Wwii 101 Police Bn Essay Research Paper

(Wwii) 101 Police Bn Essay, Research Paper

The stunningly and powerful book Ordinary Men was written by Christopher R. Browning. Browning is a professor of History at the Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. He is a contributor to Yad Vashem s official twenty-four-volume history of the Holocaust. Browning also wrote many other books on this subject. His book Ordinary Men reveals the truth about how a unit of average, middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews. Reich says,

Browning tells us how they were transformed psychologically from ordinary men to active participants in the most monstrous crime in history.

In the aftermath of Germany s defeat in World War I, a revolution broke out. The Order police resulted from the third attempt in interwar Germany to create large Police formation with military training and equipment. As the army dissolved, military officers and government officials who were afraid of being swept away by the revolution organized paramilitary units known as Freikorps. When the situation became stable in 1919, the Freikorps men merged with regular police into formation stations in barracks to combat further resurgence. The allies demanded the dissolution of these police units in 1920 as a violation of the clause of the Versailles Treaty that limited Germany s army to 100,000 men. (Remak 3)

In 1933, after the establishment of the Nazi regime a police army (Armee der Landespolizei) of 56,000 men was created. They were given full military training as part of Germany s covert rearmament. In 1935, when Hitler openly defied the Versailles Treaty and reintroduced military conscription, the police army was merged with the regular army to provide commissioned and non-commissioned officers. As of 1942, 97 Generals in the German army had served in the police army of 1933-35. (Browning 4)

Browning states the preservation of large military formations within the police had to await the appointment of Heinrich Himmler, already head of the SS as chief of German police in 1936, with jurisdiction over all police units in the Third Reich. The German police where divided into two branches, one being the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei) with the Main Office of Reinhard Heydirch. Within the Security Police there was the Secret State Police (Gestapo) to combat political enemies and the Criminal Police (Kripo) which was a detective force. The second branch was the Order Police with the Main Office under Kurt Daluege. Daluege also commanded municipal police (Schupo) and rural police equivalent to county trooper (Gendarmerie). By 1938 Daluege had over 62,000 men under his command. The number of police battalions expanded to 101 by mid 1940. The Order Police where quickly an essential source of manpower for holding German-occupied Europe. (Browning 6)

Police Battalion 101 took over for Police Battalion 61 in the district of Lublin. The Police Battalion s main duty was to round up Polish and Russian Jewry. In September of 1939 Germany invaded Poland. Police Battalion 101 based in Hamburg was attached to a German Army group sent to Poland. In the Polish City of Kielce, they were involved in rounding up Polish soldiers and military equipment and guarding a prisoner of war camp. On December 17th 1939 they returned to Hamburg where a hundred or so Police men were transferred. To replace them, middle-aged reservist drafted in 1939 where brought in.

In May of 1940 Battalion 101 was sent to Warthegau, Posen, and Lodz to carry out resettlement actions, a demographic scheme of Hitler and Himmler s to populate them with racially pure Germans and eliminating all Poles, Jews, and gypsies which were so called undesirables. The 101 Police Battalion evacuated thirty-seven thousand people out of the targeted fifty-eight thousand. About twenty-two thousand escaped by fleeing. The Police Battalion rounded up all people without regard for whether or not they where old, sick, or children. In many cases the old and sick were shot and killed at the collection point.

At the undressing barracks the Order Police forced Jews to strip naked, where they searched them for valuables. Browning says, In most deportations, the Jews were instructed to take a few personal belongings with them, to give credence to the cover story of the resettlement. (Browning 39) After the strip search, the Jews were then allowed to put their underclothes back on before they were marched to the train station. It was then, that they were packed into train cars like cattle. (Browning 40) The Police Battalion then took them to labor camps and some were taken directly to gas chambers. In the labor camps the Jewish men worked long days for the Germans. Waking up hours before dawn and going to bed hungry. These men were separated from their families, later on finding out that their wife and children have been murdered. (Langer 98)

On July 11th 1942, Major Trapp of 101 Police Battalion received orders for their special actions from SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik. They were to round 18,000 Jews in the city of Jozefow. At this time most of the male Jews of working age were to be sent to Globocnik s camp in Lubin. All of the women, children, and elderly were to be executed. Major Trapp called up all the units stationed in nearby towns for support and assembled in Bilgoraj on July 12th. Major Trapp with his Compa