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This article naturally focuses on the war crimes committed by this regiment. I imagine they did other things in the rear area other than executing people. It was my understanding that these police regiments were used for rear area security operations to fight partisans as well, but there doesn't seem to be any coverage of this, so it constitutes an obvious gap in information. Also, it is usual for a regiment such as this that was redesignated to have one article in the final name (or name which is clearly most common in sources). I strongly suggest merging this one and the 13th Police Regiment article (the relevant guideline for this is WP:MILMOS#UNITNAME), and covering the pre-histories of the constituent battalions here as well, as they may not be individually notable given their nature and size. Cheers, Peacemaker67 ( click to talk to me) 04:42, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a look! Regarding the proposed merge: The source that I have (USHMM document) states that the regiment was dissolved; please see "Selected Records from the Military Historical Institute Archives, Prague, 1941-1944", pp. 5-7. There's clearly a distinct period for the unit as "Police Regiment Centre" / "Polizeiregiment Mitte". In any case, I would not be opposed to the merge of Rgt 13 into this article; this name appears to be the more prominent one, but I wonder if it makes sense given that the constituent battalions of Polizeiregiment Mitte were not part of Rgt 13, as discussed below:
Polizeiregiment Mitte
With the onset of the invasion of the Soviet Union, three police regiments were deployed in the rear areas of Army Groups North, Center, and South. Max Montua commanded Polizeiregiment Mitte (Center), which consisted of the 307th, 316th, and 322nd Police Battalions, which existed prior to the formation of the police regiment and after its dissolution. During the period they served in the police regiment, they also had consecutive Roman numerals. Thus, Police Battalion 322 was simultaneously Police Regiment Center Battalion III. (...) In mid-1942, new police regiments were set up with Arabic numerals. Polizeiregiment Mitte was dissolved and its original battalions were reassigned.
Battalion 307 became Battalion I of Regiment 23, and I/23 was listed as a component of Gruppe Binz, named for its commander, Siegfried Binz, which was set up for the anti-partisan operation “Sumpffieber” in the Byelorussian region. Battalions 316 and 322 were subordinated with their original Arabic numerals to the Befehlshaber der Ordungungspolizei “Alpenland” in Bled, Slovenia. Battalion 316 was then shifted to France, where it became Battalion I of SS Police Regiment 4. Battalion 322 remained in the northwestern Yugoslavia area and southern Hungary area from which it operated in 1944 as Battalion II of SS Police Regiment 5.
I'll double check with Sturmvogel 66 on this discrepancy; it seems to have been a complete reorganisation, rather than a redesignation. K.e.coffman ( talk) 00:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
The same document details the activities of the regiment which mention partisans only in passing. The documents consist almost entirely of depictions of various killing operations, as in:
The regiment was indeed assigned to combat duties during the crisis of the Soviet winter counter-offensive, which is already mentioned in the article. I've searched again and found a bit more about the unit's combat activities: Battalion 307 took part in fending off a Soviet air landing operation in late December 1941 (Hitler's Bandit Hunters, p. 60). The regiment is described once as having participated in countering an attempted breakthroughs of a bypassed Red Army unit, around Sept 1941 (also p. 60).
This is 1.5 paragraphs vs pages and pages outlining the unit's mass murder tasks. If there are sources that discuss its participation in anti-guerilla warfare in the rear, I'd be glad to review them. But I'm not sure they exist since the unit's purpose was primarily policing / genocide, not combat. The sources cover it accordingly, and so does the article. Dedicating disproportionate coverage to combat operations would be undue, IMO. K.e.coffman ( talk) 00:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
Lastly, I agree that the battalions themselves may not be independently notable, esp those that were part of Rgt 13. Police Battalion 322 is likely notable, since its set of war diaries and orders was one of the more complete ones to reach the archives; source:
[1] and subsequent pages. A bit on motivations:
[2]. Also:
"Police Battalion 322 distinguished itself by participating in about 10,000 executions by May 1942" etc. The redlinks were added by Sturm; I think it would be a good idea to remove them for some of the sub-units.
Does this address your queries? Would love to hear your and Sturm's thoughts on this. K.e.coffman ( talk) 00:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
K.e.coffman ( talk) 00:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
I found a source that may be directly relevant: Edward B. Westermann (2005): Hitler's Police Battalions: Forcing Racial War in the East. University Press of Kansas. It has received positive reviews. Unfortunately, the book does not appear to be searchable via Google books. It covers the pre-WWII history of the force and 1939-1942 period of the war.
The Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos has information on the actions by individual battalions. The first two volumes are available as online PDFs from the USHHMM web site; here's part 2 of Vol II: [3].
Regarding the unit's 1942 activities, I could find little in Google books; same for regiments South and North. That's how I ended up locating the USHMM document that I linked above. My general impression (possibly incorrect) was that the regiment Center was depleted and in disarray following the Soviet counter-offensive; von dem Bach was on convalescent leave, Montua was recalled, etc, etc.
I did find an overall summary of killing operations by various battalions in Hitler's Willing Executioners; some of the data points are for the first half of 1942: PB battalions 307, 316, 322 – major killing operations, pp. 272, 273.
Sturm, if you have sources pertaining to 1942, that would be helpful. I also see that the page needs a "Background / formation" section; the article opens kind of abruptly. I'll add that in the meantime. K.e.coffman ( talk) 01:15, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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Reviewer: Chetsford ( talk · contribs) 07:39, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
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I added two new sections, with new and restructured material:
I still need to add a bit on the purpose of the unit; I'll do this tomorrow. K.e.coffman ( talk) 04:46, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
I feel that in this case, the language is appropriate. Below are some examples from Westermann (I'm currently reading it so it's fresh in my mind, but that's pretty much the language in any book on Barbarossa). From the foreword by Dennis Showalter (pp. xiii–xiv):
From Westermann proper, "Introduction" (pp. 3–5):
...you get the idea -- and that's only up to page 5. I thus prefer to keep the current language as I find it to be factual, rather than emotive. K.e.coffman ( talk) 01:34, 1 February 2018 (UTC)
Police Regiment Centre has been listed as one of the
Warfare good articles under the
good article criteria. If you can improve it further,
please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can
reassess it. Review: February 1, 2018. ( Reviewed version). |
This article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
It is requested that a photograph of unit's insignia and personnel in action be
included in this article to
improve its quality.
Wikipedians in Germany may be able to help! The external tool WordPress Openverse may be able to locate suitable images on Flickr and other web sites. |
This article naturally focuses on the war crimes committed by this regiment. I imagine they did other things in the rear area other than executing people. It was my understanding that these police regiments were used for rear area security operations to fight partisans as well, but there doesn't seem to be any coverage of this, so it constitutes an obvious gap in information. Also, it is usual for a regiment such as this that was redesignated to have one article in the final name (or name which is clearly most common in sources). I strongly suggest merging this one and the 13th Police Regiment article (the relevant guideline for this is WP:MILMOS#UNITNAME), and covering the pre-histories of the constituent battalions here as well, as they may not be individually notable given their nature and size. Cheers, Peacemaker67 ( click to talk to me) 04:42, 10 January 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for taking a look! Regarding the proposed merge: The source that I have (USHMM document) states that the regiment was dissolved; please see "Selected Records from the Military Historical Institute Archives, Prague, 1941-1944", pp. 5-7. There's clearly a distinct period for the unit as "Police Regiment Centre" / "Polizeiregiment Mitte". In any case, I would not be opposed to the merge of Rgt 13 into this article; this name appears to be the more prominent one, but I wonder if it makes sense given that the constituent battalions of Polizeiregiment Mitte were not part of Rgt 13, as discussed below:
Polizeiregiment Mitte
With the onset of the invasion of the Soviet Union, three police regiments were deployed in the rear areas of Army Groups North, Center, and South. Max Montua commanded Polizeiregiment Mitte (Center), which consisted of the 307th, 316th, and 322nd Police Battalions, which existed prior to the formation of the police regiment and after its dissolution. During the period they served in the police regiment, they also had consecutive Roman numerals. Thus, Police Battalion 322 was simultaneously Police Regiment Center Battalion III. (...) In mid-1942, new police regiments were set up with Arabic numerals. Polizeiregiment Mitte was dissolved and its original battalions were reassigned.
Battalion 307 became Battalion I of Regiment 23, and I/23 was listed as a component of Gruppe Binz, named for its commander, Siegfried Binz, which was set up for the anti-partisan operation “Sumpffieber” in the Byelorussian region. Battalions 316 and 322 were subordinated with their original Arabic numerals to the Befehlshaber der Ordungungspolizei “Alpenland” in Bled, Slovenia. Battalion 316 was then shifted to France, where it became Battalion I of SS Police Regiment 4. Battalion 322 remained in the northwestern Yugoslavia area and southern Hungary area from which it operated in 1944 as Battalion II of SS Police Regiment 5.
I'll double check with Sturmvogel 66 on this discrepancy; it seems to have been a complete reorganisation, rather than a redesignation. K.e.coffman ( talk) 00:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
The same document details the activities of the regiment which mention partisans only in passing. The documents consist almost entirely of depictions of various killing operations, as in:
The regiment was indeed assigned to combat duties during the crisis of the Soviet winter counter-offensive, which is already mentioned in the article. I've searched again and found a bit more about the unit's combat activities: Battalion 307 took part in fending off a Soviet air landing operation in late December 1941 (Hitler's Bandit Hunters, p. 60). The regiment is described once as having participated in countering an attempted breakthroughs of a bypassed Red Army unit, around Sept 1941 (also p. 60).
This is 1.5 paragraphs vs pages and pages outlining the unit's mass murder tasks. If there are sources that discuss its participation in anti-guerilla warfare in the rear, I'd be glad to review them. But I'm not sure they exist since the unit's purpose was primarily policing / genocide, not combat. The sources cover it accordingly, and so does the article. Dedicating disproportionate coverage to combat operations would be undue, IMO. K.e.coffman ( talk) 00:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
Lastly, I agree that the battalions themselves may not be independently notable, esp those that were part of Rgt 13. Police Battalion 322 is likely notable, since its set of war diaries and orders was one of the more complete ones to reach the archives; source:
[1] and subsequent pages. A bit on motivations:
[2]. Also:
"Police Battalion 322 distinguished itself by participating in about 10,000 executions by May 1942" etc. The redlinks were added by Sturm; I think it would be a good idea to remove them for some of the sub-units.
Does this address your queries? Would love to hear your and Sturm's thoughts on this. K.e.coffman ( talk) 00:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
K.e.coffman ( talk) 00:22, 11 January 2018 (UTC)
I found a source that may be directly relevant: Edward B. Westermann (2005): Hitler's Police Battalions: Forcing Racial War in the East. University Press of Kansas. It has received positive reviews. Unfortunately, the book does not appear to be searchable via Google books. It covers the pre-WWII history of the force and 1939-1942 period of the war.
The Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos has information on the actions by individual battalions. The first two volumes are available as online PDFs from the USHHMM web site; here's part 2 of Vol II: [3].
Regarding the unit's 1942 activities, I could find little in Google books; same for regiments South and North. That's how I ended up locating the USHMM document that I linked above. My general impression (possibly incorrect) was that the regiment Center was depleted and in disarray following the Soviet counter-offensive; von dem Bach was on convalescent leave, Montua was recalled, etc, etc.
I did find an overall summary of killing operations by various battalions in Hitler's Willing Executioners; some of the data points are for the first half of 1942: PB battalions 307, 316, 322 – major killing operations, pp. 272, 273.
Sturm, if you have sources pertaining to 1942, that would be helpful. I also see that the page needs a "Background / formation" section; the article opens kind of abruptly. I'll add that in the meantime. K.e.coffman ( talk) 01:15, 13 January 2018 (UTC)
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
GA toolbox |
---|
Reviewing |
Reviewer: Chetsford ( talk · contribs) 07:39, 18 January 2018 (UTC)
GA review (see here for what the criteria are, and here for what they are not) |
---|
|
Overall: |
· · · |
I added two new sections, with new and restructured material:
I still need to add a bit on the purpose of the unit; I'll do this tomorrow. K.e.coffman ( talk) 04:46, 27 January 2018 (UTC)
I feel that in this case, the language is appropriate. Below are some examples from Westermann (I'm currently reading it so it's fresh in my mind, but that's pretty much the language in any book on Barbarossa). From the foreword by Dennis Showalter (pp. xiii–xiv):
From Westermann proper, "Introduction" (pp. 3–5):
...you get the idea -- and that's only up to page 5. I thus prefer to keep the current language as I find it to be factual, rather than emotive. K.e.coffman ( talk) 01:34, 1 February 2018 (UTC)