbarossa. While some of these joined the German side to avoid the atrocious conditions of the PoW camps, or out of conviction that Germany offered a better future, others remained loyal to the Soviet Union, and regrouped in secret to continue the fight. On 3 August 1941 Stalin recognized this phenomenon by declaring an official ‘partisan war’. ‘It is necessary,’ he said in a radio broadcast, ‘to create unbearable conditions for the enemy in the occupied areas.’ By the spring of 1942 the central headquarters of the partisan movement had been created at Stavka, the headquarters of the Soviet armed forces, headed by Panteleimon Ponomarenko. Groups of partisans were trained by the NKVD, SMERSH (the acronym for the Soviet counter-intelligence agency, ‘Death to the Spies’) and GRU, the Main Intelligence Directorate, and dropped behind enemy lines, and as German oppression worsened their ranks swelled. Many joined to avoid being press-ganged by the Germans as Hilfswillige – literally ‘those willing to help’ – and there were increasing desertions from the ranks of German-controlled military and police formations: the entire 1,000-strong Volga Tatar Battalion came over to the Russian side in February 1943. Around 10,000 Jews from Minsk also tried to join: men with weapons were taken, but most women and children who were hoping for protection were turned away, and had to eke out an existence in the forests and marshes nearby; many were later caught in German ‘combing’ operations and killed.

The huge area of uncharted forests and swamps of Byelorussia was ideally suited to partisan warfare. Small mobile units could race through the marshes and outmanoeuvre the Germans, who would get lost on unmarked trails and whose vehicles would get stuck in the mud. The partisans had special swamp clothing and boots which helped them walk in the sodden landscape. Using methods more reminiscent of Vietnam than the Eastern Front, they fashioned reeds into breathing tubes so that they could submerge themselves underwater until danger had passed. By the end of 1943 the partisans controlled vast areas behind the German lines, with sophisticated facilities and airstrips where the Soviets could land with supplies and men; by 1942 they already numbered around 100,000. Having learned that the Western Allies would not be opening the second front within the year, Stalin held a party for the partisans at the Kremlin in September 1942. They were, he said, to become a serious element of Soviet strategy – ‘a second front in the enemy’s rear’.

It soon became clear to the Germans that the partisans were more than a mere nuisance. As early as February 1942 Field Marshal Günther von Kluge, commander of Army Group Centre, complained to General Halder that far from limiting themselves to disrupting communications, the growing partisan bands were now attempting to bring ‘entire districts under their control’. For Hitler this was intolerable, and his answer was to order even more brutality. In August 1942 he placed anti-partisan warfare under the jurisdiction of the Army Operations Sections from the High Command down. In Directive no. 46, ‘Instructions for Intensified Action Against Banditry in the East’, released that month, he vested responsibility for the operational areas in the General Staff, while the SS was given overall command and responsibility for the extermination of the partisans. There would be no attempt to win them over. Being ‘weak’ had only led to failure in the past. In a top-secret supplementary order to the 18 October 1942 ‘Commando Order’, Hitler stated that ‘Only where the fight against this partisan disgrace was begun and executed with ruthless brutality were results achieved which relieved the positions of the fighting front. In all eastern territories the war against the partisans is therefore a struggle of absolute annihilation of one or the other party.’ As for enemy sabotage troops, they were to be exterminated, without exception, to the last man. ‘This means that their chance of escaping with their lives is nil.’ Hitler recalled watching as the ‘red bastards’ had placed children at the head of their march through Chemnitz in the interwar period in order to dissuade their opponents from attacking them. Faced with similar circumstances an officer must, he explained to Generals Keitel and Jodl in December 1942, be prepared to kill women and children in order to overcome a greater evil. Burning down houses with people inside was now a military necessity. On 16 December Keitel issued the last security order of the year. Partisans were to be eradicated like ‘pests’, and troops were granted the right to use all measures, even against women and children, if it led to success. They would not be punished, nor would they ever face trial. The level of brutality was set to escalate to astronomical levels.

When in the first days of August 1944 the beleaguered civilians of Warsaw were hauled from their homes and taken to their deaths – men, women, children, the infirm, babies, the sick – they were executed to the cry of one word: ‘Banditen’. Every single citizen of Warsaw, regardless of background, age or gender, was considered to be guilty by association – guilty because they were inhabitants of a city that had condoned the uprising. As they were all collaborators, they could be killed outright without question and without pity. This murderous treatment of so-called ‘Banditen’ was not invented in Warsaw, but had been pioneered in the east, and perfected under the watchful eye of von dem Bach himself.

It was Himmler who had dreamed up the use of the term ‘Banditen’. Ever conscious of symbolism, he felt that the word ‘partisan’ conjured up far too positive an image, suggesting a noble freedom fighter romantically standing up to an evil invader. This would not do. In a pamphlet entitled ‘Thoughts on the Word “Partisan”’ he decided to officially replace it with ‘bandit’. This had suitable connotations of the underhanded opportunist, the lawless thug, indeed the very opposite of the brave rebel fighting for a great cause. The ‘Jewish-Bolshevik evil of terrorists, bandits and outlaws’ was to be completely eliminated. And if ‘partisans’ were now ‘bandits’, the war to annihilate them would also have a new name: the ‘Bandenbekämpfung’, or Bandit War. In September 1942 Himmler wrote a pamphlet outlining how the Waffen SS, the regular police force and the Wehrmacht would work alongside the SD and the SiPo (the security police) to rid the Germans of the menace. Their goal was to be the ‘extermination’, and ‘not the expulsion’, of bandits.

Himmler needed someone to lead this fight. Von dem Bach, still disappointed that German reversals had meant that he had not become SS Police Leader in Moscow, brazenly put himself forward for the job. As long ago as September 1941 he had presented two papers at the first of a number of conferences dedicated to the theme of ‘combating partisans’, and he described himself as ‘the most experienced Higher SS and Police Leader in the business’.

Himmler agreed. On 23 October 1942 he made Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski SS Plenipotentiary for the Bandit War, with the approval of the OKW, the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces; on 21 June 1943 he was promoted to Chief of the Bandit War (Chef der Bandenkampfverbände).

His deputy was to be the drunkard Curt von Gottberg.

Von dem Bach’s star was rising, and it was clear to all in the inner circle that Himmler was grooming him for high office. He was given all the perks of enormous power – meetings with high officials on visits to Berlin, palatial headquarters in Mogilev and a palace in Minsk, chauffeur-driven limousines and even a Junkers 52 passenger transport plane directly from Göring – a huge status symbol in Nazi Germany, which implied that he had reached the realm of strategic command.

He was even given a new, grand-sounding code-name – ‘Arminus’. ‘I was very well known, respected, and beloved,’ he said at Nuremberg, and his diary records a social life befitting his new status. As the brutal war raged around him he described evenings of cocktail parties and cultural events. He arranged for the latest films to be screened for his secretaries, and when after heavy fighting officers of the 14th Police Regiment needed a rest he gave them a free night at the Minsk theatre, with the whole building set aside for their use. Ballet, chamber music, opera and cabaret all played a part in his life, with many local artists given rations to keep them alive. He and Artur Nebe conducted ‘actual exercises’: the first was a search-and-destroy operation in a village near Mogilev; the second took place in a forest where they ‘dug out’ partisans who were later shot.

Von dem Bach was now in charge of a large organization dedicated to the fight against the ‘bandits’. After the war he claimed that at its height his gleaming offices received 15,000 pieces of information every day, much of it intelligence from local villages and towns, on suspicious characters and possible collaborators. This information allowed the Germans to create enormous ‘bandit maps’ of ‘infested areas’. When an area seemed beyond control and resources allowed, it would be subject to an ‘Aktion’, in effect a killing spree. Von dem Bach could draw upon army personnel – security divisions, units composed of indigenous collaborators, SS units, police regiments and Einsatzgruppen for as long as he needed them for any particular operation. In the military areas the same responsibility was exercised by the chief of the army’s General Staff; in practice the two often overlapped.

Killing so-called partisans became a part of everyday life: ‘A partisan group blew up our vehicles,’ wrote Private H.M., a member of an intelligence unit. ‘Early yesterday morning forty men were shot on the edge of the city … Naturally there were a number of innocent people who had to give up their lives … One didn’t waste a lot of time on this and just shot the ones who happened to be around.’

The Wehrmacht, too, participated in these killings. Wehrmacht soldier Claus Hansmann recalled an execution of partisans in Kharkov: ‘The first human package, tied up, is carried outside … The hemp neckband is placed around his neck, hands are tied tight, he is put on the balustrade and the blindfold is removed from his eyes. For an instant you see glaring eyeballs, like those of an escaped horse, then wearily he closes his eyelids … one after the other is brought out, put on the railing … Each one bears a placard on his chest proclaiming his crime … Partisans and just punishment.’

Field Marshal Walter Model, soon to become the head of Army Group Centre, requested that partisans be executed out of sight of his office, as the sight of men hanging nearby was so unpleasant.

Murder of partisans and civilians was carried out on a grand scale in Byelorussia, to be sure, but one person who stood out even in that terrible time was Oskar Dirlewanger.

The Very Face of Evil

Like that of Erich von dem Bach, Oskar Dirlewanger’s name will always be linked first and foremost with the Warsaw Uprising. He too did the majority of his ‘practical training’ in Byelorussia. Unlike the affable von dem Bach, Dirlewanger actually looked and acted like the murderer he was. His face resembled that of a vulture, with thin lips and deep circles under his cruel, almost mocking eyes, while his dark hair was cropped close to his bony, angular head. His violent tendencies got him noticed at an early age. After serving in World War I he joined the Freikorps, a volunteer paramilitary organization and temporary home to many future Nazis, where he made a name for himself beating up Communists in the regular street fights of the period. He attended Frankfurt University, earning a PhD in economics, and then joined the Nazi Party, becoming deputy director of the Labour Office in Heilbronn.

Dirlewanger seemed to enjoy stirring up trouble, and his position was in question almost immediately. The Führer of his SA-Group Southwest reported that for a full five months since joining the Labour Office Dirlewanger had been acting in an ‘undisciplined way’. He had ‘repeatedly had sex in the official car of the Labour Office with girls who were less than fourteen years old’.

Then on 15 April 1934 he ‘drove the official car of the Labour Office into a ditch while completely drunk; on this occasion, a female passenger was severely hurt and he fled the scene of the accident’.

Dirlewanger was sentenced by the State Court of Heilbronn on 20 September 1934. At his trial it was noted that he had had sexual relations with ‘several other women among them the twenty-year-old leader of the BDM [League of German Girls] group of Heilbronn’; also, he had ‘used’ the fourteen-year-old Anneliese ‘four or five times in the period of February to mid-July 1934 in order to satisfy his sexual appetite’; during one of these meetings the girl had actually been wearing her BDM uniform.

Dirlewanger was kicked out of the SA and sentenced to two years in prison. But he had friends in high places.

Dirlewanger’s old comrade, SS Brigadeführer Gottlob Berger, was outraged. ‘The condemnation was absolutely unjust,’ he said at Nuremberg. ‘I turned to Himmler in a teletype, to the higher SS and Police Leader, and they had enough sense of justice to intervene and fetch him out again the next day. Then I sent him to Spain.’

Berger had salvaged what would turn out to be a most notorious career. Dirlewanger served in the Condor Legion, a unit of German volunteers who fought alongside the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, and in 1938, while he was away, he was investigated by the SD. Its report concluded that ‘Dirlewanger must be called absolutely reliable as far as politics are concerned.’ He returned from Spain in June 1939, and wrote to Himmler asking to join the SS. He was soon to get the promotion that would make his career.

When Adolf Hitler had lunch with his Minister Dr Hans Lammers in 1942 he introduced an unexpected topic to the conversation. ‘It is ridiculous,’ he said, ‘for a poacher to be sent to prison for three months for killing a hare when there are so many real criminals who serve no time. I myself should have taken the fellow and put him into one of the guerrilla companies of the SS!’

Despite his vegetarianism, Hitler had long had a strange admiration for poachers, and decided that with their particular skills of tracking and killing they might be useful in the fight against the partisans. On 23 March 1940 SS Gruppenführer Karl Wolff had informed Himmler that Hitler had decided to grant an amnesty for convicted poachers, and that they were to be organized into a special sharpshooter company. Eighty poachers were located and transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Someone had to head this unit, and Gottlob Berger thought of his old friend who now needed a job, and wrote to Himmler recommending Dirlewanger. Himmler agreed, and on 1 September 1940 the band of poachers was given the official name ‘Sonderkommando Dr. Dirlewanger’ (SS Special Battalion Dr

Dirlewanger), and was immediately sent to Poland to work with the SS. Amongst other things they excelled at carrying out the Sonderbehandlung (‘special treatment’) of victims – the Nazi euphemism used to cover crimes including mass murder – in Lublin. On 9 November 1941 Dirlewanger was promoted to SS Sturmbannführer.

Despite his good fortune, Dirlewanger could not stay out of trouble, and in January 1942 he was again under investigation, this time for corruption, rape and looting. SS Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik criticized Dirlewanger not because he disagreed with what he had done, but rather because he could not control him, and wanted to retain power in the Lublin area for himself. In one incident Globocnik accused Dirlewanger of ‘race defilement’ for taking an attractive young Jewish assistant as his lover; the situation was made ‘worse’ because Dirlewanger repeatedly kept her from being sent away for ‘special treatment’. At the same time, Dirlewanger was under investigation for crimes against Jews. Dr Konrad Morgen, the SS lawyer investigating the case, testified at Nuremberg: ‘Dirlewanger had arrested people illegally and arbitrarily, and as for his female prisoners – young Jewesses – he did the following against them: he called together a small circle of friends consisting of members of a Wehrmacht supply unit. Then he made so-called scientific experiments, which involved stripping the victims of their clothes. Then they were given an injection of strychnine. Dirlewanger looked on, smoked a cigarette, as did his friends, and watched as they died.’

‘This is a joke,’ Dirlewanger claimed in his defence. ‘It looks as if Brigadeführer Globocnik has made a question out of poisoning Jews in Lublin a subject of investigation. He is besmirching my name. He has tried to do this before. But he is not so lucky this time. It is true that I told a doctor from Lublin to poison these Jews instead of shooting them, but I did it to save the clothes, like coats, for example, which I sent later to Hauptsturmführer Streibel. These were clothes for work. The gold teeth were taken by the Director of the SSPF Infirmary from Lublin so that there would be material for teeth for members of the SS. All of these things were settled with Brigadeführer Globocnik, who then denied all the facts when the SD got involved. It is really a comedy in Lublin. In one trial I am said to have had intercourse with a Jewish woman. In another case I am not showing the correct attitude towards the nation, and I throw out my unbreakable ideology with a Jewess, and when it turns out not to be true I am accused of the complete opposite.’

Himmler decided that the solution was to quietly send Dirlewanger somewhere else, where his skills could be put to greater use. On 29 January 1942 the Chief of Staff of the headquarters of the Waffen SS placed Sonderkommando Dirlewanger under the direct control of the command staff of the SS Reichsführer himself. The Sonderkommando was refitted and sent to Byelorussia in February 1942. (While Himmler saw great potential in Dirlewanger, and wanted to use him, a problem was that he was being investigated by Dr Konrad Morgen – backed by Globocnik, who wanted to get him out of ‘his’ territory. Himmler spirited Dirlewanger off to Byelorussia as quickly as he could, although Morgen’s dogged investigation into his activities continued throughout the war.)

The SS Sonderkommando Dirlewanger that arrived in Byelorussia consisted of around ninety former poachers, but it would grow rapidly. Within six months it would receive a few hundred political prisoners, criminals and psychopaths recruited from psychiatric hospitals and concentration camps, and would gain the reputation of ‘exceeding all others’, even amongst the SS, in ‘brutality and depravity’.

Between February 1942 and June 1944 Sonderkommando Dirlewanger participated in over fifty of von dem Bach’s anti-partisan raids. Some of these were small, with just a few dozen men attacking a single target area. After eighteen German soldiers had been killed in a partisan attack a young soldier, Matthias Jung, witnessed the reprisal: ‘The whole place, everything [was destroyed]. Everything. Totally! The civilians who had done it, all the civilians who were in the place. In each corner stood a machine gun, and then all the houses were set on fire and whoever came out – in my opinion with justice!’

The large ‘actions’ were giant sweeps into ‘bandit’ territory involving hundreds of men. There were various approved methods of attacking ‘bandit-infested areas’. The main aim was to encircle an area and to capture or kill anyone within it. Von dem Bach referred to this as ‘extermination by encirclement’.

The first and preferred form of the extermination of those caught was through combat. This was called ‘Kesseltreiben’, or ‘crushing the encirclement’, and involved units proceeding through the area and slaughtering everyone they could find. The Nazis employed hunting terms to describe various methods of clearing a designated area; human beings were treated like animals.

This was by no means random or hurried killing. Areas with ‘proven’ bandit connections were targeted for destruction weeks, or even months, in advance. Agents were placed in villages and towns, with collaborators, Hilfswillige and others recruited as spies. Signs of suspicious activity – the delivery of too much food, or strange movements at night – were noted. Before the Aktion began, the SS or police would arrive and check papers. Houses and barns were meticulously searched. A hidden weapon meant certain death; if there was an extra coat in the kitchen or too much food on the table the householders were shot.

On the fateful day the SS and police would surround the area and herd the inhabitants into the largest building in town – usually a church or hall. When everyone was inside it would be set on fire; anyone who tried to escape was shot. At Nuremberg, von dem Bach described the standard procedure: ‘The village was suddenly surrounded and without warning the police gathered the inhabitants into the village square. In front of the mayor, people not essential to the local farms and industry were immediately taken off to collection points for transfer to Germany.’

Von dem Bach was careful not to mention that those who were not designated as useful slave labour were burned alive or shot.

The partisans, if indeed there were any in the area, often escaped to the woods in advance, leaving only innocent civilians behind. They were killed anyway, the logic being that if you couldn’t kill the actual partisans, you could at least destroy the people who might be aiding them. From six to ten people were killed for each weapon that was found. It became mass murder on a grand scale: it is estimated that 345,000 civilians, many of them Jews, and only 15 per cent of them actual partisans, were killed in these operations, but there were probably many more who died without a trace. The reports speak for themselves. Von dem Bach’s deputy von Gottberg wrote to Berlin after the relatively small Operation ‘Nürnberg’ on 5 December 1942, boasting that 799 bandits, over three hundred suspected gangsters and over 1,800 Jews had been killed. In all this only two German soldiers had been killed and ten wounded. ‘One must have luck,’ he quipped. One had only to recall Himmler’s words of July 1942: ‘All women and girls have the potential to be bandits and assassins.’

Dirlewanger’s first large-sweep operation was Operation ‘Bamberg’, near Bobruisk, in March–April 1942. It was reported that he had proved himself with ‘flying colours’. He met von dem Bach on 17 June, and was praised again for his work. Soon the brigade was involved in some of the biggest ‘anti-bandit’ operations in Byelorussia, which were given romantic-sounding code-names like ‘Adler’, ‘Erntefest’, ‘Zauberflöte’ and ‘Cottbus’. Most lasted three to four weeks, and involved attacks against not only the Byelorussian peasant communities, but also the remaining ghettos – ‘Hornung’ ended with the liquidation of the Slutsk ghetto, and ‘Swamp Fever’ with that of the Baranovitsche ghetto.

The commander of the 286th Protective Division of the Wehrmacht, General-Leutnant Johann Georg Richert, congratulated Dirlewanger in front of von dem Bach after Operation ‘Adler’. The enemy had ‘tried to escape capture by going up to their necks in the bog or by climbing thin branches of trees and viciously tried to break through. In many cases officers and commissars committed suicide to avoid capture.’ Dirlewanger had ruthlessly hunted them down.

Operation ‘Hornung’, in February 1943, was staged ostensibly to prevent the spread of ‘bandits’ in the Slutsk region. After careful reconnaissance, von dem Bach arrived at Combat Group Staff von Gottberg on 15 February to give the order to begin. Dirlewanger had just been put at von Gottberg’s disposal – other units taking part were Einsatzgruppe B and the Rodianov Battalion, which came from the rear area of Army Group Centre and was also known for its ruthlessness. Five combat groups including the Dirlewanger Brigade were sent into the area with orders to kill everyone they could find, and to take all useful property. Dirlewanger primed his men not to shirk from killing civilians, who, he said, were guilty by association: ‘Given the current weather it must be expected that in all villages of the mentioned area the bandits have found shelter.’ All the houses in Dirlewanger’s area were burned down, and cattle and food taken. Villages were utterly destroyed, along with their inhabitants – the official lists included dozens of place names, all carefully tallied up: ‘Lenin 1,046 people, Adamovo 787, in Pusiczi 780 …’ and so it went on. In all 12,718 people were reported killed, including 3,300 Jews murdered in the Słuck ghetto. Only sixty-five prisoners were taken in the entire operation. Later, when the Soviets exhumed the bodies they found no bullets or spent cartridges lying around. The victims had been burned alive in the barns.

In this terrible phase of the ‘Bandit War’ few prisoners were taken; indeed, only 3,589 people were taken for slave labour by the Sauckel Commission (in charge of processing forced and slave labourers) in the course of eleven major operations, in which at least 33,378 people were murdered.

It was straightforward slaughter. Gana Michalowna Gricewicz, who survived the destruction of her village, remembered feeling as if ‘there was no one left in the world, that all had been killed’. The country around Slutsk was turned into a ‘dead zone’: all the people, animals and supplies were removed, and the area torched. Any person found there was to be treated like ‘game’, and shot on sight.

One of the most deadly ‘actions’ in which Dirlewanger participated was Operation ‘Cottbus’, which started on the morning of 30 May 1943. The attack at Lake Palik saw 16,662 soldiers sent in to push a terrified civilian population in front of them, forcing them to fight with their backs to the water; the death toll was at least 15,000 people.

Bach’s deputy von Gottberg praised Dirlewanger’s innovation of forcing civilians to walk over minefields: ‘The mine detector developed by the Dirlewanger Battalion has successfully passed the test,’ he crowed.

Von dem Bach was delighted by this new technique, which had ‘sent two to three thousand villagers flying’, he said.