Police Regiment Centre
| Police Regiment Centre | |
|---|---|
| Polizei-Regiment Mitte | |
| Active | 1941–1942 |
| Country |
.svg.png){kind=small} Nazi Germany |
| Role | Rear-area security; participation in the Holocaust |
| Size | Regiment |
| Part of | Orpo units under SS command, reporting directly to Higher SS and Police Leader, Central Russia |
| Commanders | |
| Notable commanders | Max Montua |
The Police Regiment Centre (Polizei-Regiment Mitte) was a police formation under the command of the SS of Nazi Germany. During Operation Barbarossa, it was deployed in German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union, in the Army Group Centre Rear Area.
Alongside the Einsatzgruppen detachments and the SS Cavalry Brigade, it perpetrated mass murder in the Holocaust and was responsible for large-scale crimes against humanity targeting the civilian population. The scope of the regiment's operations were known to the British intelligence since July 1941. However, for reasons of national security, these materials were not released until 1993.
Operational history
The Police Regiment Centre was formed in June 1941 by combining Order Police (Orpo) Battalions 307, 316, and 322 under the command of Max Montua, a career policeman. The regiment was subordinated to Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSS-PF) for Army Group Centre.[1] Himmler made a personal visit to the headquarters of the unit in Belostok on 8 July where he spoke to Montua, Bach-Zalewski and the regiment's officers. The same evening, a company of Police Battalion 322 participated in the shooting of about 1,000 Jews under the direction of Einsatzgruppe B. On 11 July, Montua passed a confidential order from Bach-Zalewski to the battalion commanders that Jews, who had been "convicted of looting", were to be shot; an execution took place the same day.[2]
On 17 July, the regiment murdered over 1,100 Jews in Slonim, with Bach-Zalewski reporting to Himmler on 18 July: "Yesterday's cleansing action in Slonim by Police Regiment Centre. 1,153 Jewish plunderer were shot".[3] By 20 July, the unit's reports referred to executions of Jewish women and children.[2] By late August, Police Battalion 322 moved to Minsk, where, on September 1, it conducted a killing operation together with the units of Einsatzgruppe B. The victims included 290 Jewish men and 40 Jewish women.[4]
In September 1941, the regiment participated in the Mogilev conference, organised by General Max von Schenckendorff, commander of the Army Group Centre Rear Area.[5] Montua had been in charge of the event's planning and logistics.[6] The conference included three field exercises. On the second day, participants travelled to a nearby settlement where a company of the regiment conducted a demonstration of how to surround and screen a village. According to the after-action report, "suspicious strangers" (Ortsfremde), that is "partisans", could not be found but the screening of the population revealed fifty-one Jewish civilians, of whom thirty-two were shot.[7]
On 2 October 1941, Police Battalion 322, along with Bach-Zalewski's staff company and Ukrainian auxiliaries, rounded up 2,200 Jews in the Mogilev ghetto. Sixty-five were killed during the roundups, and another 550 executed the next day. Throughout the rest of the month, the battalion continued to execute Jews, communists, and alleged partisans in the vicinity of Mogilev. The commander of the unit received Iron Cross, 2nd class, following these operation.[8]
In December 1941, after the German failure in the Battle of Moscow, the regiment was sent to the front lines to plug the holes in the German defenses, depriving Bach-Zalewski of manpower.[9] The regimental commander Montua was recalled to Germany to assume an SS and police training role.[9] (He committed suicide in April 1945.[10]) Bach-Zalewski himself was temporarily relieved of command and sent to Germany for recuperation.[9] The regiment was dissolved in mid-1942, with Police Battalions 307, 316 and 322 retaining their designations.[11]
Decrypts by British intelligence
While the murderous activities of the Police Regiment Center, the Einsatzgruppen detachment and the SS Cavalry Brigade progressed, the reports by Bach-Zalewski were being intercepted and decoded by MI6, the British intelligence service. As part of Ultra, British signals intelligence program, the code breakers at Bletchley Park decoded and analysed the messages. The head of MI6, Stewart Menzies, communicated the decrypts directly to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The first message decrypted was the 18 July report on the mass murders by the regiment at Slonim. In late July and early August, similar reports were intercepted on a regular basis.[12]
Starting with 27 August, Bletchley Park delivered specially prepared daily intelligence reports on the activities of the police troops. By these point, the British intelligence had detailed information on the activities of both Bach-Zalewski's and Friedrich Jeckeln's formations (with Jeckeln operating in Army Group South Rear Area). On 12 September, the German Police changed their cipher; the following day, the SS officials were instructed to stop transmitting the reports over the radio.[13]
Subsequently, the code breakers produced monthly reports detailing the crimes perpetrated by Nazi Germany. For reasons of national security, the Ultra program remained classified after the war and these materials had not been shared with Britain's allies. Thus they were not used during the Nuremberg trials and subsequent investigations of German war crimes and crimes against humanity. The materials were finally released in 1993.[14]
See also
References
Citations
- ↑ Breitman 1998, pp. 45–46.
- 1 2 Breitman 1998, pp. 47–48.
- ↑ Persico 2002, p. 219.
- ↑ Breitman 1998, p. 50.
- ↑ Beorn 2014, p. 97.
- ↑ Blood 2006, p. 167.
- ↑ Beorn 2014, p. 10.
- ↑ Breitman 1998, p. 66.
- 1 2 3 Blood 2006, pp. 61–62.
- ↑ Wolfgang Curilla: Der Judenmord in Polen und die deutsche Ordnungspolizei 1939–1945, S. 273, 336, 535, 860
- ↑ "Selected Records from the Military Historical Institute Archives, Prague, 1941-1944", U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
- ↑ Smith 2004, pp. 112–113.
- ↑ Smith 2004, pp. 114–115.
- ↑ Smith 2004, pp. 116–119.
Bibliography
- Beorn, Waitman Wade (2014). Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674725508.
- Blood, Phillip W. (2006). Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe. Potomac Books. ISBN 978-1-59797-021-1.
- Breitman, Richard (1998). Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew. New York: , 1998. New York: Hill and Wang/Farrar Straus & Giroux.
- Persico, Joseph E. (22 October 2002). Roosevelt's Secret War: FDR and World War II Espionage. Random House. ISBN 0-3757-6126-8.
- Smith, Michael (2004). "Bletchley Park and the Holocaust". In Scott, L. V.; Jackson, P. D. Understanding Intelligence in the Twenty-First Century: Journeys in Shadows. ISBN 0714655333.
Further reading
- Megargee, Geoffrey P., ed. (2009). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–-1945. Volume 1. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 731. ISBN 0-253-35328-9.
- Rutherford, Jeff (2014). Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front. Cambidge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 1107055717.