Anti-Partisan Guerrilla Warfare Badge

Last updated
Bandit-warfare Badge
Bandenkampfabzeichen

Bandenkampfabzeichen.jpg

Bronze grade version
Awarded by Nazi Germany
Type Badge
Eligibility Wehrmacht, Ordnungspolizei and Waffen-SS personnel
Awarded forBandenbekämpfung (literally: "bandit fighting") against "partisans", "bandits", "'plunderers", and any other persons assumed to present danger to the Nazi rule or Wehrmacht's security in the occupied territories. [1]
Campaign(s) World War II
Status Obsolete
Statistics
Established 30 January 1944 [2]
Last awarded 1945

Anti-Partisan Guerrilla Warfare Badge (German Bandenkampfabzeichen; literally: "Bandit-fight badge") was a World War II decoration of Nazi Germany awarded to members of the army, Luftwaffe, Ordnungspolizei (Order Police), and Waffen-SS for participating in rear-area security operations, the so-called Bandenbekämpfung (bandit fighting). The badge was instituted on 30 January 1944 by Adolf Hitler after authorization/recommendation by Heinrich Himmler. [2]

World War II 1939–1945 global war

World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war.

Nazi Germany The German state from 1933 to 1945, under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler

Nazi Germany is the common English name for Germany between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party (NSDAP) controlled the country through a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a totalitarian state that controlled nearly all aspects of life via the Gleichschaltung legal process. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich until 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany is also known as the Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", the first two being the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918). The Nazi regime ended after the Allies defeated Germany in May 1945, ending World War II in Europe.

Contents

Especially on the Eastern Front, the terms "partisan" and "bandit" were applied by the Nazi security apparatus to Jews, communists, Soviet state officials, Red Army stragglers, and any other persons deemed to pose a security risk. Rear-area security operations against armed irregular fighters ("pacification actions") were often indistinguishable from massacres of civilians, accompanied by burning down villages, destroying crops, stealing livestock, deporting able-bodied population for slave labour to Germany and leaving parent-less children on their own. [1]

Eastern Front (World War II) theatre of conflict during World War II, encompassing Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans)

The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.), Poland and other Allies, which encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans) from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. It has been known as the Great Patriotic War in the former Soviet Union and modern Russia, while in Germany it was called the Eastern Front, or the German-Soviet War by outside parties.

Description

All versions of the badge feature a skull and crossed bones at the base, with a laurel wreath of oak leaves around the sides and a sword in the center. The sword's handle has the "sun-wheel" swastika, with the blade plunged into the "Hydra", whose five heads represent the "partisans". The second version of the badge had larger oak leaves in the wreath and a larger "sun-wheel" swastika. [3] Historian Phillip W. Blood notes the similarities between the symbol of the occultist Thule Society, with a sword and a swastika, and the design of the badge. He suggests that Himmler and Erich von dem Bach-Zalewski "had sealed [...] Germanic mythology into a medal for Lebensraum". [4]

The Thule Society, originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum, was a German occultist and völkisch group founded in Munich right after World War I, named after a mythical northern country in Greek legend. The society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which was later reorganized by Adolf Hitler into the National Socialist German Workers' Party. According to Hitler biographer Ian Kershaw, the organization's "membership list ... reads like a Who's Who of early Nazi sympathizers and leading figures in Munich", including Rudolf Hess, Alfred Rosenberg, Hans Frank, Julius Lehmann, Gottfried Feder, Dietrich Eckart, and Karl Harrer.

The badge existed in three grades: [5]

Criteria were slightly different for the Luftwaffe, being based on 30, 75, and 150 operational flights/sorties flown in support of "anti-partisan" operations. [5]

Known recipients

Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski German politician and SS functionary

Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski was a high-ranking SS commander of Nazi Germany. During World War II, he was in charge of security warfare against those designated by the regime as ideological enemies and any other persons deemed to present danger to the Nazi rule or Wehrmacht's rear security in the occupied territories of Eastern Europe. It mostly involved atrocities against the civilian population. In 1944 he led the brutal suppression of the Warsaw Uprising.

Otto Hellwig was a German SS-Gruppenführer (1944) and lieutenant general of police (1944), as well as an SS and Police Leader.

Bronislav Kaminski German general

Bronislav Vladislavovich Kaminski was a Russian collaborationist and the commander of the S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A., an anti-partisan formation made up of people from the so-called Lokot Autonomy territory in the Nazi Germany occupied areas of Russia, which was later incorporated into the Waffen-SS as the S.S. Sturmbrigade R.O.N.A.. Older publications mistakenly give his first name as Mieczyslaw.

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References

Citations

  1. 1 2 Blood 2006, p. 20, 310.
  2. 1 2 Angolia 1987, p. 106.
  3. ↑ Angolia 1987, pp. 106, 107.
  4. ↑ Blood 2006, p. 310.
  5. 1 2 Angolia 1987, p. 107.

Sources

International Standard Book Number Unique numeric book identifier

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier which is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency.

<i>Hitler’s Bandit Hunters</i>

Hitler’s Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe is a 2006 book by the British author and researcher Philip W. Blood. It discusses the evolution of German rear security policies during World War II, from Partisanenkreig to Bandenbekämpfung, leading to mass crimes against humanity and genocide.

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