Tannenberg company

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The code name company Tannenberg was used for two different companies:

Command company

With the "Operation Tannenberg", which was devised by SS-Gruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich , the chief of the security police and the SD, Adolf Hitler was supposed to get a propaganda pretext for the attack on Poland . To this end, on August 31, 1939, the SS under SS-Sturmbannführer Alfred Naujocks faked a Polish attack on the Gleiwitz transmitter.

operational groups

Polish teachers from Bromberg are led to execution in the Valley of Death by the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz , November 1, 1939
Ludolf von Alvensleben, leader of the ethnic German self-protection in West Prussia, Bromberg 1939

In the run-up to the attack on Poland, five Einsatzkommandos (EK) were set up under the code name Company Tannenberg in order to push through the National Socialist national politics in Poland behind the advancing German armies .

The official task of the EKs with a total of 2,700 men was the "fight against all elements hostile to the Reich and German against the fighting force". In addition, however, they served to destroy the Polish Inteligencja as comprehensively as possible . For this purpose, in cooperation with the ethnic German minority in Poland, the so-called Special Search Book Poland was created in advance , in which 61,000 names of activists, intellectuals, military and others. a. were listed that should be " liquidated ". The Einsatzkommandos were formally subordinate to the local commanders of the Wehrmacht .

The SS men who z. B. were involved in the attack on the Gleiwitz transmitter , which was staged as a justification for the German attack on Poland, were then assigned to one of these commandos.

In September and October 1939 at least 20,000 Poles were murdered in 760 mass executions by the EKs and regular units of the Wehrmacht. The Tannenberg company had also been agreed with the Wehrmacht before the war began. Especially under the leadership of the SS and Police Leader for West Prussia, Ludolf-Hermann von Alvensleben , extensive executions were also carried out by the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz .

literature

  • Alfred Spiess, Heiner Lichtenstein: Tannenberg company. The occasion for World War II. Corrected and expanded edition (Ullstein book; No. 33118: Zeitgeschichte). Ullstein, Frankfurt / M. / Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-548-33118-1 .
  • Various authors: [ Monografia obozu KL Stutthof ( Memento from June 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Monografia obozu KL Stutthof] . Państwowe Muzeum Stutthof w Sztutowie, 2000.
  • Andrzej Leszek Szcześniak: Plan zagłady Słowian - General Plan EAST . Radom, POLAND, 2001, ISBN 83-88822-03-9 .
  • Tannenberg company. August 1939: How the SD prepared the attack on Poland (III) . In: Der Spiegel . No. 34 , 1979 ( online ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Operation Tannenberg: How the SD prepared the attack on Poland . In: Der Spiegel . No. 33 , 1979 ( online ).
  2. ^ Border incidents . In: Wolfgang Benz , Hermann Graml , Hermann Weiß (eds.): Encyclopedia of National Socialism . 3rd, corrected edition. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1998.
  3. ^ Company Tannenberg: Polish documentation about the Einsatzgruppen . ( Memento of the original from January 19, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Die Zeit , No. 45/1971. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.zeit.de
  4. Christian Jansen, Arno Weckbecker: A militia in the “Weltanschauungskrieg”. The “Volksdeutsche Selbstschutz” in Poland in 1939/40. In: Wolfgang Michalka (Ed.): The Second World War. Analyzes, basic features, research results. On behalf of the Military History Research Office . Seehamer, Weyarn 1997, ISBN 3-932131-38-X , pp. 482-500.