What about the "ordinary men"?: The German order police and the Holocaust in the occupied Soviet Union

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Volumn 10, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 134-150

  Matthäus, Jürgen ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60950403244     PISSN: 87566583     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hgs/10.2.134     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Collins, 1992)
2. See Christopher Browning, "Ordinary Germans or Ordinary Men? A Reply to Critics" (unpublished paper given at the opening of the United States Holocaust Research Institute, 6 December 1993); Daniel J. Goldhagen, "The Evil of Banality," The New Republic (13 and 20 July 1992), pp. 49-52
3. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1996)
4. For some aspects of order police history, see Konrad Kwiet, "Auftakt zum Holocaust: Ein Polizeibatallion im Osteinsatz," in: Wolfgang Benz e.a. (eds.), Der Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Ideologie und Herrschaft (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1993), pp. 191-208
5. idem, "From the Diary of a Killing Unit," in: John Milfull (ed.), Why Germany? (Oxford: Berg, 1992), pp. 92-110
6. Andrej Angrick e.a., "'Da hätte man schon ein Tagebuch führen müssen.' Das Polizeibataillon 322 und die Judenmorde im Bereich der Heeresgruppe Mitte während des Sommers und Herbstes 1941," in: Helge Grabitz e.a. (eds.), Die Normalität des Verbrechens: Bilanz und Perspektiven der Forschung zu den nationalsozialistischen Gewaltverbrechen (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1994), pp. 325-385
7. Heiner Lichtenstein, Himmlers grüne Helfer: Die Schutz- und Ordnungspolizei im 'Dritten Reich' (Cologne: Bund, 1990)
8. Jürgen Matthäus, '"Reibungslos und planmäßig' - Die zweite Welle der Judenvernichtung im Generalkommissariat Weißruthenien (1942-1944)," in: Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 4 (Frankfurt/New York: Campus, 1995), pp. 254-274
9. There is no better indication of the lack of interest among historians in the history of the German order police than the fact that the book by Hans-Joachim Neufeldt, Jürgen Huck, and Georg Tessin, Zur Geschichte der Ordnungspolizei 1936-1945 (Koblenz: Bundesarchiv, 1957), is still used as a standard work of reference. While this study is useful to reconstruct details of formal organizational function and affiliation, it is totally inadequate in regard to the involvement of the order police in Nazi policy in general and the Holocaust in particular
10. See Ruth Bettina Birn, Die Höheren SS- und Polizeiführer: Himmlers Vertreter im Reich und in den besetzten Gebieten (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1986)
11. The tasks of the HSSPF are described by Angrick Polizeibatallion 322, pp. 330, 334-337
12. See Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrielr Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges: Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1938-1942 (Stuttgart: DVA, 1981)
13. On the decision-making process in the initial stage of "Operation Barbarossa" see Ralph Ogorreck, Die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD im Rahmen der Genesis der Endlösung (unpubl. Ph.D., Freie Universität Berlin, 1992)
14. Browning, Ordinary Men, pp. 11-12, mentions as the first involvement of order police units the killings by Police Battalion 309 in Bialystock on 27 June 1941
15. See Jürgen Matthäus, "Jenseits der Grenze - Die ersten Massenerschießungen von Juden in Litauen," Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft (February 1996), pp. 101-117
16. Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, vol. 15, p. 57
17. Hilberg, Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1990), vol. 2, p. 387
18. So far, little research has been done on the role of indigenous police units in the Soviet Union within the process of destruction (see Richard Breitman, "Himmlers Police Auxiliaries in the Occupied Soviet Territories," Simon Wiesenthal Center Annual 7 (1990), pp. 23-39. A study by Yehoshua Büchler, Local police units - Schutzmannschaften - in the Murder Campaign in the Soviet Union, is forthcoming
19. Browning, Ordinary Men, p. 24
20. Hilberg, Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, vol. 2, p. 387
21. For the transformation of German administrative policy in the Soviet Union see Norbert Müller e.a., Die besetzten Gebiete der UdSSR (Europa unterm Hakenkreuz, vol. 5; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1991)
22. Horst Boog e.a., Der Angriff auf die Sowjetunion (Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, vol.4; Stuttgart: DVA, 1983)
23. Timothy P. Mulligan, The Politics of Illusion and Empire: German Occupational Policy in the Soviet Union, 1942-1943 (New York: Praeger, 1988)
24. Jonathan Steinberg, "The Third Reich Reflected: German Civil Administration in the Occupied Soviet Union, 1941-4," English Historical Review 437 (June 1995), pp. 620-651
25. Under German rule, Galicia was incorporated into the Generalgouvernement and not - as were Western Byelorussia and the Ukraine - administered by the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. See Dieter Pohl, NS-Judenverfolgung in Ostgalizien 1941-1944: Die Organisierung eines staatlichen Massenverbrechens (unpubl. Ph.D., München: Ludwig-Maximilian- Universität, 1994)
26. For the second killing wave see Hilberg, Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, vol. 2, pp. 386-410
27. For the involvement of the Wehrmacht in genocidal policies in general and the Holocaust in particular see Christian Streit, Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941-1945, (Stuttgart: DVA, 1978)
28. Gerd R. Überschär and Wolfram Wette, Der deutsche Überfall auf die Sowjetunion: "Unternehmen Barbarossa 1941" (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1991)
29. and more recently the articles by Christian Streit and Jürgen Förster in David Cesarani (ed.), The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation (London/New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 85-118
30. West German public prosecutors who investigated the pattern of killings in the area of Baranovitchi estimated that gendarmes participated in mass executions in five localities with an overall estimate of at least 7,000 victims; see Zentrale Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen, Ludwigsburg (ZSL) 202 AR/Z 16/67 (Eibner-case), "Arbeitsvermerk," pp. 119-140, 193, 229-243, 249-260, 336-353)
31. Pohl, Ostgalizien, pp. 270-275
32. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners, pp. 226-231
33. Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry (New York/ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), p. 256
34. Phrase used by Strauch in his order for the liquidation of the Sluzk-ghetto in February 1943, published in Paul Kohl, "Ich wundere mich, daß ich noch lebe": Sowjetische Augenzeugen berichten (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1990), pp. 210f
35. See e.g. Yitzhak Arad, Ghetto in Flames: The Struggle and Destruction of the Jews in Vilna in the Holocaust (New York: KTAV Publishing House, 1982)
36. Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe Under Nazi Occupation (New York: Stein and Day, 1977)
37. See Nechama Tec, In the Lion's Den: The Life of Oswald Rufeisen (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990)
38. Christopher Browning, Ordinary Germans, p. 20, gives an example for a faked execution by German policemen. The phrase "shot according to martial law," in other cases "shot while trying to escape" ("auf der Flucht erschossen"), was used because formal regulations required the agreement of the SSPF to executions carried out by gendarmes
39. On German orders relating to anti-partisan warfare in the Soviet Union, see Reinhard Rürup (ed.), Der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion 1941-1945: Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: Argon, 1991), pp. 127-139. In October 1942, two months after he had been charged by Hitler with coordinating anti-partisan activities, Himmler appointed the HSSPF Russia-Center, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, plenipoteniary for the "Bandenkampf."
40. See Rürup, Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion, p. 139
41. Kohl, Sowjetische Augenzeugen, p. 107