Polish villages destroyed in security operations.

[sid guttridge]

It has been remarked on earlier threads how little we know in Western Europe and the USA about the scale of losses inflicted by German security operations in Eastern Europe.

I have just found an old Polish book, "Hitlerowski Terror na wsi Polskiej 1939-1945" (Warsaw, 1965) that details German security operations in Polish villages (within the post-war boundaries) that killed 10 or more civilians. In almost every case this also involved the partial or total destruction of the village concerned.

There appear to have been 769 such villages. In 21 of them between 100 and 370 people were killed.

The book contains charts listing the name of each village, the date of the incident, the number of known dead, the German branch of service involved (where known) and the sources of the information.

The book also contains a ten page English language introduction. The charts, although in Polish, are very clear, so this book is easily accessible to English speakers.

It would appear that the Nuremberg process only heard evidence on the destruction of six French villages, seven Greek villages, five representative Yugoslav villages and two Czech villages. This might explain why we in the Western Europe and the USA know so little about similar events on a far greater scale further East.

Cheers,

Sid.

[oleg]

there are two relatevly new book dealing with the subject

[sid guttridge]

Hi Oleg,

Thanks. I will look them out.

Cheers,

Sid.

[pzrmeyer2]

Oleg,

can you tell us a little about the books? if you've read them, that is. They look interesting--I wonder if they've uncovered any new info or sources?

[oleg]

I read the second one about a year ago I am on waiting list for the first one. In so far as war in the Wild East is concerned nothing new for me really –the way Germans treated civilians on occupied territories is well known on these territories – but I guess for people in West it is an eye opener. Book has a lot of translation of actual German documents – after action reports and such – mostly battalion and regimental level units. Ratio of “partisans” killed vs guns captured is rather striking. It seems that on average was one rifle for every 50 partisans. (insert irony)

[sid guttridge]

Hi pzrmeyer,

I have both books in front of me in the British Library.

Their character is a bit different.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hitler's Police Battalions" is more of a socio-political institutional study than a military-operational one. It has 230 pages of text before the Conclusion, of which it uses 124 pages just to reach the outbreak of war. It is page 163 before Russia is invaded, leaving less than a third of the text to discuss all aspects of police activities in their major theatre of war.

It is appears a good, well researched book of its sort, but not particularly one for military anoraks. However, it might interest W-SS groupies who want to know the sort of activities the original cadre units for several late war W-SS divisions had earlier been up to.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"War in the Wild East" has some of the same character, but because it focuses particularly, although not exclusively, on the operations of 221st Security Division in 1942-43 it is much more military-anorak friendly. Indeed, if looked upon as the only English-language military divisional history of a German security division, it fills a major hole on the bookshelf.

This is a book that will give a real insight into operational conditions within a security division during two key years of the war. I like the look of it a lot and will be buying it.

Cheers,

Sid.

P.S. If you have any specific questions, I will have both books on my desk for another three hours.

[pzrmeyer2]

Thanks...just curious as to the specifics of the books--which you've now answered. Nice to have a civil discussion with the both of you...

[Lorenz]

Thanks...just curious as to the specifics of the books--which you've now answered. Nice to have a civil discussion with the both of you...

I have and have read both books. The Westermann book is far, far superior to the Shepherd book because Westermann used a number of resources previously unexplored by English language authors. The main one was the Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen in Ludwigsburg which houses all of the trial transcripts of war crime trials conducted in Germany as well as other European countries. I would guess that 97% of these hundreds of trials are unknown to most people. The transcripts and prosecution/defense exhibits provide immense detail on operations carried out by deutschen Polizei and other rear area security forces in the occupied East and elsewhere. I highly recommend it. There are better studies of the subject in German, but few if any have not been translated into English.

--Lorenz

[sid guttridge]

Hi Lorenz,

I was just looking at the Conclusion of "Hitler's Police Battalions". It opens: "Despite the immensity of their crimes, the police battalions and the men of the Uniformed Police escaped the reach of Nuremberg and........... the Ordnungspolizei were not identified by the Allies as a criminal organisation."

It looks more and more as though the further one goes East the less and less the Nuremberg process gave any pretence of comprehensive coverage. As a result we in Western Europe and the USA know a lot about the relatively few Oradours on our collective soils, but have not been exposed to the full scale and detail of the far more numerous Oradour-equivalents in Eastern Europe.

Or perhaps the information has always been accessible (as in the case of the 1965 Polish book I mention above) but we just haven't been interrested in the wartime sufferings of our Cold War opponents?

Cheers,

Sid.

[Lorenz]

I think you are spot-on with both presumptions. The Ludwigsburg files only began to open up a bit, and very reluctantly at that, about 10 years ago. The files are being opened a few at a time and even Westermann, writing just last year, found that only 15% to 20% of the records were available to researchers. German privacy laws and the requirement for clearance/approval from foreign countries is what keeps fresh openings at a snail's pace.

Material of this sort in foreign archives, i.e., Poland and Russia, mainly, requires special permission to access. The U.S. Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, with all the clout they have, fought with these secrecy-obsessed bureaucracies for 25+ years for access to various records and if often took two or three years to get some cooperation. You can imagine how difficult it would be for you and me or any other private researcher, for that matter.

--Lorenz

[tigre]

Hi folks, I really do not if you already know this info, anyway following the link below you can find something dealing with the Hamburg Police Battalions during the Second World War.

http://www.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/rz3a035/police101.html

Cheers. Tigre.

[Lorenz]

Hi folks, I really do not if you already know this info, anyway following the link below you can find something dealing with the Hamburg Police Battalions during the Second World War.
http://www.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/rz3a035/police101.html
Cheers. Tigre.

Interesting web site. I had not seen that one before. Thanks for the link.

--Lorenz

[sid guttridge]

Hi Tigre,

I second Lorenz.

http://www.rrz.uni-hamburg.de/rz3a035/police101.html

is an extremely interesting site that confirms the thrust of "Hitler's Police Battalions" by focusing on a specific group of police units.

Many thanks,

Sid.

[Torquez]

Circa 20,000 villagers were murdered alone in Poland due to actions of Wehrmacht and Police units in these "pecification operations".
http://netsprint.encyklopedia.pwn.pl/54562_1.html

Of course this are just "pacifications" meaning operations to intimidate the villagers, not expulsions, executions and hunting down Jews which are different category of operations made by Germans.
You might be interested that Luftwaffe also took place in them, by bombing the villages out of existance.

Crimes in the Poland and Soviet Union were rarely punished due to Cold War protection of former Wehrmacht members by West Germany.

[sid guttridge]

Hi Torquez,

I think you must have a copy of the same book, which goes into some detail about how it is compiled.

The book only recounts the circumstances of death of 19,792 people from villages in which more than ten people were killed together. It makes no attempt to quantify the number killed in smaller groups or as individuals, or in the towns, or in the cities, or in concentration camps, or labour camps, or prisons, or in deportations, or in pre-war territories lost to the USSR, etc., etc..

In fact, it records the deaths of less than one percent of the Polish nationals who lost their lives in WWII.

Cheers,

Sid.