Voluntary German protection service

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The Voluntary German Protection Service (FS) was a militia-like organization of the SdP in the Sudetenland based on the SA , which emerged from the security service of the SdP in spring 1938 at the instigation of Konrad Henlein . Several members of the FS were previously organized in the German Gymnastics Association. The head of the FS was Willi Brandner , who was based in Asch as chief of staff of the FS main staff and gymnastics association . As early as May 17, 1938, the FS had 15,000 members and later between 60,000 and 70,000 members. For the members of the FS, a members' magazine with the title Team in Combat was published. The FS was divided into local, district and district groups. The lowest organizational unit was the crowd, which consisted of ten to fifteen FS members. The FS members did not carry any firearms.

The FS comprised three departments, many FS members received military training in the German Reich and recruited by the German Abwehr . The FS, which was founded to serve the destabilization of the Czechoslovak state, was divided into three departments:

  • Department A (supervisory department) served the espionage and surveillance of its own party members as well as the local and district associations. Political opponents were also researched. The members of Department A were virtually part of a security service of the party. This department, also responsible for military espionage and propaganda, was unknown to most of the members of the party.
  • Department B, to which the vast majority of the FS men belonged, comprised an auxiliary police force that performed regulatory functions at mass events of the SdP and was supposed to protect the Sudeten German population from alleged Czech attacks. Their relatives have also been trained in terrorist acts and acts of sabotage.
  • In Division C there were Sudeten German reservists from the Czechoslovak army and military instructors.

The FS, initially approved by the Czechoslovak Ministry of the Interior, was banned again on September 15, 1938 at the height of the Sudeten crisis . After that, many members of the FS fled across the Czechoslovakian border into the German Reich , where they mostly joined the Sudeten German Freikorps . The FS members who remained in the Sudetenland went underground and cooperated with the Sudeten German Freikorps in the terrorist actions against Czechoslovak state institutions in the Sudetenland.

In August 1944 the protection service was integrated into the SS homeland security in Slovakia .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Werner Röhr: The "Fall Grün" and the Sudeten German Freikorps. 2007, p. 245.
  2. ^ A b c d Andreas Luth: The German Gymnastics Association in the First Czechoslovak Republic. From folk club operations to popular political movement. Verlag Oldenbourg, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-486-58135-X , p. 417f.
  3. ↑ Martin Broszat: The Sudeten German Freikorps. In: Institute for Contemporary History Munich (Ed.): Quarterly Issues for Contemporary History . Issue 1, 1961, p. 35 ( PDF ).
  4. ↑ Oskar Neumann: In the shadow of death. Edition Olamenu, Tel-Aviv 1956, pp. 67, 96-98. Quoted in: Daniel Siemens : Sturmabteilung: The history of the SA. Siedler Verlag, 2019, ISBN 3-64115-535-5 , p. 505.