Perpetrator, Firefighter, Soldier, Cop: The Many Roles of the Order Auxiliary Police in German-Occupied Latvia

• In Event: Policing in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

During the Nazi German occupation of Latvia in World War II, various armed formations of police, auxiliaries, and soldiers were recruited. Most scholarly attention has been placed on Latvian killing squads under the authority of the Security Service of the SS (e.g. the Arājs Kommando) or frontline combat units (e.g. the Waffen-SS Latvian Legion). By comparison, the Latvian Order Auxiliary Police (or Schutzmannschaft), subordinated to the Order Police, have been understudied, especially in the full spectrum of the roles that they performed: as local police in urban and rural areas, as firefighters, and as detached units engaged in anti-partisan operations, in peripheral roles in the Final Solution, and in combat against the Red Army. I argue that the multifarious and fluctuating roles of the Latvian Order Auxiliary Police derive in part from the competing institutions and evolving policies of the German occupation. Beyond presenting an illustrative example of the militarization of police under German influence, I also argue that closer study of the Latvian Order Auxiliary Police provides new insights about institutional continuity and local agency under foreign occupation.

Author

• Harry Merritt, U of Vermont