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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.
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) and ultimately exterminate them.
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).
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.
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.
Inspectors of the Order Police in various branches were established in September 1936, overseeing the entire Order Police within their jurisdictions. At the start of the war, they were gradually renamed "Commanders of the Order Police" (BdO) and given greater authority, directly reporting to Higher SS and Police Leaders. Although fully integrated into the Ordnungspolizei-system, its police officers were still considered municipal civil servants. The civilian law enforcement in towns with a municipal protection police was not performed by the Verwaltungspolizei, but by municipal civil servants. Until 1943, they also had municipal criminal investigation departments, but that year, all such departments with more than 10 detectives were integrated into the Kripo.
The battalions also guarded Polish prisoners of war behind the German lines, and carried out expulsion of Poles from Reichsgaue under the banner of Lebensraum. They also committed atrocities against both the Catholic and the Jewish populations as part of those "resettlement actions". After hostilities had ceased, the battalions—such as Reserve Police Battalion 101—took up the role of security forces, patrolling the perimeters of the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland (the internal ghetto security issues were managed by the SS, SD, and the Criminal Police, in conjunction with the Jewish Judenrat).
Each battalion consisted of approximately 500 men armed with light infantry weapons. In the east, each company also had a heavy machine-gun detachment. Administratively, the Police Battalions remained under the Chief of Police Kurt Daluege, but operationally they were under the authority of regional SS and Police Leaders ( SS- und Polizeiführer), who reported, in a separate chain of command, directly to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. The battalions were used for various auxiliary duties, including the so-called anti-partisan operations, support of combat troops, and construction of defence works (i.e. the Atlantic Wall).
Some of them were focused on traditional security roles as an occupying force, while others were directly involved in actions designed to inflict terror and in the ensuing Holocaust. While they were similar to Waffen-SS, they were not part of the thirty-eight Waffen-SS divisions, and should not be confused with them, including the national 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division. The battalions were originally numbered in series from 1 to 325, but in February 1943 were renamed and renumbered from 1 to about 37, to distinguish them from the Schutzmannschaft auxiliary battalions recruited from local population in German-occupied areas.
Order Police battalions involved in direct killing operations were responsible for at least 1 million murders. Starting in 1941, the regional Order Police units helped to transport Jews from ghettos in both Poland and the USSR (and elsewhere in occupied Europe) to concentration and extermination camps; they also participated in operations to hunt down and murder Jews outside the ghettos. The Order Police and the Waffen-SS were the two primary sources from which the Einsatzgruppen drew personnel.
In 1940, the SS Polizei Division was stationed along the Maginot Line to provide passive defense and in preparation for the Manstein plan. Eventually the SS Polizei Division was called into offensive action, when on 9 June and 10 June, the 1st and 2nd Police Regiments participated in the assault across the Aisne River and the Ardennes Canal where they faced fierce French resistance before the 2nd Police Regiment broke through and took the town of Voncq. The unit was then ordered to advance through the Argonne Forest and again, despite fierce French fighting, managed to capture Les Islettes. Nonetheless, the SS Polizei Division was taken out of front-line fighting and placed in reserve near Bar le Duc, but not before they had suffered some 704 casualties in two engagements.
Throughout the course of the war, Himmler established as many as thirty SS-Police regiments for regions occupied by German forces. These units were created to carry out "special tasks" behind the Russian front, and each SS-Police regiment was assigned two armored car and antitank platoons with this "police army" subordinated to HSSPF leaders under Himmler's authority. Between 5,500 and 6,000 additional members of the Order Police were dispatched across central and southern Russia, accompanied by the SS-Einsatzgruppen. During periods of intense fighting and crisis, these SS-Police units were thrown into the front lines, but normally were used for anti-partisan activities or the mass execution of political prisoners and Jews.
During the spring of 1944—after a disastrous year on the Russian front—the 4th SS-Polizei Division fought Greek guerrilla forces near Klissura, after which, the division carried out "savage reprisals against the local inhabitants." The same thing happened at Distomo near Delphi, where members of this division slaughtered men, women, and children alike. Days after the massacre at Distomo, a Red Cross team from Athens "found bodies dangling from the trees that lined the road into the village."
Nearly 15 percent of all Waffen-SS general officers and colonels, as well as another 11 percent of its lieutenant-colonels and majors, began their careers as policemen.
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