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The Police Regiment North (''Polizei-Regiment Nord'') was a police formation under the command of the
SS of
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
. During
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named after ...
, it was deployed in German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union, in the
Army Group North Rear Area
Army Group North Rear Area (''Rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Nord'') was one of the three Army Group Rear Area Commands, established during the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union. Initially commanded by General Franz von Roques, it was an area ...
.
The Police Regiment North was formed in June 1941 by combining three
Order Police battalions
The Order Police battalions were militarised formations of the German Order Police (uniformed police) during the Nazi era. During World War II, they were subordinated to the SS and deployed in German-occupied areas, specifically the Army Grou ...
and associated units. The regiment was subordinated to
Hans-Adolf Prützmann
Hans-Adolf Prützmann (31 August 1901 – 16 May 1945) was among the highest-ranking German SS officials during the Nazi era. From June 1941 to September 1944, he served as a Higher SS and Police Leader in the occupied Soviet Union, and from No ...
, the
Higher SS and Police Leader (HSS-PF) for
Army Group North
Army Group North (german: Heeresgruppe Nord) was a German strategic formation, commanding a grouping of field armies during World War II. The German Army Group was subordinated to the ''Oberkommando des Heeres'' (OKH), the German army high comman ...
.
Alongside the ''
Einsatzgruppen'' detachments, it perpetrated mass murder in the
Holocaust
The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...
. The information on the scope of the unit's activities remains limited as, in contrast to the
Police Regiment Centre and
South, the 1941 reports of the unit were not intercepted by the British intelligence. Prützmann's command experienced communications difficulties during the summer of 1941. Then starting on September 12, the HSS-PF were instructed to not transmit their reports over the radio. Thus, none of its reports were decrypted as part of the operation
Ultra
adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. ' ...
, the British signals intelligence program.
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Police Regiment North
1941 establishments in Germany
1942 disestablishments in Germany
The Holocaust in Latvia
The Holocaust in Lithuania
SS and Police units
Security units of Nazi Germany established in 1941