The HIPO Corps (

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

: HIPO-korpset) was a

auxiliary police Auxiliary police, also called special police, are usually the part-time reserves of a regular police force. They may be armed or unarmed. They may be unpaid volunteers or paid members of the police service with which they are affiliated. The po ...

corps, established by the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...

on 19 September 1944, when the Danish civil police force was disbanded and most of its officers were arrested and

deported Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...

concentration camps Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

in Germany. The majority of HIPO members were recruited from the ranks of

Nazi collaborators. The word ''HIPO'' is an abbreviation of the German word ''

Hilfspolizei The ''Hilfspolizei'' (abbreviated ''HiPo'' or ''Hipo''; meaning "auxiliary police") was a short-lived auxiliary police force in Nazi Germany in 1933. The term was later semi-officially used for various auxiliary organizations subordinated to the ...

'' ("auxiliary police"). The purpose of HIPO was to assist the Gestapo as an auxiliary police unit. HIPO was organized under, and along quite similar lines to, the Gestapo. Some men were uniformed in order to be visible while others worked secretly in plain clothes. The uniformed men wore a black uniform with Danish police insignia. HIPO, like the Gestapo, had their own informers. The major difference was that most of the Gestapo were Germans working in an occupied country, while the HIPO Corps consisted entirely of Danes working for the German occupiers. During the last winter of the war a number of HIPO members were tortured and killed by

Danish resistance The Danish resistance movements ( da, Den danske modstandsbevægelse) were an underground insurgency to resist the German occupation of Denmark during World War II. Due to the initially lenient arrangements, in which the Nazi occupation autho ...

members. In retaliation and as a warning, the corps terrorized the civil population and blew up houses, factories, and even the

Tivoli Gardens Tivoli Gardens, also known simply as Tivoli, is an amusement park and pleasure garden in Copenhagen, Denmark. The park opened on 15 August 1843 and is the third-oldest operating amusement park in the world, after Dyrehavsbakken in nearby Klam ...

. The

Lorenzen Group The Lorenzen group ( Danish: ''Lorenzengruppen'') was an armed paramilitary group of Danish collaborators, subordinate to the HIPO Corps, which was active during the period December 1944 - May 1945. The group is named after its founder Jørgen ...

, also known as section 9c, was an armed paramilitary group of Danes subordinate to the HIPO Corps. After the war, service in the HIPO corps was one of the crimes of

collaborationism Wartime collaboration is cooperation with the enemy against one's country of citizenship in wartime, and in the words of historian Gerhard Hirschfeld, "is as old as war and the occupation of foreign territory". The term ''collaborator'' dates to ...

that retroactively became

capital offense Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that t ...

s. Some two to three hundred HIPO members were prosecuted under these laws. About a dozen were executed between 1946 and 1950. A somewhat larger number received death sentences that were later reduced to long prison terms or parole.

Bibliography

* Matthias Bath: ''Danebrog gegen Hakenkreuz.'' Wachholz, 2011, . * Erik Haaest: ''Hipofolk Lorenzen-gruppen – Danske Terrorister i Nazitiden.'' Documentas 2007.

References

External links

Webpage with details about HIPO Corps
{{Danish Nazi collaborationism Collaborators with Nazi Germany Danish collaborators with Nazi Germany Defunct law enforcement agencies of Denmark Local participation in the Holocaust The Holocaust in Denmark

Bibliography

See also

References

External links