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115-801: The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police was created by Heinrich Himmler in mid-August 1941 and put under the control of German Ordnungspolizei within General Government . The actual Reichskommissariat Ukraine was formed officially on 20 August 1941. The uniformed force was composed in large part of the former members of the Ukrainian People's Militia created by the OUN in June. There were two categories of German-controlled Ukrainian armed organisations. The first comprised mobile police units most often called Schutzmannschaft , or Schuma , organized on

230-609: A Völkisch youth group. There he met Rudolf Höss , who was later commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp , and Walther Darré , whose book The Peasantry as the Life Source of the Nordic Race caught Hitler's attention, leading to his later appointment as Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture. Darré was a firm believer in the superiority of the Nordic race , and his philosophy was a major influence on Himmler. Upon

345-537: A pretext for the invasion of Poland in 1939, Himmler, Heydrich, and Heinrich Müller masterminded and carried out a false flag project code-named Operation Himmler . German soldiers dressed in Polish uniforms undertook border skirmishes which deceptively suggested Polish aggression against Germany. The incidents were then used in Nazi propaganda to justify the invasion of Poland , the opening event of World War II. At

460-645: A Prussian secret police force, the Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo in 1933 and appointed Rudolf Diels as its head. Göring, concerned that Diels was not ruthless enough to use the Gestapo effectively to counteract the power of the SA, handed over its control to Himmler on 20 April 1934. Also on that date, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of all German police outside Prussia. This was a radical departure from long-standing German practice that law enforcement

575-588: A State Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior. In this role, Himmler was still nominally subordinate to Frick. In practice, however, the police were now effectively a division of the SS, and hence independent of Frick's control. This move gave Himmler operational control over Germany's entire detective force. He also gained authority over all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies, which were amalgamated into

690-468: A good old strain which has been adulterated and debased; we started from the principles of plant selection and then proceeded quite unashamedly to weed out the men whom we did not think we could use for the build-up of the SS." Few dared mention that by his own standards, Himmler did not meet his own ideals. Himmler's organised, bookish intellect served him well as he began setting up different SS departments. In 1931 he appointed Reinhard Heydrich chief of

805-439: A hundred were immediately re-captured and killed. Some of the escapees joined partisan units operating in the area. The camp was dismantled by December 1943. The Nazis also targeted Romani (Gypsies) as "asocial" and "criminals". By 1935, they were confined into special camps away from ethnic Germans. In 1938, Himmler issued an order in which he said that the "Gypsy question" would be determined by "race". Himmler believed that

920-488: A life of politics. He was questioned by the police about his role in the putsch but was not charged because of insufficient evidence. However, he lost his job, was unable to find employment as a farm manager, and had to move in with his parents in Munich. Frustrated by these failures, he became ever more irritable, aggressive, and opinionated, alienating both friends and family members. In 1923–24, Himmler, while searching for

1035-538: A military career. Although he was not successful, he was able to extend his involvement in the paramilitary scene in Munich. It was at this time that he first met Ernst Röhm , an early member of the Nazi Party and co-founder of the Sturmabteilung ("Storm Battalion"; SA). Himmler admired Röhm because he was a decorated combat soldier, and at his suggestion Himmler joined his antisemitic nationalist group,

1150-697: A positive impetus: in this case that means the reconstruction of the German heritage in the widest and most comprehensive sense. In early 1937, Himmler had his personal staff work with academics to create a framework to replace Christianity within the Germanic cultural heritage. The project gave rise to the Deutschrechtliches Institut, headed by Professor Karl Eckhardt, at the University of Bonn . When Hitler and his army chiefs asked for

1265-609: A reputation for good organisational skills as well as for selecting highly competent subordinates, such as Reinhard Heydrich . From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of the Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police) and Minister of the Interior, which gave him oversight of all internal and external police and security forces (including the Gestapo ). He also controlled the Waffen-SS , a branch of the SS that served in combat alongside

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1380-630: A speech to the party elite—the Gauleiters and Reichsleiters —Himmler referred explicitly to the "extermination" ( German : Ausrottung ) of the Jewish people. A translated excerpt from the speech of 4 October reads: I also want to refer here very frankly to a very difficult matter. We can now very openly talk about this among ourselves, and yet we will never discuss this publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on 30 June 1934 , to perform our duty as ordered and put comrades who had failed up against

1495-433: A student of agriculture and a farmer, Himmler was acquainted with the principles of selective breeding , which he proposed to apply to humans. He believed that he could engineer the German populace, for example, through eugenics , to be Nordic in appearance within several decades of the end of the war. On 4 October 1943, during a secret meeting with top SS officials in the city of Poznań (Posen), and on 6 October 1943, in

1610-594: A useful face of the party, and he later admired and even worshipped him. To consolidate and advance his own position in the Nazi Party, Himmler took advantage of the disarray in the party following Hitler's arrest in the wake of the Beer Hall Putsch. From mid-1924 he worked under Gregor Strasser as a party secretary and propaganda assistant. Travelling all over Bavaria agitating for the party, he gave speeches and distributed literature. Placed in charge of

1725-415: A victim. He went very green and pale and swayed. Karl Wolff jumped forward, held him steady and led him away from the grave. Nauseated and shaken by the experience, he was concerned about the impact such actions would have on the mental health of his SS men. He decided that alternate methods of killing should be found. On his orders, by early 1942 the camp at Auschwitz had been greatly expanded, including

1840-777: A vital role in the execution of the Holocaust. Professor Alexander Statiev of the Canadian University of Waterloo writes that Ukrainian Auxiliary Police were the major perpetrator of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union based on native origins, and those police units participated in the extermination of 150,000 Jews in the area of Volhynia alone. German historian Dieter Pohl in The Shoah in Ukraine writes that

1955-432: A world view, came to abandon Catholicism and focused on the occult and in antisemitism. Germanic mythology, reinforced by occult ideas, became a religion for him. Himmler found the Nazi Party appealing because its political positions agreed with his own views. Initially, he was not swept up by Hitler's charisma or the cult of Führer worship. However, as he learned more about Hitler through his reading, he began to regard him as

2070-522: Is a splendid Jew. But none has observed it, endured it. Most of you here know what it means when 100 corpses lie next to each other, when there are 500 or when there are 1,000. To have endured this and at the same time to have remained a decent person—with exceptions due to human weaknesses—has made us tough, and is a glorious chapter that has not and will not be spoken of. Because we know how difficult it would be for us if we still had Jews as secret saboteurs, agitators and rabble-rousers in every city, what with

2185-480: The Bund Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag Society). In 1922, Himmler became more interested in the " Jewish question ", with his diary entries containing an increasing number of antisemitic remarks and recording a number of discussions about Jews with his classmates. His reading lists, as recorded in his diary, were dominated by antisemitic pamphlets, German myths, and occult tracts. After

2300-572: The Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe (German Economic Enterprise) in 1940. Under the auspices of the SS Economy and Administration Head Office, this holding company owned housing corporations, factories, and publishing houses. Pohl was unscrupulous and quickly exploited the companies for personal gain. In contrast, Himmler was honest in matters of money and business. In 1938, as part of his preparations for war, Hitler ended

2415-788: The Sonderdienst , made up of Volksdeutsche ; the Kripo (Criminal police); Bahnschutz (railroad and transport police); and the Werkschutz , who kept order and guarded industrial plants. They were supported by the Ukrainian Protection Police and the Ukrainian Order Police. In the newly formed Reichskommissariat Ukraine the auxiliary police forces were generally named Schutzmannschaft , and amounted to more than 35,000 men throughout all of

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2530-718: The Wehrmacht in World War II . As the principal enforcer of the Nazis' racial policies , Himmler was responsible for operating concentration and extermination camps as well as forming the Einsatzgruppen death squads in German-occupied Europe . In this capacity, he played a central role in the genocide of an estimated 5.5–6 million Jews and the deaths of millions of other victims during

2645-711: The Einsatzgruppen rounded up and killed Jews and others deemed undesirable by the Nazi state. Hitler was sent frequent reports. In addition, 2.8 million Soviet prisoners of war died of starvation, mistreatment or executions in just eight months of 1941–42. As many as 500,000 Soviet prisoners of war died or were executed in Nazi concentration camps over the course of the war; most of them were shot or gassed . By early 1941, following Himmler's orders, ten concentration camps had been constructed in which inmates were subjected to forced labour. Jews from all over Germany and

2760-596: The General Government . Notably, the District of Galicia was a separate administrative unit from the actual Reichskommissariat Ukraine . They were not connected with each other politically. The UP formations appeared as well further east in German-occupied Soviet Ukraine in significant towns and cities such as Kyiv. The urban based forces were subordinated to the city's German Commander of State protection police ( Schutzpolizei or Schupo );

2875-709: The German alliance with China and entered into an agreement with the more modern Japan. That same year, Austria was unified with Nazi Germany in the Anschluss , and the Munich Agreement gave Nazi Germany control over the Sudetenland , part of Czechoslovakia . Hitler's primary motivations for war included obtaining additional Lebensraum ("living space") for the Germanic peoples, who were considered racially superior according to Nazi ideology . A second goal

2990-656: The Heer (army) into Poland, and by the end of 1939 they had murdered some 65,000 intellectuals and other civilians . Militias and Heer units also took part in these killings. Under Himmler's orders via the RSHA, these squads were also tasked with rounding up Jews and others for placement in ghettos and concentration camps. Germany subsequently invaded Denmark and Norway , the Netherlands , and France , and began bombing Great Britain in preparation for Operation Sea Lion ,

3105-462: The Netherlands , Norway , Belgium , Denmark and Finland . Spain and Italy also provided men for Waffen-SS units. Among western countries, the number of volunteers varied from a high of 25,000 from the Netherlands to 300 each from Sweden and Switzerland . From the east, the highest number of men came from Lithuania (50,000) and the lowest from Bulgaria (600). After 1943 most men from

3220-525: The OUN-B . When they failed, Kedyw began an action called "Nieszpory" ( Vespers ) where 11 policemen were shot in retaliation and the murders of young Poles in Lviv stopped. For many who joined the police force, enlistment served as an opportunity to receive military training and direct access to weapons. Bandera 's OUN leadership on 20 March 1943 issued secret instructions ordering their members who had joined

3335-628: The University of New Hampshire at Manchester in Manchester, New Hampshire . Born in the region of Volhynia in occupied Poland , Piotrowski and his family left in August 1943. He earned his PhD in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1973. Piotrowski taught courses at the University of New Hampshire in anthropology and the Holocaust . Poland’s Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in

3450-493: The "principle of Christian mercy", both of which he saw as dangerous obstacles to his planned battle with "subhumans". In 1937, Himmler declared: We live in an era of the ultimate conflict with Christianity. It is part of the mission of the SS to give the German people in the next half century the non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives. This task does not consist solely in overcoming an ideological opponent but must be accompanied at every step by

3565-558: The British Special Operations Executive for the mission to kill Heydrich. During the two funeral services, Himmler—the chief mourner—took charge of Heydrich's two young sons, and he gave the eulogy in Berlin. On 9 June, after discussions with Himmler and Karl Hermann Frank , Hitler ordered brutal reprisals for Heydrich's death. Over 13,000 people were arrested, and the village of Lidice was razed to

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3680-461: The German auxiliary police to desert with their weapons and join with the military detachment of OUN (B) units in Volyn . The number of trained and armed policemen who in spring 1943 joined the ranks of the future Ukrainian Insurgent Army were estimated to be 10,000. This process in some places involved engaging in armed conflict with German forces as they tried to prevent desertion. By 1942, after

3795-684: The Holocaust . A day before the launch of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, Himmler commissioned the drafting of Generalplan Ost , which was approved by Hitler in May 1942 and implemented by the Nazi regime, resulting in the deaths of approximately 14 million people in Eastern Europe . In the last years of the Second World War , Hitler appointed Himmler as Commander of the Replacement Army and General Plenipotentiary for

3910-744: The Jews—for the economic hardships. In September 1930, Himmler was first elected as a deputy to the Reichstag . In the 1932 election, the Nazis won 37.3 percent of the vote and 230 seats in the Reichstag. Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933, heading a short-lived coalition of his Nazis and the German National People's Party . The new cabinet initially included only three members of

4025-470: The Munich Police. Himmler appointed Heydrich commander of Department IV, the political police . Thereafter, Himmler and Heydrich took over the political police of state after state; soon only Prussia was controlled by Göring. Effective 1 January 1933, Hitler promoted Himmler to the rank of SS- Obergruppenführer , equal in rank to the senior SA commanders. On 2 June Himmler, along with the heads of

4140-485: The Nazi Party in 1923. In 1925, he joined the SS, a small paramilitary arm of the Nazi Party that served as a bodyguard unit for Adolf Hitler . Subsequently, Himmler rose steadily through the SS's ranks to become Reichsführer-SS by 1929. Under Himmler's leadership, the SS grew from a 290-man battalion into one of the most powerful institutions within Nazi Germany. Over the course of his career, Himmler acquired

4255-622: The Nazi Party: Hitler, Hermann Göring as minister without portfolio and Minister of the Interior for Prussia , and Wilhelm Frick as Reich Interior Minister . Less than a month later, the Reichstag building was set on fire . Hitler took advantage of this event, forcing Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree , which suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial. The Enabling Act , passed by

4370-445: The Nazi regime; most estimates range closer to 6 million. Himmler visited the camp at Sobibór in early 1943, by which time 250,000 people had been killed at that location alone. After witnessing a gassing, he gave 28 people promotions and ordered the operation of the camp to be wound down. In a prisoner revolt that October, the remaining prisoners killed most of the guards and SS personnel. Several hundred prisoners escaped; about

4485-415: The Nazis came to power, Himmler set up the first official concentration camp at Dachau . Hitler had stated that he did not want it to be just another prison or detention camp. Himmler appointed Theodor Eicke , a convicted felon and ardent Nazi, to run the camp in June 1933. Eicke devised a system that was used as a model for future camps throughout Germany. Its features included isolation of victims from

4600-623: The Order Police in occupied Kraków . The Ukrainian auxiliary police in the new District of Galicia fell under the command of the German office for the General Government. An actual ethnic Ukrainian command centre did not exist. The top Ukrainian police officer, Vladimir Pitulay, rose to the rank of major and became the district commandant ( Major der Ukrainische Polizei und Kommandeur ) in Lemberg (now Lviv). A police school

4715-485: The Reichstag on 23 March 1933, gave the Cabinet—in practice, Hitler—full legislative powers, and the country became a de facto dictatorship. On 1 August 1934, Hitler's cabinet passed a law which stipulated that upon Hindenburg's death, the office of president would be abolished and its powers merged with those of the chancellor. Hindenburg died the next morning, and Hitler became both head of state and head of government under

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4830-505: The Romani were originally Aryan but had become a mixed race; only the "racially pure" were to be allowed to live. In 1939, Himmler ordered thousands of Gypsies to be sent to the Dachau concentration camp and by 1942, ordered all Romani sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. Himmler was one of the main architects of the Holocaust, using his deep belief in the racist Nazi ideology to justify

4945-575: The SS as a separate organisation, although it was officially still subordinate to the SA. To gain political power, the Nazi Party took advantage of the economic downturn during the Great Depression . The coalition government of the Weimar Republic was unable to improve the economy, so many voters turned to the political extreme, which included the Nazi Party. Hitler used populist rhetoric, including blaming scapegoats—particularly

5060-883: The Second Republic, 1918–1947 , first published in 1998, concerns the topic of Poland's history in the interwar period as well as in World War II , with particular focus on the uneasy relations between various ethnic groups of the Second Polish Republic . Genocide and Rescue in Wolyn , first published in 2000, concerns the topic of massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia during WWII. Bogdan Musiał , reviewing for Zeitschrift für Ostmitteleuropa-Forschung in 2001, found it to be an unbiased and informative work; however, he noted that there

5175-750: The Soviet Empire and destroy the Bolshevik intelligentsia and leadership. His special directive, the "Guidelines in Special Spheres re Directive No. 21 (Operation Barbarossa)", read: "In the operations area of the army, the Reichsführer-SS has been given special tasks on the orders of the Führer , in order to prepare the political administration. These tasks arise from the forthcoming final struggle of two opposing political systems. Within

5290-419: The addition of gas chambers , where victims were killed using the pesticide Zyklon B . Himmler visited the camp in person on 17 and 18 July 1942. He was given a demonstration of a mass killing using the gas chamber in Bunker 2 and toured the building site of the new IG Farben plant being constructed at the nearby town of Monowitz . By the end of the war, at least 5.5 million Jews had been killed by

5405-564: The administration of the Third Reich ( Generalbevollmächtigter für die Verwaltung ). He was later given command of the Army Group Upper Rhine and the Army Group Vistula . However, after he failed to achieve his assigned objectives, Hitler replaced him in these posts. Realising the war was lost, Himmler attempted, without Hitler's knowledge, to open peace talks with the western Allies in March 1945. When Hitler learned of this on 28 April, he dismissed Himmler from all his posts and ordered his arrest. Thereafter, Himmler attempted to go into hiding but

5520-439: The arrangements with Frick. Himmler and Heydrich had greater bargaining power, as they were allied with Frick's old enemy, Göring. Heydrich drew up a set of proposals and Himmler sent him to meet with Frick. An angry Frick then consulted with Hitler, who told him to agree to the proposals. Frick acquiesced, and on 17 June 1936 Hitler decreed the unification of all police forces in the Reich and named Himmler Chief of German Police and

5635-431: The authority of Himmler, the Waffen-SS developed a fully militarised structure of command and operations. It grew from three regiments to over 38 divisions during World War II, serving alongside the Heer (army), but never being formally part of it. In addition to his military ambitions, Himmler established the beginnings of a parallel economy under the umbrella of the SS. To this end, administrator Oswald Pohl set up

5750-428: The auxiliary police was active during killing operations by the Germans already in the first phases of the German occupation. The auxiliary police registered the Jews, conducted raids and guarded ghettos, loaded convoys to execution sites and cordoned them off. There is a possibility that some 300 auxiliary policemen from Kyiv helped organize the massacre in Babi Yar . They also took part in the massacre in Dnipro , where

5865-470: The battalion level and which engaged in the murder of Jews and in security warfare in most areas of Ukraine. It was subordinated directly to the German Commander of the Order Police for the area. The second category was the local police force (approximately, a constabulary), called simply the Ukrainian Police (UP) by the German administration, which the SS raised most successfully in the District of Galicia (formed 1 August 1941) extending south-east from

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5980-435: The beginning of the war against Poland, Hitler authorised the killing of Polish civilians, including Jews and ethnic Poles. The Einsatzgruppen (SS task forces) had originally been formed by Heydrich to secure government papers and offices in areas taken over by Germany before World War II. Authorised by Hitler and under the direction of Himmler and Heydrich, the Einsatzgruppen units—now repurposed as death squads —followed

6095-516: The benefits of German citizenship. These laws were among the first race-based measures instituted by the Third Reich. Himmler and Heydrich wanted to extend the power of the SS; thus, they urged Hitler to form a national police force overseen by the SS, to guard Nazi Germany against its many enemies at the time—real and imagined. Interior Minister Frick also wanted a national police force, but one controlled by him, with Kurt Daluege as his police chief. Hitler left it to Himmler and Heydrich to work out

6210-426: The bombings, with the burden and with the hardships of the war. If the Jews were still part of the German nation, we would most likely arrive now at the state we were at in 1916 and '17 ... Tadeusz Piotrowski (sociologist) Tadeusz Piotrowski or Thaddeus Piotrowski (born 10 February 1940) is a Polish-American sociologist and author. He is a professor of sociology in the Social Science Division of

6325-468: The borders of Germany to the east by one thousand kilometres (600 miles). Himmler expected that it would take twenty to thirty years to complete the plan, at a cost of 67 billion  ℛ︁ℳ︁ . Himmler stated openly: "It is a question of existence, thus it will be a racial struggle of pitiless severity, in the course of which 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews will perish through military actions and crises of food supply." Himmler declared that

6440-414: The camps housed political opponents; over time, undesirable members of German society—criminals, vagrants, deviants—were placed in the camps as well. In 1936 Himmler wrote in the pamphlet "The SS as an Anti-Bolshevist Fighting Organization" that the SS were to fight against the "Jewish-Bolshevik revolution of subhumans". A Hitler decree issued in December 1937 allowed for the incarceration of anyone deemed by

6555-401: The collaboration between Himmler and Heydrich, and Himmler was proud to have SS control over a state. Despite having direct access to Hitler, Heydrich's loyalty to Himmler remained firm. With Hitler's approval, Himmler re-established the Einsatzgruppen in the lead-up to the planned invasion of the Soviet Union. In March 1941, Hitler addressed his army leaders, detailing his intention to smash

6670-451: The east were conscripts . The performance of the eastern Waffen-SS units was, as a whole, sub-standard. In late 1941, Hitler named Heydrich as Deputy Reich Protector of the newly established Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . Heydrich began to racially classify the Czechs, deporting many to concentration camps. Members of a swelling resistance were shot, earning Heydrich the nickname "the Butcher of Prague". This appointment strengthened

6785-434: The ethnic composition of Auxiliary Police reflected the demographics of the land and included not only Ukrainians but also Russians from among the Soviet POWs, Poles drafted from the local population, and German Volksdeutsche of all nationalities. However, Browning ( Ordinary Men ) and Lower both insist that, for the German administration, nobody but the "Ukrainians and local ethnic Germans could be relied upon to assist with

6900-431: The extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. "The Jewish people is being exterminated", every Party member will tell you, "perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!, a small matter." And then they turn up, the upstanding 80 million Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say the others are all swines, but this particular one

7015-421: The field command noted that the cooperation ran "smoothly in every way". Cases where local commandants ordered murder of Jews using police force are known. In killings of Jews in Kryvyi Rih the "entire Ukrainian auxiliary police" was put to use. Defining nationality of Ukrainian policemen using present-day classifications is problematic, because in German-occupied eastern Poland (see: District of Galicia ) there

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7130-406: The framework of these tasks, the Reichsführer-SS acts independently and on his own responsibility." Hitler thus intended to prevent internal friction like that occurring earlier in Poland in 1939, when several German Army generals (including Johannes Blaskowitz ) had attempted to bring Einsatzgruppen leaders to trial for the murders they had committed. Following the army into the Soviet Union,

7245-453: The ground ; its male inhabitants and all adults in the village of Ležáky were murdered. At least 1,300 people were executed by firing squads. Himmler took over leadership of the RSHA and stepped up the pace of the killing of Jews in Aktion Reinhard ( Operation Reinhard ), named in Heydrich's honour. He ordered the Aktion Reinhard camps—three extermination camps —to be constructed at Bełżec , Sobibór , and Treblinka . Initially

7360-556: The heart of Ukraine were numbered from 101 to 200. The ones operating in Russia Center and in Byelorussia were numbered from 51 to 100. An exception was Battalion 201 , which was formed not in Galicia but in Frankfurt an der Oder in October 1941, from members of the disbanded Nachtigall Battalion , formed originally by OUN-B . in August, as 30th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS . Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler ( German: [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈluːɪtpɔlt ˈhɪmlɐ] ; 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945)

7475-435: The highest formal SS rank, equivalent to a field marshal in the army. The SA was converted into a sports and training organisation. On 15 September 1935, Hitler presented two laws—known as the Nuremberg Laws —to the Reichstag. The laws banned marriage between non-Jewish and Jewish Germans and forbade the employment of non-Jewish women under the age of 45 in Jewish households. The laws also deprived so-called "non-Aryans" of

7590-436: The inferior positions were occupied by the local inhabitants and POWs. On the contrary, the OUN had no influence on the Ukrainian criminal police ( Sicherheitsschutzmannschaft ), which consisted of former Soviet jurists, communists , militsioners , and Volksdeutsche . Moreover, some of them hunted for "colleagues" after the German authorities started anti-OUN repression on the edge of 1941-42. Despite ideological differences,

7705-436: The killing". Also, according to Aleksandr Prusin most members were ethnically Ukrainian, hence the name or the force. In some cases, the personnel of the Ukrainian auxiliary police depended on the institution to which it subordinated. For example, in Kyiv, superior posts in the Ukrainian guard police ( Schutzmannschaft-Einzeldienst ) hierarchy were frequently held by Ukrainian People's Army veterans and members of OUN-M ;

7820-422: The leadership roles. Many of those who joined the ranks of the police had served as militiamen under Soviet rule since the invasion of Poland in 1939. Professor Tadeusz Piotrowski wrote that the majority of Ukrainische Hilfspolizei in Galicia came from OUN -B, which was confirmed by Professor John-Paul Himka as an important transitional stage of OUN involvement in the Holocaust. According to Andrew Gregorovich,

7935-427: The military administration was replaced with the regular Gendarmerie in occupied East, the strength of the Schutzmannschaft had increased tenfold. However, the new recruits were mostly not in the battalions. Instead, they took up the individual post duty as militias in place of former local Ordnungsdienst . The actual Security Battalions (or Schumas, German : Schutzmannschaft Bataillone ) comprised only one-third of

8050-411: The murder of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau on 24 June, Himmler's political views veered towards the radical right, and he took part in demonstrations against the Treaty of Versailles . Hyperinflation was raging, and his parents could no longer afford to educate all three sons. Disappointed by his failure to make a career in the military and his parents' inability to finance his doctoral studies, he

8165-430: The murder of millions of victims. Longerich surmises that Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich designed the Holocaust during a period of intensive meetings and exchanges in April–May 1942. The Nazis planned to kill Polish intellectuals and restrict non-Germans in the General Government and conquered territories to a fourth-grade education. They further wanted to breed a master race of racially pure Nordic Aryans in Germany. As

8280-539: The new Ordnungspolizei (Orpo: "order police"), which became a branch of the SS under Daluege. Shortly thereafter, Himmler created the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo: criminal police) as an umbrella organisation for all criminal investigation agencies in Germany. The Kripo was merged with the Gestapo into the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo: security police), under Heydrich's command. In September 1939, following

8395-536: The new Ic Service (intelligence service), which was renamed the Sicherheitsdienst (SD: Security Service) in 1932. He later officially appointed Heydrich his deputy. The two men had a good working relationship and a mutual respect. In 1933, they began to remove the SS from SA control. Along with Interior Minister Frick, they hoped to create a unified German police force. In March 1933, Reich Governor of Bavaria Franz Ritter von Epp appointed Himmler chief of

8510-668: The notion that people who were racially inferior had no right to live, date back to the earliest days of the party; Hitler discusses this in Mein Kampf . Around the time of the German declaration of war on the United States in December 1941, Hitler resolved that the Jews of Europe were to be "exterminated" . Heydrich arranged a meeting, held on 20 January 1942 at Wannsee , a suburb of Berlin. Attended by top Nazi officials, it

8625-557: The occupied territories were deported to the camps or confined to ghettos. As the Germans were pushed back from Moscow in December 1941, signalling that the expected quick defeat of the Soviet Union had failed to materialize, Hitler and other Nazi officials realised that mass deportations to the east would no longer be possible. As a result, instead of deportation, many Jews in Europe were destined for death. Nazi racial policies, including

8740-462: The occupied territories, with 5000 in Galicia. The names of battalions reflected their geographic jurisdiction. The make-up of the officer corps was representative of Germany's foreign policy. Professor Wendy Lower from Towson University wrote that although Ukrainians greatly outnumbered other non-Germans in the auxiliary police, only the ethnically German Volksdeutsche from Ukraine were given

8855-735: The other two Nazi paramilitary organizations, the SA and the Hitler Youth , was named a Reichsleiter , the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party. On 10 July, he was named to the Prussian State Council . On 2 October 1933, he became a founding member of Hans Frank 's Academy for German Law at its inaugural meeting. Himmler further established the SS Race and Settlement Main Office ( Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt or RuSHA). He appointed Darré as its first chief, with

8970-776: The outbreak of World War II, Himmler formed the SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA: Reich Security Main Office) to bring the SiPo (which included the Gestapo and Kripo) and the SD together under one umbrella. He again placed Heydrich in command. Under Himmler's leadership, the SS developed its own military branch, the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT), which later evolved into the Waffen-SS . Nominally under

9085-508: The outside world, elaborate roll calls and work details, the use of force and executions to exact obedience, and a strict disciplinary code for the guards. Uniforms were issued for prisoners and guards alike; the guards' uniforms had a special Totenkopf insignia on their collars. By the end of 1934, Himmler took control of the camps under the aegis of the SS, creating a separate division, the SS-Totenkopfverbände . Initially

9200-474: The overall strength of the formation. As a matter of course, the static police wore black uniforms from the pre-war German stock which was no longer used and kept in storage. The black uniforms of the former Allgemeine-SS including their characteristic field caps were simply stripped of German insignia and given to Schutzmannschaft to use with the new patches. Gradually, the mobile units were issued field-grey uniforms (pictured). The desired size of each battalion

9315-597: The party office in Lower Bavaria by Strasser from late 1924, he was responsible for integrating the area's membership with the Nazi Party under Hitler when the party was re-founded in February 1925. That same year, he joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) as an SS-Führer (SS-Leader); his SS number was 168. The SS, initially part of the much larger SA, was formed in 1923 for Hitler's personal protection and

9430-475: The party, and following his strong need for control, he developed an elaborate bureaucracy. In September 1927, Himmler told Hitler of his vision to transform the SS into a loyal, powerful, racially pure elite unit. Convinced that Himmler was the man for the job, Hitler appointed him Deputy Reichsführer-SS , with the rank of SS-Oberführer . Around this time, Himmler joined the Artaman League ,

9545-539: The personnel of these two police institutions cooperated in the arrests of Jews, communists, and other "political enemies" of the German authorities. The total number of all Schutzmannschaft employees in Kyiv fluctuated between 1,800 - 2,000 (March 1943). The auxiliary police were directly under the command of the Germanic SS , the Einsatzgruppen , and military administration. The Ukrainian auxiliary police played

9660-775: The planned invasion of the United Kingdom. On 21 June 1941, the day before invasion of the Soviet Union , Himmler commissioned the preparation of the Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East); the plan was approved by Hitler in May 1942. It called for the Baltic States , Poland, Western Ukraine , and Byelorussia to be conquered and resettled by ten million German citizens. The current residents—some 31 million people—would be expelled further east, starved, or used for forced labour. The plan would have extended

9775-480: The racial investigation, the person concerned was excluded from the SS. Each man was issued a Sippenbuch , a genealogical record detailing his genetic history. Himmler expected that each SS marriage should produce at least four children, thus creating a pool of genetically superior prospective SS members. The programme had disappointing results; less than 40 per cent of SS men married and each produced only about one child. In March 1933, less than three months after

9890-446: The rank of SS- Gruppenführer . The department implemented racial policies and monitored the "racial integrity" of the SS membership. SS men were carefully vetted for their racial background. On 31 December 1931, Himmler introduced the "marriage order", which required SS men wishing to marry to produce family trees proving that both families were of Aryan descent to 1800. If any non-Aryan forebears were found in either family tree during

10005-502: The regime to be an undesirable member of society. This included Jews, Gypsies , communists, and those persons of any other cultural, racial , political, or religious affiliation deemed by the Nazis to be Untermensch (sub-human). Thus, the camps became a mechanism for social and racial engineering. By the outbreak of World War II in autumn 1939, there were six camps housing some 27,000 inmates. Death tolls were high. In early 1934, Hitler and other Nazi leaders became concerned that Röhm

10120-489: The reserve battalion of the 11th Bavarian Regiment in December 1917. His brother, Gebhard, served on the western front and saw combat, receiving the Iron Cross and eventually being promoted to lieutenant. In November 1918, while Himmler was still in training, the war ended with Germany's defeat, denying him the opportunity to become an officer or see combat. After his discharge on 18 December, he returned to Landshut. After

10235-558: The resignation of SS commander Erhard Heiden in January 1929, Himmler assumed the position of Reichsführer-SS with Hitler's approval; he still carried out his duties at propaganda headquarters. One of his first responsibilities was to organise SS participants at the Nuremberg Rally that September. Over the next year, Himmler grew the SS from a force of about 290 men to about 3,000. By 1930 Himmler had persuaded Hitler to run

10350-426: The rural police posts were subordinated to the area German Commander of Gendarmerie. The Schupo and Gendarmerie structures were themselves subordinated to the area Commander of Order Police. The local municipal police force (UP) in the occupied Ukrainian SSR came into existence right after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa . It was the result of an order issued on 27 July 1941 by the German commander in chief of

10465-516: The school later remembered him as studious and awkward in social situations. Himmler's diary, which he kept intermittently from the age of 10, shows that he took a keen interest in current events, dueling, and "the serious discussion of religion and sex". In 1915, he began training with the Landshut Cadet Corps . His father used his connections with the royal family to get Himmler accepted as an officer candidate, and he enlisted with

10580-485: The title Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor). The Nazi Party's rise to power provided Himmler and the SS an unfettered opportunity to thrive. By 1933, the SS numbered 52,000 members. Strict membership requirements ensured that all members were of Hitler's Aryan Herrenvolk ("Aryan master race"). Applicants were vetted for Nordic qualities—in Himmler's words, "like a nursery gardener trying to reproduce

10695-473: The topic of forced migrations. Gifford Malone, a US diplomat writing in History: Reviews of New Books , found the volume to be a well written and moving account. Piotr Wróbel considers Piotrowski's works to be "highly polemical and controversial", similar to those by Richard C. Lukas and Marek Jan Chodakiewicz . According to Ukrainian historian Andrii Bolianovskyi , Piotrowski's studies on

10810-530: The towns of Szczepiatyn , Dyniska , Tarnoszyn , Niemstów , and Korczów . He was sentenced to death in Poland in 1978. After being denied clemency, Maslij was hanged at Mokotów Prison on 20 August 1979. On 13 November 1942, members of the Ukrainische Hilfspolizei robbed and executed 32 Poles and 1 Jew in the village of Obórki ( pl ), located in prewar Wołyń Voivodeship . After the crime

10925-453: The vanguard in overcoming Christianity and restoring a 'Germanic' way of living" as part of preparations for the coming conflict between "humans and subhumans". Longerich wrote that, while the Nazi movement as a whole launched itself against Jews and Communists, "by linking de-Christianisation with re-Germanization, Himmler had provided the SS with a goal and purpose all of its own". Himmler was vehemently opposed to Christian sexual morality and

11040-458: The victims were killed with gas vans or by firing squad, but these methods proved impracticable for an operation of this scale. In August 1941, Himmler attended the shooting of 100 Jews at Minsk . A "military virgin" this was the first time he heard a shot fired in anger or seen dead people, and in Minsk while looking into the open grave his coat and perhaps his face were splashed by the brains of

11155-529: The village was burned down. On 16 December 1942, the Ukrainian policemen, led by Germans, killed 360 Poles in Jezierce (former powiat Rivne ). In Lviv , in late February and March 1944, the Ukrainische Hilfspolizei arrested a number of young men of Polish nationality. Many of them were later found dead and their Identity documents stolen. The Government Delegation for Poland started negotiations with

11270-418: The wall and execute them, we also never spoke about it, nor will we ever speak about it. Let us thank God that we had within us enough self-evident fortitude never to discuss it among us, and we never talked about it. Every one of us was horrified, and yet every one clearly understood that we would do it next time, when the order is given and when it becomes necessary. I am talking about the "Jewish evacuation":

11385-552: The war in the east was a pan-European crusade to defend the traditional values of old Europe from the "Godless Bolshevik hordes". Constantly struggling with the Wehrmacht for recruits, Himmler solved this problem through the creation of Waffen-SS units composed of Germanic folk groups taken from the Balkans and eastern Europe. Equally vital were recruits from among the Germanic considered peoples of northern and western Europe, in

11500-605: The war, Himmler completed his grammar-school education. From 1919 to 1922, he studied agriculture at the Munich Technische Hochschule (now Technical University Munich ) following a brief apprenticeship on a farm and a subsequent illness. Although many regulations that discriminated against non-Christians—including Jews and other minority groups—had been eliminated during the unification of Germany in 1871, antisemitism continued to exist and thrive in Germany and other parts of Europe. Himmler

11615-592: Was a German politician who was the 4th Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the German Nazi Party , and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany . He is primarily known for being a principal architect of the Holocaust . After serving in a reserve battalion during the First World War without seeing combat, Himmler went on to join

11730-633: Was a lack of engagement with the historical and political context of the events. The Polish Deportees of World War II , first published in 2004, concerns the topic of mass deportations of Poles following the Soviet invasion and occupation of Eastern Poland in 1939. Anna Jaroszynska-Kirchmann in her review of this book for the Journal of Cold War Studies wrote that the book is "an excellent teaching tool" that "will likely be of great interest" to scholars interested in either modern history of that region or

11845-450: Was a state and local matter. Heydrich, named chief of the Gestapo by Himmler on 22 April 1934, also continued as head of the SD. Hitler decided on 21 June that Röhm and the SA leadership had to be eliminated. He sent Göring to Berlin on 29 June, to meet with Himmler and Heydrich to plan the action. Hitler took charge in Munich, where Röhm was arrested; he gave Röhm the choice to commit suicide or be shot. When Röhm refused to kill himself, he

11960-540: Was about 500 soldiers divided into three companies of 140-150 men each, with 50 staff members. The logistical problems with securing enough uniforms for all of them continued until late 1942. For the weapons, the most widely used were captured Russian military rifles and pistols. Machine guns remained scarce until the latter stages of the war. Most battalions were assigned block numbers based on ethnic and national makeup for ease of recognition. Those in Russia South and

12075-531: Was antisemitic by the time he went to university, but not exceptionally so; students at his school would avoid their Jewish classmates. He remained a devout Catholic while a student and spent most of his leisure time with members of his fencing fraternity, the "League of Apollo", the president of which was Jewish. Himmler maintained a polite demeanor with him and with other Jewish members of the fraternity, in spite of his growing antisemitism. During his second year at university, Himmler redoubled his attempts to pursue

12190-591: Was captured by British forces. He committed suicide in British custody on 23 May 1945. Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was born in Munich on 7 October 1900 into a conservative middle-class Roman Catholic family. His father was Joseph Gebhard Himmler (1865–1936), a teacher, and his mother was Anna Maria Himmler (née Heyder; 1866–1941), a devout Roman Catholic. Heinrich had two brothers: Gebhard Ludwig (1898–1982) and Ernst Hermann (1905–1945). Himmler's first name, Heinrich,

12305-600: Was established in Lviv by the district SS-and-Police Leader in order to meet plans for growth. The school director was Ivan Kozak. The total number of enlisted men in the new politically independent District of Galicia amounted 5,000 people (out of the planned 6000, as the police was perceived negatively in Galicia due to German actions in Ukraine) including 120 low-level officers who served there. The units were used primarily to keep order and carry out constabulary duties. Their actions were restricted by other police groups such as

12420-485: Was forced to take a low-paying office job after obtaining his agricultural diploma. He remained in this position until September 1923. Himmler joined the Nazi Party on 1 August 1923, receiving party number 14303. As a member of Röhm's paramilitary unit, Himmler was involved in the Beer Hall Putsch —an unsuccessful attempt by Hitler and the Nazi Party to seize power in Munich. This event would set Himmler on

12535-551: Was no perception of de jure Ukrainian independent statehood. Some Ukrainian Hilfspolizei who harbored a pathological hatred for Poles and Jews – resulting in acts of mass murder – remained formally and legally Polish from the time before the invasion until much later. Thirty years after the war ended, one former Ukrainian policeman, Jan Masłowski (a.k.a. Iwan Maslij), was recognized in Rakłowice near Wrocław by Polish survivors of massacres committed by Ukrainische Hilfspolizei in

12650-524: Was planning a coup d'état. Röhm had socialist and populist views and believed that the real revolution had not yet begun. He felt that the SA—now numbering some three million men, far dwarfing the army—should become the sole arms-bearing corps of the state, and that the army should be absorbed into the SA under his leadership. Röhm lobbied Hitler to appoint him Minister of Defence , a position held by conservative General Werner von Blomberg . Göring had created

12765-437: Was re-formed in 1925 as an elite unit of the SA. Himmler's first leadership position in the SS was that of SS- Gauführer (district leader) in Lower Bavaria from 1926. Strasser appointed Himmler deputy propaganda chief in January 1927. As was typical in the Nazi Party, he had considerable freedom of action in his post, which increased over time. He began to collect statistics on the number of Jews, Freemasons , and enemies of

12880-516: Was shot dead by two SS officers. Between 85 and 200 members of the SA leadership and other political adversaries, including Gregor Strasser, were killed between 30 June and 2 July 1934 in these actions, known as the Night of the Long Knives . With the SA thus neutralised, the SS became an independent organisation answerable only to Hitler on 20 July 1934. Himmler's title of Reichsführer-SS became

12995-517: Was that of his godfather, Prince Heinrich of Bavaria , a member of the royal family of Bavaria who had been tutored by Himmler's father. He attended a grammar school in Landshut , where his father was deputy principal. While he did well in his schoolwork, he struggled in athletics. He had poor health, suffering from lifelong stomach complaints and other ailments. In his youth he trained daily with weights and exercised to become stronger. Other boys at

13110-470: Was the elimination of those considered racially inferior, particularly the Jews and Slavs, from territories controlled by the Reich. From 1933 to 1938, hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated to the United States, Palestine, the United Kingdom, and other countries. Some converted to Christianity. According to Himmler biographer Peter Longerich , Himmler believed that a major task of the SS should be "acting as

13225-665: Was used to outline the plans for the " final solution to the Jewish question ". Heydrich detailed how those Jews able to work would be worked to death ; those unable to work would be killed outright. Heydrich calculated the number of Jews to be killed at 11 million and told the attendees that Hitler had placed Himmler in charge of the plan. In June 1942, Heydrich was assassinated in Prague in Operation Anthropoid , led by Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš , members of Czechoslovakia's army-in-exile. Both men had been trained by

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