. NMT04-T0155
Volume IV · Page 155
| to hurriedly establish personal contact with the commanders of the armies and with the commander of the army of the rear area. It must be stressed from the beginning that cooperation with the armed forces was generally good, in some cases, for instance with Panzer Group 4 under General Hoepner, it was very close, almost cordial. Misunderstandings which cropped up with some authorities in the first days were cleared up mainly through personal discussions. |
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| At the start of the eastern campaign it
became obvious for the security police that its special work had to be done not
only in the rear areas, as was provided for in the original agreements with the
high command of the army, but also in the combat areas, and this for two
reasons — on the one hand, the development of the rear area of the armies
was delayed because of the quick advance and on the other hand, the undermining
Communist activities and the fight against partisans took place mainly within
the areas of actual warfare — especially when the Luga sector was reached.
To carry out security police tasks, it was desirable to enter into the larger towns together with the armed forces. We had our first experiences in this direction when a small advance Kommando under my leadership entered Kovno together with the advance units of the armed forces on 25 June 1941. When the other larger towns, especially Lepaya, Yelgava, Riga, Tartu, Tallin, and the larger suburbs of Leningrad were captured, a Kommando of the security police was always with the first army units. Above all, Communist functionaries and Communist documentary material had to be seized, and the armed forces themselves had to be safeguarded against surprise attacks inside the towns; the troops themselves were usually not able to take care of that because of their small numbers. For this purpose the security police, immediately after capture, formed volunteer detachments of reliable inhabitants of all three Baltic provinces who carried out their duties successfully under our command. As an example it may be mentioned that the armed forces suffered considerable losses through guerrillas in Riga, on the left of the Dvina [Daugava] river; on the right bank of the Dvina river, however, after these volunteer detachments had been organized in Riga, not a single soldier was injured, although members of these Latvian detachments were killed and wounded in fighting against dispersed Russians. Similarly, native anti-Semitic forces were induced to start pogroms against Jews during the first hours after capture, though this inducement proved to be very difficult. Following out orders, the security police was determined to solve the Jewish question with all possible means and determination most decisively. But |
