Latvijas Vēsturnieku komisijas raksti - 23.sējums

Dr. Matthew Kott. What Does the Holocaust in the Baltic States Have to Do with the SS’ Plans?
ruthlessly kill the enemies of the Volksgemeinschaft, particularly the “Judaeo-Bolsheviks”
of the East, was deemed a sign of mastery over one’s human weaknesses. 62
In Michael Wildt’s study of the cohort of young officers who reached high positions
in the RSHA hierarchy, Generation des Unbedingten, Erich Ehrlinger is one of those
seen as exemplifying this striving towards the ideal of kämpfende Verwaltung. 63 By
contrast, the bureaucrat and businessman Otto Marrenbach had never served the SS
in the front-line struggle against Jews and Bolshevism; hence Himmler was initially
negatively predisposed to Berger’s aforementioned recommendation that Marrenbach
be promotion to the rank of SS-Brigadeführer in 1942. 64
PB 9 fit the ideal of the Staatsschutzkorps, having ably proven itself a valuable
weapon against the enemies of the SS at the front. It then returned to the core areas
of Germanic Europe to pass on this expertise to others at Kongsvinger – not only a
school for the next cohort of the genocidal SS Staatsschutzkorps, but also a potential
training ground for a Norwegian contribution to kämpfende Verwaltung.
Jonas Lie, the Norwegian Police Companies,
and the SS’ plans for Norway
One of baffling mysteries of the occupation in Norway is the story of the Norwegian
Police Companies (politikompaniene) within the history of Norwegian volunteers to
the Waffen-SS. These small units of around 160 men were created in parallel to the
other Waffen-SS formations where Norwegians served, i.e. Regiment Nordland in SS
Division Wiking, the Norwegian Legion, SS Division Nordland, and the Ski Ranger
Battalions (Schijägerbataillone) attached to SS Division Nord. The Police Companies
even served alongside the Norwegian Legion at the Leningrad Front, and with the Ski
Rangers in northern Finland. The 4th Police Company was just in the process of being
formed when the war ended in May 1945. 65 The military contribution of these Norwegian
Police companies to the German war effort was minimal, yet nonetheless a great deal
of effort was exerted in recruiting and deploying them – right up to the dying hours of
the Third Reich. Was their creation simply an act of folly on the part of the Quisling, or
were they part of some greater, unrealised scheme?
In September 1942, the German SS leadership was informed that Jonas Lie – formerly
the SS’ favourite to head the collaborationist government, now Police Minister in the cabinet
of Quisling – had founded a Norwegian Police Company that would travel to the Leningrad
Front to fight alongside the Norwegian Legion. 66 Lie had received tacit agreement to
the idea from Quisling already in July of that year, 67 but had only formally asked for
Quisling’s endorsement on 1 September. In his request, Lie stressed the enormous
importance of this unit for the development of what he called the “new Norwegian police”. 68
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