Ordnungspolizei

The Ordnungspolizei (Orpo, German: [ˈɔʁdnʊŋspoliˌtsaɪ], meaning "Order Police") were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945. The Orpo was absorbed into the Nazi monopoly on power after regional police jurisdiction was removed in favour of the central Nazi government ("Reich-ification", Verreichlichung, of the police). The Orpo was controlled nominally by the Interior Ministry, but its executive functions rested with the leadership of the Schutzstaffel (SS) until the end of World War II, The top "leaders" were almost all SS members. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler was appointed Chief of the German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior. Owing to their green uniforms, Orpo members were also referred to as Grüne Polizei (green police). The force was first established as a centralised organisation uniting the municipal, city, and rural uniformed police that had been organised on a state-by-state basis.

Order Police Ordnungspolizei
Orpo flag
Clockwise from top left: Kurt Daluege (right), Chief of the Order Police, with Heinrich Himmler, 1943 Unit inspection at Strasbourg, 1940: Daluege (centre), with Bomhard, and Winkler Ordnungspolizei in Minsk, Reichskommissariat Ostland, 1943 Police raid (razzia) in the Kraków Ghetto, January 1941 Biała Podlaska Ghetto liquidation action, 1942
Common name	Grüne Polizei
Abbreviation	Orpo
Agency overview
Formed	26 June 1936 (26 June 1936)
Dissolved	1945 (1945)
Employees	401,300 (1944 est.)
Legal personality	Governmental: Government agency
Jurisdictional structure
Legal jurisdiction	German Reich German-occupied Europe
General nature	Civilian police
Operational structure
Headquarters	Berlin NW 7, Unter den Linden 72/74 52°30′26″N 13°22′57″E
Elected officers responsible	Heinrich Himmler 1936–1943, Reichsführer-SS and Chief of German Police Wilhelm Frick (nominally) 1936–1943, Interior Minister Heinrich Himmler 1943–1945, Interior Minister
Agency executives	Kurt Daluege, Chief of Order Police, 1936–1943 Alfred Wünnenberg, Chief of Order Police, 1943–1945
Parent agency	Interior Ministry

The Ordnungspolizei encompassed virtually all of Nazi Germany's law-enforcement and emergency response organisations, including fire brigades, coast guard, and civil defence. Himmler and Kurt Daluege, chief of the Orpo, worked to transform the police force into militarised formations ready to serve the regime's aims of conquest and racial annihilation. Police troops were first formed into battalion-sized formations for the invasion of Poland, where they were deployed for security and policing purposes, also taking part in executions and mass deportations. During World War II, the force was tasked with policing the civilian population of the occupied and colonised countries. In 1941, the Orpo's activities escalated to genocide with the Order Police battalions, formed into independent regiments or attached to Wehrmacht security divisions and Einsatzgruppen, perpetrated mass-murder in the Holocaust and were responsible for crimes against humanity and genocide.

History

Almost immediately after the Nazis seized power, they instituted measures to gain political control of German police and to use them against their perceived enemies. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler had already been deputy chief of the Prussian secret police, when by decree of June 17, 1936, he was appointed Chief of the Police force; he performed both functions in parallel and was officially (and publicly) referred to as "Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior". Although nominally subordinate to Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, Himmler could participate in meetings of the Reich Cabinet—when and if police agendas were discussed.

Traditionally, law enforcement in Germany had been a state and local matter. When Himmler was given the lead over all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies in 1936, he divided the police into two main areas: the Ordnungspolizei (Orpo or Order Police) under the command of Kurt Daluege and the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo or security police) under Reinhard Heydrich. The Orpo assumed duties of regular uniformed law enforcement while the SiPo was made up by the combined forces of the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo; secret state police) and the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo; criminal investigation police). The Gestapo were a political police agency with additional legally guaranteed powers of arrest. On 27 September 1939, shortly after the start of World War II, the SiPo and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD; SS security service) were folded into the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA). The RSHA symbolised the close connection between the SS (a party organisation) and the police (a state organisation). The Order Police (uniformed police, enforcement police) remained in the Ministry of the Interior. Himmler's multiple attempts to increase the proportion of SS members in the Orpo failed.

Himmler pursued the amalgamation of SS and police into a form of "State Protection Corps" (Staatsschutzkorps), and used the expanded reach the police powers gave him to persecute ideological opponents and "undesirables" of the Nazi regime such as Jews, freemasons, churches, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other groups defined as "asocial". The Nazi conception of criminality was racial and biological, holding that criminal traits were hereditary, and had to be exterminated to purify German blood. As a result, even ordinary criminals were consigned to concentration camps to remove them from the German racial community (Volksgemeinschaft) and ultimately exterminate them.

The Order Police was one—among several—of the executing organizations that facilitated inhumane goals pursued by Himmler and the RSHA by transforming and reorienting police functions into part of the Nazi security apparatus as they prepared for war. Instructions for the Orpo came through the regional political administrative authorities and/or the Higher SS and Police Leaders (HSSPF)—the latter had authority to command both police branches and the SS-forces, since Himmler intended all along for harmony between both the police and the SS. Most of the battalions of the Order Police troops in the east were deployed for the expulsion and extermination of the Jewish population, since parts were assigned to the SS Einsatzgruppen. Their personnel were used to guard ghettos or to carry out mass shootings. Order police played an executive role in the Holocaust, by "both career professionals and reservists, in both battalion formations and precinct service" (Einzeldienst) by providing men for the tasks involved.

Indoctrination

Before the Nazi siezure of power, there was already a penchant for nationalistic beliefs and militarism among police officers in Germany, since most of its members consisted of men who had fought in the First World War. Many among the police forces in Weimar believed the causation of Germany's loss in that war was bound up in the myths of being stabbed in the back by profiteers and Jews, which certainly contributed to their willingness to believe the National Socialist message. Beginning in February 1933, Nazi minister Hermann Göring issued a decree that Nazi party members and those in related organizations "were to receive priority as applicants for the Order Police. Just a few months later, Kurt Deluege issued a secret memorandum that emphasized eight to ten weeks worth of ideological indoctrination for SA and SS members transitioning into the Order Police at the rank of captain or higher, to ensure "close ties between the state instruments of power [the police] and the SA and SS."

By 1935, there was an increased national political curricula and intensive ideological training by the "Comradeship of the German Police" (Kameradschaftsbund der deutschen Polizei). Monthly national political lectures were instituted, and all police officers were encouraged to attend courses in state and party training facilities. Historian Edward B. Westermann writes that the "transformation of the police into political soldiers and instruments of genocide occurred in large part due to the efforts of Heinrich Himmler and Kurt Daluege to create an organizational culture within the Ordnungspolizei that married a “martial attitude” with Nazi racial ideology."

In keeping with Nazi ideological programmatic lines, the Order Police, alongside the SS, played a key role in implementing Nazi racial policies. Unlike the SS, whose members voluntarily aligned with its ideology, the police required extensive ideological training to adopt and support the SS's goals, which was generally accepted due to a combination of Nazi propaganda, latent antisemitism, and a societal disposition towards authority. Within the administrative organ (Verwaltungspolizei) for instance, the Order Police were required to read specific history books and essays on Nazi ideology, which were integrated into their practical police training and exams, ensuring alignment with Nazi goals. Training for State Protection Police (Schutzpolizei) at the Berlin-Schöneberg School in 1937 included 44 weekly hours focused on police and criminal law, with two hours dedicated to national politics and ideological training by SS instructors. Similarly, the curriculum included history and National Socialist ideology. From the end of 1942 to the end of 1944, the Mariaschein Police School (later moved to Heidenheim) conducted monthly ideological training sessions for the Schutzpolizei with corresponding training of like-kind being held at other police and police weapons schools across Nazi occupied Europe.

Organization

The German Order Police had grown to 244,500 men by mid-1940. In preparation for the war of aggression and conquest, a replacement police force was set up as early as 1937 to take over patrol and guard duties. This auxiliary police could be activated by decree for service in their home districts and had grown to over 90,000 by the beginning of the war. These older men were drafted and conscripted into the reserve police, and in the course of the war, veterans were also called up. The majority of them served in their home environment, some were deployed in police reserve battalions.

In 1936, Himmler divided the Nazi police into two branches, each in Berlin. The central command office known as the Ordnungspolizei Hauptamt was housed in the old office building of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior in Berlin at NW 7, Unter den Linden 72/74. From 1936 to 1941, it consisted of two offices: Command Department (Kommandoamt), responsible for finance, personnel and medical; and the Office of Administration and Law (Verwaltung), responsible for handling all administrative police, legal and economic tasks of the entire Order Police. In 1941, the Colonial Office, the Office of Fire Brigades, and the Office of Technical Emergency Aid were added.

While the Order Police was initially commanded by Kurt Daluege, in May 1943, he had a massive heart attack and was removed from duty. He was replaced by Police and Waffen-SS General Alfred Wünnenberg, who had previously spent his career as a professional police officer.

Branches of police

Ordnungspolizei in Minsk, Reichskommissariat Ostland, Weißruthenien, 1943

The administration police (Verwaltungspolizei) was the branch with overall command authority for all Orpo police stations. The Verwaltungspolizei also was the central office for record keeping and was the command authority for civilian law enforcement groups, which included the Gesundheitspolizei (health police), Gewerbepolizei (commercial or trade police), and the Baupolizei (building police). In the main towns, Verwaltungspolizei, Schutzpolizei and Kriminalpolizei would be organised into a police administration known as the Polizeipräsidium or Polizeidirektion, which had authority over these police forces in the urban district. Generally speaking, there were three subtypes of uniformed police forces within the Order Police, arranged according to the population size and density of the community they served." These were:

• Gendarmerie (rural police), who were tasked with frontier law enforcement to include small communities, rural districts, and mountainous terrain.
• Municipal protection police (Gemeindepolizei) municipal uniformed police in smaller and some large towns.
• State protection police (Schutzpolizei), state uniformed police in cities and most large towns, which included police-station duties (Revierdienst) and barracked police units for riots and public safety (Kasernierte Polizei).

Inspectors of the Order Police in various branches were established in September 1936, overseeing the entire Order Police within their jurisdictions. At the start of the war, they were gradually renamed "Commanders of the Order Police" (BdO) and given greater authority, directly reporting to Higher SS and Police Leaders. Although fully integrated into the Ordnungspolizei-system, its police officers were still considered municipal civil servants. The civilian law enforcement in towns with a municipal protection police was not performed by the Verwaltungspolizei, but by municipal civil servants. Until 1943, they also had municipal criminal investigation departments, but that year, all such departments with more than 10 detectives were integrated into the Kripo.

Other police forces

Additional police units not entirely subordinate to the Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei or the Reich Security Main Office existed across Germany, which made them outside the regular Nazi police structure and were "staffed mainly by officials from the police and judiciary who had served under Weimar". Despite the seeming independence of other functional policing and public safety organizations, they were still part of the Nazi state, which was monitored and controlled by the SS and its subordinated agencies, like the Gestapo.

Police battalions

Main article: Order Police battalions

Invasion of Poland

Ordnungspolizei conducting a raid (razzia) in the Kraków ghetto, 1941

Between 1939 and 1945, the Ordnungspolizei maintained military formations, trained and outfitted by the main police offices within Germany. Specific duties varied widely from unit to unit and from one year to another. Generally, the Order Police were not directly involved in frontline combat, except for Ardennes in May 1940, and the Siege of Leningrad in 1941. The first 17 battalion formations (from 1943 renamed SS-Polizei-Bataillone) were deployed by the Orpo in September 1939 along with the Wehrmacht during the invasion of Poland. One unit was organized under the command of Udo von Woyrsch and its members were specifically tasked to "carry out executions." Under Woyrsch, these Orpo men terrorized the Jews of Bedzin, Katowice, Sosnowiec, where they wrecked Jewish-owned property, shot dozens, and in one case (in the town of Dynow), forced a dozen Jews into a synagogue before setting it on fire.

The battalions also guarded Polish prisoners of war behind the German lines, and carried out expulsion of Poles from Reichsgaue under the banner of Lebensraum. They also committed atrocities against both the Catholic and the Jewish populations as part of those "resettlement actions". After hostilities had ceased, the battalions—such as Reserve Police Battalion 101—took up the role of security forces, patrolling the perimeters of the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland (the internal ghetto security issues were managed by the SS, SD, and the Criminal Police, in conjunction with the Jewish ghetto administration).

Each battalion consisted of approximately 500 men armed with light infantry weapons. In the east, each company also had a heavy machine-gun detachment. Administratively, the Police Battalions remained under the Chief of Police Kurt Daluege, but operationally they were under the authority of regional SS and Police Leaders (SS- und Polizeiführer), who reported up a separate chain of command directly to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The battalions were used for various auxiliary duties, including the so-called anti-partisan operations, support of combat troops, and construction of defence works (i.e. Atlantic Wall).

Some of them were focused on traditional security roles as an occupying force, while others were directly involved in actions designed to inflict terror and in the ensuing Holocaust. While they were similar to Waffen-SS, they were not part of the thirty-eight Waffen-SS divisions, and should not be confused with them, including the national 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division. The battalions were originally numbered in series from 1 to 325, but in February 1943 were renamed and renumbered from 1 to about 37, to distinguish them from the Schutzmannschaft auxiliary battalions recruited from local population in German-occupied areas.

Order Police descending to the cellars on a Jew-hunt in Lublin, December 1940. The Lublin Ghetto was set up in March 1941.

Invasion of the Soviet Union

Members of the Ordnungspolizei shooting naked women and children during the Holocaust

The Order Police battalions, operating both independently and in conjunction with the Einsatzgruppen, became an integral part of the Final Solution in the two years following the attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Operation Barbarossa. The first mass-murder of 3,000 Jews by Police Battalion 309 occurred in occupied Białystok on 12 July 1941. Police battalions were part of the first and second wave of murders in 1941 and into 1942 throughout the territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union and also earlier, during the killing operations within the 1939 borders of the USSR—whether as part of Order Police regiments, or as separate units reporting directly to the local SS and Police Leaders. They included the Reserve Police Battalion 101 from Hamburg, Battalion 133 of the Nürnberg Order Police, Police Battalions 45, 309 from Köln, 91 and 316 from Bottrop-Oberhausen. These units—among others—carried out extensive murder operations across the Eastern Front. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, this latter role was obscured both by the lack of court evidence and by deliberate obfuscation, while most of the focus was on the better-known Einsatzgruppen ("Operational groups") who reported to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) under Reinhard Heydrich.

Order Police battalions involved in direct killing operations were responsible for at least 1 million murders. Starting in 1941 the Battalions and local Order Police units helped to transport Jews from the ghettos in both Poland and the USSR (and elsewhere in occupied Europe) to the concentration and extermination camps, as well as operations to hunt down and murder Jews outside the ghettos. The Order Police were one of the two primary sources from which the Einsatzgruppen drew personnel in accordance with manpower needs (the other being the Waffen-SS).

In 1942, the majority of the police battalions were re-consolidated into thirty SS and Police Regiments. These formations were intended for garrison security duty, anti-partisan functions, and to support Waffen-SS units on the Eastern Front. Notably, the regular military police of the Wehrmacht (Feldgendarmerie, Feldjägerkorps, and Geheime Feldpolizei) were separate from the Ordnungspolizei.

Waffen-SS Police Division

Main article: 4th SS Polizei Division

21 October 1944. An SS Propaganda Company photograph of armed Volkssturm; a uniformed Orpo man is shown at the far right end of the line.

The militarization of the police during the war was reflected in the restructuring of police units, with companies replacing traditional formations. In October 1939, a Police Division of 15,800 militarily trained personnel was formed, initially part of the police but made available to the Wehrmacht, participating in the 1940 Western Campaign and later restructured as the SS Polizei Division officially integrated into the Waffen-SS in 1942. Many members of the Ordnungspolizei, along with other reservists and men from the Allgemeine SS were organized into the SS Totenkopfdivision. In 1940, the SS Polizei Division was stationed along the Maginot Line to provide passive defense and in preparation for the Nazi invasion of France. Eventually the SS Polizei Division was called into offensive action, when on June 9 and June 10, the 1st and 2nd Police Regiments participated in the assault across the Aisne River and the Ardennes Canal where they faced fierce French resistance before the 2nd Police Regiment broke through and took the town of Voncq. The unit was then ordered to advance through the Argonne Forest and again, despite fierce French fighting, managed to capture Les Islettes. Their efforts notwithstanding, the SS Polizei Division was take out of front-line fighting and placed in reserve near Bar le Duc, but not before they had suffered some 704 casualties in two engagements.

Troops from the SS Police Battalions load Jews into boxcars at Marseille, France, in January 1943.

See also

• Executions in Warsaw's police district
• Ranks and insignia of the Ordnungspolizei
• Police Long Service Award
• Glossary of Nazi Germany
• Schutzmannschaft, auxiliary policemen raised from local populations in occupied Eastern Europe during World War II

References

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Further reading

• Megargee, Geoffrey P., ed. (2009). Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945. Vol. II. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-35328-3.
• Nix Philip and Jerome Georges (2006). The Uniformed Police Forces of the Third Reich 1933-1945, Leandoer & Ekholm. ISBN 91-975894-3-8