Special Police of the Upper Silesian Self-Protection
The Special Police of the Upper Silesian Self-Protection ( SP ) was a paramilitary organization in the Weimar Republic . It was evidently set up in Breslau at the end of 1920 mainly by members of the 3rd Marine Brigade ( Marine Brigade von Loewenfeld ).
Its founder was the government commissioner Carl Spiecker , its military leader Heinz Oskar Hauenstein . The special police was deployed as a military intelligence force in the context of the second Upper Silesian uprising against Polish commandos of Polska Organizacja Wojskowa (POW) and its Bojowka Polska (BP); the latter was also referred to by the German side as the “Polish Cheka ”. It is unclear when the special police was disbanded; probably in April 1921. Allegedly, the special police in so-called killed raiding party companies more than 200 people within a few weeks that either the membership or collaboration with the Bojowka Polska were suspect. Some of the staff of the special police seem to have joined the Abwehr under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris a good 15 years later and may have been used in the commando force of the “Brandenburger” . The operation of the special police and their Polish opponents shows clear parallels to the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the aegis of Michael Collins ; in the broadest sense it could be characterized in the modern sense as asymmetrical warfare . At the time, this type of informal warfare was known as “war in the dark”.
Sources. Foundation and structure
The source situation was evidently already a good 15 years after the events in the mid-1930s, since most of the official files are said to have been destroyed following the dissolution of the special police. So far it is unclear to what extent there are files on this unit in Poland or in English, French or Italian archives, since the latter powers in the region provided the so-called voting police (APO) and it can be assumed that the activities of the special police are in the interest of the respective secret services attracted. The existence of the special police was apparently first made known to a broader public through the memoirs of former relatives in the 1930s; mainly through Friedrich Glombowski's work Organization Heinz (OH). The fate of Schlageter's comrades edited according to official files (Berlin 1934) as well as his essay Special Police in Action , which appeared in Ernst von Salomon's anthology The Book of the German Freikorps Fighters (Berlin 1938).
Due to the conspiratorial mode of operation of the Bojowka Polska, the German side apparently felt compelled to set up a civilian commando force. Their tasks consisted in initiating unrest in the occupied area, theft and break-ins to obtain information, freeing prisoners, bomb attacks and the murder of political opponents. The personnel for the SP was evidently in close consultation with the General Command of VI. Army corps of the Reichswehr in Breslau, recruited by the Prussian government commissioner Carl Spiecker in Breslau mainly from members of the 3rd Marine Brigade, but also from former members of Gerhard Roßbach's Freikorps ( Rossbach Sturmabteilung ). The members of the SP received their training in Liegnitz in a so-called shock troop school, among other things, from former police officers who instructed the special police officers, for example, in the techniques of forging documents, break-ins or conspiratorial behavior.
According to Hannsjoachim W. Koch, the SP had, in addition to the headquarters in Wroclaw, a school in Liegnitz and four shock troops of 25 men under the leadership of Lieutenant Schnepper (Liegnitz), Schwieder (Neisse), Hesse (Breslau) and Bergerhoff (Breslau), which each could be used depending on the location in the occupied territory. In addition, according to Glombowski, the SP had espionage departments in Opole , Bytom and Katowice, and local agents in every district of the voting area. The SP basically acted in civilian clothes. Its members had secret ID cards that were changed every eight days and were disguised as unsuspicious documents.
Calls
The only SP operation for which a published report is available is a commando operation in Cosel in which 21 German prisoners were freed. The date is not given by Glombowski. Allegedly Albert Leo Schlageter was also involved in the company . Six motor vehicles were used for this purpose, presumably with three to four people each. The special police were armed with revolvers and submachine guns. Through a befriended sergeant, the group managed to break into the prison in Cosel, which was guarded by French units. While escaping with the freed prisoners, a unit of the so-called Voting Police (Apo) tried to stop the unit, but managed to break through the roadblock and get into the so-called unoccupied area in Upper Silesia.
resolution
Regardless of the changed political conditions, which no longer required the existence of such a force, it becomes clear from the little information that the former members made public that some criminal elements had been recruited who committed crimes on their own account and often came from the Free Corps milieu in the Baltic States (so-called Baltic States ). Since such crimes could not be punished with normal military disciplinary measures due to the structure of the SP as a secret service force, the leadership of the SP apparently resorted to the same means against its own members as against its opponent, according to Friedrich Wilhelm von Oertzen :
Such people were removed quickly and silently wherever necessary. During the months in which the Special Police […] worked, there was a lot, a lot of dirt for their leaders and members to handle .
Part of the special police, which was presumably dissolved in April 1921, appears to have joined a voluntary corps founded by Hauenstein or his organization Heinz .
The special police was a novelty in German military history for which there were no historical models. The tactics and methods of this unit seem to have been adopted by the so-called Brandenburgers, possibly also through the acceptance of former members. It is also unclear to what extent staff or experience of the special police flowed into the concepts of Grenzschutz Ost , which up until the end of the 1920s had developed concepts for a kind of guerrilla war in the event of a Polish attack. It is also unclear whether the methods of so-called war in the dark were developed by both the Polish and German sides themselves or whether they were adapted by the IRA or the warring parties in the Russian civil war .
See also
literature
- Gang fighting in Upper Silesia. Official report of Lieutenant von Scheele, former Kom.-Führer in the Reichswehr Infantry Regiment 63 . In: Ernst von Salomon (ed.): The book from the German free corps fighters . Limpert, Berlin 1938; again publishing house for holistic research and culture , Viöl 2001, ISBN 3-932878-92-2 , p. 248f.
- Friedrich Glombowski: Organization Heinz (OH). The fate of Schlageter's comrades . Processed according to official files. Hobbing, Berlin 1934
- ders .: Special police in action . In: Ernst von Salomon (ed.): The book from the German free corps fighters . Limpert, Berlin 1938 (reprint: Verlag für holistic research and culture, Viöl 2001, ISBN 3-932878-92-2 , pp. 253-258)
- Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz : The Freikorps in Upper Silesia . In: Curt Hotzel (Ed.): German uprising. The post-war revolution . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1934, pp. 70-88.
- Guido Wärme : Carl Ulitzka (1873–1953) or Upper Silesia between the World Wars. = Carl Ulitzka (1873–1953) albo Górny Śląsk pomiędzy dwoma wojnami światowymi . Droste, Düsseldorf 2002, ISBN 3-7700-1888-5 ( research and sources on contemporary history 40).
- Karl Hoefer : Upper Silesia during the uprising 1918–1921. Memories and documents . Mittler, Berlin 1938.
- Sigmund Karski: Albert (Wojciech) Korfanty . A biography. Laumann, Dülmen 1990, ISBN 3-87466-118-0 ( Schlesische Kulturpflege 3).
- Hannsjoachim W. Koch: The German Civil War. A History of the German and Austrian Freikorps 1918–1923 . Edition Antaios , Dresden 2002, ISBN 3-935063-12-1 (first edition Munich 1977).
- Friedrich Wilhelm von Oertzen : The German Freikorps 1918–1923 . Bruckmann, Munich 1936.
- Bernhard Sauer: "Off to Upper Silesia!" The fighting of the German Freikorps in 1921 in Upper Silesia and the other former German eastern provinces . In: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswwissenschaft , 58, issue 4, 2010, ISSN 0044-2828 , pp. 297-320, (PDF, 7.6 Mbyte).
- Bernhard Sauer: Gerhard Roßbach. Hitler's representative for Berlin. On the early history of right-wing radicalism in the Weimar Republic . In: Journal of History. 50, 1, 2002, ISSN 0044-2828 , pp. 5-21, (PDF, 3.8 Mbytes).
- Bernhard Sauer: Black Reichswehr and Fememicide. A milieu study on right-wing radicalism in the Weimar Republic . Metropol, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-936411-06-9 . Center for anti-Semitism research at the Technical University of Berlin. Series: Documents, Texts, Materials, 50. (At the same time: Berlin, TU, Diss., 2003).
- Timothy Wilson: Frontiers of violence. Conflict and identity in Ulster and Upper Silesia 1918-1922 , Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-958371-3 .