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Hitler's Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe
In August 1942, Hitler directed all German state institutions to assist Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS and the German police, in eradicating armed resistance in the newly occupied territories of Eastern Europe and Russia. The directive for “combating banditry” (Bandenbekämpfung), became the third component of the Nazi regime’s three-part strategy for German national security, with genocide (Endlösung der Judenfrage , or “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question”) and slave labor ( Erfassung , or “Registration of Persons to Hard Labor”) being the better-known others.An original and thought-provoking work grounded in extensive research in German archives, Hitler’s Bandit Hunters focuses on this counterinsurgency campaign, the anvil of Hitler’s crusade for empire. Bandenbekämpfung portrayed insurgents as political and racial bandits, criminalized to a greater degree than enemies of the state; moreover, violence against them was not constrained by the prevailing laws of warfare. Philip Blood explains how German forces embraced the Bandenbekämpfung doctrine, demonstrating the equal culpability of both the SS police forces and the “heroic” Waffen-SS combat arm and shattering the contrived postwar distinctions between them. He challenges the traditional view of Himmler as an armchair general and bureaucrat, exposing him as the driving force behind one of the most successful security campaigns in history, and delves into the contentious issue of the complicity of ordinary German police, soldiers, and citizens, as well as the citizens of occupied territories, in these state-sponsored manhunts. This book provokes new debates on the Nazi terrorization of Europe, the blind acquiescence of many, and the courageous resistance of the few.
424 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 22, 2025
Says that Bandenbekampfung differs from Partisanbekampfung, but never clearly explains how.
Talks about the old Imperial Army's Etappen from the First World War...then says that they did not use it during the Second World War.
Spends a tonne of time talking about all kinds of rear-echelon diagrammes and plans (better known in America as "Five o'Clock Follies" and "razzle dazzle"), then says that Bach-Zelewksi excelled at forming ad hoc task force on the spot to deal with the terrs. Never makes a clear linkage between all those theoretical rear-echelons diagrammes and plans and actual operations , of which, in contrast to Christian Ingrao in Les Chasseurs Noirs he writes precious little.
For example, he briefly mentions the idea behind the Jagdkommandos, but scarcely mentions them in the few operations he writes about.
The key is how he describes the Karstwehr. He says that the the Karstwehr "became" the 24th Waffen Gebirgs Division Kartsjäger, neglecting to mention that, despite this name, the Karstwehr never attained either the manpower or assets of an actual division. This suggests that, like business professor Henry Mintzberg did with REMF US General "Marty" Dempsey, he takes whatever a general says at his word and never looked under the hood. There is always a vast gap between rear-echelon ideals, projection and razzle dazzle and actual conditions in the bush.
In stark contrast, in Les Chasseurs Noirs , Christian Ingrao fully traces the Dirlewanger unit's evolution from Company to Division strength, as well as the evolution in missions from surveillance to ISTAR to torch the ville to rounding up suspects to MOUT in Warsaw to Gian Gentile-style Clausewitzian operations in Hungary and Lusatia. Ingrao also linearly and sequentially traces the manpower evolution, and its effects on performance from October 1940 to May 1945, whereas Blood proceeds, like Mike Pompeo, Ron DeSantis and Kayleigh McEnany in a literarily esthetic but logically and analytically nonsensical thematic format.
Blood's comprehension of German history, and of history in general, is, despite his doctorate, limited. He says that German anti-partisan warfare started in the "brutal" Thirty Years War. This ignores that the Teutonic Knights conquered Prussia in the Baltics by continually raiding into native Prussian territories, razing their villages a la William Tecumseh Sherman and Bach-Zelewski, then hauling ass back to the Green Zone, and doing this enough times until the native Prussians collapsed (as opposed the Clausewitzian fanatics Halder and Kluge, who insisted on holding on to large tracts of enemy territory instead of more economically shooting and scooting repeatedly and successively until Brand X was ripe for the picking.) Likewise, the German Peasants' War of the century before the Thirty Years War was even bloodier, with both the Bundeschuh and the Swabian League preferring to slaughter and raze everything in sight. More the to point, Blood ignores that, with the peace of 1495 and the formation of the Reichskammergericht at about the same time, Germany as a whole became more peaceful in that Wenzel's disputed succession was handled by courts in contrast to the contemporary Henry IV of England starving his rival Richard II to death.
Likewise, he makes as if rigourous anti-partisan measures were a uniquely German phenomenon, completely ignoring that Banastre Tarelton in South Carolina and John Grave Simcoe in New York during the Revolution did exactly the same thing that Bach-Zelewski did in the East.
Then, like Peter Hayes and Timothy Snyder, he citez Mark Mazower's Inside's Hitler's Greece , then completely misrepresents it. Mark Mazower said clearly that German anti-partisan operations in Greece worked when the German garrison was nearby, and that they worked less well when German troops took care of business and then RTBd out of range. Unlike Mazower, Blood never mentions the fact that German manpower limitations were a key element in the outcome of the war.
Coming back to Blood's extremely thin section on actual operations, Antonio J. Munoz does a better job of cataloguing said actual operations in his book Hitler's White Russians .
Also, Blood has a schoolboy delight in explaining in detail all the personal beefs and rivalries between the various SS and other Nazi individuals as if this was unique to the Third Reich. Savary, Napoleon's Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and Bach-Zelewski all rolled into one, was infamous for his beefs with his predecessor Fouche, the Prefect of Police Pasquier, the Military Governor Clarke, the civilian Intendant Pichon and the Foreign Minister Tallyrand. Not to mention the feuds between MI5 and MI6, between MI6 and SOE, between MI5, 4 Field Survey/14 Int and the RUC, and between the FBI and every other American law enforcement department and agency. In contrast, more mature and more professional historians like Michael Wildt, Peter Longerich and Robert Gerwarth focus on process over personalities and successfully show that the process often worked despite the personalities.
Long story short, you will get far more out of Christian Ingrao's Les Chasseurs Noir and Antonio J. Munoz's Hitler's White Russians then you will out of this compendium of theories, Five o'Clock Follies and razzle-dazzle.
Talks about the old Imperial Army's Etappen from the First World War...then says that they did not use it during the Second World War.
Spends a tonne of time talking about all kinds of rear-echelon diagrammes and plans (better known in America as "Five o'Clock Follies" and "razzle dazzle"), then says that Bach-Zelewksi excelled at forming ad hoc task force on the spot to deal with the terrs. Never makes a clear linkage between all those theoretical rear-echelons diagrammes and plans and actual operations , of which, in contrast to Christian Ingrao in Les Chasseurs Noirs he writes precious little.
For example, he briefly mentions the idea behind the Jagdkommandos, but scarcely mentions them in the few operations he writes about.
The key is how he describes the Karstwehr. He says that the the Karstwehr "became" the 24th Waffen Gebirgs Division Kartsjäger, neglecting to mention that, despite this name, the Karstwehr never attained either the manpower or assets of an actual division. This suggests that, like business professor Henry Mintzberg did with REMF US General "Marty" Dempsey, he takes whatever a general says at his word and never looked under the hood. There is always a vast gap between rear-echelon ideals, projection and razzle dazzle and actual conditions in the bush.
In stark contrast, in Les Chasseurs Noirs , Christian Ingrao fully traces the Dirlewanger unit's evolution from Company to Division strength, as well as the evolution in missions from surveillance to ISTAR to torch the ville to rounding up suspects to MOUT in Warsaw to Gian Gentile-style Clausewitzian operations in Hungary and Lusatia. Ingrao also linearly and sequentially traces the manpower evolution, and its effects on performance from October 1940 to May 1945, whereas Blood proceeds, like Mike Pompeo, Ron DeSantis and Kayleigh McEnany in a literarily esthetic but logically and analytically nonsensical thematic format.
Blood's comprehension of German history, and of history in general, is, despite his doctorate, limited. He says that German anti-partisan warfare started in the "brutal" Thirty Years War. This ignores that the Teutonic Knights conquered Prussia in the Baltics by continually raiding into native Prussian territories, razing their villages a la William Tecumseh Sherman and Bach-Zelewski, then hauling ass back to the Green Zone, and doing this enough times until the native Prussians collapsed (as opposed the Clausewitzian fanatics Halder and Kluge, who insisted on holding on to large tracts of enemy territory instead of more economically shooting and scooting repeatedly and successively until Brand X was ripe for the picking.) Likewise, the German Peasants' War of the century before the Thirty Years War was even bloodier, with both the Bundeschuh and the Swabian League preferring to slaughter and raze everything in sight. More the to point, Blood ignores that, with the peace of 1495 and the formation of the Reichskammergericht at about the same time, Germany as a whole became more peaceful in that Wenzel's disputed succession was handled by courts in contrast to the contemporary Henry IV of England starving his rival Richard II to death.
Likewise, he makes as if rigourous anti-partisan measures were a uniquely German phenomenon, completely ignoring that Banastre Tarelton in South Carolina and John Grave Simcoe in New York during the Revolution did exactly the same thing that Bach-Zelewski did in the East.
Then, like Peter Hayes and Timothy Snyder, he citez Mark Mazower's Inside's Hitler's Greece , then completely misrepresents it. Mark Mazower said clearly that German anti-partisan operations in Greece worked when the German garrison was nearby, and that they worked less well when German troops took care of business and then RTBd out of range. Unlike Mazower, Blood never mentions the fact that German manpower limitations were a key element in the outcome of the war.
Coming back to Blood's extremely thin section on actual operations, Antonio J. Munoz does a better job of cataloguing said actual operations in his book Hitler's White Russians .
Also, Blood has a schoolboy delight in explaining in detail all the personal beefs and rivalries between the various SS and other Nazi individuals as if this was unique to the Third Reich. Savary, Napoleon's Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and Bach-Zelewski all rolled into one, was infamous for his beefs with his predecessor Fouche, the Prefect of Police Pasquier, the Military Governor Clarke, the civilian Intendant Pichon and the Foreign Minister Tallyrand. Not to mention the feuds between MI5 and MI6, between MI6 and SOE, between MI5, 4 Field Survey/14 Int and the RUC, and between the FBI and every other American law enforcement department and agency. In contrast, more mature and more professional historians like Michael Wildt, Peter Longerich and Robert Gerwarth focus on process over personalities and successfully show that the process often worked despite the personalities.
Long story short, you will get far more out of Christian Ingrao's Les Chasseurs Noir and Antonio J. Munoz's Hitler's White Russians then you will out of this compendium of theories, Five o'Clock Follies and razzle-dazzle.
March 12, 2025
Very detailed study of the methods and purposes of the German "anti-partisan" war in the Soviet Union. The study, which I would not recommend to those new to the subject, focuses particularly on the blood-soaked "career" of Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, one of the worst German war criminals of World War II.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews