The Police Battalion 320 (''Polizeibattalion 320'') was a formation of the German

Order Police The ''Ordnungspolizei'' (), abbreviated ''Orpo'', meaning "Order Police", were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945. The Orpo organisation was absorbed into the Nazi monopoly on power after regional police jurisdiction ...

(uniformed police) during the

Nazi era 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 afte ...

, it was subordinated to the SS and deployed in German-occupied areas, specifically the

Army Group South Rear Area Army Group South Rear Area (''Rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Süd'') was one of the three Army Group Rear Area Commands, established during the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union. Commanded by General Karl von Roques, it was an area of milita ...

, of the Soviet Union, as part of Police Regiment Special Purpose (later the 11th SS Police Regiment). Alongside detachments from the ''

Einsatzgruppen (, ; also ' task forces') were (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass murder, primarily by shooting, during World War II (1939–1945) in German-occupied Europe. The had an integral role in the im ...

'' of the SD, 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; ...

and was responsible for large-scale

crimes against humanity Crimes against humanity are widespread or systemic acts committed by or on behalf of a ''de facto'' authority, usually a state, that grossly violate human rights. Unlike war crimes, crimes against humanity do not have to take place within the ...

targeting civilian populations.

Background and formation

The German

(''Ordnungspolizei'') was a key instrument of the security apparatus 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 ...

. In the prewar period,

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was of the (Protection Squadron; SS), and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and a main architect of th ...

, the head of the SS, and

Kurt Daluege Kurt Max Franz Daluege (15 September 1897 – 24 October 1946) was chief of the national uniformed ''Ordnungspolizei'' (Order Police) of Nazi Germany. Following Reinhard Heydrich's assassination in 1942, he served as Deputy Protector for th ...

, chief of the Order Police, cooperated in transforming the police force of the

Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic (german: link=no, Weimarer Republik ), officially named the German Reich, was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a Constitutional republic, constitutional federal republic for the first time in ...

into militarised formations ready to serve the regime's aims of conquest and racial annihilation. Police troops were first formed into battalion-sized formations for the

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week af ...

, where they were deployed for security and policing purposes, also taking part in executions and mass deportations. Twenty-three Order Police battalions were slated to take part in the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union,

. Nine were attached to security divisions of the

Wehrmacht The ''Wehrmacht'' (, ) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the ''Heer'' (army), the '' Kriegsmarine'' (navy) and the ''Luftwaffe'' (air force). The designation "''Wehrmacht''" replaced the previo ...

, three for each

Army Group Rear Area Army Group Rear Area Command () was an area of military jurisdiction behind each of the three Wehrmacht army groups from 1941, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, through 1944 when the pre-war territories of the Sovie ...

s. Two battalions were assigned to support the ''

'', the mobile

death squads A death squad is an armed group whose primary activity is carrying out extrajudicial killings or forced disappearances as part of political repression, genocide, ethnic cleansing, or revolutionary terror. Except in rare cases in which they are f ...

of the SS, and the

Organisation Todt Organisation Todt (OT; ) was a civil and military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi. The organisation was responsible for a huge range of engineering pr ...

, the military construction group. Twelve were formed into regiments, three battalions each, and designated as Police Regiments North,

Centre Center or centre may refer to: Mathematics *Center (geometry), the middle of an object * Center (algebra), used in various contexts ** Center (group theory) ** Center (ring theory) * Graph center, the set of all vertices of minimum eccentricity ...

South South is one of the cardinal directions or compass points. The direction is the opposite of north and is perpendicular to both east and west. Etymology The word ''south'' comes from Old English ''sūþ'', from earlier Proto-Germanic ''*sunþa ...

, and Special Purpose. Alongside Police Battalions 304 and 315, Police Battalion 320 was assigned to Police Regiment Special Purpose, under the command of Gerret Korsemann, a career policeman. When the regiment crossed the German-Soviet border, it came under the control of Friedrich Jeckeln, the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSS-PF) for

Army Group South Army Group South (german: Heeresgruppe Süd) was the name of three German Army Groups during World War II. It was first used in the 1939 September Campaign, along with Army Group North to invade Poland. In the invasion of Poland Army Group So ...

in Ukraine.

Operational history

In August 1941, Police Battalion 320 perpetrated the

Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre The Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre was a World War II mass shooting of Jews carried out in the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa, by the German Police Battalion 320 along with Friedrich Jeckeln's ''Einsatzgruppen'', the Hungarian soldiers, a ...

, alongside Jeckeln's staff company. The staff company performed the shooting, while the Police Battalion 320 cordoned off the area. The massacres resulted in the murder of thousands of Jews deported from Hungary and rounded up Ukrainian Jews. Shortly thereafter, Police Battalion 320 reported the shooting of twenty-two hundred Jews at another location north-east of Kamianets-Podilskyi. The overall ''Einsatzgruppen'' report for the operation listed a total of 23,000 victims.

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * *

Background and formation

Operational history

References

Bibliography

Further reading