119th SS-Standarte

The 119th SS-Standarte was a regimental command of the Allgemeine-SS that was formed in the city of Grudziądz, Poland during World War II. The unit was a commissioned General-SS command, assigned to Eastern Poland for the purposes of administrating SS security and military commands whose members were frequently engaged in atrocities and other activities associated with the Holocaust.^[1] The Standarte was under the command of SS-Oberabschnitt Weichsel, headquartered at Danzig.

Formation

The Standarte was activated in the summer of 1940 and was used for the purposes of assigning Waffen-SS and Sicherheitspolizei personnel to a General-SS regiment for administrative and pay reasons. The Standarte itself did not engage in musters or formations, but possessed a full time headquarters staff. The administratively attached personnel of the Standarte were frequently assigned to security and police duties in Poland and many played an active role in the Holocaust.

Command and Control

The single commander of the 119th Standarte was SS-Obersturmbannführer Otto Böttcher. The unit effectively ceased to exist in the winter of 1944, as Red Army forces began to liberate Poland from Nazi Germany. The unit itself was formally disbanded on May 8, 1945 at the time of Germany's general surrender.

Notes

References

• Yerger, Mark C. Allgemeine-SS: The Commands, Units, and Leaders of the General SS, Schiffer Publishing (1997). ISBN 0-7643-0145-4