Interview with Max O., an auxiliary in the SA, Berlin police officer and member of the Sicherheitsdienst [the intelligence agency of the SS]. Bremen, 1991.
Interview with Max O., an auxiliary in the SA, Berlin police officer and member of the Sicherheitsdienst [the intelligence agency of the SS]. Bremen, 1991.
Max: Yes, kind sir. I only speak to you because of who you know. I stay quiet these days and do not really like talking about the war, the past is the past. I have to be careful with what I say and will not speak to anyone unless they come from trusted comrades. So you are asking how I came to be in the police?
Yes, and about your early life.
Max: Ok, yes sir. I was born in Berlin in 1912 and my father was in the civil service but called to war duty in 1915. That interested me in military matters and state service. He was wounded at Verdun and was sent home and was bitter at how the war turned out. I leaned to the nationalist side in the '20s and by 1928 I was helping the SA in Berlin as an auxiliary.
Back then there were many red strong holds in Berlin and the National Socialists fought to overcome them. I was only 17 but I was able to march with them and witnessed first hand the attacks by the reds. I was once hit by a brick in the arm and a comrade was sent to the hospital with a concussion.
The reds were nasty, dirty fighters and I saw their depravity in the east. We were given a taste of this in the street fights early on. Many National Socialist supporters were targeted and killed early on. When Hitler came to power I was hoping there would be a day of reckoning but many of the guilty fled.
Hitler even let many of them off the hook in a general amnesty which flooded German society with closet reds who agitated against the state and secretly aided those who opposed the German revolution. Later on we had to dismantle many cells who had moved to Poland and elsewhere.
I worked for the Berlin SA until 1938 when I decided to join the police, and was accepted as a probationary police cadet. After training I was assigned to street patrols in my home district. So then came the war in 1939 and I was recruited to join the security service [Sicherheitsdienst, or SD for short] to hunt for enemies behind the front.
After training we were moved under the SS and sent into Poland in 1940. And so it was by choice I came to the police and later the security service. The SS commanded both and Himmler was the head. I met him in Poland and he greeted our unit you know.
What was it like in Poland for you, who did you have to watch out for?
Max: I was sent into Poland after the fighting with a commander named Schafer, and our first piece of action was to go after foreign agents who were there to stir up the people to fight the war in secret. We would find caches of hidden weapons and explosives. Gangsters from all over came to Poland to fight, and they planned on waging a terrorist war on us.
Many of them were very easy to catch as the people turned them in. They did not speak Polish and would stumble into an arrest. They planted bombs, shot our soldiers and attacked German citizens. We would receive word of a nest of them and would go in and arrest them.
We had powers, from high authority, to arrest anyone accused of breaking the rules of occupation. There ended up being several attacks on German military personnel, I can tell you these were handled swiftly. When the people were caught and identified they were tried and sent away to new camps that were being built for them.
My unit handled the claims made by Germans against Poles accused of attacks. Today nothing is said of this, but many Poles paid the price for killings, rapes, and attempted murder. The punishments had to be severe to let the people know we would give swift justice.
[Above: Said to be one of the most skilled and capable men in all of the Third Reich -- Reinhard Heydrich. A testament to this is his assassination by British agents in 1942. Heydrich died like a hero from an ancient tale. After an assassin raised his gun, it jammed, and instead of ordering his driver to drive off, Heydrich jumped from the car to confront him! Here is a man who flew over 100 combat missions on the Eastern Front! To this day his enemies hate him to no end, inventing every sort of lie they can about him. In reality he was a deeply spiritual, passionate family man who was a genius in the security service. Click to enlarge.]
I am interested in this part of history, do you think the claims were true or made up?
Max: From the investigations we did they mostly all held merit. They ranged from simple threats and intimidation, to assaults and murder. We moved all around the General Government [Poland] and interviewed witnesses and hunted for the guilty. Some were a waste of time, like the mother who wanted us to arrest Polish kids for bullying her son.
Or the farmer who wanted a rival investigated for being Polish. These were wastes of our time; the real crimes were the beatings and rapes that happened when angry mobs attacked German neighborhoods. There was a town called Bromberg where many former Germans were killed by a Polish mob. I helped investigate who organized this and who did it.
We found a troubling theme where the Church helped hide people we were looking for. A myth at this time was it was Jews who did this, it was not. It was Poles who agitated against the Reich, and attacked Germans simply for being a lost part of Germany. There appeared to be no provocation to justify such attacks.
If there were Germans who openly shouted "down with Poland, down with [Ignacy] Moscicki" then you maybe could understand why a mob would be angry. Nothing like this happened, Germans did not bother the Poles, yet the Poles bothered Germans. When the attack started they saw this as a sign to kill any Germans in Poland.
The state offered no protection and sat by as these attacks happened, even the Jews were blamed and several Jewish areas were attacked as well. As a result of all this we detained many Poles, even clergy, which was not popular. Many ended up being sent to camps for further investigations. They aided fugitives who did these attacks.
I can remember this one German family, the father was a worker and was killed by Poles. We found his killers, one being a well off shop owner. His home was taken as it was large, and given to the widow and her several children. I remember helping move the family; it was justice that they received better lodgings. The look on the children's faces was sad while they were walking with their only belongings, until they saw the new home they had. The protectorate arranged to have a helper for the mom as well, as she bore many children.
My unit stayed in Poland for the most part, except for a short trip to the Netherlands in 1941 to train Dutch security men in tracking cells of terrorists. Wherever German forces were they came under attack from hidden cells supplied by the English. They would send in people to help organize teams to do many tasks, sabotage, assassinate, and spy.
We stayed very busy trying to weed out these cells that would have help from the civilian population.
What about the Jews in Poland? I have read that they were persecuted and eventually exterminated.
Max: Oh young one how do I answer that? All is not what it seems I will say. When we arrived in Poland we were briefed that army units actually saved Jews from attacks by Polish mobs. Many of the Jews looked at us as their protectors since they had settlements attacked and burned down.
We allowed the Polish police and security people to handle much of these cases as it was considered internal. However we started to see that some Jews were part of the cells who opposed us. They had contacts in England and France and communicated with them to spy on us. But it was a small percentage.
Once identified many ran away and hid with family or people who were part of the cells as well. Of course when found everyone involved was arrested and investigated. If it was found that they knowingly broke laws they were punished, if not they were freed. We generally had a lukewarm relationship with Jews; they knew we were not there to harass them, if they did nothing to us.
We would go into Jewish areas and buy from them, trade, or see shows. We wanted to keep up a friendly appearance so that they would trust us. Many did, and even helped when we hunted their criminals. I was in Krakow I remember, and a man stole money from a family.
They helped us trace where his family lived and we went into Warsaw to get him. They were happy we had helped them. Not all of our business in Poland was bad, we had many who turned to us for protection and worked to help us break cases and catch spies who the Allies brought in.
[Above: Jewish residents of Litzmannstadt, screamed 'Herzlich willkommen' (heartfelt welcome). Litzmannstadt was a Jewish ghetto in Poland. This picture shows German soldiers as they entered the city.]
You were in Russia as well I have been told? Can you tell me what it was like for you?
Max: Ah yes, further to the east. When Germany attacked the Soviets it was an ideological war then. We had many people come to us from all over the world to fight Jewish Bolshevism, but they also had many who came to help them fight us. They were clever in that by 1943 they moved units behind our lines.
As soon as the fighting started, there was acts of sabotage from passed over red army pockets. For the first time, we went in with combat troops to root them out. They would bury large weapons caches in villages after attacking German rear units. Something I will say is that many in Russia helped us.
The red terror caused many Russians to hate Stalin and the Bolsheviks, so at first they helped us go after these bandits. Later on Stalin became sly, instead of the war being National Socialist against Stalin he made it Russia against fascists. It became a patriotic war where only fascists would be against Stalin.
The reds sent murder units behind the lines of NKVD ['The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs', these were the genocidal monsters who ran the Gulags and were responsible for carrying out the Soviet genocides against their own citizens.-Ed.] men who killed those who helped Germans. They attacked villages, wearing German uniforms, and openly executed women and children so that the people would turn against us. This is never mentioned today, but I saw it, I saw the aftermath and the fear. We ambushed a unit in German uniforms, and they were all NKVD men.
The war in the east was a hard fight, as the reds were able to send in units to fight behind the front. They blew up railroads, bridges, grain bins, and even launched terror attacks on soldiers' rest areas. One attack killed German soldiers and nurses who were at a theater with civilians. These bastards fought in such a diabolical way that we called them demons.
Russia was organized into zones and each unit had a zone to work in. We worked with the police units to track radio signals to hideouts. They at times had better weapons than we did; it would be all out battles to catch them. Army and SS combat units would at times be used. We could tell that they had military people training them, these were not mere peasants.
They were hard to find and fight as they always wore civilian clothes; they never fought in military uniforms. This made it very hard you see, we had to be careful not to accuse the wrong people, or make a false arrest. We had freedom, but still had to be careful with not sending innocents away, it was a hard duty.
We had Russian auxiliaries and militias that would often work with us to track down these hidden bands. We had to sometimes turn our backs on what happened when they caught these people. Here I must tell you that many Jews were later involved in this type of fighting, they were often in hiding doing this.
What happened once caught is a matter of history. They were tried, and if pronounced guilty would be sentenced. We had to make sure they were never seen as martyrs, so if they were guilty of lesser crimes they went to jail or a camp for a short period. The longer the war went on, the more cells we had to fight.
The Soviets were masters at bringing in partisans to force populations to aid them, which became problematic for us. We knew these were innocent victims, they were put in a kettle, either be killed by partisans for refusing their requests, or deal with us when they were caught.
We were often humane and understood to punish anyone in this predicament was counter productive to pacification of the people. Of course this was not always possible, we would have people lie to us, only to have someone tell on them and alert us that they were part of the partisans.
My unit and those like us had a very hard duty to carry out. It was our duty to protect the rear areas from those who sought to disrupt our lines of supply and communication. War like this is not new; it is as old as warfare but we had to face it on a grand scale. Never in history has a nation occupied so many nations.
May I ask you about the claims being made today that special action squads and police units carried out mass killings and extermination against Jews and others? Do you know anything about this, or believe it is true?
Max: In the world today the most powerful person is the story teller, as they can control the story and point of view. It is interesting to me that the Americans and Soviets told Germans how the war was fought. They tell us what happened, and who did what. As we try to tell our side of the story they shut us up as apologists or Hitler fans. If anyone tried to tell it right after the war, it was a death sentence.
Did I see terrible things in the east? Yes indeed I did. Did I see killings and reprisals? Yes I did. I saw things I can not unsee, I wish I had never seen such things. We were at war and fighting a non conventional foe that in his mind was fighting with bloodlust against a racial and political enemy.
I saw the aftermath of what they did to my comrades, German civilians, and our allies. Their bloodlust came from the devil himself. They did such things to people whose only crime was siding with us because maybe it was the easiest thing to do rather than resist. They rarely took prisoners, and at times we did not want to take them as ours. I should say, as our enemy, there was no real desire to save them if wounded.
Knowing what we knew of them and how they behaved. However we were humane and looked at them often with pity that they just could not or would not see our world view. We wanted them to know that peace was our only aim, but to have peace, we had to make war to destroy the sickness that was plaguing the world.
They chose to aid that sickness, and now they have helped herald in dark times for the world. I see the Führer's words being fulfilled, that a dark cloud is forming that will bring hate, sickness, death, and suffering to the people. They fought us and chose a path that allowed their very executioners to take charge of their nations.
They made us fight them as fire with fire, we knew we could not slacken or be weak. To do so only allowed them to get more brazen. I can not feel sorry for them, and will tell that upon my judgment. We stood fast in the face of terror and used their tactics on them that deterred others.
I am sorry we lost the war, if we had won the story would be told far differently than it is today.
[Above: An American newspaper reports Holodomor, the mass murder and genocide of men, women and children. The Soviet regime was born in rivers of Russian blood. The United States refused to even recognize the Soviet Union until the traitor president Roosevelt did so.]
Do you think Germany should have done anything differently in regards to the partisans and resistance?
Max: That is a good question. I have thought of this often as well. If we did nothing and left them alone, left their villages and hideouts alone, we would have had chaos. Their goal was to fight us behind the lines, on the orders of Stalin, without marked uniforms, as criminals.
I tell you this, they were criminals, they kidnapped children and adults for ransom, robbed banks and trains. They made drugs, false papers, printed illegal pamphlets encouraging uprisings, and were murderers. Some of the more petty things we could let them get away with, but the bigger picture was to stop them from growing large forces behind the front lines.
We knew we had to be careful with the populations, yet punish the guilty. Some were very easy to punish, like the men who attacked and killed German soldiers without mercy. The hard ones were the women who got involved; some I believe were forced, as they claimed. Once I remember a young Jewish woman was hung for poisoning German wounded in a hospital.
Those punishments were hard as I saw women manipulated into actions they did not truly understand, but we had to act to let the populace know it was a crime that would not be tolerated. If we could we always referred cases to camp confinement so that way the Reich had the labor.
In this way I do not think we could have done anything differently. Other nations, past and present, have also had to deal with crimes behind the front, and in every war the punishment is the same. When people take up arms against you in an occupied territory it is called terrorist action.
According to the rules of war, until the Americans changed it, you could and should punish those who were willing do this. Only in that way do you stop the illegal attacks and sabotage. Extreme punishment was rarely used only in the cases of willful and deliberate killings or acts that resulted in killings.
Did you have a hand in Jewish operations like removing them from one area to another? I have read this was common.
Max: So you read books and believe everything you read. There is truth that we did arrest many Jews in the eastern territories. There is also truth that we settled many Jews into areas to be watched. There was nothing wrong with this order. We were at war with a nation that many Jews held a political love for.
Because of the Jewish roots of Bolshevism many aided Stalin and his army. From spying and spreading propaganda, to outright attacks and sabotage, Jews did play a part. When caught they also paid the same price others did. They got it no better or worse. There were times in the beginning that the populations of areas we freed took revenge on Jews who had helped the Bolsheviks. I will tell you about a story that was in Stern [a left-liberal, weekly current affairs magazine] a while back. They dared say that when Ukraine was freed of the red army, the people went after Jews.
They blamed Jews for all that had happened to them during the revolution. It was German troops who stopped the killings. It is estimated that tens of thousands of Jews were killed in reprisals for their hand in the red terror. I know that during the war many militias and local police units would hunt down Jews in hiding and shoot them on the spot.
We would not do that unless there was an immediate need to seek justice, like seeing a comrade killed in cold blood. This would doom the killer, even if they surrendered. This did happen as I saw it. But Jews for the most part stayed out of the fighting and wanted no part of it.
They were at times forced to move to areas where they could be kept safe and watched over. Even then there could be problems, like in Warsaw, which was a huge ghetto where crime was very high. A crackdown brought out Jewish crime gangs and hidden Polish criminals who fought attempts at arresting the guilty. Because the people allowed this under their noses there were repercussions.
Two times the ghetto in Warsaw had to be forced into submission as the Allies used Jews to incite attacks and spy. There were indeed attacks on Jews in the east, and forced removals. Some of it was well-deserved, and other times the Jews were innocent victims of racial hatred by the Poles. It was a strange war to say the least, where at times you had no idea who the enemy could be.
There were even reports that some fanatics used their children as weapons. They would have them cut lines, plant bombs, or hide illegal items while a search was going on. It was very sad, but that was the war. There was something about the war that was not normal. It involved too many peoples, and everyone was part of the fight. It was as if it was a colossal good versus evil war, to decide the fate of all peoples.
[Above: An entrance to a Jewish ghetto in Poland. No German soldiers or guards in sight. The Jews were allowed their own government and police force within their areas. The Germans only intervened when their were actions against them.]
[Above: A Jewish trolly within their protected area.]
[Above: A large group of Jewish police in Poland. All of this is pretty confusing huh? It greatly goes against the narrative we've been taught. To learn more, click HERE ]
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~ The Polish Atrocities Against the German Minority in Poland [1940] ~
~ Crimes Against the Wehrmacht [1939-1944/2015] ~
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