matter again. Now, however, he associated the ‘bandit activities’ with
unemployment in the General Government. As with the 1938 ‘asocial
operation’ in the Reich, his main concern was to increase the numbers
held in concentration camps through a programme of massive arrests:
‘I therefore order that from now onwards all proletarian types whether
male or female should be sent to the KL [concentration camps] in Lublin,
Auschwitz, or in the Reich. The numbers arrested must be sufficiently large
to decrease significantly those people who are not in employment in the GG
and thus achieve a distinct alleviation of the threat from bandits.’
44
As a result, between 15 and 22 January Himmler’s men arrested around
20,000 people indiscriminately; the ‘action’ affected above all people who
were not unemployed, producing considerable unrest among the popula-
tion and thereby increasing the potential threat of resistance. The civilian
population, who had not been warned in advance, objected strongly, and
Kru
¨
ger not only had to admit that mistakes had been made but eventually
felt obliged to reassure the civilian administration that such actions would
not be carried out in future.
45
Himmler did not allow himself to be affected
by this. ‘We must not be put off such actions by unavoidable mistakes, since
all in all the removal of asocial, criminal types will in the final analysis
alleviate the situation.’
46
Apparently among the ‘mistakes’ was the fact that,
in the course of the mass arrests, Himmler had wanted to ‘transfer’ to
concentration camps the 20,000 Polish officers who were still held as
prisoners of war. In the event, the Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop, intervened
to prevent this.
47
On 19 June 1943 Himmler was able to persuade Hitler to extend his
range of responsibilities for ‘combating bandits’, and to convince him for
this purpose to ‘return’ to him a number of SS and police units that had been
transferred to the front. As in the previous September, in order to achieve
this he utilized a meeting in which the ‘partisan problem’ and the ‘Jewish
question’ formed the subject of discussion. Himmler’s commission to ex-
pand the ‘combating of bandits’ was evidently linked to Hitler’s order to
him ‘to carry out ruthlessly [ . . . ] the evacuation of the Jews [ . . . ] in the
course of the next three to four months’.
48
Two days later Himmler appointed von dem Bach-Zelewski commander
of the units involved in combating bandits. At the same time he declared the
territories of Upper Carinthia and Lower Styria, the General Government,
the district of Bialystock, the regions of Russia-Centre and Russia-South/
Reich Commissariat Ukraine, as well as Croatia to be ‘bandit combat
658 a new opportunity?