Distributed by the Polonia Media Network

PART 4 - HITLER COMMANDS: "WIPE THEM OUT"

From August 2, 1944, onwards Heinrich Himmler organized the German counteroffensive. In fact, General "Panzer-Heinz" Guderian had already suggested to Hitler that he should place that area of Warsaw not already in the operational zone of the army under the Wehrmacht, and thus leave the suppression of the rebellion completely to the army. This suggestion showed that Guderian had recognized the uncomfortable fact that the uprising was threatening to take the German front facing Rokossowskij’s First White Russian Front in the rear. Hitler turned this suggestion down and the mission fell to Reichsfuehrer Himmler. He already commanded the Replacement Army which handled all military activities behind the actual front. In addition, the uprising, of course, involved the operations of an Underground Army, and the SS "dealt with" such affairs involving comparatively small groups.

Himmler himself had never reckoned with an uprising in Warsaw and for that very reason he had almost all the effective fighting units drained off from the city during July. He now reacted all the more brutally and ferociously. On the night of August 1 he ordered the execution of the former AK Chief Commander, General Rowecki, who had been kept prisoner in Dachau. He delegated the task of crushing the uprising completely to SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski who already commanded the units responsible for combating guerrilla groups. However, none of these units were at hand in Warsaw at the beginning of August. So Himmler and Bach-Zelewski promptly snatched up literally any troops nearby. They included Police units from Poznan [named Posen by the Germans] under SS Police Commander, Gruppenfuehrer Reinefarth, Dirlewanger’s Police Regiment (Brigade) from Lyck, not forgetting the Russian SS Assault Brigade RONA led by Brigadier Mieczyslaw Kaminski. Bach-Zelewski flew from Danzig [Gdansk], where Himmler had alerted him, to Breslau and from there drove to Warsaw. He arrived only on August 5, one day after the troops he was to command.

Meanwhile Himmler addressed the District Commanders and senior Wehrmacht and SS officers about July 20. During his harangue he included his intentions for the city of Warsaw and its inhabitants.

"… as soon as I heard the news about the Warsaw uprising I went to the Fuehrer, (You should bear this in mind, by the way, as an example of how to grasp news coolly and calmly). Fuehrer, I said, the moment is not convenient from a historical point of view. However, what the Poles are doing is a blessing in disguise. Within five or six weeks it will all be sorted out and then Warsaw, the capital, the head, the brains behind these 16-17 million Poles will be extinguished. The Volk [indigenous people] which has blocked our way east for a hundred years, which has been a hindrance to us since the First Battle of Tannenberg, after this … will no longer be a grave historical problem for our children, for all our descendants—yes, even for ourselves.

"Apart from this, at the same time, I ordered that Warsaw should be totally destroyed. Now, you may think that I am a dreadful barbarian. I am, if you like, when I have no other choice. The order stated: each block of houses is to be burned down and blown up so that none of their units can dig themselves in. The couple of staffs which will have to carry on there, will move into the cellars. They’re front line soldiers anyway, not like those rear echelon swine, they don’t like going where there are dead bodies! They'd find it disgusting."

Hitler simply commented laconically, "Wipe them out!"

This signal started the horrors committed by troops commanded by the Germans-- above all by the Dirlewanger and Kaminski Brigades. These measures went far beyond anything which could be considered necessary to quell the uprising. It is difficult to imagine what sort of troops could even have contemplated carrying out the commands which led to such atrocities.

By August 4 about 1,000 men belonging to Reinefarth's Police Brigade were available on the Western outskirts of Warsaw. By the following day they were 2,695 NCOs and men strong. The Russian SS Assault Brigade "RONA" under Kaminski was encamped in Tschenstochau [Czestochowa] and, supervised by a Russian Major Trolow, arrived in Warsaw with two battalions--1,700 men--on August 4. The Russians were armed with cannon of different calibers.

The Rona Brigade was a fantastic band unparalleled throughout the whole of the Second World War. Only the special conditions of partisan warfare in White Russia and German policies in their occupied territories could have produced such a unit. Its formation dated from Autumn 1941, in the area of Lokotj east of the giant forests and south of Brjansk. It was possible thanks to the initiative and courage of one German general who, counter to the express German policy in occupied Russia, set up a large autonomous Russian district. The first Russian volunteer sections were formed here.

The peasants of this area were 100% anti-Soviet. After the withdrawal of the Red Army, the farmers had divided up the country into sections, armed and prepared to defend themselves against the partisans. Thus, a sort of popular movement directed against Stalin’s regime had arisen even before the Germans appeared on the scene. The Commander of the Second German Panzer Army confirmed the Russians’ rights and withdrew all German units from this area. In return, the autonomous district around Lokotj put down any sign of partisan activity. Gradually the area was extended until it included 1,700,000 people and commanded a 20,000 strong self-defense brigade led by Russians. It was divided into five infantry regiments, one tank brigade with twenty-four T-34 tanks, one engineer battalion, one guards battalion and a machine gun section. They called themselves "Rona" [Russkaya Oswoboditeljnaja Narodnaja Armya - the Russian National Liberation Army]. When the Russian commander fell during a skirmish with partisans, Kaminski, an engineer, took over command of the brigade and the area, the Second Panzer Army making him a brigadier. Under his leadership the district developed into a haven of peace and prosperity, an example of what the Germans could have achieved, had they not let themselves be brainwashed by the Nazi theory of "Sub-human Slavs."

Kaminski, of course, noticed how the German police and civilian administration treated the Russians outside his own autonomous region. Late in 1942 he sent a warning memo to the Germans in which he predicted a change of mood even among his own people should the Germans’ inhuman and anti-Russian policies continue; this occurred a mere sixty miles behind the front.

When the Germans finally had to retreat, in the autumn of 1943, most of the Brigade went too, accompanied by their families; a total of about 50,000 people moving westwards. All these people had to be looked after and Kaminski placed himself under the command of the SS, thereby hoping to obtain better supplies. Thereupon, Himmler appointed him Full Colonel and the unit was given the title "The 29th Division of the Waffen-SS Rona (Russian)." After many horrifying experiences and much degrading treatment at the hands of the Germans, the brigade landed in Upper Silesia. Only 15,000 troops and 20,000 civilians remained.

There, in alien surroundings, Kaminski received the command to participate in the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising. He refused, maintaining that he wanted to fight Bolshevism not the Poles; but in the end he had to give in to the formidable Himmler. He selected all the bachelors from his brigade, most of them very young, unruly lads with a minimal amount of military training. As some of them still wore Soviet uniforms, they were issued yellow armbands. They deliberately assumed the right of pillage, especially as both Hitler and Himmler had ordered Warsaw to be razed to the ground anyway. But, though Kaminski's brigade may have been wild, adventurous, uncivilized and militarily unreliable, they were still not basically so barbaric and inhuman as to commit the outrages against civilians in Warsaw that occurred later. Dirlewanger’s mob were another kettle of fish entirely. Himmler himself gave full details of this strange unit at a Gauleiter [Provincial Governor] conference in East Prussia on August 3, 1944.

"… In 1941 I organized a ‘poachers’ regiment’ under Dirlewanger. Dirlewanger himself is a good Swabian fellow, wounded ten times, a real character--bit of an oddity, I suppose. I obtained permission from the Fuehrer to collect from every prison in Germany all the poachers who had used firearms and not, of course, traps, in their poaching days--about 2,000 in all. Alas, only 400 of these ‘upstanding and worthy characters’ remain today. I have kept replenishing this regiment with people on SS probation, for in the SS we really have far too strict a system of justice … when these did not suffice, I said to Dirlewanger .. . ‘Now, why not look for suitable candidates among the villains, the real criminals, in the concentration camps?’

"The atmosphere in the regiment is often somewhat medieval in the use of corporal punishment and so on … if someone pulls a face when asked whether we will win the war or not he will slump down from the table … dead, because the others will have shot him out of hand."

But, who exactly was this "good Swabian fellow," the "real character?"

Oskar Dirlewanger was born in Wuerzburg in Southern Germany in 1895. He was a doctor of political science until Frankfurt University deprived him of the title in 1935, when he was convicted and imprisoned for molesting a minor. The General SS gave him a dishonorable discharge. However, he had a mysterious and close "connection" with Gottlob Berger, who had risen from the shadowy and murky underworld of the Black Order and gained quick promotion in the SS. After Dirlewanger’s release from prison, Berger used his position as chief of the SS Main Headquarters to rush through his "probation" in the German Legion in Spain and his reestablishment in the SS.

In June, 1940, Dirlewanger was put in charge of a 2,000 strong group of real or supposed poachers, most of whom had in fact been imprisoned in Oranienburg concentration camp. With this mob he was sent to crush partisan groups in Poland and later in White Russia. Wherever this wild and disheveled rabble appeared, wholesale looting, rape and corruption occurred. A judge of one SS court collected enough evidence to bring about Dirlewanger’s arrest by Kruger, the senior SS and Police Commander in Krakow. Only when Kruger personally threatened, "If this bunch of criminals has not disappeared from this area within one week, I'll jail them personally!" were the "bunch of criminals" removed to Russia. Reports of awful horrors showed exactly where they were.

Berger, however, quashed all proceedings against them, because Dirlewanger’s unit was apparently so important in the struggle against the partisans. But, the gang suffered dreadful losses themselves and there had been no real poachers left for a long time. So at the time of the operation in Warsaw this "murderous crew," as one enraged army general called them, was made up 50% of common or garden hardened criminals and 40% of former members of the Soviet army. The remaining 10% were ethnic Germans, who had no criminal record and did not really know what they had let themselves in for when they joined Dirlewanger’s outfit.

By August 5 Dirlewanger had sixteen officers and 865 men in Warsaw. While the fighting was in progress, he gradually received 2,500 replacements, of which 1,900 came from the SS Prison Camp at Matzlau near Danzig [Gdansk]. At the end of the uprising he had 648 left.

The units the Germans had managed to scrape together looked even more colorful when they raked up a 600 strong "Security Regiment" from sections of Ninth Army, under the command of Colonel Schmidt. These were not young, courageous soldiers, but elderly men not worth sending to the front and therefore posted to security duties behind the lines. Although the 700 men of the two Azerbaijan Battalions had no penetrating striking power at the front, they proved to be skilful, dogged, if brutal, house-to-house fighters. By August 5 all these units gave the Germans between 11,000 and 12,000 troops who could be used in the battle. However, only half spoke any German. The remainder reflected a whole spectrum of the different races in the Soviet Union. There were the ranks of the Azerbaijan Battalions, Ukrainians, Muslims and Cossacks. Later they added Turkmenes, Hungarians and Galicians. This battle gave the Ukrainians an ideal outlet for their ingrained anti-Polish feelings. This caused the Poles to lump together as "Ukrainians" all the combatants from the east.

Thus, the soldiers from the East could do no right. They were hated by one side and neither their reliability nor their fighting ability were trusted by the other. The German Command sent Kaminski’s brigade into battle encouraged by macabre promises of booty and the express permission to loot and plunder. The other units were sent into battle with German units as far as possible. Later, on about August 10, the Germans posted in new, heavy weapons together with the necessary personnel, including the new and almost untested remote-control "Goliath," the "Taifun" [Typhoon] a kind of flame thrower (for use in the sewers,) smoke-projectors. and the super-heavy 61cm "Karl" mortar. It was obvious that the Germans would exploit their superiority in technical weapons. For one thing it was easier, with such a mixed bunch of units to occupy a ruined street than to capture a well-defended one. And, as Warsaw was to be razed to the ground anyway, in the eyes of the German High Command it did not matter if they began flattening the city during the fighting itself.

Counting the replacements brought in by August 20, the German forces must have had about 21,000 combatants in all, but they were never all engaged simultaneously. The purely numerical strength of both sides was fairly even for most of the struggle. By the morning of August 4, the Polish leaders already believed that at least some mild optimism was justified. They signaled London "the initiative is in our hands!"

But, the Poles did not know that to the west and south of Warsaw a storm was brewing, a storm which was to vent itself on the city in a sadistic orgy of terror. The units under Reinefarth, Dirlewanger and Kaminski were prowling in Warsaw’s suburbs. These were the units that were to smother entirely any sign of Polish resistance.

Hitler’s "Wipe them out!" dominated the events of the following days.