Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Goldhagen: A Narrative of Guilt and Redemption

Abstract

����� Reserve Police Battalion 101 (RPB 101) with a complement of some 500 men, originating in Hamburg, was sent by Nazi Germany on its third tour of duty to occupied Poland in June 1942. From then until November 1943, its primary activity was to maintain order among the unruly Poles, but a major additional task was ridding the Lublin District of Jews. During these sixteen months, RPB 101 executed some 38,000 Jews by shooting, and packed 45,000 Jews in boxcars to go to the Treblinka extermination camp, for a total body count of 83,00U.1 RPB 101 was typical of the hundred-plus police battalions SS-ReichsfA¼hrer Heinrich Himmler had ready for duty in occupied lands by mid-1940. These battalions were dispatched throughout territory conquered by the Germans, including Norway and the Netherlands. Some of them were elite units, composed of physically fit young men of military caliber; but reserve units such as RPB 101 were older, ordinary Germans, many belonging to Hamburg's municipal police. Many others came from various trades and unskilled occupations. Some were drawn to police battalions to escape army service; few were active Nazis, and very few were members of the SS. These order police are not to be confused with the SS Einsatzgruppen (special forces) about whom much has been written, and whose fanatical Nazism is well documented. Einsatzgruppen were the cutting edge of Hitler's executions in the conquered territories; order police such as RPB 101, because of their low status and the mundane tasks that were their primary assignment, did not attract much attention at Nuremberg or after. When the Eastern Front began collapsing in 1944, most RPB 101 policemen made it back to their homes with little attention from the Allies. The West German government, however, in its fitful and long-drawn-out prosecutions of war criminals, eventually heard testimony about RPB 101's activities, and began an investigation of the battalion in 1962. Over the next five years, the