WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.740 I want you to imagine, just for a second, a machine. 00:00:02.839 --> 00:00:06.599 OK. This incredibly complex, destructive machine. 00:00:06.940 --> 00:00:09.900 And it is built entirely on this really rigid 00:00:09.900 --> 00:00:13.880 philosophy of absolute purity. Like, the engineers 00:00:13.880 --> 00:00:16.960 who build it believe that only specific, elite 00:00:16.960 --> 00:00:19.559 parts can be used to make it run. Right. And 00:00:19.559 --> 00:00:21.839 any other parts are considered, you know, defective 00:00:21.839 --> 00:00:25.300 or inferior. Exactly. Dangerous even. But once 00:00:25.300 --> 00:00:27.739 they turn this machine on, it starts moving so 00:00:27.739 --> 00:00:30.359 fast and it covers so much ground that the engine 00:00:30.359 --> 00:00:32.960 just starts burning out. They suddenly realize 00:00:32.960 --> 00:00:35.219 they don't have enough of those elite parts to 00:00:35.219 --> 00:00:37.500 keep it running. So what do they do? They start 00:00:37.500 --> 00:00:40.060 shoving in the exact same parts they just spent 00:00:40.060 --> 00:00:43.020 years calling defective. Right. And the terrifying 00:00:43.020 --> 00:00:45.640 part, the machine doesn't stop. It actually gets 00:00:45.640 --> 00:00:47.990 bigger. It's a profound contradiction, really. 00:00:48.109 --> 00:00:49.850 I mean, when you look at the mechanics of human 00:00:49.850 --> 00:00:52.369 history, specifically the darkest chapters of 00:00:52.369 --> 00:00:55.770 the Second World War, the scale of that contradiction 00:00:55.770 --> 00:00:58.329 is just staggering. Yeah, it really is. And we 00:00:58.329 --> 00:01:01.450 are looking at a deeply unsettling source today 00:01:01.450 --> 00:01:04.370 for our deep dive. It's a comprehensive historical 00:01:04.370 --> 00:01:06.689 breakdown of the Schutzmannschaft, or the Schuma 00:01:06.689 --> 00:01:08.969 for short. Right. And if you don't recognize 00:01:08.969 --> 00:01:12.349 the name, this was the collaborationist auxiliary 00:01:12.349 --> 00:01:15.069 police force operating in Nazi occupied areas 00:01:15.069 --> 00:01:18.230 of the Soviet Union. The core mission of this 00:01:18.230 --> 00:01:20.750 deep dive is to explore that chilling paradox 00:01:20.750 --> 00:01:26.890 you just set up. Nazi Germany that was absolutely 00:01:26.890 --> 00:01:30.010 obsessed with racial purity and superiority. 00:01:30.109 --> 00:01:32.810 Yeah, obsessed is the word. But then, forced 00:01:32.810 --> 00:01:35.409 by the sheer geographic and logistical realities 00:01:35.409 --> 00:01:38.250 of the Eastern Front, they had to rely on hundreds 00:01:38.250 --> 00:01:41.150 of thousands of local people just to maintain 00:01:41.150 --> 00:01:43.349 control and carry out their darkest atrocities. 00:01:43.450 --> 00:01:45.989 People they actively despise. Exactly. And when 00:01:45.989 --> 00:01:47.909 we talk about relying on the local population, 00:01:48.090 --> 00:01:50.530 the source lays out numbers that completely alter, 00:01:50.950 --> 00:01:52.829 at least for me, the traditional picture of a 00:01:52.829 --> 00:01:54.790 military occupation. Oh, absolutely. Consider 00:01:54.790 --> 00:01:57.269 the scale here. Everywhere the German army went 00:01:57.269 --> 00:01:59.950 in these occupied territories, the local police 00:01:59.950 --> 00:02:02.810 force they built far outsized their own personnel. 00:02:02.890 --> 00:02:06.150 It's wild. In most areas, the ratio of German 00:02:06.150 --> 00:02:08.469 officers to native auxiliary police was about 00:02:08.469 --> 00:02:11.689 one to ten. Wow. Ten local collaborators for 00:02:11.689 --> 00:02:14.069 every single German officer. One to ten. OK, 00:02:14.069 --> 00:02:16.789 let's unpack this. Because to understand how 00:02:16.789 --> 00:02:19.990 a regime built on racial supremacy ends up outnumbered 00:02:19.990 --> 00:02:22.930 by its own local enforcers, I mean, we really 00:02:22.930 --> 00:02:25.069 have to start with the initial mindset of the 00:02:25.069 --> 00:02:27.530 German command. Right. According to the source, 00:02:27.669 --> 00:02:29.729 the Germans originally wanted absolutely nothing 00:02:29.729 --> 00:02:32.370 to do with using local collaborators on a large 00:02:32.370 --> 00:02:35.389 scale. No, not at all. The Nazi ideology classified 00:02:35.389 --> 00:02:38.310 these populations. So Ukrainians, Belarusians, 00:02:38.550 --> 00:02:41.430 Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, they classified 00:02:41.430 --> 00:02:46.069 them as Untermensch, subhuman. They were deemed 00:02:46.069 --> 00:02:48.849 completely unreliable. Yeah, the original blueprint 00:02:48.849 --> 00:02:51.770 for the greater Germanic Reich just didn't include 00:02:51.770 --> 00:02:54.449 arming the local populations in any capacity. 00:02:55.069 --> 00:02:57.250 Ideologues like Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, 00:02:57.409 --> 00:03:00.150 you know, the head of the SS, they saw no place 00:03:00.150 --> 00:03:02.590 for local nationalism or armed local forces in 00:03:02.590 --> 00:03:05.250 their new empire. I mean, the plan was subjugation, 00:03:05.370 --> 00:03:07.710 not collaboration. It is kind of like a hostile 00:03:07.710 --> 00:03:10.370 corporate takeover, right? Taken to this lethal 00:03:10.370 --> 00:03:12.189 extreme. Oh, that's an interesting way to look 00:03:12.189 --> 00:03:15.639 at it. Like, imagine a ruthless new management 00:03:15.639 --> 00:03:19.020 team comes in, and they absolutely despise the 00:03:19.020 --> 00:03:21.580 legacy staff. They think the legacy staff is 00:03:21.580 --> 00:03:24.259 incompetent. They plan to eventually replace 00:03:24.259 --> 00:03:25.860 or eliminate them all, and they just treat them 00:03:25.860 --> 00:03:29.000 with total contempt. Right. Right. But then management 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:31.639 tries to scale the business up overnight. And 00:03:31.639 --> 00:03:35.340 suddenly, they realize they are vastly understaffed. 00:03:35.479 --> 00:03:38.960 The factory floor spans thousands of miles, the 00:03:38.960 --> 00:03:41.979 operational demands are piling up, and they physically 00:03:41.979 --> 00:03:45.000 cannot keep the factory running without the very 00:03:45.000 --> 00:03:47.599 people they just spent months degrading. That 00:03:47.599 --> 00:03:50.000 analogy perfectly captures the logistical nightmare 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:52.080 the German High Command actually faced in the 00:03:52.080 --> 00:03:55.240 summer of 1941. Yeah. Because the sheer speed 00:03:55.240 --> 00:03:57.780 of the German advance in the East during Operation 00:03:57.780 --> 00:04:00.740 Barbarossa was unprecedented. They conquered 00:04:00.740 --> 00:04:03.639 vast swaths of territory so rapidly that they 00:04:03.639 --> 00:04:05.919 completely outran their own administrative and 00:04:05.919 --> 00:04:07.740 security capabilities. They just moved too fast 00:04:07.740 --> 00:04:10.520 for their own good. Exactly. The manpower shortage 00:04:10.520 --> 00:04:13.340 became an immediate critical crisis. They needed 00:04:13.340 --> 00:04:16.620 a massive police force just to deal with everyday 00:04:16.620 --> 00:04:20.040 crimes, to secure thousands of miles of railways 00:04:20.040 --> 00:04:22.899 behind the front lines, and to combat the growing 00:04:22.899 --> 00:04:25.540 anti -Nazi resistance. So the new management 00:04:25.540 --> 00:04:27.600 had to swallow its pride to keep the factory 00:04:27.600 --> 00:04:32.699 open. Basically, yeah. So on July 25, 1941, Heinrich 00:04:32.699 --> 00:04:35.259 Himmler officially authorized the creation of 00:04:35.259 --> 00:04:37.779 the Schutzmann shaft, and he subordinated it 00:04:37.779 --> 00:04:40.980 directly to the German police, the Ordnungspolizei 00:04:40.980 --> 00:04:44.060 or ORPO. Okay. And you know the naming convention 00:04:44.060 --> 00:04:46.500 itself reveals the ideological tightrope they 00:04:46.500 --> 00:04:49.319 were walking. Schutzmannschaft translates roughly 00:04:49.319 --> 00:04:53.019 to protection team. Protection team. Yeah. Initially 00:04:53.019 --> 00:04:55.779 local commanders called them Hilfspolizei, meaning 00:04:55.779 --> 00:04:58.399 auxiliary police, but the high command actually 00:04:58.399 --> 00:05:00.800 refused to attach a reputable German police title 00:05:00.800 --> 00:05:02.920 to this force. Wow, so even in the name they 00:05:02.920 --> 00:05:05.620 were holding them at arm's length. Exactly. They 00:05:05.620 --> 00:05:07.560 needed a linguistic barrier to keep the locals 00:05:07.560 --> 00:05:09.329 in their Just a constant reminder that they were 00:05:09.329 --> 00:05:12.470 not equals. But despite that institutional disdain, 00:05:12.649 --> 00:05:15.009 the growth of this organization was just explosive. 00:05:15.430 --> 00:05:17.709 Oh, it was massive. The source notes that by 00:05:17.709 --> 00:05:20.410 the end of 1941, literally just months after 00:05:20.410 --> 00:05:23.149 Hindler's authorization, there were already 45 00:05:23.149 --> 00:05:26.019 ,000 men serving in the Schutzmannschaft. And 00:05:26.019 --> 00:05:30.420 then by 1942, that number skyrocketed to an estimated 00:05:30.420 --> 00:05:34.360 300 ,000 men. 300 ,000 armed individuals, right. 00:05:34.699 --> 00:05:37.660 Operating under this sprawling semi -military 00:05:37.660 --> 00:05:40.560 apparatus. It's hard to even picture. And because 00:05:40.560 --> 00:05:43.600 there was very limited German supervision, especially 00:05:43.600 --> 00:05:45.920 out in the rural areas where that 10 to 1 ratio 00:05:45.920 --> 00:05:49.060 was most pronounced, these local Schützmannschaft 00:05:49.060 --> 00:05:51.920 members suddenly found themselves wielding considerable 00:05:51.920 --> 00:05:54.870 unchecked power. Right. The source documents 00:05:54.870 --> 00:05:57.529 how this lack of oversight resulted in a massive 00:05:57.529 --> 00:06:00.089 surge of reported corruption and civilian abuse. 00:06:00.529 --> 00:06:02.189 I am really trying to understand the psychology 00:06:02.189 --> 00:06:04.649 on the ground here. We know the mechanical reason 00:06:04.649 --> 00:06:06.810 the Nazis needed bodies, right? Their supply 00:06:06.810 --> 00:06:08.769 lines were stretched way too thin. Right, the 00:06:08.769 --> 00:06:11.600 logistical need. But if you are a local living 00:06:11.600 --> 00:06:14.740 in Ukraine or Lithuania, and these invaders view 00:06:14.740 --> 00:06:17.100 you as inferior, treat you with disdain, and 00:06:17.100 --> 00:06:18.920 they won't even give you a proper police title, 00:06:19.500 --> 00:06:22.560 why on earth do 300 ,000 local men willingly 00:06:22.560 --> 00:06:24.699 sign up to serve them? Well, the motivations 00:06:24.699 --> 00:06:27.379 are incredibly fractured. It's not just one thing. 00:06:28.139 --> 00:06:30.519 A significant portion of the recruitment was 00:06:30.519 --> 00:06:33.139 driven by the absolute banality of survival. 00:06:33.360 --> 00:06:36.399 Survival? Yeah. I mean, in a war zone where the 00:06:36.399 --> 00:06:38.300 agricultural output is being shipped back to 00:06:38.300 --> 00:06:40.980 Germany, starvation becomes a tool of control. 00:06:41.500 --> 00:06:43.459 Local men joined for steady wages. They joined 00:06:43.459 --> 00:06:46.449 for reliable food rations. Just to eat. Exactly. 00:06:46.750 --> 00:06:49.470 Yeah. And putting on that armband provided crucial 00:06:49.470 --> 00:06:51.149 administrative protections for their families, 00:06:51.569 --> 00:06:53.910 too, specifically getting exempted from forced 00:06:53.910 --> 00:06:56.170 labor drafts that were sending millions to work 00:06:56.170 --> 00:06:58.550 in German factories. The source even details 00:06:58.550 --> 00:07:01.509 how captured Soviet prisoners of war volunteered 00:07:01.509 --> 00:07:05.180 for the Schützmannschaft. And the mortality rate 00:07:05.180 --> 00:07:08.399 in those POW camps was just catastrophic. When 00:07:08.399 --> 00:07:10.800 you are starving behind barbed wire and someone 00:07:10.800 --> 00:07:13.560 offers you a German rifle and a daily food ration, 00:07:13.980 --> 00:07:16.800 that isn't a political choice. That is a biological 00:07:16.800 --> 00:07:19.279 imperative. What's fascinating here is how that 00:07:19.279 --> 00:07:22.920 raw survival instinct seamlessly intersected 00:07:22.920 --> 00:07:25.920 with deep -seated opportunism and ideological 00:07:25.920 --> 00:07:28.290 malice. Wait, what do you mean? Well, it is a 00:07:28.290 --> 00:07:30.329 mistake to view the entire force as reluctant 00:07:30.329 --> 00:07:33.310 survivors. Many joined for fiercely ideological 00:07:33.310 --> 00:07:36.310 reasons. Oh, right. The source highlights virulent 00:07:36.310 --> 00:07:39.329 anti -Semitism and intense anti -communism as 00:07:39.329 --> 00:07:41.850 major drivers. Ah, I see. You also had local 00:07:41.850 --> 00:07:44.629 nationalism, where some recruits genuinely believed 00:07:44.629 --> 00:07:47.170 that collaborating with the Germans was a strategic 00:07:47.170 --> 00:07:49.670 stepping stone, you know, to securing their own 00:07:49.670 --> 00:07:51.750 independent nation state after the war. Right. 00:07:51.750 --> 00:07:53.829 I want to push back on the idea of this being 00:07:53.829 --> 00:07:56.170 a highly disciplined ideological army, though. 00:07:56.269 --> 00:07:58.430 Oh, it definitely wasn't. Because the source 00:07:58.430 --> 00:08:00.410 points out that a lot of these recruits joined 00:08:00.410 --> 00:08:03.209 simply for the opportunity to loot. Yes. Like 00:08:03.209 --> 00:08:05.529 they saw their Jewish neighbors being targeted 00:08:05.529 --> 00:08:07.930 by the regime and they signed up specifically 00:08:07.930 --> 00:08:10.930 to steal their property. It attracted criminals 00:08:10.930 --> 00:08:13.370 and opportunists right alongside the political 00:08:13.370 --> 00:08:16.930 ideologues and the starving POWs. The demographics 00:08:16.930 --> 00:08:20.459 paint a very chaotic picture. A snapshot of the 00:08:20.459 --> 00:08:23.240 Schutzmannschaft near the town of Mir in 1944 00:08:23.240 --> 00:08:25.939 showed that about half the force was under 25 00:08:25.939 --> 00:08:29.920 years old. Wow, half. That's so young. Very young 00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:32.639 men, often entirely lacking in professional law 00:08:32.639 --> 00:08:34.919 enforcement training and discipline. Unbelievable. 00:08:35.519 --> 00:08:37.700 The German commanders frequently complained about 00:08:37.700 --> 00:08:40.559 their unreliability, and in some sectors, they 00:08:40.559 --> 00:08:42.620 initially refused to supply them with firearms 00:08:42.620 --> 00:08:45.179 at all. They opted to give them truncheons instead. 00:08:45.500 --> 00:08:48.330 So... How do you even build a cohesive military 00:08:48.330 --> 00:08:52.250 machine out of 300 ,000 teenagers, opportunists, 00:08:52.450 --> 00:08:54.690 and starving prisoners? You change the rules 00:08:54.690 --> 00:08:57.330 of engagement. Initially, recruits were signing 00:08:57.330 --> 00:08:59.529 up for specific terms like six -month or one 00:08:59.529 --> 00:09:01.730 -year contracts. Right, like temp work. It functions 00:09:01.730 --> 00:09:03.909 exactly like temporary employment. Yeah. But 00:09:03.909 --> 00:09:06.009 as the war dragged on and the Eastern Front became 00:09:06.009 --> 00:09:09.429 a total meat grinder, the German command eliminated 00:09:09.429 --> 00:09:11.409 those term limits. You couldn't just leave when 00:09:11.409 --> 00:09:14.470 your year was up. Oh wow. And by 1942, to meet 00:09:14.470 --> 00:09:17.129 their escalating quotas, the Germans simply began 00:09:17.129 --> 00:09:19.830 forcing men to sign up. So you end up with this 00:09:19.830 --> 00:09:22.350 stark internal contrast within the ranks. You 00:09:22.350 --> 00:09:25.870 have the enthusiastic ideological early volunteers 00:09:25.870 --> 00:09:30.190 forced to serve alongside resentful trapped later 00:09:30.190 --> 00:09:34.129 conscripts. Exactly. Giving rifles to 300 ,000 00:09:34.129 --> 00:09:37.750 divided resentful men creates a terrifying new 00:09:37.750 --> 00:09:40.710 problem for the German command. How do you prevent 00:09:40.710 --> 00:09:43.029 a mutiny when you're outnumbered 10 to 1? You 00:09:43.029 --> 00:09:46.149 have to fracture and indoctrinate them. Himmler 00:09:46.149 --> 00:09:48.710 eventually mandated up to eight weeks of non 00:09:48.710 --> 00:09:51.149 -commissioned officer training for squad leaders. 00:09:51.350 --> 00:09:53.450 Eight weeks? Yeah. And this wasn't just about 00:09:53.450 --> 00:09:55.889 learning how to march or shoot. It included heavy 00:09:55.889 --> 00:09:58.590 doses of political education. They needed to 00:09:58.590 --> 00:10:01.190 force ideological discipline onto the ranks to 00:10:01.190 --> 00:10:03.230 ensure these local commanders would follow German 00:10:03.230 --> 00:10:06.080 orders without hesitation. Right. And once they 00:10:06.080 --> 00:10:08.639 have this volatile workforce assembled and trained, 00:10:08.740 --> 00:10:11.460 they have to actually deploy it. Right. The source 00:10:11.460 --> 00:10:13.399 outlines that they divided the Schützmannschaft 00:10:13.399 --> 00:10:16.360 into four distinct branches just to manage that 00:10:16.360 --> 00:10:19.299 massive geographic area. Yes. First, you have 00:10:19.299 --> 00:10:21.519 the stationary regular police. These were the 00:10:21.519 --> 00:10:24.100 local patrolmen in the cities and districts handling 00:10:24.100 --> 00:10:27.000 mundane law enforcement and traffic. Which freed 00:10:27.000 --> 00:10:30.070 up German soldiers for the front. Exactly. Second, 00:10:30.190 --> 00:10:32.710 you had the reserve units who were tasked with 00:10:32.710 --> 00:10:35.789 guarding POW camps and handling local work details. 00:10:36.669 --> 00:10:39.690 Third, there were fire brigades. But the most 00:10:39.690 --> 00:10:42.250 significant and ultimately the most lethal was 00:10:42.250 --> 00:10:45.169 the fourth branch, the mobile police battalions. 00:10:45.389 --> 00:10:47.350 The mobile battalions. The source notes there 00:10:47.350 --> 00:10:50.450 were about 200 of these battalions formed and 00:10:50.450 --> 00:10:52.450 they were organized strictly by nationality. 00:10:53.110 --> 00:10:55.379 The breakdown is incredible to look at. There 00:10:55.379 --> 00:10:59.179 were 71 Ukrainian battalions, 47 Latvian, 26 00:10:59.179 --> 00:11:03.639 Lithuanian, 21 Estonian, 11 Belarusian, and eight 00:11:03.639 --> 00:11:05.700 Tatar battalions. And, you know, when the Germans 00:11:05.700 --> 00:11:07.700 tried to organize similar police battalions in 00:11:07.700 --> 00:11:10.480 occupied Poland, they completely failed to find 00:11:10.480 --> 00:11:13.139 volunteers. Wait, really? Yeah. They had to use 00:11:13.139 --> 00:11:15.340 physical force just to form a single Polish unit. 00:11:15.450 --> 00:11:18.690 Battalion 202. The political and social climates 00:11:18.690 --> 00:11:21.169 varied wildly across the occupied territories 00:11:21.169 --> 00:11:23.629 and that dictated how easily the Germans could 00:11:23.629 --> 00:11:26.049 raise these mobile forces. Here's where it gets 00:11:26.049 --> 00:11:28.110 really interesting regarding the mechanics of 00:11:28.110 --> 00:11:30.210 how these battalions were treated. Hitler issued 00:11:30.210 --> 00:11:33.269 a specific directive, directive number 46. All 00:11:33.269 --> 00:11:36.509 right, the uniform directive. He expressly forbade 00:11:36.509 --> 00:11:39.149 these Schutzmannschaft men from wearing German 00:11:39.149 --> 00:11:43.049 badges of rank. No German Eagles, no swastikas, 00:11:43.389 --> 00:11:46.070 no German military shoulder straps. It circles 00:11:46.070 --> 00:11:48.830 right back to that intermench ideology. These 00:11:48.830 --> 00:11:51.649 men are actively doing the Reich's bidding, holding 00:11:51.649 --> 00:11:54.370 the front lines of the occupation, but they are 00:11:54.370 --> 00:11:56.950 strictly prohibited from wearing the Reich's 00:11:56.889 --> 00:11:59.990 The logistics of that are fascinating to me. 00:12:00.149 --> 00:12:02.370 Instead of standardized uniforms, they often 00:12:02.370 --> 00:12:04.990 wore old pre -war national uniforms from their 00:12:04.990 --> 00:12:07.730 own country's dismantled armies. Yeah, or sometimes 00:12:07.730 --> 00:12:10.049 they just wore civilian clothes. Right. Their 00:12:10.049 --> 00:12:12.529 only real unifying identification was a simple 00:12:12.529 --> 00:12:14.970 white armband with the word Schutzmann, a service 00:12:14.970 --> 00:12:17.940 number, and their location. They were intentionally 00:12:17.940 --> 00:12:21.200 kept visually and materially second class. Definitely. 00:12:21.399 --> 00:12:23.159 The source notes, they were poorly supplied, 00:12:23.440 --> 00:12:26.279 often lacking basic food rations and modern weaponry 00:12:26.279 --> 00:12:28.779 because German frontline troops always got priority. 00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:30.919 They were second class in status, sure, but they 00:12:30.919 --> 00:12:33.600 were frontline in terms of utility. And this 00:12:33.600 --> 00:12:36.139 brings us to the darkest mechanical function 00:12:36.139 --> 00:12:38.500 of the Schutzmannschaft. These mobile battalions 00:12:38.500 --> 00:12:40.600 weren't just directing traffic or guarding rail 00:12:40.600 --> 00:12:43.220 yards. They were systematically weaponized to 00:12:43.220 --> 00:12:45.779 carry out the Holocaust. The source is explicit 00:12:45.779 --> 00:12:48.600 about their complicity. The German forces simply 00:12:48.600 --> 00:12:51.500 did not have the manpower to round up entire 00:12:51.500 --> 00:12:53.799 regional populations on their own. They just 00:12:53.799 --> 00:12:56.500 didn't. They relied on the local Schutzmannschaft. 00:12:56.700 --> 00:12:59.679 for the heavy lifting of genocide. Wow. These 00:12:59.679 --> 00:13:02.240 battalions were frequently attached to the Einsatzgruppen, 00:13:02.299 --> 00:13:06.080 the German mobile death squads. The local auxiliaries 00:13:06.080 --> 00:13:08.679 possessed the geographic knowledge, the language 00:13:08.679 --> 00:13:12.399 skills and the manpower to round up, guard and 00:13:12.399 --> 00:13:14.909 execute Jewish men, women and children. There 00:13:14.909 --> 00:13:17.129 is a statistic in the source that highlights 00:13:17.129 --> 00:13:20.230 the staggering scale of this collaboration. It 00:13:20.230 --> 00:13:22.269 estimates that the Lithuanian Schutzmannschaft 00:13:22.269 --> 00:13:25.490 alone were responsible for killing 78 ,000 Jews 00:13:25.490 --> 00:13:29.830 in Lithuania and Belarus. 78 ,000 lives extinguished 00:13:29.830 --> 00:13:32.509 by just one nationalities auxiliary force. It's 00:13:32.509 --> 00:13:34.649 just staggering to think about. And beyond the 00:13:34.649 --> 00:13:36.649 mass shootings, they were crucial to the mechanics 00:13:36.649 --> 00:13:39.409 of the Nazi slave labor machine, too. The source 00:13:39.409 --> 00:13:42.370 details how about 12 ,000 of these Shuma men 00:13:42.370 --> 00:13:45.970 were tasked with guarding Soviet POWs, civilians, 00:13:46.610 --> 00:13:49.649 and Jews who were forced to build Durchgangstrasse 00:13:49.649 --> 00:13:53.210 V. That was the road project, right? Yes, a massive, 00:13:53.509 --> 00:13:56.230 brutal military road project stretching all the 00:13:56.230 --> 00:13:59.610 way from Viv to Donetsk. The guards enforced 00:13:59.610 --> 00:14:01.809 the lethal working conditions that claimed just 00:14:01.809 --> 00:14:04.710 countless lives. It is a level of structural 00:14:04.710 --> 00:14:07.529 complicity that is hard to fully grasp, but it 00:14:07.529 --> 00:14:09.809 leads to an inevitable collapse. Naturally. You 00:14:09.809 --> 00:14:13.269 have this sprawling 300 ,000 man machine built 00:14:13.269 --> 00:14:16.330 on coercion, survival, opportunism and mass murder. 00:14:16.529 --> 00:14:19.029 And then the tide of the war turns. The German 00:14:19.029 --> 00:14:21.309 autonomy stalls at Stalingrad and the long retreat 00:14:21.309 --> 00:14:24.590 begins. What happens to 300 ,000 accomplices 00:14:24.590 --> 00:14:26.929 when the regime that gave them those white armbands 00:14:26.929 --> 00:14:29.269 starts losing the war? The machine splinters 00:14:29.269 --> 00:14:32.080 almost immediately. As the Soviet Red Army began 00:14:32.080 --> 00:14:34.480 pushing westward, the reality of the impending 00:14:34.480 --> 00:14:36.740 collapse hit the Schutzmannschaft. The mechanics 00:14:36.740 --> 00:14:39.580 of desertion took over. The numbers dropped dramatically. 00:14:40.399 --> 00:14:42.460 Looking at the Lithuanian Schutzmannschaft again, 00:14:42.740 --> 00:14:45.299 the source notes that roughly 3 ,000 men deserted 00:14:45.299 --> 00:14:49.940 between late 1943 and early 1944. They saw the 00:14:49.940 --> 00:14:51.759 front lines collapsing and realized they were 00:14:51.759 --> 00:14:54.159 holding the losing side's weapon. If we connect 00:14:54.159 --> 00:14:56.730 this to the bigger picture... The end of the 00:14:56.730 --> 00:15:00.169 war created a wildly divergent, almost chaotic 00:15:00.169 --> 00:15:03.350 landscape of justice for these men. Their post 00:15:03.350 --> 00:15:05.950 -war fates were dictated almost entirely by the 00:15:05.950 --> 00:15:08.169 mechanics of geography and timing. Let's look 00:15:08.169 --> 00:15:10.590 at the East first. If a Schuma member stayed 00:15:10.590 --> 00:15:13.009 in the East, or was captured by the advancing 00:15:13.009 --> 00:15:15.690 Red Army, the justice was swift and brutal, right? 00:15:15.730 --> 00:15:18.769 Oh, absolutely. The Soviet Union heavily persecuted 00:15:18.769 --> 00:15:20.970 former members of the Schutzmannschaft. They 00:15:20.970 --> 00:15:23.090 were viewed as the ultimate traitors to the state. 00:15:23.179 --> 00:15:25.240 This source provides a snapshot of the Soviet 00:15:25.240 --> 00:15:27.899 retribution. Men were frequently sentenced to 00:15:27.899 --> 00:15:31.940 death upon capture. In 1948, 14 men from a Lithuanian 00:15:31.940 --> 00:15:34.320 unit were sentenced to 25 years in the Gulag. 00:15:34.860 --> 00:15:37.419 The Soviet justice system had a long, unforgiving 00:15:37.419 --> 00:15:41.039 memory for collaborators. As late as 1962, eight 00:15:41.039 --> 00:15:43.419 former members were sentenced to death, and another 00:15:43.419 --> 00:15:47.279 was executed in 1979. Decades later. But when 00:15:47.279 --> 00:15:50.470 you look to the West, It is a completely different 00:15:50.470 --> 00:15:53.110 mechanism at play. It's a massive blind spot. 00:15:53.370 --> 00:15:56.210 Really? How so? Because as the Soviets advanced, 00:15:56.750 --> 00:15:59.230 a huge number of the Yashuma men fled westward. 00:15:59.490 --> 00:16:02.029 They tossed their white armbands, changed into 00:16:02.029 --> 00:16:04.870 civilian clothes, and blended in with the millions 00:16:04.870 --> 00:16:07.970 of displaced persons and refugees moving across 00:16:07.970 --> 00:16:10.509 a shattered Europe. They just hid in plain sight. 00:16:10.690 --> 00:16:12.549 And they were highly successful at slipping through 00:16:12.549 --> 00:16:15.919 the cracks. A specific survey mentioned in the 00:16:15.919 --> 00:16:18.340 source looked at a group of about 200 former 00:16:18.340 --> 00:16:20.960 members. And it found that more than 30 % of 00:16:20.960 --> 00:16:23.019 them had successfully escaped the Soviet zone 00:16:23.019 --> 00:16:27.019 and made it to the West. Wow. Over 30%. When 00:16:27.019 --> 00:16:29.039 Western authorities encountered these young men 00:16:29.039 --> 00:16:31.440 claiming to be displaced farmers from Ukraine 00:16:31.440 --> 00:16:34.240 or Latvia, they faced very little scrutiny. Hardly 00:16:34.240 --> 00:16:36.620 any. The source explicitly states that Western 00:16:36.620 --> 00:16:38.860 authorities showed much less interest in prosecuting 00:16:38.860 --> 00:16:41.059 these local auxiliaries than they did the actual 00:16:41.059 --> 00:16:44.289 German Nazi officials. Well, in the chaotic aftermath 00:16:44.289 --> 00:16:46.710 of World War II and the immediate dawn of the 00:16:46.710 --> 00:16:49.610 Cold War, Western intelligence and justice systems 00:16:49.610 --> 00:16:52.769 were focused almost entirely on high ranking 00:16:52.769 --> 00:16:55.549 German command structures. The big fish. Right. 00:16:55.950 --> 00:16:58.769 The local auxiliary police didn't have SS blood 00:16:58.769 --> 00:17:01.870 group tattoos. They didn't have extensive paper 00:17:01.870 --> 00:17:04.910 trails in Berlin. They simply emigrated to the 00:17:04.910 --> 00:17:07.670 United States, to Canada, to South America and 00:17:07.670 --> 00:17:10.670 assimilated into new lives. It wasn't until decades 00:17:10.670 --> 00:17:13.210 later, literally after the Soviet Union dissolved 00:17:13.210 --> 00:17:16.390 in the 1990s and new KGB records became available 00:17:16.390 --> 00:17:18.890 to international researchers, that countries 00:17:18.890 --> 00:17:21.529 like the U .S. and Canada realized who they had 00:17:21.529 --> 00:17:23.769 let in. Yeah, that's when the reckoning finally 00:17:23.769 --> 00:17:26.670 started. They began the slow mechanical process 00:17:26.670 --> 00:17:29.609 of tracking these men down, denaturalizing them 00:17:29.609 --> 00:17:31.809 and deporting them back to their home countries. 00:17:31.930 --> 00:17:34.670 A highly localized, heavily delayed form of accountability 00:17:34.670 --> 00:17:37.069 that frankly only caught a fraction of those 00:17:37.069 --> 00:17:39.619 who actually escaped. What does this all mean 00:17:39.619 --> 00:17:43.059 for you listening to this deep dive? It highlights 00:17:43.059 --> 00:17:45.500 something deeply unsettling about the mechanics 00:17:45.500 --> 00:17:48.700 of a post -war world. We often picture post -war 00:17:48.700 --> 00:17:51.599 justice as this neat sweeping broom that clears 00:17:51.599 --> 00:17:55.119 away the perpetrators. But history shows the 00:17:55.119 --> 00:17:58.200 mechanics of justice are messy. They're inconsistent. 00:17:58.420 --> 00:18:00.740 Yeah. In the case of the Schutzmannschaft, the 00:18:00.740 --> 00:18:03.460 uniform you wore, or more accurately, the white 00:18:03.460 --> 00:18:05.700 armband you managed to throw into a ditch before 00:18:05.700 --> 00:18:08.160 reaching an allied checkpoint, dictated your 00:18:08.160 --> 00:18:11.200 entire fate. The Schutzmannschaft forces us to 00:18:11.200 --> 00:18:14.220 confront the gray areas of human conflict. It 00:18:14.220 --> 00:18:16.779 exemplifies the dangerously blurred lines between 00:18:16.779 --> 00:18:19.519 victim, bystander, and perpetrator. Definitely. 00:18:19.640 --> 00:18:22.000 Some of these men were genuinely victims of circumstance. 00:18:22.240 --> 00:18:24.440 They were forced to choose between starvation 00:18:24.440 --> 00:18:27.539 in a POW camp and holding a rifle. But the moment 00:18:27.539 --> 00:18:30.440 they accepted that rifle, many became the operational 00:18:30.440 --> 00:18:32.720 gears of some of the worst atrocities in human 00:18:32.720 --> 00:18:34.920 history. The Holocaust on the Eastern Front was 00:18:34.920 --> 00:18:37.460 not executed solely by a monolithic German army. 00:18:38.019 --> 00:18:41.519 It was a localized effort fueled by 300 ,000 00:18:41.519 --> 00:18:44.940 complex, compromised individuals making day -to 00:18:44.940 --> 00:18:47.579 -day choices about their own survival and prejudice. 00:18:48.420 --> 00:18:51.640 It is the legacy staff keeping the hostile takeover 00:18:51.640 --> 00:18:54.720 running long after the new management loses control. 00:18:55.259 --> 00:18:57.599 Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into 00:18:57.599 --> 00:19:01.470 a really dark but crucial piece of history. And, 00:19:01.549 --> 00:19:03.789 you know, it begs a profound question when we 00:19:03.789 --> 00:19:06.150 look at the world today. Modern international 00:19:06.150 --> 00:19:09.529 refugee law has incredibly strict, complex clauses 00:19:09.529 --> 00:19:12.150 specifically designed to weed out war criminals 00:19:12.150 --> 00:19:14.609 hiding among fleeing victims. Right. The entire 00:19:14.609 --> 00:19:16.750 modern vetting process for displaced persons 00:19:16.750 --> 00:19:19.049 exists almost entirely because of the men who 00:19:19.049 --> 00:19:21.589 threw away their white armbands in 1945. Wow. 00:19:21.829 --> 00:19:23.750 Yeah. History books love to focus on the grand 00:19:23.750 --> 00:19:26.430 architects of empires and atrocities. But the 00:19:26.430 --> 00:19:28.509 Schutzmannschaft proves that world altering events 00:19:28.400 --> 00:19:30.420 are often carried out by ordinary people. It 00:19:30.420 --> 00:19:32.500 makes you wonder, when we look at the massive 00:19:32.500 --> 00:19:34.980 refugee crises and immigration checkpoints of 00:19:34.980 --> 00:19:37.900 the 21st century, how much of our modern legal 00:19:37.900 --> 00:19:40.660 system is just the ghost of the Schutzmannschaft 00:19:40.660 --> 00:19:43.400 still haunting the machinery? And in the historical 00:19:43.400 --> 00:19:46.200 narratives we consume today, how many other massive 00:19:46.200 --> 00:19:48.019 events are secretly resting on the shoulders 00:19:48.019 --> 00:19:50.740 of unseen, opportunistic middlemen whose true 00:19:50.740 --> 00:19:52.519 motives have just been swallowed by time?