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Zombie Squad Ilya Derevyanko

To organize riots in Russia, Western intelligence agencies have prepared a large detachment consisting of former special forces. Each fighter is implanted with a subcutaneous microchip controlled by a supercomputer. These zombies are capable of fulfilling any, the most incredible and cruel orders. But " universal soldiers' have one significant drawback. A specialist who implanted microchips fell into the hands of FSB Colonel Dmitry Korsakov, which means that the behavior of zombies can be controlled...

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Introduction

They wore black uniforms, kept the nation in fear and swore allegiance to the Fuhrer. On their caps was a skull and crossbones - the so-called "dead head", which their divisions carried throughout Europe. Them supreme symbol there were double runes "zig" - "victory", and they destroyed millions of people.

All spheres of life of the German nation were under their vigilant control. They were subordinate to the police and special services. They occupied key positions in agriculture, health care and science. They managed to infiltrate the traditional stronghold of diplomacy and seize commanding heights in the bureaucracy.

They were called "security detachments of the National Socialist German Workers' Party" or "Schutzstaffeln", abbreviated - SS (according to the first letters of the words). They felt themselves to be "a new type of sect, with their own forms and customs."

This organization was terror itself. She committed mass destruction of people. He, like no other structure in Hitler's empire, personified the murderous utopia of the superman. The SS fully embody the most effective and most dangerous power tool of the dictatorship of National Socialism. Over the course of several years, the “guard detachments” turned from an inconspicuous bodyguard into a state in the state of Hitler, in the state of slaves.

“Your honor is your loyalty” - under this slogan of Heinrich Himmler, SS members, like a “fire brigade”, were supposed to ruthlessly exploit prisoners and forced laborers, kill people in cold blood as part of mobile death squads in concentration camps and, later, on the fronts. Only one structure, namely the SS, was able to carry out the Holocaust on the orders of Hitler in the Nazi state.

It was not given to the uninitiated to look into the inner world of the secret SS sect. She remained for ordinary fellow citizens as incomprehensible as the Jesuit order, against which the SS officially fought, but at the same time imitated him to the smallest detail. The leaders of the "black order" consciously supported the feeling of fear among the people.

"The secret state police - the Gestapo, the criminal police and the security service - the SD are shrouded in a mysterious political and criminal halo," SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the then security chief, was delighted. The “Master of the Black Order” SS Reichsfuehrer Heinrich Himmler himself admitted, not without complacency: “I know that in Germany there are some people who feel bad when they see our black uniform, we understand this and do not expect to be loved.”

People felt that some secret organization had scattered a huge, thinnest net over the Reich, but they were not able to see it. The Germans could only hear the beaten step of black columns on the asphalt of towns and villages.

Hundreds of thousands of agents and informants of the security service hourly controlled even the thoughts of fellow citizens. In universities and in production, in peasant farms and on public service any information of interest was caught and then pumped to the Berlin center.

Even the most prominent leaders of the Third Reich could not afford to look behind the scenes of the "black sect".

“I knew nothing about the activities of the SS. In general, an outsider is hardly able to say anything about the Himmler organization, ”- admitted Hermann Goering in 1945.

Only the fall of the Third Reich threw off the veil of secrecy from the empire of the "black order". As accused of preparing for war and committing other grave crimes, the dock of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg was occupied by people who had led security detachments for many years.

The secret SS dossiers, which, unfortunately, are still not fully used by most researchers, are able to shed light on numerous conflicts within the SS hierarchy. The archives tell how one SS Untersturmführer collected dirt on SS Gruppenführer Gottlob Berger, who, in turn, wrote denunciations against his colleagues, accusing them of pandering to the Catholic Church.

Mysterious, inexplicable, not amenable to human logic, the world of security detachments is seen. On the contrary, the arguments that other scientists and publicists use in trying to explain the SS phenomenon seem quite logical.

The true history of the SS never obeyed any clear plan, rather, it flowed at the behest of chance and circumstances. The history of the SS, like the history of any secret order, is the history of idealists and criminals, ambitious people. In addition, the study of this topic is important for understanding the colossal scale of the murders that occurred in the 20-30s. 20th century in Germany and later abroad. By examining the prerequisites for the formation, as well as subsequent activities, the SS provides the researcher with the opportunity to reveal the depth of the influence of this order-organization on all spheres of life of the inhabitants of what was then Germany and the peoples enslaved by the Third Reich. It is also important to note that the SS apparatus was, figuratively speaking, "Hitler's hands", which obediently carried out any order of their head, their Fuhrer. Therefore, the study of the activities of the SS sheds a number of interesting facts on the life of A. Hitler himself, which allows you to look at his portrait not directly, but indirectly, through the activities of the SS.

Based on the importance of the problem under consideration, the author set a goal when writing the work: to study the features of the formation and activities of the SS in the period from 1925 to 1939.

Consider the prerequisites for the formation of the SS;

To trace the dynamics of the formation and activities of the SS until 1933;

Consider the structure of the formation of the apparatus of terror at the head of the SS;

Describe the punitive policy of the SS until 1939.

1. Characterization of sources and historiographical review

To the question of the historiography of the problem studied in this course work, it should be noted that, in general, a lot of attention was paid to the problems that illuminate the history of Nazi Germany in historiography. This is objective, since the events associated with this regime influenced the course of the entire history. Fascism showed all its terrible nature. Therefore, so that this does not happen again, it is necessary to remember about its features and methods of influence, both on the masses and on each person individually.

There are many monographs, articles, various kinds of publications that tell about the Second World War. However, most researchers closely touch upon the issues of strategy, weapons, and the personalities of the ruling Nazi elite. But the problem of the formation and activities of the SS in the period from 1925 to 1939. mainly covered in the context of the study of internal politics in Nazi Germany.

In the periodization of the problems of the course work, it is possible to distinguish the stages of development of historiography.

The initial stage is actually the time when the Nazis were in power in Germany in 1933-1945.

In characterizing the development of this historiographical period, as well as the sources presented, it should be noted that all documents, research works of the Nazis, were subject to ideologization and aimed to argue and justify the actions of the Nazis in relation to various segments of the country's population, especially those who were in opposition NSDAP. Exceptional preference was given to the massovization of the ideology of National Socialism. If we take into account the goal of the ideology and philosophy of Nazism - the consolidation of the nation without the individualism inherent in Catholicism, then we can evaluate the vector of propaganda of Nazi Germany. The same considerations in assessing the period under consideration are expressed by such researchers as I.P. Dementiev and A.I. Patrushev, Historical Science in the 20th Century. Historiography of the history of modern and modern times of the countries of Europe and America".

In general, this period - the period of accumulation and the first attempts to systematize the material - ended with the fall of the Reich.

Since 1945, another period in the historiography of the problem can be counted. This period can be described as effective and productive. Many different authors, both Western and Soviet, were engaged in research work, the topics of which were in contact with the research questions. various parties activities of the Third Reich. In addition, numerous contemporaries and participants in the events after the war wrote their memoirs, published in the 60-70s of the last century, in which, with a sufficient degree of truthfulness, they shed light on the important circumstances of the daily life of Nazi Germany. In this kind of sources, the author's analysis of the events that took place is also given. From a historiographic point of view, for a better understanding of this period, the work of L.A. Mertsalova "German fascism in the latest historiography of the FRG". The author provides an analysis of a number of sources (memoirs, memoirs) on the history of German fascism, written by the leaders of the Nazi movement.

At the present stage of development of historical thought, research activities aimed at studying the history of Nazi Germany and the Second World War in general, do not stop, but are considered in even more detail. Moreover, in recent years more and more different countries, there are groups that consider Nazism a favorable phenomenon. This is unfortunately a bleak trend. modern society.

Of course, in the description of sources and literature, it is important, first of all, to mention the book, which is the primary source in the study of almost any problem related to German Nazism. This is "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle"), written by one of the ideologists and the "chief Nazi" - Adolf Hitler. The work is also important because it was a reference book for many Germans during the period of the fascist dictatorship in Germany. In addition, this book became a kind of "Bible" for the Nazis and the new Protestant Church.

With the exception of the Bible, no book sold in such quantities during the Nazi era, when few families felt safe without having a book in their home. It was considered almost obligatory - and, of course, reasonable - to give "Mein Kampf" to the bride and groom for the wedding, and to the schoolboy after finishing school of any profile.

Analyzing the sources on the topic under consideration, it should also be noted: the documents contained in such a collection as: "SS in action". This collection documents contains many materials revealing the most terrible fascist crimes against humanity. The book contains secret directives of Nazi Fuhrers and orders of SS leaders, reports of the SD, Gestapo and Sonderkommando reports, diaries of SS executioners, secret plans and open statements of all Fuhrers and Leiters of the Third Reich.

Thus, in particular, the document cited in the work of May 29, 1933 on the “Interrogation of political prisoners carried out by the SA and SS” tells about the special role of the SA and SS organizations in the punitive mechanism of the Nazi Party that recently came to power. Based on the text of the document, it can be concluded that the quality of the interrogations, as well as the measures taken by these organizations to obtain the information they needed, were highly effective.

It is important to note the many different kinds of memoir documentaries on the problem studied in the course work. Among these are the memoirs: Martin Bormann "Letters", Heinz Guderian "Memoirs of a Soldier", G. Rauschning "Hitler Speaks. Beast from the abyss"; V. Schellenberg "Memoirs", Otto Strasser "Hitler and I".

The above documentary collections do not fully relate to the course project, however, the history of Nazism should be studied in a voluminous and comprehensive manner, including the problem of not only a social nature, but also a foreign policy one. Firstly, because Nazism is a common dangerous phenomenon and all its manifestations, be it military operations, domestic politics, are a single whole. Therefore, it is important to study not only the problems of the formation and activities of the SS in Germany in 1925-1939, but also the memories of significant personalities of the era of the “Third Empire”, which, by the way, directly influenced the actual origin and further development of the SS, first as part of the SA, and after the abolition of the SA, as an independent organization with an extensive apparatus of terror.

So, for example, in the "Letters" of M. Bormann, one can find a brief personal description of G. Himmler at the turn of the 20-30s. XX century, in which the author notes a number of features of Himmler, in particular: "impersonality", friendliness. However, at the same time, Bormann considered Himmler "a man of no great intelligence."

Analyzing the "Memoirs" of G. Guderian in relation to Himmler, we can conclude that Himmler had a high degree of perseverance and efficiency, which allowed him to achieve dizzying results in the future, as in career growth, and in the growth of the "Black Order", of which he became the Fuhrer.

G. Rauschning in his work “Hitler Speaks. Beast from the Abyss" showed some of the absurd and devoid of any common sense A. Hitler's statements in relation to the SS and the leaders of this organization. So, for example, in correspondence with E. Röhm, Hitler noted that he had a rather urgent need for security detachments to protect party meetings. However, Hitler saw more under these measures - first of all, personal protection, as well as the presence of his own organization-order devoted to him, subordinate to no one but him, for the subsequent implementation of his and no one else's personal plans regarding his coming to power. Despite Hitler's many shortcomings, he was a good "tribune" and could captivate the crowd. He only lacked the people close to him who obeyed him, whom he found in the person of the SS.

Considering Shelenberg's Memoirs, one can again be convinced of the erroneous views of the Nazi leaders in relation to the figure of G. Himmler, who clearly underestimated him, especially at the initial stage of the formation of the apparatus of the Third Reich. The author of the "Memoir", comparing the personalities of M. Bormann and G. Himmler, gave clear preferences in intelligence and the ability to make a "proper impression" to M. Bormann. This should be taken into account in order to better understand those qualities of G. Himmler that fit into the formula he created: “To seem a little bigger than it really is,” which was very good for the detective and master of the terror apparatus branched out in the future at the head of the SS.

And, finally, O. Strasser, who, unlike the Nazi leaders mentioned above, was able to discern in Himmler that “black, destructive potential”, which in the near future unfolded in full.

The work of Russian researchers involved in the consideration of problems related to German fascism, as well as affecting issues disclosed in the course work, can be divided into several groups:

The first group is works of a general nature, in which fascism is considered in many ways, both as an ideology, and as a policy, and as a regime that brought a lot of suffering, both to the Germans and to all of humanity as a whole. These works include: B.N. Bessonov "Fascism: Ideology, Politics", A.S. Blank "From the history of early fascism in Germany"; A.A. Galkin "German fascism", "Totalitarianism in Europe of the XX century. From the history of ideologies, movements, regimes and their overcoming". The study of D.M. Projector "Fascism: the path of aggression and death", who analyzed the process of formation of pedagogical views. I would also like to note in his work a high degree of analysis of the psychological components of the fascist ideology and their specific impact on the broad masses of the population, especially on young people, as the most malleable part of the population, which was given special importance in the "SS".

The second group - works on the history of Germany, which are well disclosed the subject of fascism in this country and which help to better navigate the systematization of the available material. And information concerning the formation and activities of the "SS" in Germany in the 20-30s. 20th century concisely and in blocks is a separate small article. These include: J. Droz "History of Germany"; G.L. Rozanov "Essays recent history Germany (1918-1933)" .

The third group - works of historiographic content. They cover the period of post-war study of fascism by German historians and are characterized by a good source base and objectivity. These include the work of L.A. Mertsalova "German fascism in the latest historiography of the FRG".

The fourth group - studies devoted to the actual features of the formation, formation and activity of the "SS".

The works of K. Grunberg “Hitler. SS - Hitler's Black Guard"; K. Zalessky "Security detachments of the NSDAP"; G. Knoppa “SS. Black Inquisition"; D.E. Melnikova, L.B. Chernaya, Empire of Death. The Apparatus of Violence in Nazi Germany”, Hehne H. “The Black Order of the SS. The History of the Guards".

So, in particular, in the study of G. Knopp, there are more than 1000 testimonies of those who suffered at the hands of the SS or were involved in the activities of the Black Order.

Based on his own research, personal diaries of representatives of the ruling elite of Nazi Germany and the revelations of the victims of Nazi terror, a comprehensive picture of the social and political life of Europe during the Third Reich is being recreated.

The book by K. Zalessky opens a series of encyclopedias dedicated to the criminal activities of the secret services of Nazi Germany. The publication provides the most complete information about the structure, leaders, paraphernalia and methods of destruction of prisoners, as well as the Gestapo with the SD.

In the study of K. Grünberg, in addition to the deeply presented theoretical material on the history of the formation and activities of the SS, factual numerical information is also provided regarding the growth dynamics of this organization both on the eve of the Nazis coming to power and during the Third Reich. Based on the analysis of these data, it can be concluded that the rapid growth of the SS in Germany in 1930-1934. was due to the special secret policy pursued by Hitler and his entourage to block and subsequently abolish the SA, dissolving this organization, as unpromising and nurturing views that were different from Hitler on the reality around him, in the young, "ideological" body of the SS.

In the work of A.I. Patrushev "Germany in the XX century", proposed modern concept recent history of Germany, developed on the basis of an analysis of new historiographic trends. The problems of mass national consciousness and culture are considered in detail. Materials on the Holocaust (1933-1945) are fundamentally new and extremely important for historical education.

When analyzing foreign works, the book by K.G. Jung, The Psychology of Nazism. The work presents the history of German fascism, from the rise of the Nazi Party to the defeat of the Nazi Reich in World War II. Widely using secret documents state institutions and various departments of Germany, materials of conferences and meetings, records of confidential negotiations of the Nazi leadership, diaries of diplomats, politicians and generals, archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Germany, headquarters of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKW), ground forces (OKH), air force (OKL) and naval (OKM), memories of people from Hitler's entourage, testimonies of the accused and witnesses at the Nuremberg trials, the author of the presented publication highlights the key problems of the emergence, formation, development and collapse of Nazi Germany and fascism as a social phenomenon in general. Only in a few places, according to Jung, does he resort to conjecture - where there were no documents. But such cases the author tries to stipulate.

The work is sustained in the traditions of a moderately conservative Western historiography with its rejection of many realities of Soviet society. At the same time, the objective position of the author contributes to a vivid and convincing disclosure of fascism and the great role of the "SS" in its expansion, as a product of imperialism, a deadly threat to the existence of civilized mankind.

Noteworthy are such studies by such authors as: V. Mazer “The History of Mein Kampf: Facts, Comments, Versions”, L.I. Gintsberg, The Early History of Nazism. Struggle for power". For example, in the work of L.I. Gintsberg, the reasons for the strengthening of the Bavarian officer corps on the Munich political scene in the early 1920s are noted. XX century., A description of the activities of one of the founders of the SA - E Rem.

The period of the Weimar Republic in the history of Germany was the heyday of liberal and social democratic trends. At the same time, this is a very difficult stage in the history of Germany, which unfortunately ended in a deep economic crisis, which began earlier than the world. Fascism and nationalism in Germany won as a result of the deep economic decline of the country in connection with the defeat in the First World War, as well as the growth of revanchism, which was also a direct premise of the extremely unfavorable consequences of the First World War for Germany.

It is to the above phenomena that the works of K. Bisk are devoted to "The History of Everyday Life in the Weimar Republic"; A.R. Davletov "NSDAP and the destruction of the party-state structure of the Weimar Republic (1930-1933)" .

In the course work, such a generalizing publication as "History of Europe" was also used. It cannot be said that this publication contains a lot of information about the activities of the SS in Germany in the 20-30s. XX century, however, it helps to better systematize the available material and introduces the problem of interest to the researcher into the atmosphere of time.

The dispute of historians about the National Socialist dictatorship, and the role of the "SS" in this dictatorship, continues in our time. Such is the nature of this complex phenomenon of the 20th century. The flow of literature about it does not dry out, this can be seen in the Russian and Belarusian book markets. The very process of studying the history of Nazism in the post-Soviet space was complex and zigzag, underwent serious changes, went through certain stages and became even more diverse. Times have changed, the perception of Nazism in the public has changed and continues to change. historical consciousness.

However, nevertheless, a number of issues need to be subjected to a certain degree of revision and analysis. Therefore, there is a need to return to the study of the formation and activities of the "SS" in the period from 1925 to 1933.

2. Prerequisites for the formation of the SS

The origins of the SS are inseparable from the history of the emergence of the Nazi movement itself in the post-war spring of 1919, when volunteer detachments (Freikorps) and parts of the Reichswehr managed to expel the red leadership of Bavaria.

It was during this period that the Nazi movement appeared on the political scene. The unwitting creator of National Socialism was destined to be the Munich historian, Professor Karl Alexander von Müller. He maintained close contacts with the nationalist-minded officers who at that time captured the Munich political arena. The actual creator of the Nazi movement was Adolf Hitler, as a counterintelligence agent in Munich. He made contact in 1919 with a small chauvinist group that adopted an anti-capitalist ideology, operating under the name of the German Workers' Party (DAP).

Already in January 1920, the DAP, which had only 64 members in its ranks, elected Hitler as its main propagandist, approved the new party program prepared with his participation, as well as the new name of the party proposed by the Austrian - the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP).

By this time, Karl Mayr (he was the head of the department responsible for propaganda and work with the press at the headquarters of the IV military district stationed in Bavaria), who had retired, was replaced by a short, dense officer, distinguished by a smoothly shaven massive skull, a scarred face and a depressed nose . It was this man who was destined to launch Hitler, already dismissed from the army, into the spheres of big politics. His name was Captain Ernst Rohm.

Being a cold pragmatist, Rem considered Bavaria as some kind of last “cell of order”, which should be strengthened in every possible way in order to be used as a springboard for “storming Berlin - the stronghold of the revolution”.

Deprived of their former elite status, the former front-line soldiers in the shaky, despised by all new social order, called democracy, generated by the November Revolution, saw the root of all the troubles that befell their homeland and personally them. They began to seriously think about returning the lost social positions, about recreating the former military power of the empire, destroyed by the Allies in 1918.

And they got such a historic chance. It was in Bavaria that, as a result of the victory over the communists, the military came to power for a short time. After the dissolution of the Soviet republic, the status of a person in military uniform sharply increased. As a result, the Bavarian officer corps, badly battered by the Social Democrats and only verbally supported by the right-wing Catholic Bavarian People's Party (BNP), began to play a leading role on the Munich political scene.

Soon Rem begins to organize a system of armed civil self-defense on the territory of Bavaria. The reason was that, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the number of personnel and weapons German army were strictly limited. The remaining 7 infantry and 3 cavalry divisions of the Reichswehr had practically no reserves necessary in case of war. The military, including Rem, saw a way out of the situation in the formation of an underground army parallel to the official Reichswehr - the so-called "Black Reichswehr".

Remus, as well as his entourage, in a short period of time managed to create the most powerful civil militia organization in the history of Germany from among the locals - the Bavarian "einvonerver". In parallel, there was a process of intensive arming of this militia with all kinds of weapons.

However, already in the summer of 1921, a bold point was put in the history of the Bavarian "civilian militia". Under pressure from representatives of the victorious Western powers, the imperial government outlawed the Ainvonerwehr. Ernst Röhm not only lost his own armed forces, but also lost influential patrons. As a result, his “army” was reduced to a small scattered handful of “fighters” from fragments of various freikorps and other ultra-right paramilitary formations.

In 1921, Hitler became the leader (Führer) of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP). . At the same time, Ernst Röhm created the first detachments of party militants - the SA (assault detachments), their activities were aimed at protecting the NSDAP party meetings from speeches by opponents of the party, especially communists. Also, the duties of these detachments included the protection of the party leader - Adolf Hitler.

However, very soon Hitler became convinced how formal was the "loyalty to his Fuhrer" on the part of the stormtroopers, as well as his power over the SA in general. Unquestioningly, the attack aircraft obeyed only their commanders - proteges of Rem and Erhardt (captain of the 3rd rank, headed the remnants of the headquarters of the 2nd naval brigade, was distinguished by extremely radical moods. His "headquarters" was the "core" of the SA). Nor did they share Hitler's views on the mission and functions of the assault troops. The Fuhrer of the NSDAP, for example, saw in the SA only a convenient tool for political propaganda: stormtroopers could quickly paste over the entire city with Nazi election posters, easily win in "beer battles", charm impressionable fellow citizens with their parades and formations. The leaders of the SA wanted their offspring to be perceived as a real military formation. And in fact, the Bavarian military authorities began to take the SA with all seriousness, taking into account the assault squads in their mobilization plans.

To create a counterbalance to Erhardt's grouping, Hitler appointed Captain Hermann Göring, a hero pilot of the First World War, a holder of the Order of Pour-le-merit (For Merit), to the post of commander of the SA. At the beginning of 1923, the new head of the attack aircraft established the main command of the SA, formed in the image and likeness of the headquarters of an army division and including the posts of infantry and artillery commanders.

However, Hitler intuitively felt that a force was being formed within the party, obeying other people's orders. So, for example, in the newsletter No. 2, published by the SA High Command, the following passage was printed: “Ortsgruppenfuehrers (leaders of local assault detachments) are ready to fully support the leader of the SA if he assumes only the functions of a “tribune”.

So the conflict was designated, which was destined to shake the Nazi movement until the physical liquidation of Rem and his associates. A period of merciless struggle began between the leaders of the SA and the partocrats. Even then, Hitler managed to anticipate the impending danger: he decided to create his own Praetorian Guard, capable of protecting him from wayward stormtroopers.

In March 1923, a structure appeared that became the embryo of the future “black order”. And it all started like this: several "old fighters" swore to Hitler to protect him from external and internal enemies, even at the cost of their own lives. They called themselves "shtabsvahe" - "headquarters guard".

It was then that for the first time the black colors of the future SS appeared on the Nazi party uniform. The Fuhrer's guards decided to add elements to their uniforms that distinguish them from the general mass of attack aircraft. In addition to gray-green front-line uniforms, civilian khaki windbreakers, they began to wear black ski caps with a silver image of a “dead head”, and the red field of the armband with a swastika was sheathed around the edges with black ribbon.

The life of the headquarters guard was not long: two months later, Captain Ehrhardt broke with Hitler and took his people. Then the Fuhrer created a new security structure, calling it "Stosstrupp" ("shock squad") "Adolf Hitler". The new unit was headed by the stationery dealer and party treasurer, the dwarf-like Joseph Berchtold, and Julius Schreck (one of the leaders of the SS, Hitler's personal chauffeur, since 1934 - SS Brigadeführer in Hitler's escort group) was appointed his deputy.

Every day the members of this detachment met in the Munich beer "Torbroy". It should be noted that they belonged to a different social group than the attack aircraft of Rem and Erhardt, originating in their mass from the petty-bourgeois quarters and working outskirts of Munich and its suburbs and being mainly engaged in handicrafts. If among them there were officers, then only lieutenants of the reserve.

The detachment received its “baptism of fire” during the failed coup attempt in Munich on November 8-9, 1923, which Hitler staged in order to establish the power of the “provisional imperial government”. The road to the putschists was then blocked by a volley of police. 16 Nazis were killed, including five from the Adolf Hitler Strike Force. .

The head of the SA, Hermann Goering, who was seriously wounded, and Josef Berthold managed to escape to Austria. The activities of the NSDAP, the SA and the "Shock Detachment Adolf Hitler" were banned, the organizers of the putsch were thrown into prison.

Rem was conditionally released and discharged from the army. The arrested Hitler appointed him commander of the illegal SA. Remus managed to recruit about 30,000 war veterans into the SA, while Hitler, before his arrest, had only 2,000 SA members who were only formally under his influence.

Thus, the situation was not in favor of Hitler: while he was in prison, the number of SA members who obeyed Remus increased 15 times. The possibility of control over them by Hitler was limited to a minimum. When Hitler, who had been released ahead of schedule, left the prison in Landsbeer in December 1924, new conflict about the subjugation of the SA. Hitler did not want to hear anything about independent assault troops. Rem, on the other hand, firmly stood his ground, proving that a partocrat cannot command a soldier, and Hitler’s business is to remain a “tribune”.

However, Röhm never realized that Hitler had already decided not to allow the creation of the SA until he was completely sure that men in the form of stormtroopers would never again impose their will on him. In the end, he broke up with Rem.

Former founder The SA had no choice but to send a farewell note to Hitler on April 30, 1925:

“In memory of the difficult and wonderful hours spent together, I sincerely thank you for your comradely attitude and ask you not to deprive me of your friendship.” Only a month later Hitler deigned to answer him, and in a very peculiar way. He instructed his secretary to tell Rem the following: “Mr. Hitler does not intend to create any military organization in the future. And if at one time he took such a step, it was only at the insistence of some gentlemen, who eventually betrayed him. Today, he needs only the protection of party meetings, as before 1923.

The hour of the birth of the "black order" was approaching. The old Röhm-Ehrhardt standard assault troops were replaced by the SS. Their task was to be constantly next to Hitler, to strengthen the authority of the party, to unquestioningly carry out all the orders of the Fuhrer.

“I said to myself then,” Hitler later recalled, “that I needed such personal protection, which, even if it was not numerous, should be unconditionally devoted to me, so that the guards, if necessary, were ready to go for me even against my own brothers. It is better to have only 20 people, provided, of course, that you can completely rely on them than on a useless crowd.

Naturally, ordinary party members received a different version of the reasons for the formation of the SS, which eventually entered into all history textbooks of the Third Reich. It consisted in the following: due to the fact that the SA was still banned, in February 1925 the newly recreated party formed a self-protection service, designed to protect it from terror from political opponents. Of course, it was also silent about the fact that Hitler deliberately delayed the re-creation of the assault squads. The fact is that the SA ban did not apply to the entire territory of Germany at all, on the contrary, in the northwestern part of the country, the SA units grew and grew stronger. Another thing is that they refused to recognize the dubious Munich Fuhrer as their leader.

It was then that Hitler decided to take advantage of the situation to create his own "life guard". In April 1925, he ordered Stoesstrup veteran Julius Schreck to form a new staff guard. A few weeks later, this group received its new name - "Schutzstaffel" ("security squad"). Shrek found the first SS men in the same place where he had previously recruited personnel for the "Stabswahe" and "Stosstrup" - among the regulars of the beer "Torbroy". Initially, the security detachment consisted of only eight people, some of whom had already served in the Stoesstrup. The old uniform has also survived. An innovation was the all-party brown shirt, which replaced the gray-green jacket, as well as a black tie (SA units wore brown ties with a brown shirt).

Thus, the main prerequisites for the formation of the SS organization were the following:

Ø contradictions between Hitler and the leadership of the SA over the leadership of the party and, accordingly, its unity;

Ø the difference in the social affiliation of future SS men and attack aircraft;

Ø Hitler saw in the SS a force capable of keeping the party as a whole, clamping it with iron hoops and eliminating the emergence of any dissatisfaction with the party leadership. After all, the NSDAP was never a unity party;

Ø the failures associated with the Munich "beer putsch" and, as a result, Hitler's need for high-quality protection.

Now the history of the SS became its history, the chronicle of their deeds became its chronicle, the list of crimes of the security forces became its crimes.

3. The formation and activities of the SS (until 1933)

Soon Shrek began to create security units outside of Bavaria. On September 21, 1925, he sent his circular No. 1 to the regional branches of the NSDAP, in which he called for the organization of SS units in the field. Party bodies were asked to form small combat-ready elite groups (commander and 10 subordinates), only Berlin was allocated an increased quota - 2 leaders and 20 people.

Shrek was careful to ensure that only specially selected people who corresponded to the Nazi idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe superman got into the SS. Mostly young people were recruited, that is, persons aged 23 to 35 years. Recruits were required to have "excellent health and strong constitution". Upon admission, they had to submit two recommendations, as well as a police certificate of residence for the last 5 years in the area. “Candidates of chronic drunkards, weaklings, as well as persons burdened with other vices, are not considered,” read the “SS Rules”.

Shrek tirelessly called for speeding up "the unification of the best and most reliable members of the party for the protection and selfless work for the good of the movement." He declared the main tasks of the SS to be "the protection of meetings, the attraction of subscribers and sponsors for the Völkischer Beobachter newspaper, and the recruitment of new party members."

Alois Rosenwick, head of the department of the newly created supreme body of the SS, the so-called main leadership, declared in purely Nazi jargon: “We wear skulls and bones on our black caps as a warning to our enemies and as a sign of readiness to defend the ideas of our Fuhrer at the cost of our own lives.”

In the meantime, victorious reports from the field began to arrive in Munich. So, in Dresden, the SS managed to prevent an attempted explosion at a Nazi meeting, allegedly prepared by the Communists.

“After the combined SS detachments from Dresden, Plauen, Zwickau and Chemnitz not only thoroughly beat up the Communists in the Marble Palace, but also threw some of them out of the windows, not a single Marxist in Saxony will dare to disturb our meetings again!” Rosenwick reported.

Already in December 1925, the main leadership of the SS could report to the party that it "has a centralized security organization of about 1,000 people at its disposal." Although this number was soon reduced to 200, the SS became the first structural organization The NSDAP, which took a serious position in virtually the entire territory of Germany.

In April 1926, the former commander of the Stoesstrup, Berchtold, who arrived from Austrian emigration, replaced Schreck as head of the SS. After the return of the amnestied participants of the "beer coup", Hitler elevated the guard detachments to the rank of an elite organization. On July 4, 1926, at the Second Party Congress in Weimar, the Fuhrer handed over to the SS the so-called "banner of blood" - the same banner under which on November 9, 1923, his columns marched along the Residenzshtasse to storm democracy.

The SS grew and gained strength. Now Hitler could repeat his attempt to create "his own" SA: he was well aware that without such a tool he would not be able to break through to power in Germany - a country obsessed with party armies and marching columns.

However, the leaders of most assault squads outside of Bavaria and Austria continued to distrust the former corporal. Therefore, there was a need for a fairly authoritative person who could unite the regional Fuhrers scattered by civil strife. And Hitler managed to find such a person in the face of former leader North German Freikorps, retired Captain Franz Pfeffer von Salomon.

There was a dual situation: Pfeffer, a confidant of the Nazi leaders of Northern Germany, who had not yet recognized the Munich Fuhrer as a national leader, joined the NSDAP board as an intelligence officer and at the same time a supervisor.

Hitler had to give Zalomon significant powers. From November 1, 1926, all assault detachments in Germany were subordinate to him, as the supreme leader of the SA. Although Pfeffer had to unconditionally fulfill all the directives of the party leader, he could, at his own discretion, organize and build a structure subordinate to him.

The alliance with the Nazis of Northern Germany seemed so important to Hitler that he went to reduce the power ambitions of his beloved offspring - the SS. As a result, the security detachments came under the jurisdiction of Pfeffer, but their leader now became known as the Reichsfuehrer SS.

The commander of the Stoesstrup, Berchtold, soon sensed the danger. His elite unit could well become dependent on the SA and party bureaucrats. The fact is that his predecessor Shrek was rejected by the members of the main leadership of the SS themselves. The compliant behavior of the chief reminded them of a soccer ball flying between the party apparatchiks and the SA.

“We came to the conclusion,” Ernst Wagner, a member of the SS leadership, wrote to Hitler, “that Shrek does not possess the qualities necessary for a leader and organizer, and also does not have the weight that can guarantee the position of the SS as an elite unit of the party.”

Due to the strengthening of the power ambitions of the SA, Berchtold resigned. In March 1927, his deputy Erhard Heiden became the new Reichsführer SS. But he also failed to maintain the independent positions of the SS.

By his order, Pfeffer forbade the leaders of security detachments to create their units in settlements, where SA was underrepresented. They were allowed to keep units in the communities with a strength of only 10% of the list of local SA units. In this regard, by 1928 the number of SS reached only 280 people.

The password for the SS was: "The aristocracy is silent!" The guard detachments turned into silent companions of the brown columns of stormtroopers, minting a step along the pavements of German cities. Only the tougher reception conditions and discipline brought to automatism maintained in the SS men a sense of belonging to the elite.

“SS never participates in any discussions at party meetings or lectures. The fact that each member of the SS, being present at such events, does not allow himself to smoke or leave the premises until the end of the lecture or meeting, serves the political education of the personnel, read order No. 1, signed by SS Reichsführer Erhard Heiden on September 13, 1927.

Any appearance of security units was supposed to demonstrate that the SS is the aristocracy of the party. “The SS man is the most exemplary member of the party that one can imagine,” one of the instructions of the leadership of the security detachments said. “If the SA is the infantry, then the SS is the guard,” one of the SS men proudly declared.

In his message to the party headquarters in Munich, Ludolf Haase, the NSDAP state leader of the South Hanover district and a leading member of the Narodnik Skald Order, outlined what he believed was crucial to the development of the Nazi movement. After the Munich "beer putsch", he believed, the party collapsed for the reason that it did not have a cohesive "corps of Fuhrers", and the existing leadership did not have a strong instrument of power. According to Haase, the restored party needed an "internal National Socialist order", a secret society always ready to defend the party leadership and able to rally the movement with an iron fist. With his letter, Haase actually anticipated the concept of the SS. However, the party bureaucrats from Munich were not interested in his letter.

In January 1929, one of the offices of house number 50 on the Munich Schellingstrasse (NSDAP headquarters) was occupied by a man who thought the same way as the Hanoverian Landesführer. It was in his personal archive that Haase's letter was subsequently found. The new Reichsführer SS, Heinrich Himmler, decided to put Haase's ideas into practice.

The rise of the SS is inextricably linked with the fate of Heinrich Himmler. His secret slogan was: "To seem a little more than it really is." Hardly anyone could have imagined that it was this ordinary-looking man who would become Hitler's most powerful "Fuhrer".

Indeed, the statements of the Nazi elite of that time confirmed the insignificance of the figure of Hitler. Here is how M. Bormann spoke about him: “Himmler seemed faceless to me. He didn't make a deep impression on me. He was always friendly when he visited us. He left a friendly, kindly impression.

Walter Schellenberg, chief of the SS foreign intelligence service, also noted in his memoirs: “The differences between the rivals were, both external and in character, very great. While Bormann was like a lucky boar in a potato field, Himmler was like a stork in a salad by comparison.

The SS chief was not an intellectual, but rather a clumsy, cowardly and indecisive subject. G. Guderian in his "Memoirs" in relation to Himmler noted: "he gained authority not by the persuasiveness of his personality, but by purposeful perseverance aimed at consistently strengthening his power." As proof, in O. Strasser's diary dated April 28, 1930, one can read the following brief description G. Himmler: "He is not too smart, but diligent and diligent." Organizational abilities and consciously created image of an inflexible serviceman made him an indispensable executor of the master's will.

At the end of his career, Himmler, as Reichsführer SS, chief of the German police, imperial minister Internal Affairs and Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve Forces, became the second most powerful man in the Empire after Hitler. His ideal was a sober-minded, self-sacrifice rapist, his goal was to educate a person of this type. He instilled in his subordinates the principles of honesty and morality at the same time as violence and mass destruction of people, proclaiming heartlessness as a blessing, and brutal murder as strength.

In 1929, the guard detachments were subordinate to the supreme leader of the SA, Franz Pfeffer von Salomon. The leaders of the SS with great difficulty managed to fight against the opinion prevailing in the party that the purpose of the future black order was exclusively to recruit subscribers to Nazi publications.

However, Himmler, despite the ridicule of his party comrades, was not going to give up. He developed an ambitious program of action aimed at rapidly increasing the number of security forces, as well as creating the image of the SS as an elite organization. In April 1929, he sent Hitler and Pfeffer for approval a draft resolution, in fact, intended to give the guard units the status of an order.

From that day on, only a person who met the most serious selection criteria could become a member of the SS.

The idea of ​​a “blood elite” quickly captured the minds of former military men, students who interrupted their studies due to inflation, unemployed petty officials who tossed between freikorps and paramilitary unions and hoped to find a way out of the impasse in some new social formation. According to Himmler's concept of the racial elite, these people were promised to regain their homeland, guaranteed salvation from spiritual turmoil, and the return of social prestige.

Both in the pre-war and post-war years, elitism was a purely social concept. The elite belonged to those who possessed property, education or noble birth. For the lost generation of front-line soldiers, the path to the elite was closed forever. The inability to adapt to the new conditions of existence and the "war syndrome" pushed them to the margins of society. Instead of the traditional estate elite, Himmler proposed to create a new one: the aristocracy of race and ideology. She was ready to become a haven for all the humiliated and offended.

And soon a rapid growth in the number and authority of the SS began to be observed.

At one time, petty burghers such as the assistant butcher Ulrich Graf and the stationery dealer Joseph Berthold stood at the cradle of security detachments. Now rushed to the SS new wave: impoverished representatives of the middle class and the big bourgeoisie. The aliens brought to the SS and the inherent mentality, characterized by an unconditional readiness to fight and the absence of any ideology. The "new SS" betrayed their origin. They were the heirs of the Freikorps, "people who were not let go by the war, who carried the war in their blood", Rathenau Ernst von Salomon wrote about them in 1930.

The Freikorps were a peculiar part of the German younger generation, who were contemptuous of culture and expected that a new world war would cleanse the people of bourgeois hypocrisy and satiety and lead to the rejection of "one's own ego." In their hearts, the Frakorians continued to hate bourgeois world, in which the bulk of the SA strove.

And so Heinrich Himmler offered them their real homeland - the elite order of the SS, and, starting in 1929, they went to the guard detachments in two waves. The first included veterans who could not find a place for themselves in the new society, the second wave consisted of those who were able to somehow adapt in bourgeois society, but lost their position in the competitive struggle of the free market. And this bankruptcy prompted them to put on the SS uniform.

The picture of the growth of the SS by the middle of 1933 looked like this: January 1929 - 280 people, December 1929 - 1000, December 1930 - 2727 people. in December 1931 - 14964, in June 1932 - 30 thousand, in May 1933 - 52 thousand. In addition, the former Freikorps from the SA did not mind moving to the SS, which also determined the rapid growth of this organization.

In Berlin, anonymous leaflets appeared against "the creation of a life guard of individual civilians, in particular the leadership of the SS, at the expense of the SA."

Hitler reconciled the two party armies and even helped Himmler in his aspirations, dividing the SA and SS at the end of 1930, giving the order: “No one from the SA command has the right to give orders to the SS from now on.” The guard units became, in fact, independent.

Their uniforms also changed: black was assigned to the SS, while the SA remained brown. SS men now wore black caps, black ties, black trousers, and armbands with a black-edged swastika. On the left sleeve there was an Arabic numeral indicating the number of the corresponding unit.

On September 1930, the acting Chief of Staff of the SA, Wagener, announced to all deputy commanders of the SA that they must "obligatorily take an oath of allegiance to the Fuhrer of the Party and the SA, Adolf Hitler." This oath spoke of "the unquestioning and conscientious fulfillment of all orders, knowing that the leadership will not demand anything illegal."

The Fuhrer Adolf Hitler thus became the sole leader of the National Socialist Party, having the SS at his disposal as the party police. And he needed it much earlier than he expected, since there were still party members who were not drugged by his cult.

In the SS territorial districts, secret information departments were created, which were supposed to monitor the enemy both in the party itself and outside it. SS chief Himmler reported to his Fuhrer on October 10, 1931: “In some cities, there have been cases of official exclusion of experienced anti-fascists from the ranks of the Communist Party for the purpose of their subsequent introduction into security detachments ...”.

With the help of the former Oberleutnant of the Navy, Reinhard Heydrich, who joined the party and the SS in the same year, Himmler created the notorious security service - the SD.

Sturmführer (company commander) SS Heydrich turned out to be an excellent information collector, and the SS began to gradually turn into the most important secret service parties. And Hitler began to consider her his reliable personal guard. On January 25, 1932, he appointed Himmler head of the security service.

The more the leaders of the SA, headed by Rem, discredited themselves in the eyes of the public (scandals related to the homosexuality of Rem and a number of his associates), the more hopefully many members of the party looked at the organization of Heinrich Himmler. On October 5, 1932, Bormann, turning to Hitler's secretary, Rudolf Hess, said: “Look more closely at the SS. After all, you know Himmler and his abilities.

And outside the party, sensible people began to form the opinion that the 50,000-strong SS army of Puritans, who do not know pity and compassion, are ready to repulse a handful of degenerate SA homosexuals. No wonder Himmler proclaimed at a meeting of his leadership on June 13, 1931: “Perhaps months or weeks will pass before the moment when the time comes for a decision. We will be where our Fuhrer sends us."

Indeed, the SS did not have to wait long. As January 30, 1933, approached, the first signs of the “Night of the Long Knives” appeared on the horizon of German history.

punitive detachment war domestic

4. Formation of the apparatus of terror at the head of the SS

The restructuring of the state apparatus of fascist Germany was of paramount importance for the establishment and consolidation of the open terrorist dictatorship of monopoly capital. The main elements of this restructuring were: ensuring the monopoly position of the National Socialist Party; the rejection of bourgeois-democratic methods of activity and the transition to openly violent, repressive methods; "cleansing" the state apparatus of democratic elements who are in opposition or who, in the opinion of the fascist leaders, are able to become in opposition to the course pursued by them; a sharp increase in the role of punitive and intelligence agencies; changes in the structure, competence and relationships of state bodies, which destroyed all bourgeois-democratic state-legal institutions established by the Weimar constitution (parliamentary rights, land autonomy, local self-government, bourgeois legality, etc.).

Direct restructuring of state bodies was carried out from the end of March 1933 to the beginning of 1935. At this time, the main links of the state apparatus were created and all the foundations of its activity were determined. Among the most important legislative acts that have formalized political system Nazi Germany included: the law of March 24, 1933 "On the Elimination of Poverty of the People and the Reich" (the law on granting emergency powers to the government); the law of July 14, 1933 "Against the formation of new parties", which punished as a serious crime attempts to create other (except National Socialist) parties; the law of December 1, 1933 "On Ensuring the Unity of the Party and the State"; the law of January 30, 1934 "On the new structure of the state" (on the liquidation of the autonomy of the lands); law of August 2, 1934 "On the Supreme Head of State"; regulation of January 30, 1935 "On German communities" and some others.

As a result of the restructuring of the state apparatus, it was rapidly merging with the monopolies and the National Socialist Party. The supreme power was concentrated in the hands of the fascist government, primarily Hitler, who received the new title of Fuhrer of the fascist party and state, in practice equal to the titles of Caesar, Emperor.

The turn from bourgeois democracy to fascist dictatorship entailed great changes in the system of punitive and intelligence organs and general increase their role in the mechanism of the state. The system of punitive and intelligence agencies included organizations of the National Socialist Party: SA, SS and SD. The fascist government announced the full support of the assault troops, elevated them to the rank of auxiliary police and declared the unity of goals of the state and the SA. So, the newspaper "SS" of January 6, 1934 wrote: " New Germany could not exist without the SA fighters... What has been done so far, namely the seizure of power in the state and the destruction of all... followers of Marxism, liberalism, the destruction of these people - this is only a preliminary task... to fulfill... the big National Socialist tasks..." .

SA became the most important weapon in the fight against anti-fascist movement, the fascist leadership forbade the police to interfere in the actions of the assault squads, giving them complete freedom.

A special place among the punitive organs of fascist Germany was occupied by SS detachments (in 1933 there were 52 thousand people in them).

The Nazi leadership, having eliminated any framework that limited the activities of punitive organs, used them to carry out open and unlimited terror. The order of the Minister of the Interior Frick stated: "The Reichsführer SS and the chief of the German police may take the administrative measures necessary to maintain order and security, even if they go beyond the legal limits of administrative measures." After coming to power, the Nazis rebuilt the police system, affecting all aspects of its organization and activities. The main task of the police was to carry out mass terror and physically exterminate communists and anti-fascists.

In a special order on the use of weapons by the police, issued by Göring in February 1933, it was stated: “Police officials who, in the performance of their duties, use weapons, I will provide protection, regardless of the consequences of using weapons. On the contrary, anyone who shows false kindness should wait for punishment in the service. Any official must always remember that failure to take measures is a greater offense than a mistake made in their implementation.

Göring's order of May 29, 1933, on the "Interrogation of Political Prisoners Produced by the SA and SS" stated: "Experience has shown that the interrogation of persons detained on suspicion of political crimes or anti-state designs by members of the ordinary police in many cases did not have the same success , which could be achieved when the same persons were interrogated by members of the SA and SS. Given the special circumstances, it seems appropriate ... to hand over the prisoners under police protection for interrogation in full form ... to those institutions that will be occupied by the ranks of the SA and SS ".

The fascist party-state elite completely subordinated the system of judicial bodies to their arbitrariness, turning them into a weapon of terror against communists and anti-fascists.

To consider cases of a "political" nature in the territory under the jurisdiction of the regional (zemstvo) court, "exceptional courts" were created. The simplified order of legal proceedings turned them into operational bodies for reprisals against anti-fascists.

How "exceptional courts" were created in Nazi Germany can be seen in the example of the so-called "People's Court", established on April 24, 1934. This court was created by the Chancellor (on the proposal of the Minister of Justice) of two members and three assessors to deal with cases of high treason, which had previously been considered by the imperial court. The order of proceedings in the "people's court" essentially did not differ from that adopted in the other "exceptional courts". The Congress of the Nazi Party, held in 1935, officially proclaimed the final rejection of the liberalist starting point of the old criminal legislation "no punishment without law" and established the principle of "punishment for every offense", which meant in practice the justification and justification of any barbaric methods of fascist justice and the entire system of punitive organs aimed at the destruction of people who are not pleasing to the Nazi regime.

total terror, total surveillance, comprehensive fascist propaganda turned Germany into real barracks, and the majority of Germans - into obedient creatures, over which the spirit of Hitlerism soared. The police, the Gestapo, the Goebbels department did everything to ensure that this spirit became the soul of everything in the "Third Reich". The American writer Upton Sinclair, summing up the arguments of one of the leaders of fascist Germany, Goering, expressed the anti-human, anti-social aspirations of the Nazis as follows: “We have specialists in all fields of knowledge, “they have worked out for years ways for us to break the will of those who stand in our way” .

The role of the intelligence agencies in suppressing the resistance of the exploited masses and in carrying out the aggressive foreign policy designs of German imperialism increased substantially. In order to achieve their goals, the fascists brought intelligence to the fore among other links in the state mechanism. Creation new system intelligence became the most important practical task of the Nazis. This was explained by the fact that total espionage most fully corresponded to the plans of the monopoly bourgeoisie and to the very essence of the fascist dictatorship, exceptional in its reactionary and aggressive nature. Plans for the creation of an intelligence system were discussed in Munich at a meeting of the top of the Nazi Party as early as mid-1932. After the Nazis came to power, these issues were put on a number of priorities.

The reorganization of the German intelligence apparatus was an integral part of the overall process of fascisization of the political superstructure, in particular the state apparatus. It was based on the same principles that characterized the organization and activities of the entire state apparatus of fascist Germany: totality, unbound by law, etc.

The creation of the fascist intelligence apparatus took place in 1933-1935. by reorganizing intelligence of the Weimar period and the formation of new services. During these years, the main links of the intelligence apparatus were formed, the most important fascist principles of its organization and activity were quite clearly manifested. The fascist leadership assigned a special role to the political police in the state intelligence system. As a result of a number of measures, the political police was turned into a widely branched, centralized apparatus endowed with punitive functions. In April 1933, by decree of Goering, a state secret police (Gestapo) was created in Prussia. It was declared the highest police authority, subordinated to the Ministry of the Interior and was supposed to solve the tasks of the political police. Subsequently, the Gestapo turned into an exceptional body in its position. According to Goering's decree of November 30, 1933, the Gestapo was subordinate only to the Prime Minister of Prussia. In March 1934, the district departments of the Gestapo separated from the local authorities and gained independence from all other state bodies. At the same time, the governing bodies of the general police were obliged to act in accordance with the directives of the Gestapo. In the future, the Gestapo became one of the departments of the main department of imperial security in Germany.

In the struggle against the vanguard of the working class and the anti-fascist forces, the Gestapo, on the basis of the decree of President Hindenburg of February 28, 1933, widely used the preventive arrest and imprisonment of communists and progressives in concentration camps.

The activities of the Gestapo were nothing more than legalized arbitrariness and reprisals. The Gestapo threw into concentration camps not only communists and anti-fascists, but also persons who were not pleasing to the Nazi regime, all dissidents for their subsequent physical destruction or turning into slaves.

One of the "old" intelligence agencies of Germany, the counterintelligence department of the War Ministry (Abwehr), headed by Admiral V. Canaris, was called to serve the Nazis. Even in the pre-fascist period, this department began to deal not only with counterintelligence, but also with intelligence. By 1935, the Abwehr had become the main intelligence center fascist state, designed to conduct espionage and commit sabotage and terrorist acts in the USSR, as well as in capitalist countries.

The Abwehr created its agent network in the state apparatus, various public organizations in many countries, as well as in army headquarters (even in intelligence and counterintelligence agencies).

Thus, with the coming of the Nazis to power in January 1933, they actually formed a terror apparatus headed by a powerful organization of the SA assault detachments, whose activities somewhat differed from the later widely deployed "work" by the "SS". The main difference was only that the "SA" fought for the idea of ​​National Socialism, speaking out against anti-fascists, communists and Jews, while the "SS" and "SD" brought this idea to the extreme point of radicalization, which led to the creation of an extensive, mass apparatus terror in the Third Reich and its rapid evolution compared to the SA. So, a more ideological organization, united not only by common views, but also by mystical rites, “racial purity”, the “aristocracy of the Third Reich” at first grew like a grain on the fertile soil of the “SA”, and at the right moment simply swallowed it up, squeezing everything possible out of it , using this organization as a springboard on the way to achieving their success.

5. Punitive policy of the SS until 1939

Even before Hitler came to power, the "SA" had numerous attacks on workers' rallies and demonstrations, organization of massacres in workers' quarters, kidnappings, beatings and murders of activists of the workers' and especially the communist movement. However, the assault detachments were especially deployed after the appointment of Hitler as Reich Chancellor. In the very first days after the creation of the cabinet of ministers with the participation of the National Socialists, the "SA" was entrusted with the functions of the auxiliary police. This formal act, testifying to the impunity of the pogromists from the assault detachments, unleashed a wave of brown terror, which not only Germany, but not a single civilized state knew.

The persecution of political opponents and all "objectionable" persons took on a mass character. Stormtroopers broke into the apartments of activists of the labor movement and democratically minded figures of the former regime, dragged them out into the street, beat them, and subjected them to humiliation. Were mixed personal accounts: enemies, rivals, creditors were liquidated. Mass persecution began race- a precondition for the subsequent mass extermination of the Jewish population.

Concentration camps began to appear, which later turned into an integral part of Nazi regime. They were created wherever there was a room suitable for prison purposes. The list of the largest concentration camps organized by storm troopers in 1933, cited, has 26, of which 3 are in Berlin itself. However, only large ones should be included in this number. Practically in the first months of 1933, almost every barracks of the assault detachments was a concentration camp.

After the first wave of terror subsided, the Nazi authorities, frightened by the violent reaction of the world community, which threatened to undermine the already fragile positions of the fascist regime, tried to absolve themselves of responsibility for it, declaring the most disgusting excesses the result of the "instigatory activity" of those who made their way into the "SA" " elements hostile to National Socialism. For appearances, some of the most zealous in the atrocities of the attack aircraft were expelled from the "SA". In reality, the wave of terror was the result of a deliberately planned policy of the Nazi government and pursued two main goals. Firstly, it was supposed to create an atmosphere of panic in the country, to paralyze the opponents of fascism, thereby providing favorable conditions for stabilizing the power of the National Socialist government. Only in such an atmosphere could the Nazi Party in the shortest possible time carry out the unification of the entire state apparatus. Secondly, it was supposed to give vent to the accumulated passions of the supporters of National Socialism, who were waiting for "real results" from the coming to power of their party. The possibility of settling political and personal scores with impunity, on the one hand, distracted the masses of stormtroopers from social demands, and on the other hand, firmly connected them with the Nazi regime, the direct participants in whose crimes they thus became.

However, it was difficult to use the SA as a weapon of constant, organized terror, which the fascist authorities needed. They were too numerous for that. It was not only a tool, but also a kind of mass organization with its own specific requirements and aspirations.

Participation in terror temporarily distracted the stormtroopers from their interests. social problems, but could not be forced to forget about them. Already in the summer of 1933, dissatisfaction with the policy of the government, which was in no hurry to fulfill its promises, especially in social area, and in every possible way suppressed the anti-capitalist sentiments that manifested themselves in the ranks of the party and, above all, in the assault detachments, took sharp forms. In the middle of the year there were riots in the assault detachments of Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt am Main, Dresden, Essen, Dortmund, Kassel, Konigsberg and Freiburg. In this regard, the National Socialist leadership had to take extraordinary measures. A mass purge of the assault squads began. In August 1933, all SA units in Frankfurt were disbanded. In Berlin alone, 3,870 people were expelled from the SA. In total, by the end of 1933, about 200,000 people were expelled from the SA. Some of them soon found themselves in the very concentration camps that they created with their own hands.

Already the first purge seriously weakened the significance of the assault detachments as the main instrument of fascist terror. However, the events of June 30, 1934, which ended in the physical destruction of almost all of their tops, dealt the most severe blow to them. After this St. Bartholomew's Night, the actual importance of "SA" in the hierarchy of Nazi organizations has steadily fallen. The main instrument of state-organized terror was the organization that grew up in the bowels of the assault detachments, which became widely known as the "SS".

Even before the NSDAP became the ruling party, the "SS", thanks to the sophisticated tactics of Himmler, who managed to win the special confidence of the "Führer", assumed dual functions. On the one hand, they acted as the guardian of the racial purity of the NSDAP, the main source of the formation of the Nazi elite. In this regard, the so-called "Racial and Settlement Administration" ("Rasse und Siedlugnsamt") created by Himmler within the "SS" was of particular importance. On the other hand, they are all more turned into a kind of internal party police, whose tasks included the fight against "subversive activities" in the party itself, that is, against opposition party groups.

To carry out this function, Himmler created his own counterintelligence, which initially disguised itself as the “information and press service” (“ITs - Dinst” and “PI - Dinst”), and then became known as the “security service” (“Siherheitsdinst” SD).

The "merits" of the "security detachments" before Hitler, especially in the police and counterintelligence field, allowed Himmler immediately after the seizure of power by the Nazis to begin to directly influence the state police authorities. Already in April 1933, the Reich Fuhrer "SS" was appointed chief of the political police of Bavaria. Shortly thereafter, Himmler was given the task of setting up a political police force in other German states. The exception was Prussia, where the political police were in the hands of Goering as Prussian Prime Minister. However, in April 1934, Hitler, against Goering's wishes, appointed Himmler his deputy as head of the Prussian Secret State Police. As a result, by the middle of 1934, all the police power in the country was concentrated in the hands of the Imperial Fuhrer "SS". Thus, the foundations were laid for the almost unlimited influence that the "SS" soon began to use in the "third empire".

The role played by this organization in the events of June 30, 1934 was of paramount importance for the further strengthening of the position of the SS. Having taken a decisive part in the massacre of the leaders of the assault detachments, the SS not only demonstrated their loyalty to Hitler, their readiness to unconditionally comply with any of his orders, but with one blow they dealt with their main rival in the struggle for dominant positions. Immediate result This was Hitler's decree of July 13, 1934, according to which, "in commemoration of the great merits" of the "SS", the "security detachments" were separated from the "SA" and declared an independent unit of the National Socialist Party.

Already by 1933, the "SS" was a branched organization, the branches of which penetrated into all branches of state and public life.

By this time they numbered about 165,000 members. At the beginning of 1937, the "SS" consisted of 210 thousand people, and by the beginning of the war - about 260 thousand.

The organization was based on three main directorates, symbolizing the three main areas of activity of the "SS" - the general Main Directorate, the General Directorate for Racial and Settlement Affairs and the General Directorate of State Security.

The General Commander-in-Chief was subordinate to the three groups of SS formations created by that time: “general detachments” (“Algemeine SS”), “guard detachments” (“SS - Wachferbende”) or, as they were otherwise called “detachments of the dead head” (“Totenkopfferbende” ) and "detachments for assignment" ("SS - Verfyugungstruppe").

Each of these groups had a special structure and special tasks.

The "General Detachments" were a kind of club of the "Nazi elite", the stay in which opened up unlimited opportunities for moving up the bureaucratic state and party ladder. From among the members of the "general detachments" officers were recruited for the police and other punitive bodies. Members of the "general detachments" were appointed to leadership positions in numerous "public" organizations created by the National Socialists. The very fact of membership in the "SS" cleared the way for a successful business career, as it testified that such a powerful and influential organization stands behind this person.

For ordinary people, joining the "general detachments" was associated with a complex and lengthy procedure. A member of the organization of the Nazi youth who wished to get into the "general detachments", after a thorough check of his racial, physical and political suitability, was declared an "applicant" upon reaching the age of 18. After a probationary period, he was accepted into the detachment as a candidate and underwent military sports training there. Then he was called up for military service, and only after demobilization and passing an additional probationary period, during which he was subjected to indoctrination, was he finally enrolled in full members of the "SS".

For representatives of the ruling classes who held prominent social or economic positions, the path to the "general detachments" was extremely facilitated. For many of them, it was enough just to express a desire to not only be enrolled in the "general detachments", but also to receive the title of honorary officer of the "SS". It was very beneficial for the bearer of such a title, because it was an official confirmation of the strength of his position in Nazi society. For the “SS”, the distribution of such titles opened up a wide opportunity for exercising supervision over the activities of all branches of the state apparatus through its people.

The duties of the members of the "general detachments" were not burdensome. Staying in them was considered a social activity and did not require separation from the main work. The detachments were engaged in various types of military sports training (including automobile and equestrian sports), participated in parades, and held training camps. But their main task was, of course, not this. Having taken an oath to Hitler for unconditional loyalty and declaring the goal of his life to be the merciless extermination of all sedition, each member of the "general detachments", feeling himself a representative of a special order called to "reign and reign", in itself became an active carrier of terror. Without waiting for directives, at any time, at work and outside of work, he monitored the behavior of those around him, put pressure on them with his presence, at the same time widely using the right to involve punitive bodies. In case of "necessity" (demonstrations, strikes, unrest), "general detachments" could be quickly mobilized and thrown against the "internal enemy".

The SS "detachments for assignments" were smaller than the "general detachments". Initially, they numbered 4-5 thousand people, and by the beginning of the war - 18 thousand. Unlike the latter, they were professional police units that differed from ordinary paramilitary police only in their privileged position. The main task of the "detachments for assignments" was considered to be to ensure order on the "internal front", especially. In military conditions. In fact, it was a personal army. Hitler, his guard, to whom he gave the most delicate and most dirty tasks.

The existence of the third group - "guard detachments" ("detachments of the dead head") was closely connected with the system of stationary concentration camps created by the Nazi leadership.

Already after the first purges carried out in the storm troopers, and especially after the events of June 30, 1934, the guards of the concentration camps created in the first months of fascist domination were removed from the hands of the storm troopers and transferred to the SS. As a result, the management of concentration camps has become one of the main tasks facing the "SS", and an inseparable part of their activities.

The transfer of concentration camps under the auspices of the "SS" was accompanied by a number of organizational changes. The scale of this form of terrorist, repressive activity was significantly expanded, the improvisation generated by the explosion of passions was replaced by a cold, well-thought-out system of mass extermination of people, which was given an official character.

The first major concentration camp formed by the "SS" was at Dachau (near Munich). Its creator and first head was SS Standartenführer Eicke, who later played a major role in organizing other death factories.

In the autumn of 1934, within the framework of the general Main Directorate, the Office of the Inspector of "Guard Detachments" and Concentration Camps was created, which was entrusted with the deployment of a network of concentration camps and ensuring their protection. The same Eike was appointed to the post of head of the department. The concentration camps Dachau, Sachsenhausen (near Oranienburg), Papenburg with its subordinate "work camps" Esterwege, Neu-Zustrum, Bergermoor and Aschendorf-Fuhlsbüttel (near Hamburg), Lichtenburg (Silesia), Moringen ( Ruhr area) and Columbiahaus (Berlin). Subsequently, some of the smaller camps were liquidated and large ones were created in their place, including the infamous Buchenwald, Flossenburg, Mauthausen, Ravensbrück, and after the start of the war, extermination camps: Auschwitz, Majdanek, Tremblinka and others.

"Guard detachments" were created to protect the concentration camps. They were also professional police troops, the rank and file of which was recruited mainly from persons who had completed military service, and the officers from former officers of the Kaiser's army and the Reichswehr. The main condition for hiring in the "guard detachments" was unquestioning obedience to the orders of superiors and extreme cruelty towards prisoners. The cult of violence deliberately planted in the "guard detachments", combined with guaranteed impunity in everything related to the life and death of prisoners, led to the flourishing of extreme forms of sadism in the "guard detachments".

From the personnel of the "guard detachments" the administration and external guards of the camps were formed. Persons not employed in the camps passed military training.

Gradually, the “guard detachments” turned into mobile police units, which, while still performing the functions of a camp guard, at the same time prepared to suppress internal unrest, like “detachments for assignments”. By the beginning of 1937, there were 8-9 thousand people in the "guard detachments", divided into three regiments (standards): "Upper Bavaria", "Brandenburg" and "Thuringia". After the Anschluss of Austria, a fourth standard was created - "Ostmark".

Initially, the "SS troops" were formed on a voluntary basis. Later, due to heavy losses and a lack of volunteers, the Nazi authorities began to send conscripts to the SS units. In the course of hostilities, careful racial selection also had to be abandoned. Of the 400-500 thousand volunteers who were in the "SS troops", about 200 thousand were foreign fascists, among whom not all could boast of the purity of German Aryan blood.

The creation of the "SS troops" further strengthened the position of this organization in the system of the fascist dictatorship, for it placed powerful armed forces at its disposal.

No less important role in the mechanism of the fascist dictatorship played the Main Directorate of State Security ("SD"). Proclaimed by Hess' decree of June 9, 1934, as the sole intelligence service of the National Socialist Party, it soon developed into a pervasive system of total espionage both at home and abroad. The State Secret Police (Gestapo) was included in the SD. The Main Directorate of State Security was in charge of organizing sabotage and subversive activities abroad, based, in particular, on the use of Nazism-sympathetic sentiments among German national minorities in other countries. In parallel with military intelligence, the SD created an extensive military espionage apparatus.

The whole of Germany was covered with a network of secret agents. At any enterprise, in any institution, in any organization, not excluding the organs of the NSDAP, there were agents: either the so-called trusted persons ("F-leit") - members of the NSDAP, who performed surveillance functions without any remuneration, or simply spies ("A-leite" and "Ts-leit"), who received a constant or "piecework" payment.

Their reports, summarized in the central office (in particular, in the III department of the Main Directorate of State Security), were used, firstly, to take repressive measures - in this case they were transferred to the Gestapo, and secondly, to compile reports on morale and moods population (the content of these reports was taken into account in the political decisions of the Nazi leadership, as well as in determining the main directions in propaganda activities) and, thirdly, to compile secret dossiers on all more or less well-known political, public and other figures. The latter provided the leaders of the "SD" and, accordingly, the "SS" especially big influence. Having compromising material on almost all prominent party and government officials of the "third empire", they had the opportunity, resorting to blackmail, to achieve all their goals.

Along with a network of agents, the Main Directorate of State Security had its own formations - "SD detachments" that existed along with other formations of the "SS".

Thus, the punitive policy of the SS until 1939 was characterized by the material formation within the framework of the Third Empire of a branched, systematized apparatus and structure of terror. The policy of terror itself was carried out both against Jews, anti-fascists and communists, and among the NSDAP itself, in order to eliminate alleged competitors in the only place leader of the party, as well as the Fuhrer of the whole country. As a result, a system of concentration camps was created, where even those who participated in their organization fell. The state machine in Nazi Germany was organized in such a way that each Fuhrer was in his own place and therefore had a wide range of punitive, as well as coercive rights and powers in relation to his subordinates, especially if they could be, in the opinion of such "Führers", dangerous to spreading the ideas of humanism, anti-fascism and communism.

Conclusion

SS and SD (from German Schutzstaffeln, - "security formations" and Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsf ührers-SS, - "the security service of the imperial leader of the SS"), were the main repressive and punitive institutions of Nazi Germany, which were in charge of the "final solution" of the Jewish question. The SS arose in 1923 as part of the assault squads (Sturmabtielungen) as a small group of A. Hitler's personal bodyguards. Since 1929, when G. Himmler headed them, they began to form as security units that ensure the safety of the entire Nazi leadership. The SD were created by G. Himmler in 1931 as an internal security service of the Nazi Party, designed to monitor the purity of the party ranks and prevent the penetration of alien and hostile elements into them. The SS turned into an all-powerful organization of political terror, ready to smoothly and effectively carry out any instructions of the Nazi Party, after the establishment of the Nazi regime in Germany in January 1933 and the unification with the SD in March 1934. A .Hitler, who did not trust the traditional government institutions(including army, political and criminal police). Hitler believed that even after a total purge of these institutions, they would not be able to become a reliable tool for carrying out the political course he planned.

SS were conceived as fundamentally new type power structure; their purpose, structure, principles of personnel selection, ideological and psychological attitudes, symbols were supposed to embody the ideals and goals of the Nazi regime and, above all, its racist ideology. The Nazi leaders made the party elite out of the SS, membership in them became a sign of distinction and honor - many millions of Germans considered the SS men the embodiment of strength and courage, knights without fear and reproach, the best sons of the German race. Until 1940, membership in the SS was exclusively voluntary (a massive influx of volunteers did not stop until last days Third Reich), and not every member of the Nazi Party was accepted into their ranks. A member of the SS had to have an impeccable racial origin (documented since at least the end of the 18th century), in addition, an "Aryan" appearance was desirable; members of the SS were required to prove selfless devotion to the Fuhrer and the racial idea, readiness to stop at nothing to carry out any orders from their superiors, good physical data and a stable psyche. The prestige of the SS was so high that many heads of state departments (for example, I. von Ribbentrop (foreign minister in the Third Reich), G. Goering ("Nazi No. 2") and many others), big bankers, industrialists, engineers, scientists etc. considered it an honor to wear the special SS general and officer ranks assigned to them (Obergruppenführer - SS General, Standartenführer - Colonel, Obersturmbannführer - Lieutenant Colonel, Sturmbannführer - Major, Sturmführer - Lieutenant, etc.).

Political course of the Nazi regime increasingly did not comply with international law and the entire European Christian cultural tradition, Nazi leaders more and more often the SS was entrusted with such practical actions, which, apart from them, no one was ready to perform.

The scale of activity of the SS and SD continuously increased, their numbers grew rapidly - from 280 people in 1929 to 52 thousand in 1933, several hundred thousand in 1939. for internal and external security (it was not possible to completely subdue only the army). In 1933, the head of the SS G. Himmler also headed the Munich police, in April 1934 - the Gestapo of Prussia, in June 1936 - the entire police system of the Third Reich. In parallel with this, the prerogatives of the SD, a kind of elite within the SS, were expanding: in June 1936, the favorite of A. Hitler and G. Himmler, the chief of the SD from the moment it was created, R. Heydrich, became the head of the Third Reich security police. In September 1939, the takeover of state structures by party structures (including the SS and SD) ended with the creation of the Reichsicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) headed by Heydrich. The RSHA, which united the Gestapo and the SD under one command, became part of the structure of the Ministry of the Interior, while remaining at the same time one of the most important divisions of the SS (in both capacities it was subordinate to G. Himmler). The functions and powers to eliminate anyone, including potential opponents of the Nazi regime and racial ideology, were transferred to the RSHA, which included persons suspected of high treason (especially vigilance was shown in relation to journalists, some church leaders and former members of banned non-Nazi parties and trade unions), as well as all representatives of the "inferior and inferior" races and, above all, Jews. " final decision"the Jewish question could not have been conceived and carried out without the SS and SD and the human type- ideological and therefore ruthless and cold-blooded killers, and often just sadists, for whom the Nazi ideology served as a convenient justification for their criminal inclinations.

From the moment the Nazi regime was established in Germany, all anti-Jewish actions were entrusted only to Himmler's department. The SS and SD directed and controlled the process, which began as early as 1933, of ousting Jews from civil, political, economic, cultural and other spheres of life. The same punitive bodies monitored the observance of the Nuremberg Laws, which actually deprived the Jews of elementary human rights. The SD and Heydrich were directly instructed to provoke a wave of "spontaneous" attacks throughout Germany on November 9, 1938. Jewish pogroms(as, for example, the tragically famous events of Kristallnacht). The SS and SD were also in charge of the campaign, which was carried out before the start of World War II, to cleanse the entire territory of Greater Germany from the Jewish presence, as the Nazis began to call after the Anschluss of Austria (March 1938) the united country. One of the main organizers of the forced Jewish emigration, which was accompanied by the confiscation of almost all the property of the expelled Jews, was A. Eichmann.

The death camps were under the exclusive jurisdiction of the SS: Himmler's department was entrusted with their design, construction, protection, and then ensuring their smooth operation. The scientific and design institutes that were part of the SS system (among them, along with the institute of "racial hygiene", were engineering and technological, chemical, biomedical and others), developed the most effective and cheap equipment and chemical means for the rapid killing of people. The RSHA clearly and organizedly ensured the delivery to the death camps of Jews from European countries controlled by Nazi Germany. Specially created in 1934 units of the SS "Dead Head" guarded the death camps. The main administrative and economic department of the SS - WVHA, which was in charge of the camps, developed and established a regime for the maximum rationalization of the death conveyor - first, children, pregnant women, the sick and the elderly were destroyed; the service by prisoners of those operations of the process of killing people, which were abhorred not only by the SS men themselves, but also by their henchmen from the populated occupied countries, was introduced; from the able-bodied prisoners, before their destruction, all the forces were pumped out by slave labor; personal belongings and even the remains of the victims were disposed of (golden crowns, hair, often skin, ashes from crematorium ovens). As a rule, only those doctors and scientists who had officer and sometimes general SS ranks were entrusted with biomedical experiments on concentration camp prisoners, mainly Jews.

The activity of organizations such as the SA, SS and SD studied in the course work is characterized as criminal and extremely inhuman, aimed at destroying any, even the simplest, generally accepted norms of law and morality.

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What happened to the officers and soldiers from the punitive battalion, then the brigade, and then the SS division Dirlewanger?

Fritz Schmedes and commander of the 72nd SS Regiment Erich Buchmann survived the war and later lived in West Germany. Another regiment commander, Ewald Ehlers, did not live to see the end of the war. According to Karl Gerber, Ehlers, who was distinguished by incredible cruelty, was hanged by his own subordinates on May 25, 1945, when his group was in the Halb cauldron.
Gerber heard the story of the execution of Ehlers while walking under escort with other SS men to the Soviet prisoner of war camp in Sagan.
It is not known how the head of the operations department, Kurt Weisse, ended his life. Shortly before the end of the war, he changed into the uniform of a corporal of the Wehrmacht and mingled with the soldiers. As a result, he ended up in British captivity, from where he made a successful escape on March 5, 1946. After that, traces of Weisse are lost, his whereabouts have never been established.

To this day, there is an opinion that a significant part of the 36th SS division was, in the words of the French researcher J. Bernage, "brutally destroyed Soviet troops". Of course, there were facts of the execution of SS men by Soviet soldiers, but not all of them were executed.
According to the French specialist K. Ingrao, 634 people who previously served with Dirlewanger managed to survive the Soviet prisoner of war camps and return to their homeland at different times.
However, speaking of Dirlewanger's subordinates who were in Soviet captivity, one should not forget that more than half of those 634 people who managed to return home were members of the Communist Party of Germany and the Social Democratic Party of Germany, who fell into the SS assault brigade in November 1944 G.

Fritz Schmedes.

Their fate was hard. 480 people who defected to the side of the Red Army were never released. They were placed in prisoner camp No. 176 in Focsani (Romania).
Then they were sent to the territory of the Soviet Union - to camps No. 280/2, No. 280/3, No. 280/7, No. 280/18 near Stalino (today Donetsk), where they, divided into groups, were engaged in coal mining in Makeevka , Gorlovka, Kramatorsk, Voroshilovsk, Sverdlovsk and Kadievka.
Of course, some of them died from various diseases. The process of returning home began only in 1946 and continued until the mid-1950s.

A certain part of the penalty box (groups of 10-20 people) ended up in the camps of Molotov (Perm), Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg), Ryazan, Tula and Krasnogorsk.
Another 125 people, mostly communists, worked in the Boksitogorsk camp near Tikhvin (200 km east of Leningrad). The bodies of the MTB checked every communist, someone was released earlier, someone later.
About 20 former members of the Dirlewanger formation subsequently participated in the creation of the Ministry of State Security of the GDR ("Stasi").
And some, like Alfred Neumann, a former convict of the Dublovic SS penal camp, managed to make a political career. He was a member of the Politburo of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, headed the Ministry of Logistics for several years, and was also Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers.
Subsequently, Neumann said that the communist penalists were under special supervision, they had up to a certain moment there was no status of prisoners of war, since for some time they were considered persons involved in punitive actions.

The fate of convicted members of the SS, the Wehrmacht, criminals and homosexuals who were captured by the Red Army was in many ways similar to the fate of the communist penitentiaries, but before they could be perceived as prisoners of war, the competent authorities worked with them, seeking to find war criminals among them.
Some of those who were lucky enough to survive, after returning to West Germany, were again taken into custody, including 11 criminals who did not serve their sentences to the end.

As for the traitors from the USSR who served in special battalion SS, then in order to search for them in 1947, an investigation team was created, headed by the investigator for especially important cases of the MTB, Major Sergei Panin.
The investigation team worked for 14 years. The result of her work was 72 volumes of the criminal case. On December 13, 1960, the KGB under the Council of Ministers of the Byelorussian SSR initiated a criminal case on the facts of atrocities committed by punishers of a special SS battalion under the command of Dirlewanger in the temporarily occupied territory of Belarus.
In this case, in December 1960 - May 1961 for murder and torture Soviet citizens KGB officers arrested and prosecuted former SS men A. S. Stopchenko, I. S. Pugachev, V. A. Yalynsky, F. F. Grabarovsky, I. E. Tupiga, G. A. Kiriyenko, V. R. Zaivy , A. E. Radkovsky, M. V. Maidanov, L. A. Sakhno, P. A. Umanets, M. A. Mironenkov and S. A. Shinkevich.
On October 13, 1961, the trial of collaborators began in Minsk. All of them were sentenced to death.

Of course, these were far from all the collaborators who served with Dirlewanger in 1942-1943. But the lives of some ended even before the mentioned process took place in Minsk.
For example, I. D. Melnichenko, who commanded the unit, after he fought in the partisan brigade named after. Chkalov, deserted at the end of the summer of 1944.
Until February 1945, Melnichenko hid in the Murmansk region, and then returned to Ukraine, where he traded in theft. From his hand, the representative of the Rokitnyansky RO NKVD Ronzhin died.
On July 11, 1945, Melnichenko confessed to the head of the Uzinsky RO NKVD. In August 1945 he was sent to the Chernihiv region, to the places where he had committed crimes.
During transportation by rail, Melnichenko escaped. On February 26, 1946, he was blocked by officers of the operational group of the Nosovsky District Department of the NKVD and shot dead during the arrest.

In 1960, the KGB summoned Pyotr Gavrilenko for interrogation as a witness. The state security officers did not yet know that he was the commander of the machine-gun squad that carried out the execution of the population in the village of Lesiny in May 1943.
Gavrilenko committed suicide - he jumped out of the window of the third floor of a hotel in Minsk, as a result of a deep emotional shock that occurred after he, together with the Chekists, visited the site of the former village.

The search for former subordinates of Dirlewanger continued further. Soviet justice also wanted to see the German penalty box in the dock.
Back in 1946, the head of the Belarusian delegation at the 1st session of the UN General Assembly handed over a list of 1200 criminals and their accomplices, including members of the special SS battalion, and demanded their extradition for punishment in accordance with Soviet laws.
But the Western powers did not extradite anyone. Subsequently, the Soviet state security agencies established that Heinrich Faiertag, Barchke, Toll, Kurt Weisse, Johann Zimmermann, Jakob Tad, Otto Laudbach, Willy Zinkad, Rene Ferderer, Alfred Zingebel, Herbert Dietz, Zemke and Weinhoefer.
The listed persons, according to Soviet documents, went to the West and were not punished.

Several litigation, which examined the crimes of the Dirlewanger battalion. One of the first such trials, organized by the Central Office of Justice of the city of Ludwigsburg and the Hannover Prosecutor's Office, took place in 1960, and it, among other things, clarified the role of fines in the burning Belarusian village Khatyn.
Insufficient documentary base did not allow bringing the perpetrators to justice. However, even later, in the 1970s, the judiciary made little progress in establishing the truth.
The Hanover prosecutor's office, which dealt with the Khatyn issue, even doubted whether it could be about the murder of the population. In September 1975, the case was transferred to the prosecutor's office of the city of Itzehoe (Schleswig-Holstein). But the search for the perpetrators of the tragedy turned out to be of little success. The testimony of Soviet witnesses did not help either. As a result, at the end of 1975, the case was closed.

Five trials against Heinz Reinefarth, commander of the SS task force and police in the Polish capital, also ended in vain.
The Flensburg prosecutor's office tried to find out the details of the executions of civilians during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in August - September 1944.
Reinefart, who by that time had become a member of the Landtag of Schleswig-Holstein from the United Party of Germany, denied the participation of the SS in the crimes.
His words are known, spoken before the prosecutor, when the question touched on the activities of the Dirlewanger regiment on Volskaya Street:
"The one who on the morning of August 5, 1944 set out with 356 soldiers, by the evening of August 7, 1944, had about 40 people who fought for their lives.
The Steingauer battle group, which existed until August 7, 1944, could hardly carry out such executions. The fighting she fought in the streets was fierce and resulted in heavy casualties.
The same goes for the Mayer battle group. This group was also constrained by hostilities, so it is difficult to imagine that it was engaged in executions contrary to international law."

In view of the fact that new materials were discovered, published in the monograph of the historian from Lüneburg, Dr. Hans von Krannhals, the Flensburg prosecutor's office stopped the investigation.
Nevertheless, despite the new documents and the efforts of the prosecutor Birman, who resumed the investigation in this case, Reinefart was never brought to justice.
The former commander of the task force died quietly at his home in Westland on May 7, 1979. Almost 30 years later, in 2008, journalists from Spiegel, who prepared an article about the crimes of the special SS regiment in Warsaw, were forced to state the fact: "In Germany Until now, none of the commanders of this unit has paid for their crimes - neither officers, nor soldiers, nor those who were at one with them.

In 2008, journalists also learned that the collected materials on the formation of Dirlewanger, as prosecutor Joachim Riedl, deputy head of the Ludwigsburg Center for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes, said in an interview, were either never transferred to the prosecutor's office or were not studied, although since 1988, when a new list of people put on the international wanted list was submitted to the UN, a lot of information accumulated in the Center.
As is now known, the administration of Ludwigsburg handed over the materials to the court of Baden-Württemberg, where an investigation team was formed.
As a result of the work, it was possible to find three people who served in the regiment during the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. On April 17, 2009, GRK prosecutor Boguslav Chervinsky said that the Polish side requested assistance from the German colleagues in bringing these three individuals to justice, since there is no statute of limitations for crimes committed in Poland. But the German judiciary did not bring any charges against any of the three former penalty boxers.

The real participants in the crimes remain at large and quietly live out their lives. This, in particular, applies to an anonymous SS veteran interviewed by the historian Rolf Michaelis.
After spending no more than two years in the Nuremberg-Langwasser POW camp, the anonymous man was released and found a job in Regensburg.
In 1952 he became a school bus driver and later a tour bus driver and traveled regularly to Austria, Italy and Switzerland. Anonymous retired in 1985. The former poacher died in 2007.
For 60 post-war years, he was not brought to justice even once, although from his memoirs it follows that he took part in many punitive actions on the territory of Poland and Belarus and killed many people.

Over the years of its existence, the SS penalty box, according to the authors' calculations, killed about 60 thousand people. This figure, we emphasize, cannot be considered final, since not all documents on this issue have been studied yet.
The history of the formation of Dirlewanger, as in a mirror, reflected the most unattractive and monstrous pictures of the Second World War. This is an example of what people who are overcome by hatred and embark on the path of total cruelty can become, people who have lost their conscience, who do not want to think and bear any responsibility.

More about the band. Punishers and perverts. 1942 - 1985: http://oper-1974.livejournal.com/255035.html

Kalistros Thielecke (matricide), he killed his mother with 17 stab wounds and ended up in prison and then in the SS Sonderkommando Dirlewanger.

Karl Johheim, a member of the Black Front organization, was arrested in the early 30s and spent 11 years in prisons and concentration camps in Germany. He was amnestied in the fall of 1944 and, among the amnestied political prisoners, was sent to the brigade located at that time in Slovakia Dirlewanger. Survived the war.

Documents of 2 Ukrainians from Poltava Pyotr Lavrik and Kharkiv resident Nikolai Novosiletsky, who served with Dirlewanger.

Diary of Ivan Melnichenko, deputy commander of the Ukrainian company Dirlewanger. On this page of the diary we are talking about the anti-partisan operation "Franz", in which Melnichenko commanded a company.

"December 25.42, I left Mogilev, to Berezino metro station. I met the New Year well, I drank. After the New Year, there was a battle near the village of Terebolye, from my company, which commanded, Shvets was killed and Ratkovsky was wounded.
It was the most difficult battle, 20 people were wounded from the battalion. We retreated. After 3 days, Berezino station went to Chervensky district, cleared the forests to Osipovichi, the whole team plunged into Osipovichi and left ....."

Rostislav Muravyov, served as a Sturmführer in a Ukrainian company. He survived the war, lived in Kyiv and worked as a teacher at a construction college. Arrested and sentenced to CMN in 1970.

Dear German,

I just got back from surgery and found your letter dated November 16th. Yes, we must all suffer in this war; My deepest condolences to you on the death of your wife. We just have to keep living until better times.
News from Bamberg is always welcome. We have the latest news: our Dirlewanger was awarded the Knight's Cross in October there were no celebrations, the operations are too difficult, and there is no time for this.
The Slovaks are now openly allied with the Russians, and in every muddy village there is a nest of partisans. The forests and mountains in the Tatras have made the partisans a deadly danger to us.
We work with every newly arrived prisoner. Now I am in a village near Ipoliság. The Russians are very close. The reinforcements we have received are no good, and it would be better if they remained in the concentration camps.
Yesterday twelve of them went over to the Russian side, they were all old communists, it would be better if they were all hanged on the gallows. But there are still real heroes here.
Well, the enemy artillery opens fire again, and I must return. Warm regards from your brother-in-law.
Franz.

Since the beginning of the Second World War, when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the systematic destruction of the Soviet population began. As a rule, to carry out tasks of this kind, special units were created that bore completely innocent names - Eisatzgruppen or operational-tactical groups. The first such groups were created in 1938 by Walter Schellenberg. The corresponding order was given by Reinhard Heydrich, before the start of operations in Czechoslovakia. The purpose of their organization was to suppress the slightest resistance from the local population.

The creation of task forces did not go beyond the agreement between the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces and the Reich Security Main Office.

In May 1941, on behalf of Heydrich, Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller was obliged to discuss the activities of the Einsatzgruppen in the rear of the German army, which was planned to be sent to the Eastern Front. But Müller was too straightforward, so the only thing he managed to achieve was to set General Wagner against him. Later, the same task was entrusted to the diplomat Schellenberg, who managed to persuade the military, who until that moment reacted extremely negatively to any actions of the Gestapo in the rear. According to Heydrich's instructions, the army had to not only tolerate the presence of operational-tactical groups, but also provide them with all kinds of support. Thus, the successful negotiations of Schellenberg led to the fact that at the end of May the agreement was signed.

As a result, four such operational-tactical groups were formed on a geographical basis: A - the Baltic States, B - Moscow, Smolensk, C - Kyiv, D - the south of Ukraine. At the head of each of these groups were placed experienced Nazis who had long forgotten about such a thing as pangs of conscience, Gruppenführers Franz Stahlecker, Arthur Nebe, Otto Rasch and Otto Ohlendorf. They all received orders from Heydrich's deputy, Bruno Steckenbach, who served as head of the security police and intelligence service SS.

Each of these groups included from a thousand to 1200 people, who were distributed among several teams. Moreover, here it should also be noted that the composition of the groups was thought out in detail. Thus, for every thousand people, there were about 100 Gestapo, 350 SS, 150 mechanics and drivers, 130 law enforcement officers, 80 auxiliary police officers, who were usually recruited on the spot, as well as about 50 criminal police officers and 30 SD officers. In addition, the groups included translators, radio operators, telegraph operators, as well as ... female staff (approximately 10-15 women for each group).

It should be noted that in 1939 it was Shtekkenbach who carried out the "Action AB" - an operation to destroy the Polish intelligentsia, and then managed to make a good career in this area. The Einsatzgruppen were assigned to the armies "Center", "North" and "South", and also to the 11th Army. The main task of the Einsatzgruppen was to destroy the enemies of the Reich, and by and large, the communists, Jews and gypsies were subject to destruction. At the insistence of Dr. Otto Rasch, all members of the groups had to take part in the executions in order to overcome themselves. Thus, all members of the groups were bound by a common sense of guilt.

The formation of the Einsatzgruppen was completed at the end of June 1941, and already at the beginning of the next they began to fulfill their duties. Among their immediate duties stood out the task of destroying the Jewish population and political commissars. Orders regarding these tasks were communicated to all commanders at a meeting held at Pretz on 19 June. According to this order, all members of the Jewish population, including children, were subject to complete destruction. Thus, for example, 35,000 Jews were killed in Riga, and 195,000 in Kyiv. As a rule, their liquidation began in a standard way - with compulsory registration with the police. Executions were always accompanied by robberies, and everything that could be used was subject to confiscation - gold and jewelry, clothes and shoes, leather goods.

During the invasion of Soviet territory the Eisatzgruppen followed the German forces as they advanced inland. These groups carried out their operations, relying on the help of teams of local collaborators. The forces of operational-tactical groups killed thousands of physically and mentally handicapped people who were in hospitals. And if the practice of taking Jews to death camps or ghettos was introduced later, at the initial stage they were shot on the spot.

The army, as prescribed by the agreement, provided the punishers with equipment, transport and housing, as well as in certain cases personnel(when transporting prisoners as guards). If at first the victims of the Einsatzgruppen were predominantly Jewish men, then later absolutely everyone died at their hands, regardless of age and gender - and they were all buried in a common grave. Jews were mostly given out by local informants. Then they were sent to collection points. After that, they were taken on foot or by trucks to the place of execution, where trenches had been prepared in advance. In a number of cases, they were forced to dig their own grave before being shot. After that, everyone, regardless of whether they were men, women or children, were forced to undress and hand over all valuables. The execution was carried out in two ways: the victims were either lined up in front of the trench, or forced to lie face down at the bottom of the pit.

I must say that the most common form of extermination of the population were executions. But in 1941, on the orders of Heinrich Himmler, who noted that such a method is a psychologically difficult test for the members of the firing squads themselves. In this regard, a new, more effective way of mass destruction of people was invented. These were gas wagons - gas chambers that were mounted on a truck chassis. They served carbon monoxide from the exhaust pipe, thus, everyone who was inside died. This invention was called "gas chamber". They first appeared on the Eastern Front in the autumn of 1941, and from that time they began to be used along with executions.

Until the spring of 1943, the Einsatzgruppen massacred more than one million of the Jewish population living in the Soviet Union, as well as tens of thousands of gypsies, politicians and patients in mental hospitals.

In the second half of the war, the Einsatzgruppen can be said to have ceased to exist. These punitive squadrons were replaced by death camps, in which stationary gas chambers were already installed. This, as the world would later learn, enabled the fascists to destroy even more innocent people.

Materials used:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C0%E9%ED%E7%E0%F2%F6%E3%F0%F3%EF%EF%FB_%EF%EE%EB%E8%F6%E8 %E8_%E1%E5%E7%EE%EF%E0%F1%ED%EE%F1%F2%E8_%E8_%D1%C4

http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005130
http://www.hrono.ru/organ/eisatzgruppen.html

In fact, we know little about the Great Patriotic War and many of its events remain unknown to many ordinary people. Nevertheless, it is our duty to remember what happened at that terrible time in order to prevent the repetition of the senseless death of millions of people. This post will shed light on one of the many episodes of the Second World War, which not everyone knows about.

In 1944, from various anti-partisan and punitive units, on the orders of Himmler, the formation of a special unit, the Jagdverbandt, began. Groups "Ost", "West" operated in the western and eastern directions. Plus a special team - "Jangengeinsack russland und gesand". The Jagdverbandt-Pribaltikum was also included there.
She specialized in terrorist activities in the Baltic countries, which after the occupation were divided into general districts: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The latter also included Pskov, Novgorod, Luga, Slantsy - the entire territory up to Leningrad.
The elementary cell of this peculiar pyramid was the "anti-partisan gruppen", where they recruited those who were ready to sell themselves to the Germans for a can of stew.
Armed with Soviet weapons, sometimes dressed in Red Army uniforms with insignia in their buttonholes, the bandits entered the village. If they came across policemen along the way, then the "guests" ruthlessly shot them. Then began questions like "how do we find" our "?
There were simple-minded people ready to help strangers, and then this happened:

“On December 31, 1943, two guys came to our village of Stega, who began to ask the locals how to find the partisans. The girl Zina, who lived in the village of Stega, said that she had such a connection.
At the same time, she indicated where the partisans were located. These guys soon left, and the next day a punitive detachment burst into the village ...
They surrounded the village, drove all the inhabitants out of their houses and then divided them into groups. Old men and children were herded into the barnyard, and young girls were taken under escort to the station to be sent to forced labor. Punishers set fire to the barnyard, where the population was driven there: mostly old people and children.
Among them was me with my grandmother and my two cousins: 10 and 6 years old. People screamed and asked for mercy, then the punishers entered the courtyard and started shooting at everyone who was there. I alone managed to escape from our family.
The next day, I, along with a group of citizens from the village of Stega, who worked on the road, went to where the barnyard used to be. There we saw the bodies of burnt women and children. Many lay embracing ...
Two weeks later, the punishers committed the same reprisals against the inhabitants of the villages of Glushnevo and Suslovo, who were also destroyed along with all the inhabitants "- from the testimony of witness Pavel Grabovsky (born 1928), a native of the village of Grabovo, the Maryn village council of the Ashevsky district; letter file No. 005/5 "Owl. secret").

According to eyewitnesses, a detachment under the command of a certain Martynovsky and his closest assistant Reshetnikov especially committed atrocities in the territory of the Pskov region. The Chekists managed to get on the trail of the last of the punishers many years after the end of the war (criminal case No. A-15511).
In the early 1960s, one of the residents of the region applied to the regional department of the KGB. Passing through some kind of stop, she recognized in a modest lineman ... a punisher who took part in the execution of civilians in her native village during the war. And although the train stopped for only a few minutes, she had a glance to understand: he!
So the investigators met a certain Gerasimov, nicknamed Pashka the Sailor, who, at the very first interrogation, confessed that he was part of an anti-partisan detachment.
“Yes, I took part in executions,” Gerasimov was indignant during interrogations, “But I was only a performer.”

“In May 1944, our detachment was located in the village of Zhaguli, Drissensky district, Vitebsk region. One evening, we went on an operation against partisans. As a result of the fighting, we suffered significant losses, while the platoon commander, Lieutenant of the German army Boris Pshik, was killed.
At the same time, we captured a large group of civilians who were hiding in the forest. They were mostly elderly women. There were also children.
Upon learning that Pshik had been killed, Martynovsky ordered the prisoners to be divided into two parts. After that, pointing to one of them, he ordered: "Shoot for the mention of the soul!"
Someone ran into the forest and found a hole, where they later led people. After that, Reshetnikov began to select punishers to carry out the order. At the same time, he named Pashka the Sailor, Narets Oscar, Nikolai Frolov ...
They took the people into the forest, placed them in front of the pit, and stood a few meters away from them. Martynovsky at that time was sitting on a stump, not far from the place of execution.
I stood next to him and told him that he could get hit by the Germans for unauthorized actions, to which Martynovsky replied that he spat on the Germans and you just need to keep your mouth shut.
After that, he said: "Igor, to the point!" And Reshetnikov gave the order: "Fire!" After that, the punishers began to shoot. Pushing the punishers aside, Gerasimov made his way to the edge of the pit and, shouting "Polundra!", began firing from his pistol, although he had a machine gun hanging behind his back.
Martynovsky himself did not participate in the execution, but Reshetnikov tried" - from the testimony of Vasily Terekhov, one of the fighters of the Martynovsky detachment; criminal case No. A-15511.

Not wanting to be responsible for the "exploits" of traitors, Pashka the Sailor handed over his "colleagues" with giblets. The first person he named was a certain Igor Reshetnikov, the right hand of Martynovsky, whom the operatives soon found behind barbed wire in one of the camps located near Vorkuta.
It immediately became clear that he received his 25 years in prison for ... espionage in favor of a foreign state. As it turned out, after the surrender of Germany, Reshetnikov ended up in the American zone, where he was recruited by intelligence. In the fall of 1947, he was transferred to the Soviet occupation zone with a special assignment.
For this, the new patrons promised him a residence permit overseas, but SMERSH intervened, whose employees figured out the traitor. A speedy court determined his punishment.
Once in the far north, Reshetnikov decided that they would no longer remember his punitive past and that he would be released with a clean passport. However, his hopes were dashed when a kind of greeting from the distant past was conveyed to him by his former subordinate, Pashka the Sailor.
In the end, under the pressure of irrefutable evidence, Reshetnikov began to testify, omitting, however, his personal participation in punitive actions.

For the dirtiest work, the Germans looked for helpers, as a rule, among declassed elements and criminals. A certain Martynovsky, a Pole by origin, was ideally suited for this role. Leaving the camp in 1940, being deprived of the right to live in Leningrad, he settled in Luga.
Waiting for the arrival of the Nazis, he voluntarily offered them his services. He was immediately sent to a special school, after which he received the rank of Lieutenant of the Wehrmacht.
For some time Martynovsky served at the headquarters of one of the punitive units in Pskov, and then the Germans, noticing his zeal, instructed him to form an anti-partisan group.
Then Igor Reshetnikov, who returned from prison on June 21, 1941, joined her. An important detail: his father also went to the service of the Germans, becoming the burgomaster of the city of Luga.

According to the plan of the invaders, Martynovsky's gang was supposed to impersonate partisans of other formations. They were supposed to penetrate into areas of active operations of the people's avengers, conduct reconnaissance, destroy patriots, under the guise of partisans, raid and rob the local population.
To disguise their leaders, they had to know the names and names of the leaders of large partisan formations. For each successful operation the bandits were generously paid, so the gang worked out the occupation marks not for fear, but for conscience.
In particular, with the help of the Martynovsky gang, several partisan appearances were uncovered in the Sebezhsky district. At the same time, in the village of Chernaya Gryaz, Reshetnikov personally shot Konstantin Fish, the intelligence chief of one of the Belarusian partisan brigades, who was on his way to establish contact with his Russian neighbors.
In November 1943, the bandits went on the trail of two groups of scouts at once, abandoned to the rear from the "mainland". They managed to surround one of them, which was led by Captain Rumyantsev.
The fight was uneven. With the last bullet, intelligence officer Nina Donkukova wounded Martynovsky, but was captured and sent to the local Gestapo office. The girl was tortured for a long time, but having achieved nothing, the Germans brought her to the Martynovsky detachment, giving her "to be eaten by wolves."

From the testimony of false partisans:

"On March 9, 1942, in the village of Elemno of the Sabutitsky s/soviet, traitors to our people Igor Reshetnikov from Luga and Ivanov Mikhail from the village of Vysokaya Griva chose Boris Fyodorov, a resident of Yelemno (b. 1920), as a target for shooting exercises, who died as a result.
On September 17, 1942, 12 women and 3 men were shot in the village of Klobutitsy of the Klobutitsy s/soviet just because the railway was blown up in the immediate vicinity of the village.
“There was such a guy in our detachment - Petrov Vasily. During the war he served as an officer and, as it turned out, was connected with the partisans.
He wanted to take the detachment to the partisans and save them from treason. Reshetnikov found out about this and told everything to Martynovsky. Together they killed this Vasily. They also shot his family: his wife and daughter. It was, I think, on November 7, 1943. I was then very struck by the small boots ... "
“There was also such a case: when during one of the operations near Polotsk ... partisans attacked us. We retreated. Reshetnikov suddenly appeared. He began to swear, shout at us.
Here, in my presence ... he shot the nurse and Viktor Alexandrov, who served in my platoon. By order of Reshetnikov, a 16-year-old teenage girl was raped. This was done by his orderly Mikhail Alexandrov.
Reshetnikov then told him: come on, I'll remove 10 punishments for you. Later, Reshetnikov also shot his mistress Maria Pankratova. He killed her in the bath out of jealousy" - from the testimony at the trial of Pavel Gerasimov (Sailor); criminal case No. A-15511.

Truly terrible was the fate of the women of those places where the detachment passed. Occupying the village, the bandits selected the most beautiful as their concubines.
They had to wash, sew, cook, satisfy the lust of this perpetually drunk crew. And when she changed her place of deployment, this peculiar female convoy, as a rule, was shot and new victims were recruited in a new place.
"On May 21, 1944, the punitive detachment was moving from the village of Kokhanovichi through Sukhorukovo to our village - Bichigovo. I was not at home, and my family lived in a hut near the cemetery. They were discovered, and my daughter was taken with them to the village of Vidoki.
The mother began to look for her daughter, went to Vidoki, but there was an ambush, and she was killed. Then I went, and my daughter, it turns out, was beaten, tormented, raped and killed. I found it only along the edge of the dress: the grave was poorly dug up.
In Vidoki, the punishers caught children, women, the elderly, drove them into a bathhouse and burned them. When I was looking for my daughter, I was present, as they dismantled the bathhouse: 30 people died there "- from the testimony at the trial of witness Pavel Kuzmich Sauluk; criminal case No. A-15511.

Nadezhda Borisevich is one of the many victims of werewolves.

Thus, the tangle of bloody crimes of this gang, which began its inglorious path near Luga, was gradually unraveled. Then there were punitive actions in the Pskov, Ostrovsky, Pytalovsky regions.
Near Novorzhev, the punishers fell into a partisan ambush and were almost completely destroyed by the 3rd partisan brigade under the command of Alexander German.
However, the ringleaders - Martynovsky himself and Reshetnikov - managed to escape. Leaving their subordinates in the cauldron, they came to their German masters, expressing a desire to continue serving not out of fear, but in good conscience. So the newly formed team of traitors ended up in the Sebezh region, and then on the territory of Belarus.
After the summer offensive of 1944, which resulted in the liberation of Pskov, this imaginary partisan detachment reached Riga itself, where the Jagdverbandt-OST headquarters was located.
Here, the YAGD gang of Martynovsky - Reshetnikov struck even their owners with pathological drunkenness and unbridled morals. For this reason, already in the autumn of the same year, this rabble was sent to the small Polish town of Hohensaltz, where he began to master sabotage training.
Somewhere along the way, Reshetnikov dealt with Martynovsky and his family: a two-year-old son, wife and mother-in-law, who followed along with the detachment.
According to Gerasimov, "that same night they were buried in a ditch near the house where they lived. Then one of ours, nicknamed Krot, brought gold that belonged to the Martynovskys."
When the Germans missed their henchman, Reshetnikov explained what happened by saying that he allegedly tried to escape, so he was forced to act according to the laws of war.

For this and other "feats", the Nazis awarded Reshetnikov the title of SS Hauptsturmführer, awarded him the Iron Cross and ... sent him to suppress resistance in Croatia and Hungary.
They were also preparing for work in the deep Soviet rear. For this purpose, parachuting was especially carefully studied. However, the rapid offensive of the Soviet army confused all the plans of this variegated team of German special forces.
This gang ended its "combat path" ingloriously: in the spring of 1945, surrounded by Soviet tanks, it almost all died, unable to break through to the main forces of the Germans.
The exception was only a few people, among whom was Reshetnikov himself.

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