Grüne Polizei

The ''Ordnungspolizei'' (''Orpo'', , meaning "Order Police") were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945. The Orpo was absorbed into the Nazi monopoly of power after regional police jurisdiction was removed in favour of the central Nazi government ("Reich-ification", ''Verreichlichung'', of the police). In 1936, Heinrich Himmler, the commander (''Reichsführer-SS'') of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS), was appointed Chief of the German Police in the Interior Ministry. The top and upper leadership positions of the Orpo were filled by police officers who belonged to or had joined the SS. Owing to their green uniforms, Orpo members were also referred to as ''Grüne Polizei'' (Green Police). The force was established as a centralised organisation based in Berlin uniting the municipal, city, and rural uniformed police that had been previously organised on a state-by-state basis.

The ''Ordnungspolizei'' encompassed virtually all of Nazi Germany's law-enforcement and emergency response organisations, including fire brigades, coast guard, and civil defence. Himmler and Kurt Daluege, chief of the Orpo, worked to transform the police force 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, where they were deployed for security and policing purposes, also taking part in executions and mass deportations. During World War II, the force was tasked with policing the civilian population of the occupied and colonised countries. In 1941, the Orpo's activities escalated to genocide after the Order Police battalions formed into independent regiments or were attached to ''Wehrmacht'' security divisions and ''Einsatzgruppen''. Independently and in collaboration with those units, members of the Orpo perpetrated crimes against humanity and mass-murder during the Holocaust.

History

Almost immediately after the Nazis seized power, they instituted measures to gain political control of German police and to use them against their perceived enemies. The commander of the SS, ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich Himmler, had already been deputy chief of the Prussian secret police, when by decree of 17 June 1936, he was appointed Chief of the Police force; he performed both functions in parallel and was officially and publicly referred to as "Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior". Although nominally subordinate to Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, Himmler could participate in meetings of the Reich Cabinet—when and if police agendas were discussed. In 1943, Himmler himself was appointed Minister of the Interior.

Traditionally, law enforcement in Germany had been a state and local matter. When Himmler was given the lead over all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies in 1936, he divided the police into two main areas: the ''Ordnungspolizei'' (Orpo or Order Police) under the command of Kurt Daluege and the ''Sicherheitspolizei'' (SiPo or security police) under Reinhard Heydrich. The Orpo assumed duties of regular uniformed law enforcement while the SiPo was made up by the combined forces of the ''Geheime Staatspolizei'' (Gestapo; secret state police) and the ''Kriminalpolizei'' (Kripo; criminal investigation police). The Gestapo was a political police agency with additional legally guaranteed powers of arrest. On 27 September 1939, shortly after the start of World War II, the SiPo and the ''Sicherheitsdienst'' (SD; SS security service) were folded into the Reich Security Main Office (''Reichssicherheitshauptamt'' or RSHA). The RSHA symbolised the close connection between the SS (a party organisation) and the police (a state organisation). The Order Police (uniformed police, enforcement police) remained in the Ministry of the Interior. Himmler's multiple attempts to increase the proportion of SS members in the Orpo failed. Nonetheless, his reorganisation of the police under the RSHA enabled him to have "watchdogs" in multiple army districts and coordinated the power of the SS, SiPo, and Orpo, which historian Helmut Langerbein says "perverted normal police work".

Himmler pursued the amalgamation of SS and police into a form of "State Protection Corps" (''Staatsschutzkorps''), and used the expanded reach the police powers gave him to persecute ideological opponents of the Nazi regime and "undesirables" such as Jews, freemasons, churches, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other groups defined as "asocial". The Nazi conception of criminality was racial and biological, holding that criminal traits were hereditary, and had to be exterminated to purify German blood. As a result, even ordinary criminals were consigned to concentration camps to remove them from the German racial community (''Volksgemeinschaft'') and ultimately exterminate them.

The Order Police was one—among several—of the executing organisations that facilitated inhumane goals pursued by Himmler and the RSHA, transforming and reorienting police functions into part of the Nazi security apparatus as they prepared for war. Instructions for the Orpo came through the regional political administrative authorities and/or the Higher SS and Police Leaders ( HSSPF)—the latter had authority to command both police branches and the SS-forces, because Himmler intended all along to establish harmony between the police and the SS. Most of the battalions of the Order Police troops in the east were deployed for the expulsion and extermination of the Jewish population, since parts were assigned to the SS ''Einsatzgruppen''. Their personnel were used to guard ghettos or to carry out mass shootings. Order police played an executive role in the Holocaust by providing men for the tasks involved, "both career professionals and reservists, in both battalion formations and precinct service" (''Einzeldienst'').

Indoctrination

Before the Nazi seizure of power, there was already a penchant for nationalistic beliefs and militarism among police officers in Germany, since most of its members consisted of men who had fought in World War I. Many officers of the police forces in Weimar believed the causation of Germany's loss in that war was bound up in the myths of being stabbed in the back by profiteers and Jews, which certainly contributed to their willingness to believe the National Socialist message. Beginning in February 1933, Nazi minister Hermann Göring issued a decree that Nazi party members and those in related organisations "were to receive priority as applicants for the Order Police." Just a few months later, Kurt Daluege issued a secret memorandum that emphasised eight to ten weeks worth of ideological indoctrination for SA and SS members transitioning into the Order Police at the rank of captain or higher, to ensure "close ties between the state instruments of power he policeand the SA and SS."

By 1935, there was an increased national political curricula and intensive ideological training by the "Comradeship of the German Police" (''Kameradschaftsbund der deutschen Polizei''). Monthly national political lectures were instituted, and all police officers were encouraged to attend courses in state and party training facilities. Historian Edward B. Westermann writes that the "transformation of the police into political soldiers and instruments of genocide occurred in large part due to the efforts of Heinrich Himmler and Kurt Daluege to create an organizational culture within the ''Ordnungspolizei'' that married a "martial attitude" with Nazi racial ideology." In keeping with Nazi ideological programmatic lines, the Order Police, alongside the SS, played a key role in implementing Nazi racial policies. Unlike the SS, whose members voluntarily aligned with its ideology, the police required extensive ideological training to adopt and support the SS's goals, which was generally accepted due to a combination of Nazi propaganda, latent antisemitism, and a societal disposition towards obedience to authority.

Within the administrative organ (''Verwaltungspolizei'') for instance, the Order Police were required to read specific history books and essays on Nazi ideology, which were integrated into their practical police training and exams, ensuring alignment with Nazi goals. Training for State Protection Police (''Schutzpolizei'') at the Berlin-Schöneberg School in 1937 included 44 weekly hours focused on police and criminal law, with two hours dedicated to national politics and ideological training by SS instructors. Similarly, the curriculum included history and National Socialist ideology. From the end of 1942 to the end of 1944, the Mariaschein Police School (later moved to Heidenheim) conducted monthly ideological training sessions for the ''Schutzpolizei'' with corresponding training of like kind being held at other police and police weapons schools across Nazi-occupied Europe.

Organization

The German Order Police had grown to 244,500 men by mid-1940. In preparation for the war of aggression and conquest, a replacement police force was set up as early as 1937 to take over patrol and guard duties. This auxiliary police could be activated by decree for service in their home districts and had grown to over 90,000 by the beginning of the war. These older men were drafted and conscripted into the reserve police, and in the course of the war, veterans were also called up. The majority of them served in their home environment, some were deployed in police reserve battalions.

In 1936, Himmler divided the Nazi police into two branches. The central command office known as the ''Ordnungspolizei Hauptamt'' was housed in the old office building of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior in Berlin at NW 7, Unter den Linden 72/74. From 1936 to 1941, it consisted of two offices: the Command Department (''Kommandoamt''), responsible for finance, personnel and medical; and the Office of Administration and Law (''Verwaltung''), responsible for handling all administrative police, legal and economic tasks of the entire Order Police. In 1941, the Colonial Office, the Office of Fire Brigades, and the Office of Technical Emergency Aid were added.

While the Order Police was initially commanded by Kurt Daluege, in May 1943, he had a massive heart attack and was removed from duty. He was replaced by Police and Waffen-SS General Alfred Wünnenberg, who had previously spent his career as a professional police officer.

Branches of police

The administration police ('' Verwaltungspolizei'') was the branch with overall command authority for all Orpo police stations. The ''Verwaltungspolizei'' also was the central office for record keeping and was the command authority for civilian law enforcement groups, which included the ''Gesundheitspolizei'' (health police), ''Gewerbepolizei'' (commercial or trade police), and the ''Baupolizei'' (building police). In the main towns, ''Verwaltungspolizei'', ''Schutzpolizei'' and ''Kriminalpolizei'' would be organised into a police administration known as the ''Polizeipräsidium'' or ''Polizeidirektion'', which had authority over these police forces in the urban district. Generally speaking, there were three subtypes of uniformed police forces within the Order Police, arranged according to the population size and density of the community they served." These were:
* ''Gendarmerie'' (rural police), who were tasked with frontier law enforcement to include small communities, rural districts, and mountainous terrain.
* Municipal protection police ''( Gemeindepolizei)'' municipal uniformed police in smaller and some large towns.
* State protection police ''(Schutzpolizei)'', state uniformed police in cities and most large towns, which included police-station duties (''Revierdienst'') and barracked police units for riots and public safety (''Kasernierte Polizei'').

Inspectors of the Order Police in various branches were established in September 1936, overseeing the entire Order Police within their jurisdictions. At the start of the war, they were gradually renamed "Commanders of the Order Police" (BdO) and given greater authority, directly reporting to Higher SS and Police Leaders. Although fully integrated into the ''Ordnungspolizei''-system, its police officers were still considered municipal civil servants. The civilian law enforcement in towns with a municipal protection police was not performed by the ''Verwaltungspolizei'', but by municipal civil servants. Until 1943, they also had municipal criminal investigation departments, but that year, all such departments with more than 10 detectives were integrated into the Kripo.

Other police forces

Additional police units not entirely subordinate to the ''Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei'' or the Reich Security Main Office existed across Germany, which made them outside the regular Nazi police structure and were "staffed mainly by officials from the police and judiciary who had served under Weimar." Despite the seeming independence of other functional policing and public safety organizations, they were still part of the Nazi state, which was monitored and controlled by the SS and its subordinated agencies, such as the Gestapo.

Leadership

Police battalions in the East and the Holocaust

Invasion of Poland

By the time of the invasion of Poland in 1939, the Order Police had reached a strength of 131,000 men. Correspondingly, between 1939 and 1945, the ''Ordnungspolizei'' maintained military formations, who were trained and outfitted by the main police offices within Germany. Specific duties varied widely from unit to unit and from one year to another. Generally, the Order Police were not directly involved in frontline combat, except for Ardennes in May 1940, and the Siege of Leningrad in 1941. The first 17 battalion formations (from 1943 renamed ''SS-Polizei-Bataillone'') were deployed by the Orpo in September 1939 along with the ''Wehrmacht'' during the invasion of Poland. One unit was organised under the command of Udo von Woyrsch and its members were specifically tasked to "carry out executions". Under Woyrsch, these Orpo men terrorised the Jews of Bedzin, Katowice, and Sosnowiec, where they wrecked Jewish-owned property, shot dozens, and in one case in the town of Dynow, forced a dozen Jews into a synagogue before setting it on fire.

The battalions also guarded Polish prisoners of war behind the German lines, and carried out expulsion of Poles from '' Reichsgaue'' under the banner of ''Lebensraum''. They also committed atrocities against both the Catholic and the Jewish populations as part of those "resettlement actions". After hostilities had ceased, the battalions—such as Reserve Police Battalion 101—took up the role of security forces, patrolling the perimeters of the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland (the internal ghetto security issues were managed by the ''SS'', ''SD'', and the Criminal Police, in conjunction with the Jewish ghetto administration).

Each battalion consisted of approximately 500 men armed with light infantry weapons. In the east, each company also had a heavy machine-gun detachment. Administratively, the Police Battalions remained under the Chief of Police Kurt Daluege, but operationally they were under the authority of regional SS and Police Leaders (''SS- und Polizeiführer''), who reported, in a separate chain of command, directly to ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich Himmler. The battalions were used for various auxiliary duties, including the so-called anti-partisan operations, support of combat troops, and construction of defence works (i.e. the Atlantic Wall).

Some of them were focused on traditional security roles as an occupying force, while others were directly involved in actions designed to inflict terror and in the ensuing Holocaust. While they were similar to ''Waffen-SS'', they were not part of the thirty-eight ''Waffen-SS'' divisions, and should not be confused with them, including the national 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division. The battalions were originally numbered in series from 1 to 325, but in February 1943 were renamed and renumbered from 1 to about 37, to distinguish them from the ''Schutzmannschaft'' auxiliary battalions recruited from local population in German-occupied areas.

Invasion of the Soviet Union

The Order Police battalions, operating both independently and in conjunction with the ''Einsatzgruppen'', became an integral part of the Final Solution in the two years following the attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Operation Barbarossa. The first mass-murder of 3,000 Jews by Police Battalion 309 occurred in occupied Białystok on 12 July 1941. Police battalions were part of the first and second wave of murders in 1941 and into 1942 throughout the territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union and also earlier, during the killing operations within the 1939 borders of the USSR—whether as part of Order Police regiments, or as separate units reporting directly to local ''SS'' and Police Leaders. Over 11,000 members of the Order Police entered the Soviet Union in the wake of the Nazi invasion. They included the Reserve Police Battalion 101 from Hamburg, Battalion 133 of the Nürnberg Order Police, Police Battalions 45, 309 from Köln, 91 and 316 from Bottrop-Oberhausen. These units—among others—carried out extensive murder operations across the Eastern Front. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, this latter role was obscured both by the lack of court evidence and by deliberate obfuscation, while most of the focus was on the better-known ''Einsatzgruppen'' ("Operational groups") who reported to the ''Reichssicherheitshauptamt'' (RSHA) under Reinhard Heydrich.

Order Police battalions involved in direct killing operations were responsible for at least 1 million murders. Starting in 1941, the regional Order Police units helped to transport Jews from ghettos in both Poland and the USSR (and elsewhere in occupied Europe) to concentration and extermination camps; they also participated in operations to hunt down and murder Jews outside the ghettos. The Order Police and the ''Waffen-SS'' were the two primary sources from which the ''Einsatzgruppen'' drew personnel.

Waffen-SS Police Division

The militarization of the police during the war was reflected in the restructuring of police units, with companies replacing traditional formations. In October 1939, a Police Division of 15,800 militarily trained personnel was formed, initially part of the police but made available to the ''Wehrmacht'', participating in the 1940 Western Campaign and later restructured as the ''SS Polizei'' Division officially integrated into the Waffen-SS in 1942. Many members of the ''Ordnungspolizei'', along with other reservists and men from the ''Allgemeine SS'' were organised into the ''SS Totenkopfdivision''.

In 1940, the ''SS Polizei'' Division was stationed along the Maginot Line to provide passive defense and in preparation for the Nazi invasion of France. Eventually the ''SS Polizei'' Division was called into offensive action, when on 9 June and 10 June, the 1st and 2nd Police Regiments participated in the assault across the Aisne River and the Ardennes Canal where they faced fierce French resistance before the 2nd Police Regiment broke through and took the town of Voncq. The unit was then ordered to advance through the Argonne Forest and again, despite fierce French fighting, managed to capture Les Islettes. Nonetheless, the ''SS Polizei'' Division was taken out of front-line fighting and placed in reserve near Bar le Duc, but not before they had suffered some 704 casualties in two engagements.

Throughout the course of the war, Himmler established as many as thirty SS-Police regiments for regions occupied by German forces. These units were created to carry out "special tasks" behind the Russian front, and each SS-Police regiment was assigned two armored car and antitank platoons with this "police army" subordinated to HSSPF leaders under Himmler's authority. Between 5,500 and 6,000 additional members of the Order Police were dispatched across central and southern Russia, accompanied by the ''SS-Einsatzgruppen''. During periods of intense fighting and crisis, these SS-Police units were thrown into the front lines, but normally were used for anti-partisan activities or the mass execution of political prisoners and Jews.

During the spring of 1944—after a disastrous year on the Russian front—the 4th ''SS-Polizei'' Division fought Greek guerrilla forces near Klissura, after which, the division carried out "savage reprisals against the local inhabitants." The same thing happened at Distomo near Delphi, where members of this division slaughtered men, women, and children alike. Days after the massacre at Distomo, a Red Cross team from Athens "found bodies dangling from the trees that lined the road into the village."

Nearly 15 percent of all Waffen-SS general officers and colonels, as well as another 11 percent of its lieutenant-colonels and majors, began their careers as policemen.

See also

* Bandenbekämpfung
* Executions in Warsaw's police district
* Ranks and insignia of the Ordnungspolizei
* Police Long Service Award
*Police forces of Nazi Germany
* Glossary of Nazi Germany
* ''Schutzmannschaft'', auxiliary policemen raised from local populations in occupied Eastern Europe during World War II

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

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Further reading

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* Nix Philip and Jerome Georges (2006). ''The Uniformed Police Forces of the Third Reich 1933-1945'', Leandoer & Ekholm.
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{{Authority control

Allgemeine SS
Holocaust terminology
Nazi SS
Ordnungspolizei
Police forces of Nazi Germany