Bandenbekämpfung

[3] Following Jomini's lead, Oberstleutnant Albrecht von Boguslawski published lectures entitled Der Kleine Krieg ("The Small War", a literal translation of guerrilla), which outlined in detail the tactical procedures related to partisan and anti-partisan warfare—likely deliberately written without clear distinctions between combatants and non-combatants.

[4] To what extent this contributed to the intensification of unrestrained warfare cannot be known, but Prussian officers like Alfred von Schlieffen encouraged their professional soldiers to embrace a dictum advocating that "for every problem, there was a military solution".

[5] Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Chief of the Prussian General Staff, added hostage-taking as a means of deterrence to sabotage activities and the employment of collective measures against entire communities, which became the basis for German anti-partisan policies from 1870 and remained as such through 1945.

[6] Prussian security operations during the Franco-Prussian War included the use of Landwehr reservists, whose duties ranged from guarding railroad lines, to taking hostages, and carrying out reprisals to deter activities of francs-tireurs.

[15] Throughout the war, Germany's integrated intelligence, perimeter police, guard network, and border control measures coalesced to define the German military's security operations.

[18] During World War II, the German Army policy for deterring partisan or "bandit" activities against its forces was to strike "such terror into the population that it loses all will to resist".

[19] Even before the Nazi campaign in the East began, Adolf Hitler had already absolved his soldiers and police from any responsibility for brutality against civilians, expecting them to kill anyone that even "looked askance" at the German forces.

[19] Much of the partisan warfare became an exercise of antisemitism, as military commanders like General Anton von Mauchenheim gennant Bechtolsheim exclaimed that whenever an act of sabotage was committed and one killed the Jews from that village, then "one can be certain that one has destroyed the perpetrators, or at least those who stood behind them".

This resistance outraged General Kurt Student, commander of the XI Air Corps, who ordered "revenge operations," consisting of: "1) shootings; 2) forced levies; 3) burning down villages; and 4) extermination of the male population of the entire region".

During the Axis occupation of Greece, the emergence of armed resistance from 1942 onward invoked mass reprisals in places such as Viannos, Kedros, Mousiotitsa, Kommeno, Lingiades, Kalavryta, Drakeia, Distomo, Mesovouno, Pyrgoi, Kaisariani and Chortiatis, along with numerous other incidents of smaller scale.

This was part of the SS contribution to prevent crime in the newly conquered territories, to maintain order, and to ensure the efficient establishment of miniature Nazi governments, constituted by mobile versions of the Reich Security Main Office.

[30] Starting the same day Germany invaded the Soviet Union (22 June 1941), the 12th Infantry Division command issued orders that guerilla warfare combatants were not to be quartered as POWs but were to be "sentenced on the spot by an officer", meaning they were to be summarily shot.

[36] Units like the SS Galizien—who were likewise tasked to deal with partisans—included foreign recruits overseen by experienced German "bandit" fighters well-versed in the "mass murder of unarmed civilians".

[40] Misgivings from commanders within Army Group Rear that such operations were counterproductive and in poor taste, since women and children were also being murdered, went ignored or resisted from Bach-Zelewski, who frequently "cited the special powers of the Reichsführer.

[44] Historians Ben Shepherd and Juliette Pattinson note: As the war dragged on, the occupation's mounting economic rapacity engendered a vicious cycle of further resistance, further German brutality in response, and the erosion of order and stability across occupied Europe.

In effect, the German Army willingly ensnared itself in the Nazi machinery of annihilation and extermination by working with the SS to systematically suppress partisan movements and other forms of perceived resistance.

"[52] According to historian Erich Haberer, the Nazis' murderous policies toward the Jews provided the victims little choice; driven to "coalesce into small groups to survive in forested areas from where they emerged periodically to forage food in nearby fields and villages, the Germans created their own partisan problem, which, by its very nature, was perceived as banditry.

[61] Ideologically speaking, since partisans represented an immediate existential threat, in that, they were equated with Jews or people under their influence, the systematic murder of anyone associated with them was an expression of the regime's racial antisemitism and was viewed by members of the Wehrmacht as a "necessity of war".

[63] Across western and southern Europe, the implementation of anti-bandit operations was uneven, owing to a constantly evolving set of rules of engagement, command and control disputes at the local level, and the complexity of regional politics with regard to the regime's goals in each respective nation.