The Luftwaffe’s participation in Bandenbekämpfung was critical to security operations on the Eastern Front. In April 1942, the Luftwaffe committed ground forces and support units. At that stage, German security and counterinsurgency still conformed to the army’s regulations and tactical doctrines. From August, the SS became the guardians of Bandenbekämpfung dogma within all the Third Reich’s civil-military authorities, while the Wehrmacht gradually filtered the terminology into reports. On 31 December, the Luftwaffen Kommando Ost issued a report on the entire period since April. The report opened:
The increasing activities of the bandits since 1941/42 in the rear of Army Group Centre, presents a serious danger to the supply and the conduct of the war by the army and air force, or exploit or colonize local economies. Although large-scale operations and smaller actions to combat the bandits were conducted successfully by the security units, the bandit activity increased, especially in the frontline or area of the frontlines. This was aggravated by Red Army Frontlaufer, or stragglers, often supplied by the Red Air Force, and the bands’ press-ganged local people and trained them.6
The Soviets had organised raiding parties or bands of 200–400 men with specialists—scouts, messengers and saboteurs. These bands had constant and reliable communications with the Soviet Union, through signals, messengers and aircraft, which enabled re-supplies and reinforcements. These Red Army bands were properly organised and well armed, and ranged deep into occupied territory.7 The local populations were either directly assisting them or supplying food. The Germans were also disturbed that the band’s weapons were good quality and included mortars, anti-tank guns, and field artillery, and warned against underestimating the ‘bandits’.8
In response to the partisan threat the Luftwaffe had been forced to take ‘special measures’ to protect the airfields. Luftwaffen Kommando Ost recognised that the few security troops could not stem the advance of the bands. In response, on 24 April, Göring granted permission for the formation of Lw.Infantry Regiment Moskau from surplus manpower from tactical formations, building and construction units, as well as signallers and staff cadres. Training was shortened and the regiment was deployed in June. For a period, the regiment was the only available infantry in the entire area of Luftwaffen Kommando Ost and were committed to security tasks in sectors with high concentrations of partisan infiltrations. They were also briefly engaged in the frontline when circumstances demanded their commitment to conventional warfare. The ‘bandits’, according to the Luftwaffe’s colourful use of the emerging Lingua Franca, were committed to widespread Bandenanschlägen (acts of terror), with attacks on railways roads, stores, bridges, dairies, landed estates, warehouses, and kidnapping mayors (collaborators). The insurgency increased into Autumn 1942, which led the Germans to take more radical measures. The bands posed a serious threat to the occupation, the supply of the front and military communications. The Luftwaffe had facilitated a general replenishment of all its units, with increased training and reinforcements. The only limitations to the increases were inadequate shelters for the troops with the onset of winter. The army and Luftwaffe imposed similar mission targets of Befriedungsräume (entirely pacified area)—achieved through pacification, cleansing, and destruction. The Luftwaffen Kommando Ost report included a Butcher’s Bill: body counts with destroyed villages and lists of captured booty. The list of destruction included: 19 ‘bandit-camps’, 88 enemy villages, 140 bunkers destroyed, 1,284 partisans shot after capture, and lists of equipment. Subsequent research by James Corum uncovered the Lw. Infantry Regiment Moskau was responsible for the destruction of 5,000 houses and killed seventy-six hostages.9
Map 1: Poland divided, Nazi occupation zones in Poland, Soviet Russia and the Ukraine.
© J. Noakes & G.Pridham, Nazism 1919–1945 Volume 3, Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination, A Documentary Reader, University of Exeter Press, Exeter 1995, p. 1222, courtesy Liverpool University Press.
The report closed with a series of post-operational observations, which indicate that Göring’s lieutenants were not only experts in the application of security warfare, but were well versed in the politics of Bandenbekämpfung. The first observation concerned the local population vis-à-vis the Bandenlage (bandit situation): if the locals were peaceful, they were usually ‘happy’ to be protected by German troops; in bandenbeherrschten Gebieten (bandit-controlled areas) the locals work for the ‘bandits’; however, in the bandenverseuchten Gebieten (‘bandit’ diseased areas) the locals expected to be targeted by both sides. One comment concluded that local co-operation was necessary for the successful pacification and exploitation of an area, and it was therefore, critical to impose German rule. A second observation concerned the compromise of Nazi propaganda by security operations. It was recognised that burning villages for revenge or retribution might backfire, especially if the locals were both harmless and helpless. However, if an area was collaborating with the ‘bandits’ it was necessary to ‘cleanse with a firm hand.’ The third observation noted how the morale of the troops suffered when expected to combat the ‘bandits’ with inferior weapons. The bands were well supplied with superior and heavy weapons, and several times Luftwaffe flak artillery engaged in direct firing against heavily armed ‘bandits’. Another point mentioned the high level of mobility adopted by the ‘bandits’, which meant the Luftwaffe depended on the army’s security units to effect a mobile counter-strategy. A further observation criticised the absence of a unified command, and there had been reports of chaotic incidents. This had led to a centralisation of all Luftwaffe forces and the reorganisation of command structures. There had also been an introduction of strongpoints at important hubs along the railway lines, with Luftwaffe troops assigned to guarding junctions. A final point noted how the ‘bandits’ adopted ‘sneaky’ tactics, which required strong forces to counter and eradicate them. There was a palpable reluctance in a recommendation to conduct night-time actions and the troops to be trained to work in ‘night and fog’—the distasteful notion of resorting to ‘bandit’ tactics to counter the ‘bandits’. Operational training was acknowledged as the key to success and especially in learning to exploit the same methods as the ‘bandits’—the use of cunning, and ruthlessness.10
1 Adolf Galland, ‘Oberst Galland’, Wild und Hund, No. 47, 1941–42, pp. 357–358.
2 See Chris Bellamy, Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War, (London, 2007) and Evan Mawdsley, Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War 1941–1945, (London, 2016).
3 Helmut Heiber, David M. Glantz (ed), Hitler and his Generals: Military Conferences 1942–1945, (New York, 2002) pp. 14–17.
4 NARA, T175/140/2668141-355, Weisung Nr. 46: Richtlinien für die verstärkte Bekämpfung des Bandenunwesens im Osten, Der Führer, OKW/WFSt/Op. Nr. 002821/42g.K., Führerhauptquartier, 18 August 1942.
5 Philip W. Blood, Hitler’s Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe, (Virginia, 2006), pp. 3–28.
6 TsAMO 500-12454-623, Bericht über die Bandenbekämpfung durch Einheiten der Luftwaffe im Bereich des Lw.Kdo.Ost von 10.4. bis 31.12.42, 8 Jan. 1943.
7 S.A. Kovpak, Our Partisan Course, (London, 1947). Stalin’s directive, 1 May 1942, instructed the bands to cause sabotage and destruction behind German lines.
8 TsAMO 500-12454-623, Bericht über die Bandenbekämpfung.
9 James Corum, “Die Luftwaffe und Kriegsverbrechen im Zweiten Weltkrieg.” in Gerd Überschär, Wolfram Wette (Hrs), Kriegsverbrechen im 20. Jahrhundert, (Festschrift für Manfred Messerschmidt), (Potsdam, 2001), p. 298.
10 TsAMO 500-623, Bericht über die Bandenbekämpfung.
Excursions in Microhistory
Writing history has history. The Luftwaffe’s participation in the Holocaust had always been on the fringe of history. Although Hitler’s air force was known to have held an instrumental part in the war, it was not associated with killing Jews, civilians, and partisans. The senior officers of the Luftwaffe tried to destroy the evidence in 1945 and very nearly succeeded. A small section of files survived that served as a catalyst for in-depth research of the Luftwaffe. The central thread of the narrative of this book is about ordinary Luftwaffe soldiers, the Landser and the Holocaust. The Landser is a slang word for the common soldier akin to the British Tommy. There was only partial evidence of the Landser’s footprint in the military documents. Consequently, painstaking research was adopted to piece together and collect scraps of evidence to construct a microhistory. From its origins in my PhD research, Birds of Prey was destined to be a microhistory. The research for this book, however, took a scientific path and applied historical GIS methods as forensic means to map the movements and the spatiality of the Landser. The outcome is this microhistory of Luftwaffe security troops in occupied Poland during the period 1942–44.
The general hypothesis underpinning this book re-confirmed my original research conclusions. Hitler’s Bandenbekämpfung was not conventional anti-partisan warfare or counterinsurgency. Bandenbekämpfung was not a bureaucratic reclassification of anti-partisan warfare without consequences, and the Wehrmacht was no longer able to conduct security operations within the parameters of its traditional guidelines. The application of Bandenbekämpfung was relatively easy and ideologically inexpensive. In practice, it vilified opponents, placed civilians under suspicion, and rendered them defenceless to exemplary punishment. Within its historiography, the school of military history has perpetuated the myth of Partisanenbekämpfung or anti-partisan warfare rather than recognise Bandenbekämpfung and its genocidal implications. This approach downplayed the place of Nazi ideology, as it sought to make sense of anti-partisan warfare. Given the evidence, this is no longer a sustainable argument. Bandenbekämpfung evolved from the forester’s battles with poachers and bandits. Christopher Hale makes a compelling argument that Bandenbekämpfung originated in the Thirty Years’ War. The word existed long before it was institionalised as a doctrine of militarised security in the Nineteenth Century. Bandenbekämpfung was radicalised as an operational doctrine within Imperial Germany’s colonizing security warfare, and was extended into the German way of war from 1908. Bandenbekämpfung was Germany’s approach to security warfare from 1942 onwards.1
The setting for the book’s research was Białowieźa forest in eastern Poland. This primaeval forest lies in the historical region of Podlasie and is famous as a habitat for the European bison. Białowieźa established a reputation for hunting and since the 1500s was a hunting reserve for the Polish kings. The forest and surrounding areas became populated with Poles, Lithuanians, Belorussians and Jews. There were few municipal conurbations, other than Bialystok, but many small towns, villages, and shtetls. The forest had a long history of authoritarian and violent occupation. After 1795, following the third partition of Poland, Białowieźa was subject to consecutive annexations: Prussia, Russia, Imperial Germany and then Nazi Germany in 1941. After 1918 this region once again returned to Poland, but war with Soviet Russia turned the region into one of the shattered lands of the east. After the experience of German Army occupation, during Great War, the Nazis increasingly craved the forest as a trophy. Hermann Göring pursued Hitler’s ambitions for Grossdeutschland (Greater German Reich) on the eastern frontier by locking Białowieźa forest into a defensive plan. This defensive plan envisaged a primaeval wilderness as a natural barrier to the threat of the ‘Bolshevik’ horde. In theory, this geopolitical strategy was scientifically sophisticated, but proved wholly naive as a defence line. This was Germany’s Maginot Line on the eastern frontier.
The research set out to explore how other ranks (ORs), or the rank and file, adapted to Bandenbekämpfung in Hitler’s race war. From 1942, the common soldiery perpetrated genocide in most theatres of the war: without overt ideological indoctrination; without being ordered by junior officers to commit crimes; and with everyday killing normalised to within military procedures or routines. There was no evidence the troops resisted this work. Indeed, trained into aggressive military concepts such as Auftragstaktik (mission-tactics) the soldiers were roused to heightened levels of violence.2 The research synthesized Göring’s geopolitical ambitions with the study of the Landser as perpetrators of genocide. In many ways this contradicted the general opinion that Göring disappeared into the shadows after Stalingrad. However, the findings set him apart from Hitler and Himmler. Whereas Hitler wanted to be excluded from the killing process, Himmler was a keen visitor to the extermination sites. Göring, in contrast, participated in the planning and willed its execution, but never visited the killing sites, or Białowieźa after the Nazi-occupation in June 1941.
My research focused upon Göring’s manipulation of two key institutions within his mandate as a Nazi leader. The German hunting fraternity and the Luftwaffe. Both institutions contained influential social elites and controlled a large proportion of the population. The hunt created the Nazified honour code for his ‘court etiquette’, and the Luftwaffe was the foundation of a ‘revolutionary’ military order. Together they merged the nstitutional symbolism of ‘The Blue’ (Luftwaffe) and ‘The Green’ (state forester-hunters). This was the culmination of Göring’s corporatism. By exploiting this institutional dynamic, Göring set about his plans for a permanent national frontier in the east. Stalin was determined to frustrate these plans and waged an intense insurgency campaign within Białowieźa. Göring escalated the conflict by sending Luftwaffe security troops to destroy the Soviet partisans. Jews fleeing to the forests to escape the Holocaust were caught in the middle and became victims of Göring’s hunter killers—the Landser. This microhistory was demarcated by three groups: Göring and the Nazi leaders plotting from the hunting lodges in East Prussia, the Luftwaffe soldiers on the ground hunting partisans and Jews, and the German hunt officials serving as the authoritarian lynchpin in the middle. Together, they all worked towards winning Hitler’s race war, but Göring had his own views how this should be achieved. This is a challenging book, but as close as possible it is a real-time reconstruction of Nazi-occupation of Białowieźa, German soldiers and the Holocaust. Michel Trouillot’s words are evocative: ‘This is a story within a story—so slippery at the edges that one wonders when and where it started and whether it will ever end.’3
The acquisition of sources
The research was hindered by the absence of a central repository of records and archives to anchor the book. The grouping of documents was like different corners of a jigsaw puzzle without an original picture to bring them together. There were mismatches between known actions, where histories had percolated into myths and no bridges to span any connection between maps and documents. My doctoral research into Bandenbekämpfung doctrine was helpful, as was defining Sicherheitskrieg (security warfare) as a traditional German response to armed resistance in occupied and colonial territories; but it was not yet clear how all of this applied to the Białowieźa case.4 There was a vague outline for a case study article, but too thin to stand alone as a book. Richard Holmes recommended I pursue my post-doctoral research along multiple lines of investigation. The primary sources from six key topics included: Hitler’s Luftwaffe, the hunt and environmental history, military geography, Colonialism and Nazi Lebensraum, the Holocaust, and the war in the east. Gradually, the evidence was acquired from a variety of sources, but with a common cut-off date of 1945. This evidence was then categorized into victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. Some postwar evidence that directly contributed to the narrative was included to explain how the perpetrators escaped justice and manufactured ‘new’ lives. This methodological approach of synthesising multi-disciplinary research satisfied some but generated criticism from others.
There was also a story about the Luftwaffe records. On 3 August 1945, US Army intelligence officers interrogated Karl Mittman, formerly deputy commander of the Historical Section of the Luftwaffe (8. Abteilung). Mittman, born in Frankfurt in 1896, had served in the Great War and afterwards had established a career as an industrial merchant. In 1935 he was called up and joined the Luftwaffe. His work had initially involved publishing a history of the war in the air 1914–1918. The onset of the Second World War suspended all previous work, as the section began collecting material for the present conflict. The section also expanded, employing well-educated officers with experience in writing historical narrative. Lw. Brigadier General Herhudt von Rohden (1899–1951) was placed in overall command. Section eight had six subsections: Auswertung (evaluation), Kriegsgeschichte (war history), Wehrwissenschaftliche Gruppe (military science), Bildgruppe (photographic section), Technische Gruppe (technical) and Archiv (archives). Mittman claimed the purpose of military history was to establish the basis for a world history, a medium for the education of service personnel, and to present ‘a responsible account to one’s own war.’ He identified three categories of military history: a political history of the war, a history of the military strategy of the war, and a ‘history for the education of the people.’ During the war, the section had completed a review of the period 1939–43; fifteen annuals of air war accounts including Poland, France et al; had compiled special instructional guides for officers; and had published pamphlets on aspects of the air war. All this work and output, according to Mittman, had been carried out without political controls or interference. Then, as the war drew to a close, the section made several moves from Berlin to Thuringia, Bavaria, and Czechoslovakia. Driving from Karlsbad to Bavaria, as allied thrusts quickened, Mittman decided to destroy the material. Fifty cases reached Vorderriss near Bad Toelz, mostly maps and material regarded as ‘little importance’, were stored in a forester’s office. Mittman helpfully offered tips to the allies how the archive could be reconstructed.5
More than fifty years later, I was in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg-Im-Breisgau, the last day of a long research trip. Frau Noske, the resident but kindly official, presented a print-out of files that had just arrived in the reading room. They were a small collection of diaries of a Luftwaffe security battalion and a Luftwaffe ‘special commando’. They were assigned to security actions against Soviet partisans in ‘Bialowies’, the German spelling of Białowieźa, during 1942–44. The battalion was the Sicherungsbataillon der Luftwaffe Bialowies zbV. The battalion was raised on 18 July 1942, disbanded on 18 March 1943. The other formation was Jäger-Sonderkommando Bialowies der Luftwaffe zbV. This smaller unit was activated on 6 March 1943, but was increased to battalion size from October 1943, and remained in Białowieźa until the great German retreat in July 1944. It was immediately apparent they were an important source. Panic: hasty photocopy requests in bulk, hatched and dispatched, in the age before digitalisation. Subsequent deflation: under scrutiny, it was apparent that the primary content was locked in obscure map references. Richard Holmes recognized this was the ‘smoking gun’ of the research, but only so long as all the evidence was collected and deciphered.6 In lieu of managing the maps, a search process was started to locate the personnel records of the men. The Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt), in Berlin, held the Wehrmacht’s card index records. The Wehrmachtsauskunftstelle für Kriegsverluste und Kriegsgefangene (WASt) maintained a complete record of combatants, casualties, and POWs for all the Wehrmacht. Alongside the names extracted from the diaries with the casualty records, a prospective list was sent to the Bundesarchiv-Zentralnachweisstelle (BA-ZNS), previously in Korneliemünster, near Aachen, to locate records. That archive held several personnel files of some officers and ordinary ranks (ORs), including postwar claims for service pensions.
In their memoirs, Luftwaffe aviators have acknowledged the tactical implications of Bandenbekämpfung for the Luftwaffe’s ground forces. In particular, the change from the defence of installations to aggressive local search and destroy actions. Hans-Ulrich Rudel recalled his airfield being exposed to Red Army probes and no longer any ‘… battle-worthy ground forces screening our front …’. As ‘Ivan’ probed, the commander of the airfield staff company, ‘gets together a fighting company drawn from our ground personnel and those of the nearest units and holds the airfield.’ Rudel observed:
Our gallant mechanics spend their nights, turn and turn about manning trenches with rifles and hand grenades in their hands, and during the day return to their maintenance duties. … Our Luftwaffe soldiers at the beginning of the war certainly never saw themselves being used in this way.7
The question of the airfields in the ‘bloodlands’ had not entirely gone unnoticed. In July 1952, US Counter-Intelligence officials began an investigation of the Vinnytsia massacre, where Soviet secret police had murdered 9–11,000 Ukrainian civilians. The grave pits were discovered in 1943 and, the Germans used the evidence as a propaganda coup against the Soviet Union. The Nazi Ministry of Eastern Affairs assigned pathologists from nations across occupied Europe. Several former Luftwaffe personnel, present when the site was uncovered, were later interrogated by the Americans. Alfred Holstein (born December 1891), from Rothenburg, remembered visiting the excavations several times and recalled how the Ukrainian mayor (a Nazi collaborator) had called them victims of their religion. He was persuaded to give a detailed testimony, which revealed he was the commander of the Luftwaffe labour battalion working at the nearby airfield. Following a period of heavy rain and rapid drainage, the ground had formed strange shapes. In May 1943 they began digging and discovered the massacre site. Georg Müller (born 1894), had served with the Luftwaffe, was transferred to the airbase in Vinnytsia and testified:
At one time, I was going from Winia (sic) to the airport when I saw many people coming down the street accompanied by SS Guards. The people were Jews (men, old women and children). They were taken to the prison. A few days later, they were taken by truck to the place of execution (approximately one kilometre from the airport). They had to undress and walk into the pits which were already dug. There they were shot. There also partisans were disposed of in the same manner.
He also recalled engaging with a group of 60 Jews—slave labour working on the airfield. He discovered they were to be shot. A truck arrived that evening (6.00 pm) and took 10 to the place of execution—8 managed to escape. He was later transferred to a Luftwaffe facility in Lemberg, in Poland, and Müller learned of an execution site in the locality. The CIC report concluded: ‘no further investigation of subject massacre is intended by this detachment unless otherwise directed …’.8
In the 1950s, former German Army and Luftwaffe generals recast themselves as honourable professional soldiers, irrespective of being among Hitler’s cohorts.9 They were praised in military histories of the Luftwaffe, which persisted in focusing upon strategy, operations and technology; affirming a reputation for elitism, rather than scrutinising the allegiance to Hitler and its darker implications.10 Marrying murderous acts on the ground to knightly aerial warfare is not difficult to establish. The behaviour of the airborne forces in Crete (1941–42) continued a trail of crimes that began in the Spanish Civil War and included bombing civilian settlements in Soviet Russia and Yugoslavia on the spurious grounds of ‘suspected’ partisan hideouts. The Luftwaffe, as demonstrated in this book, was quite capable of breaching its legal codes to commit murder, even without the vilification of racial enemies.