Ordnungspolizei

And we're all saying these were bad things, but every male member of my father's generation and before seemed to have played a part in the state in some capacity.

think that the podcast kind of touches on a little bit but like i mean if you look at the work of like especially christopher browning i think browning and bartov really are the two who kind of put this idea of the clean veramark to rest uh they're the ones who kind of really dig into those archival things and say like no like they're they're there the whole time they're using euphemisms but like the veramark units are deployed constantly around the Einsatzgruppen and the Ordnungspolizei and and all of these kinds of things um and they're they're there the whole time you know you can't tell people that like oh just clearing a village of bandits is a neutral act like it's not like they know what they're doing uh but but Browning I think really is the one that bridges it and and kind of looks at like the mentality of these men.

You know, I'm sure you've read Ordinary Men.

Yeah.

First sentence.

So chapter four, the order police in the final solution, deportation.

Just as the role

of the order police in the massacre of Russian Jewry was beginning to wind down in the fall of 1941, Deluge took on a new and vital assignment contributing to the final solution, guarding the deportation trains to the east.

In late September 1941, Hitler approved the commencement of Jewish deportations from the Third Reich to be organized by Reinhard Heydrich through his Jewish expert in Berlin, Adolf Eichmann, and the regional security police officers throughout Germany.

The only exceptions on the local level were in Vienna and Prague, where the deportations were to be handled by the Central Agencies for Jewish Immigration, created by Eichmann before the war and staffed by his handpicked men.

Almost immediately, Heydrich reached agreement with Deluge on a division of labor.

Deluge's order police would guard the transports that Heydrich's security police organized.

Okay? Um, this isn't semantics or word games, this is a fact.

And, uh, the earliest iteration of what became the Einsatzgruppen, during the, during the Anschluss, Heydrich deployed with Order Police and SD elements that have been design- formerly designated Sonderkommandos.

Um, literally special detachment elements.

And, uh, they went into Austria to basically protect the rear echelons and, uh, handle constabulary duty with an eye for deep security.