Gestapo (15 page)

So the Gestapo had it both ways. Sometimes, if for a technical reason—as when an arrest had been made on neutral territory—the Gestapo wished to avoid shooting a man outright they would smash his body and leave him lying in the middle of a public road to give the impression that he had been run over. When a man was not killed, torture was simply a prelude to the concentration camp, where as often as not he died.

The organization of tyranny in the occupied countries was elaborately conceived and prepared in fine detail before the outbreak of war. The German police, like every other Nazi institution, was put on a war footing in 1938, and the attachment to each
Wehrkreis
inside Germany of a Higher S.S. and Police Leader was a part of this development; for the
Wehrkries
, or military district, was to serve as the base for extraterritorial expansion.

Technically the Higher S.S. and Police Leaders were Himmler's own representatives with the military commanders and the civil governors of their areas; but they varied very much from place to place in quality, character, and attack. As a rule they held the rank of S.S. general or major general. They were the hard core of the Nazi “old fighters,” and they ranged in background from the promoted sergeant-major to the dug-out retired officer who had decided to go in with the Nazis for reasons of idealism or expediency. On the whole they were tough and apt to be stupid and extremely heavy in the hand. They represented the victory of the S.S. over the civil administration, and they owed their positions to the desire of the Nazi leadership to reward the faithful for their services in the wilderness. By the professional policemen like Mueller, Nebe, Best, and others, who ran the Security Police—the Gestapo and the Kripo—they must have been regarded as a lot of blundering old men who had no comprehension of police matters—with certain notable exceptions, such as S.S. Lieutenant General Franz Jaeckeln and others of his colleagues in Poland and Russia, who by their energy and ruthlessness set an example even to the Security Police and the S.D.

To the bright young men of the S.D. they must have appeared as denizens of another world. But character and opportunity counted for a good deal and although there were undoubtedly a number of Higher S.S. and Police Leaders who were not active or interfering and hardly knew what was going on, and although there were others
who were simply corrupt in a rather elephantine manner and chiefly concerned with loot, the most energetic among them were fully worthy of the organization they were privileged to adorn and succeeded in having a finger in very many pies.

Their opportunities varied with the nature of the problems presented by their particular commands. In Denmark, for example, S.S. Colonel Bovensiepen was not much more than a repressive chief constable, often at loggerheads with the emissaries of the Gestapo and S.D. In Russia, on the other hand, where the front was far from static and there was much partisan warfare, men like von dem Bach-Zelewski, Jaeckeln, Herff, and Pruetzmann took their jobs very seriously, acted in liaison between Himmler and the Army, and entered with determination and enthusiasm into their task of terrorizing the back areas, and massacring Jews, Commissars, and other undesirables.

In Poland outside the annexed areas, in the General Government that is, where an extremely energetic civilian Governor was charged with the task of starving the masses into submission, killing off their natural leaders, and liquidating the Jews, there was clearly immense scope for displays of energy. Thus S.S. Major General Katzmann, based on Lvov, actively supervised the killing of four hundred thousand Jews in East Galicia, while S.S. Lieutenant General Odilo Globocnik, the butcher of Lublin—“dear old Globus,” Himmler's crony—officially organized and carried out “Action Reinhard,” the story of which will later be told.

In Yugoslavia, where there was constant chaos and much internecine strife of great bitterness, a man like S.S. Lieutenant General Thomas of Belgrade (and Globocnik again, when, after cleaning up Poland, he was sent to Trieste) was a professional and well-equipped hangman functioning among a mob of amateurs.

In France, on the other hand, S.S. Lieutenant General Kurt Oberg found himself inevitably involved in politics of an extremely delicate kind and, in the intervals of shooting hostages, deporting Jews, and torturing the Resistance leaders (all of which activities General Oberg is said to have disapproved of), found himself involved in complicated tangles with Vichy, the German military Governor,
the German Ambassador, and the fire-eaters on the staff of the Sipo.

The exact position of the Higher S.S. and Police Leader has never been defined. This vagueness contributed to the fog with which the whole German police organization was enveloped. At the same time it is reasonable to assume that Himmler created the office as part of a deliberate plan to prevent Heydrich from completely dominating the whole apparatus of repression—a plan which also denied the Gestapo control of the concentration camps, although Heydrich had taken active steps to obtain such control by putting them under a parallel organization, under S.S. Lieutenant General Pohl, known as the Economic Administration Main Office (W.V.H.A.). The Higher S.S. and Police Leaders were superior in rank to the Gestapo representatives in their area, the chief of which were attached to their own, staffs. For at the headquarters of each Higher S.S. and Police Leader there were to be found the direct representatives of Heydrich (Security Police, or Sipo) and Daluege (Uniformed Police, or Orpo). Inside Germany, these were known as Inspectors of Sipo and Orpo (IdS and IdO); outside they were known as Plenipotentiaries, or
Befehlshaber
(BdS and BdO). The BdS was, in effect, the head of a miniature Prinz Albrecht Strasse, which was set up on the Berlin model in certain cities of occupied Europe. Thus, in Paris, there was the Higher S.S. and Police Leader for Northern France and Belgium, Oberg; and on his staff, as BdS, S.S. Colonel Helmuth Knochen, directly responsible for all the Gestapo and S.D. of his huge area. Scattered through the country the BdS had his deputies, known as Commanders of Sipo, or KdS, each with his own headquarters. Below the KdS were the
Leit-stellen
and
Stellen
—main and subsidiary command posts of the Sipo.

The headquarters of a Bds consisted, typically, of five sections.

“Administration” and “Economic affairs” sounds harmless enough; but the one would on occasion find itself concerned with the supply and maintenance of gassing vans;
the other with the supply of forced labor and the disposal of gold from the teeth of executed prisoners.

The drive, it will be seen, save in certain cases, or when the Higher S.S. and Police Leader was an exceptionally strong and vigorous character, came from the BdS, who was usually a Colonel or a Lieutenant Colonel, but might also be a Brigadier. Some of the better known BdS were S.S. Lieutenant Colonel Hahn of Warsaw; S.S. Lieutenant Colonel Fuchs of Belgrade; S.S. Colonel Knochen of Paris; S.S. Major Lange of Latvia; S.S. Brigadier Naumann of Amsterdam; S.S. Lieutenant Colonel Witiska of Slovakia. These men, and dozens of others, were Heydrichs in little. They were energetic, hardworking, and professional. They worked sometimes hand in glove, sometimes at loggerheads, with their Higher S.S. and Police Leader. As a rule the latter was content to suggest, rather than to order, except in particular cases (above all in Poland). The normal chain of command was Himmler—Heydrich (later Kaltenbrunner)—Mueller—BdS. Often, but not always, orders were repeated for information to the Higher S.S. and Police Leader. The BdS was always supposed to consult with his nominal superior; but frequently he only did this if the intervention of a high-ranking S.S. officer was needed with, for example, the Higher Command of the Army.

If this is confusing, the Germans have only themselves to blame. The whole set-up was confusing in the extreme, and was almost certainly intended to be so. Confusion, furthermore, extended all down the line.

For the BdS, or Chief of Security, himself had a dual command, and over certain aspects of it he sometimes had no more jurisdiction than the Higher S.S. and Police Leader might have over him. In the first place, he had his own headquarters staff, with its separate sections for Gestapo, Kripo, etc.; in the second place, he had his “out stations”—the KdS and the inferior Sipo posts covering his whole area. But the members of his headquarters staff were by no means exclusively staff officers, giving orders to, as it were, the policemen in the field.

In a manner highly characteristic of German organization they mingled paper work with active investigation and interrogation. Just as Hitler astounded all his subordinates by interesting himself in affairs of minute detail, remote
from him in place and time, even to the fate of individuals, so, all the way down the line in the apparatus of tyranny, high-ranking officials were apt to turn from their in-trays, which contained documents for their signature which would move armies or condemn whole populations to death, and interest themselves directly in some particular segment of the vast mosaic of destruction. Gestapo Mueller himself would frequently take time off to conduct a special interrogation, and the same was true of the area and local Sipo chiefs throughout occupied Europe.

Thus each BdS ran his own office, supervised the subordinate offices throughout his area, and took an active hand in interrogations. His own office, his miniature R.S.H.A., was run by section heads, all of whom were liable at any moment to turn themselves into practical policemen in the Nazi manner. So that there was no clear-cut chain of command, and in the great Gestapo network which covered Europe it could never be predicted with any certainty which individual official would be found dealing directly and in detail with which particular offense.

The matter was complicated still further by the special position occupied by certain subsections of the office of the BdS. While the Gestapo was Section IVA, within the Gestapo was the usual range of subsections; and one of these, IVA 4b, which was the Jewish office, led a private existence of its own almost completely outside the normal hierarchy. The BdS had virtually no control or, indeed, sometimes no detailed knowledge of the activities of the junior official who, on paper, was a wholly subordinate officer, usually with the rank of S.S. captain. In all matters relating to the deportation and resettlement of Jews the departmental head of IVA 4b received his instructions directly from Berlin, from IVA 4b of the R.S.H.A., which was housed in a separate building and run by S.S. Colonel Eichmann. The chain of command here was rigid: Hitler—Himmler—Heydrich (later Kaltenbrunner)—Mueller—Eichmann—then straight out, by-passing the Higher S.S. and Police Leader, by-passing the BdS or other regional Sipo Chief, to Eichmann's local representative, who had virtually unlimited power.

Section IVA 4b in Paris, for instance, was run by an obscure and pedantic little creature called S.S. Captain Dannecker,
who was absolutely responsible for deporting the French Jews to the concentration camps and the gas chambers. He had a harder task than most of his colleagues in other lands because the French were difficult, and to the end he could never understand why even the most pro-German Vichy officials insisted on regarding French Jews as Frenchmen first and Jews afterwards. But, although he was a comparative failure, Dannecker had all the power of the Nazi State behind him. He did not have to work through his nominal chief, Colonel Knochen, though he frequently did so. When he required the assistance of the Army he simply went to General von Stuelpnagel and told him what he wanted. So that we have the remarkable spectacle of this fussy and terrible captain of the S.S. at one moment laying down the law to the elderly Field-Marshal, the next strolling down to the Velodrôme d'Hiver to supervise personally the round-up of unfortunates.

It was the same with Eichmann's emissaries everywhere. S.S. Captain Fuenten in Amsterdam, S.S. Captain Guenther in Prague, S.S. Captain Hunsche in Hungary, S.S. Major Krumey in Vienna, S.S. Captain Zoepff at The Hague, S.S. Captain Wisliceny in Slovakia, Greece, and Hungary again—all these, and many more besides, conducted their apalling operations nominally as subsection heads of the Gestapo, actually as the executive officers of a large-scale special operation directed from Berlin. Nor were Eichmann, himself, and his deputy, S.S. Major Brunner, content to sit at their desk. All these staff officers of the Gestapo seem to have been ridden by the demon of conscientiousness; and we find Eichmann careering about all over Europe to make sure that his instructions are understood, that no Jew shall escape the net, to keep his subordinates up to the mark, and to browbeat and argue with reluctant governments. This unremarkable lieutenant colonel was ready to bully, to flatter, or to lie. The Hungarians, for example, he bullied into sending two hundred fifty thousand Jews to his gas-chambers. But to the Slovaks, who showed concern, he lied, explaining that the Jews were simply to be resettled in special ghettos and would live in comfort and ease in their new homes.