The Police Regiment Centre (Polizei-Regiment Mitte) was a formation of the Order Police (uniformed police) during the Nazi era. During Operation Barbarossa, it was subordinated to the Schutzstaffel (SS) and deployed in German-occupied areas, specifically the Army Group Centre Rear Area, of the Soviet Union. In mid-1942, its three constituent battalions were reassigned and the unit was re-designated as the 13th Police Regiment.
Alongside detachments from the Einsatzgruppen and the SS Cavalry Brigade, it perpetrated mass murders and was responsible for large-scale crimes against humanity targeting civilian populations in the course of the Nazi security warfare. The scope of the regiment's operations was known to British intelligence since July 1941 but, for reasons of national security, information pertaining to their activities was not released until 1993.
Background and formation
The German Order Police (uniformed police) was a key instrument of the security apparatus of Nazi Germany. In the prewar period, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, and Kurt Daluege, chief of the Order Police, cooperated in transforming the police force of the Weimar Republic into militarised formations ready to serve the regime's aims of conquest and racial annihilation. The police units participated in the annexation of Austria and the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Police troops were first formed into battalion-sized formations for the invasion of Poland, where they were deployed for security and policing purposes, also taking part in executions and mass deportations.
Twenty-three Order Police battalions were slated to take part in the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. Nine were attached to security divisions of the Wehrmacht, three for each Army Group Rear Areas. Two battalions were assigned to support the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile death squads of the SS, and the Organisation Todt, the military construction group. Twelve were formed into regiments, three battalions each, and designated as Police Regiments Centre, North, South, and Special Purpose.
Police units assigned to the Wehrmacht security divisions and the Einsatzgruppen were motorised, while those formed into regiments were not. The goals of the Order Police battalions were to secure the rear by eliminating the remnants of the enemy forces, guarding the prisoners of war, and protecting the lines of communications and captured industrial facilities. Their instructions also included, as Daluege stated, the "combat of criminal elements, above all political elements".
Police Regiment Centre was formed in June 1941 by combining Police Battalions 307, 316, and 322, each comprising about 550 men. These battalions were raised from recruits mobilised from the 1905–1915 year groups. They were led by career police professionals, steeped in the ideology of Nazism, driven anti-semitism and anti-Bolshevism. The unit was placed under the command of , a career policeman. When it crossed the German-Soviet border, the regiment came under the control of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSS-PF) for Army Group Centre.
Operational history
Early killing operations
Himmler made a personal visit to the headquarters of the unit in Belostok on 8 July where he met with Max von Schenckendorff, commander of Army Group Centre Rear Area, Daluege, Montua, Bach-Zalewski, and the regiment's officers. He expressed concern that too few Jews had been rounded up and called on the officers to increase their efforts. It was likely that Himmler had ordered increased killings since several massacres followed immediately after.
The same evening, a company of Police Battalion 322 participated in the shooting of about 1,000 Jews under the direction of Einsatzgruppe B. The next day, 9 July, Police Battalion 307 participated in the massacre of 4–6,000 Jewish men, Russians and Belarusians in the vicinity of Brest-Litovsk (now Brest, Belarus). The killing operation, with assistance by personnel of the Wehrmacht's 162nd Infantry Division, lasted several days. On 10 July, Daluege addressed the members of the regiment arrayed in a parade formation, extolling them to "exterminate" Bolshevism as a "blessing for Germany". On 11 July, Montua passed a confidential order from Bach-Zalewski to the battalion commanders that Jews, who had been "convicted of looting", were to be shot; an execution took place the same day. Around this time, Police Battalions 316 and 322 rounded up approximately 3,000 Jewish men from Belostok and shot them in a nearby forest.