The Ordnungspolizei (Orpo, , meaning 'Order Police') were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945. The Orpo was absorbed into the Nazi monopoly of power after regional police jurisdiction was removed in favour of the central Nazi government ("Reich-ification", Verreichlichung, of the police). In 1936, Heinrich Himmler, the commander (Reichsführer-SS) of the Schutzstaffel (SS), was appointed Chief of the German Police in the Interior Ministry. The top and upper leadership positions of the Orpo were filled by police officers who belonged to or had joined the SS. Owing to their green uniforms, Orpo members were also referred to as Grüne Polizei (Green Police). The force was established as a centralised organisation based in Berlin uniting the municipal, city, and rural uniformed police that had been previously organised on a state-by-state basis.
The Ordnungspolizei encompassed virtually all of Nazi Germany's law-enforcement and emergency response organisations, including fire brigades, coast guard, and civil defence. Himmler and Kurt Daluege, chief of the Orpo, worked to transform the police force into militarised formations ready to serve the regime's aims of conquest and racial annihilation. Police troops were first formed into battalion-sized formations for the invasion of Poland, where they were deployed for security and policing purposes, also taking part in executions and mass deportations. During World War II, the force was tasked with policing the civilian population of the occupied and colonised countries. In 1941, the Orpo's activities escalated to genocide after the Order Police battalions formed into independent regiments or were attached to Wehrmacht security divisions and Einsatzgruppen. Independently and in collaboration with those units, members of the Orpo perpetrated crimes against humanity and mass-murder during the Holocaust; however, many were never put on trial for their crimes.
History Almost immediately after the Nazis seized power, they instituted measures to gain political control of German police and to use them against their perceived enemies. The commander of the SS, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, had already been deputy chief of the Prussian secret police, when by decree of 17 June 1936, he was appointed Chief of the Police force; he performed both functions in parallel and was officially and publicly referred to as "Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police in the Reich Ministry of the Interior". Although nominally subordinate to Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, Himmler could participate in meetings of the Reich Cabinet—when and if police agendas were discussed. In 1943, Himmler himself was appointed Minister of the Interior.
Traditionally, law enforcement in Germany had been a state and local matter. When Himmler was given the lead over all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies in 1936, he divided the police into two main areas: the Ordnungspolizei (Orpo or Order Police) under the command of Kurt Daluege and the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo or security police) under Reinhard Heydrich. The Orpo assumed duties of regular uniformed law enforcement while the SiPo was made up by the combined forces of the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo; secret state police) and the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo; criminal investigation police). The Gestapo was a political police agency with additional legally guaranteed powers of arrest. On 27 September 1939, shortly after the start of World War II, the SiPo and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD; SS security service) were folded into the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA). The RSHA symbolised the close connection between the SS (a party organisation) and the police (a state organisation). The Order Police (uniformed police, enforcement police) remained in the Ministry of the Interior. Himmler's multiple attempts to increase the proportion of SS members in the Orpo failed. Nonetheless, his reorganisation of the police under the RSHA enabled him to have "watchdogs" in multiple army districts and coordinated the power of the SS, SiPo, and Orpo, which historian Helmut Langerbein says "perverted normal police work".
Himmler pursued the amalgamation of SS and police into a form of "State Protection Corps" (Staatsschutzkorps), and used the expanded reach the police powers gave him to persecute ideological opponents of the Nazi regime and "undesirables" such as Jews, freemasons, churches, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other groups defined as "asocial". The Nazi conception of criminality was racial and biological, holding that criminal traits were hereditary, and had to be exterminated to purify German blood. As a result, even ordinary criminals were consigned to concentration camps to remove them from the German racial community (Volksgemeinschaft), where many of them were murdered or died from maltreatment.
The Order Police was one—among several—of the executing organisations that facilitated inhumane goals pursued by Himmler and the RSHA, transforming and reorienting police functions into part of the Nazi security apparatus as they prepared for war. Instructions for the Orpo came through the regional political administrative authorities and/or the Higher SS and Police Leaders (HSSPF)—the latter had authority to command both police branches and the SS-forces, because Himmler intended all along to establish harmony between the police and the SS. Most of the battalions of the Order Police troops in the east were deployed for the expulsion and extermination of the Jewish population, since parts were assigned to the SS Einsatzgruppen. Their personnel were used to guard ghettos or to carry out mass shootings. Order police played an executive role in the Holocaust by providing men for the tasks involved, "both career professionals and reservists, in both battalion formations and precinct service" (Einzeldienst).
Indoctrination Before the Nazi seizure of power, there was already a penchant for nationalistic beliefs and militarism among police officers in Germany, since most of its members consisted of men who had fought in World War I. Many officers of the police forces in Weimar believed the causation of Germany's loss in that war was bound up in the myths of being stabbed in the back by profiteers and Jews, which certainly contributed to their willingness to believe the National Socialist message. Beginning in February 1933, Nazi minister Hermann Göring issued a decree that Nazi party members and those in related organisations "were to receive priority as applicants for the Order Police." Just a few months later, Kurt Daluege issued a secret memorandum that emphasised eight to ten weeks worth of ideological indoctrination for SA and SS members transitioning into the Order Police at the rank of captain or higher, to ensure "close ties between the state instruments of power [the police] and the SA and SS."
By 1935, there was an increased national political curricula and intensive ideological training by the "Comradeship of the German Police" (Kameradschaftsbund der deutschen Polizei). Monthly national political lectures were instituted, and all police officers were encouraged to attend courses in state and party training facilities. Historian Edward B. Westermann writes that the "transformation of the police into political soldiers and instruments of genocide occurred in large part due to the efforts of Heinrich Himmler and Kurt Daluege to create an organizational culture within the Ordnungspolizei that married a "martial attitude" with Nazi racial ideology." In keeping with Nazi ideological programmatic lines, the Order Police, alongside the SS, played a key role in implementing Nazi racial policies. Unlike the SS, whose members voluntarily aligned with its ideology, the police required extensive ideological training to adopt and support the SS's goals, which was generally accepted due to a combination of Nazi propaganda, latent antisemitism, and a societal disposition towards obedience to authority.
Within the administrative organ (Verwaltungspolizei) for instance, the Order Police were required to read specific history books and essays on Nazi ideology, which were integrated into their practical police training and exams, ensuring alignment with Nazi goals. Training for State Protection Police (Schutzpolizei) at the Berlin-Schöneberg School in 1937 included 44 weekly hours focused on police and criminal law, with two hours dedicated to national politics and ideological training by SS instructors. Similarly, the curriculum included history and National Socialist ideology. From the end of 1942 to the end of 1944, the Mariaschein Police School (later moved to Heidenheim) conducted monthly ideological training sessions for the Schutzpolizei with corresponding training of like kind being held at other police and police weapons schools across Nazi-occupied Europe.
Organisation The German Order Police had grown to 244,500 men by mid-1940. In preparation for the war of aggression and conquest, a replacement police force was set up as early as 1937 to take over patrol and guard duties. This auxiliary police could be activated by decree for service in their home districts and had grown to over 90,000 by the beginning of the war. These older men were drafted and conscripted into the reserve police, and in the course of the war, veterans were also called up. The majority of them served in their home environment, some were deployed in police reserve battalions.
In 1936, Himmler divided the Nazi police into two branches. The central command office known as the Ordnungspolizei Hauptamt was housed in the old office building of the Prussian Ministry of the Interior in Berlin at NW 7, Unter den Linden 72/74. From 1936 to 1941, it consisted of two offices: the Command Department (Kommandoamt), responsible for finance, personnel and medical; and the Office of Administration and Law (Verwaltung), responsible for handling all administrative police, legal and economic tasks of the entire Order Police. In 1941, the Colonial Office, the Office of Fire Brigades, and the Office of Technical Emergency Aid were added.
While the Order Police was initially commanded by Kurt Daluege, in May 1943, he had a massive heart attack and was removed from duty. He was replaced by Police and Waffen-SS General Alfred Wünnenberg, who had previously spent his career as a professional police officer.
Branches of police
The administration police (Verwaltungspolizei) was the branch with overall command authority for all Orpo police stations. The Verwaltungspolizei also was the central office for record keeping and was the command authority for civilian law enforcement groups, which included the Gesundheitspolizei (health police), Gewerbepolizei (commercial or trade police), and the Baupolizei (building police). In the main towns, Verwaltungspolizei, Schutzpolizei and Kriminalpolizei would be organised into a police administration known as the Polizeipräsidium or Polizeidirektion, which had authority over these police forces in the urban district. Generally speaking, there were three subtypes of uniformed police forces within the Order Police, arranged according to the population size and density of the community they served." These were: Gendarmerie (rural police), who were tasked with frontier law enforcement to include small communities, rural districts, and mountainous terrain. Municipal protection police (Gemeindepolizei) municipal uniformed police in smaller and some large towns. State protection police (Schutzpolizei), state uniformed police in cities and most large towns, which included police-station duties (Revierdienst) and barracked police units for riots and public safety (Kasernierte Polizei). Fire protection police (Feuerschutzpolizei), professional fire departments in most larger cities.