61-574: Orpo may refer to: the abbreviation of Ordnungspolizei Petteri Orpo , Finnish politician Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Orpo . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Orpo&oldid=1237847362 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description
122-668: A Reichsleiter , the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party. On 1 May 1934, he replaced Minister-President Göring as Prussian Minister of the Interior, which gave him control over the police in Prussia. As a member of the Prussian cabinet, he also became an ex officio member of the Prussian State Council . By 1935, he also had near-total control over local government. He had
183-502: A Generalleutnant in the Police who was also an SS member would be referred to as SS Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Polizei . In 1942, SS membership became mandatory for police generals, with SS collar insignia (overlaid on police green backing) worn by all police officers ranked Generalmajor and above. The distinction between the police and the SS had virtually disappeared by 1943 with
244-453: A centralised organisation uniting the municipal, city, and rural uniformed police that had been organised on a state-by-state basis. The Ordnungspolizei encompassed virtually all of Nazi Germany's law-enforcement and emergency response organisations, including fire brigades , coast guard , and civil defence . In the prewar period, Heinrich Himmler , head of the SS , and Kurt Daluege , chief of
305-601: A military situation, so as not to lose police personnel to the general draft of the Wehrmacht or to the full SS divisions of the regular Waffen-SS . Very late in the war several Orpo SS -Police regiments were transferred to the Waffen-SS to form the 35th SS -Police Grenadier Division . Cossack Orpo units were rolled into the XV SS Cossack Cavalry Corps with other units to nominally form 2nd Cossack Division. By
366-641: A result of the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 . The provision of the Reichstag Fire Decree giving the cabinet the power to take over state governments on its own authority was actually his idea; he saw the fire as a chance to increase his power and begin the process of Nazifying the country. He was responsible for drafting many of the Gleichschaltung laws that consolidated
427-586: A result, even ordinary criminals were consigned to concentration camps to remove them from the German racial community ( Volksgemeinschaft ) and ultimately exterminate them. The Order Police played a central role in carrying out the Holocaust . By "both career professionals and reservists, in both battalion formations and precinct service" ( Einzeldienst ) through providing men for the tasks involved. The German Order Police had grown to 244,500 men by mid-1940. The Orpo
488-434: A separate chain of command directly to Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler . The battalions were used for various auxiliary duties, including the so-called anti-partisan operations , support of combat troops, and construction of defence works (i.e. Atlantic Wall ). Some of them were focused on traditional security roles as an occupying force, while others were directly involved in actions designed to inflict terror and in
549-504: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Ordnungspolizei The Ordnungspolizei ( Orpo , German: [ˈɔʁdnʊŋspoliˌtsaɪ] , meaning "Order Police") were the uniformed police force in Nazi Germany from 1936 to 1945. The Orpo organisation was absorbed into the Nazi monopoly on power after regional police jurisdiction
610-575: The Einsatzgruppen , became an integral part of the Final Solution in the two years following the attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Operation Barbarossa . The first mass-murder of 3,000 Jews by Police Battalion 309 occurred in occupied Białystok on 12 July 1941. Police battalions were part of the first and second wave of murders in 1941–42 in the territories of Poland annexed by
671-560: The Sicherheitspolizei ( SiPo or security police), which had been established in June 1936. The Orpo assumed duties of regular uniformed law enforcement while the SiPo consisted of the secret state police ( Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo ) and criminal investigation police ( Kriminalpolizei or Kripo). The Kriminalpolizei was a corps of professional detectives involved in fighting crime and
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#1732852024235732-587: The Action T4 "euthanasia" programme supported by his ministry. Frick also took a leading part in Germany's re-armament in violation of the 1919 Versailles Treaty . He drafted laws introducing universal military conscription and extending the Wehrmacht service law to Austria after the 1938 Anschluss , as well as to the " Sudetenland " territories of the First Czechoslovak Republic annexed according to
793-655: The Catholic and the Jewish populations as part of those "resettlement actions". After hostilities had ceased, the battalions – such as Reserve Police Battalion 101 – took up the role of security forces , patrolling the perimeters of the Jewish ghettos in German-occupied Poland (the internal ghetto security issues were managed by the SS , SD , and the Criminal Police, in conjunction with
854-587: The Holocaust and were responsible for widespread crimes against humanity and genocide targeting the civilian population. Heinrich Himmler , head of the SS , was named Chief of German Police in the Interior Ministry on 17 June 1936 after Hitler announced a decree to "unify the control of police duties in the Reich". Traditionally, law enforcement in Germany had been a state and local matter. In this role, Himmler
915-642: The Munich Agreement . In the summer of 1938 Frick was named the patron (Schirmherr) of the Deutsches Turn- und Sportfest in Breslau , a patriotic sports festival attended by Hitler and much of the Nazi leadership. In this event he presided the ceremony of "handing over" the new Nazi Reich Sports League (NSRL) standard to Reichssportführer Hans von Tschammer und Osten , marking the further nazification of sports in Germany. On 11 November 1938, Frick promulgated
976-639: The Ordnungspolizei . The primary combat arm of the Ordnungspolizei was the SS Polizei Division of the Waffen-SS . The division was formed in October 1939, when thousands of members of the Orpo were drafted and placed together with artillery and signals units transferred from the army. The division consisted of four police regiments composed of Orpo personnel and was typically used to rotate police members into
1037-500: The Reichstag as Nazi Party members. He associated himself with the radical Gregor Strasser ; making his name by aggressive anti-democratic and antisemitic Reichstag speeches, he climbed to the post of the Nazi parliamentary group leader ( Fraktionsführer ) in 1928. He would continue to be elected to the Reichstag in every subsequent election in the Weimar and Nazi regimes. In 1929, as
1098-519: The SS and, for those who did so, a special police insignia known as the SS Membership Runes for Order Police was worn on the breast pocket of the police uniform. In 1940, standard practice in the German Police was to grant equivalent SS rank to all police generals. Police generals who were members of the SS were referred to simultaneously by both rank titles – for instance,
1159-525: The Siege of Leningrad in 1941. The first 17 battalion formations (from 1943 renamed SS-Polizei-Bataillone ) were deployed by Orpo in September 1939 along with the Wehrmacht army in the invasion of Poland . The battalions guarded Polish prisoners of war behind the German lines, and carried out expulsion of Poles from Reichsgaue under the banner of Lebensraum . They also committed atrocities against both
1220-701: The University of Munich , but soon after turned to study law at Heidelberg and Humboldt University of Berlin . He received his doctorate of law in 1901. He joined the Bavarian civil service in 1903, working as an attorney at the Munich Police Department . He was appointed a Bezirksamtassessor in Pirmasens in 1907 and became acting district executive in 1914. Rejected as unfit, Frick did not serve in World War I. He
1281-471: The Waffen-SS ). In 1942, the majority of the police battalions were re-consolidated into thirty SS and Police Regiments . These formations were intended for garrison security duty, anti-partisan functions, and to support Waffen-SS units on the Eastern Front . Notably, the regular military police of the Wehrmacht ( Feldgendarmerie , Feldjägerkorps , and Geheime Feldpolizei ) were separate from
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#17328520242351342-863: The prisoner-of-war camps . Wilhelm Frick Wilhelm Frick (12 March 1877 – 16 October 1946) was a convicted war criminal and prominent German politician of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) who served as Minister of the Interior in Adolf Hitler 's cabinet from 1933 to 1943 and as the last governor of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . As the head of the Kriminalpolizei (criminal police) in Munich, Frick took part in Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, for which he
1403-696: The special police authorities not subordinate to the Hauptamt Ordnungspolizei or the Reichssicherheitshauptamt : Between 1939 and 1945, the Ordnungspolizei maintained military formations, trained and outfitted by the main police offices within Germany. Specific duties varied widely from unit to unit and from one year to another. Generally, the Order Police were not directly involved in frontline combat, except for Ardennes in May 1940, and
1464-704: The 30 January 1934 " Law on the Reconstruction of the Reich ", which converted Germany into a highly centralized state, state parliaments were dissolved and the newly implemented Reichsstatthalter were made directly responsible to him. He also drafted the Law on the Abolition of the Reichsrat (14 February 1934) that abolished the upper chamber of the Reich parliament. Frick also was made a member of Hans Frank 's Academy for German Law . On 10 October 1933, Hitler appointed Frick
1525-576: The Battalions and local Order Police units helped to transport Jews from the ghettos in both Poland and the USSR (and elsewhere in occupied Europe ) to the concentration and extermination camps, as well as operations to hunt down and murder Jews outside the ghettos. The Order Police were one of the two primary sources from which the Einsatzgruppen drew personnel in accordance with manpower needs (the other being
1586-557: The Interior in August 1943. However, he remained in the cabinet as a Reichsminister without portfolio. Besides Hitler, he and Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk were the only members of the Third Reich's cabinet to serve continuously from Hitler's appointment as Chancellor until his death. Frick's replacement as Reichsminister of the Interior did not reduce the growing administrative chaos and infighting between party and state agencies. Frick
1647-612: The Interior. Additionally, on 21 May 1935, Frick was named Generalbevollmächtigter für die Reichsverwaltung (General Plenipotentiary for the Administration of the Reich). He was instrumental in formulating laws that consolidated the Nazi regime ( Gleichschaltung ), as well as laws that defined the Nazi racial policy , most notoriously the Nuremberg Laws . On 30 August 1939, immediately prior to
1708-404: The Interior. Together with Reichstag President Hermann Göring , he was one of only two Nazi Reichsministers in the original Hitler Cabinet, and the only one who actually had a portfolio; Göring served as minister without portfolio until 5 May. Though Frick held a key position, especially in organizing the federal elections of March 1933 , he initially had far less power than his counterparts in
1769-570: The Jewish ghetto administration ). Each battalion consisted of approximately 500 men armed with light infantry weapons. In the east, each company also had a heavy machine-gun detachment. Administratively, the Police Battalions remained under the Chief of Police Kurt Daluege , but operationally they were under the authority of regional SS and Police Leaders ( SS- und Polizeiführer ), who reported up
1830-722: The Nazi regime. Within two weeks of the Enabling Act's passage, Frick helped draft the " Second Law on the Coordination of the States with the Reich " (7 April 1933) appointing Reichsstatthalter (Reich Governors) to take over the state governments. He also initiated and drafted the Law Against the Formation of Parties (14 July 1933) that formally made the NSDAP the only legal party in Germany. Under
1891-474: The Order Police, cooperated in transforming the police force of the Weimar Republic into militarised formations ready to serve the regime's aims of conquest and racial annihilation. Police troops were first formed into battalion-sized formations for the invasion of Poland , where they were deployed for security and policing purposes, also taking part in executions and mass deportations. During World War II ,
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1952-530: The Regulations Against Jews' Possession of Weapons. From the mid-to-late 1930s Frick lost favour irreversibly within the Nazi Party after a power struggle involving attempts to resolve the lack of coordination within the Reich government. For example, in 1933 he tried to restrict the widespread use of "protective custody" orders that were used to send people to concentration camps, only to be begged off by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler . His power
2013-560: The Soviet Union and also during the killing operations within the 1939 borders of the USSR, whether as part of Order Police regiments, or as separate units reporting directly to the local SS and Police Leaders. They included the Reserve Police Battalion 101 from Hamburg, Battalion 133 of the Nürnberg Order Police, Police Battalions 45 , 309 from Koln, and 316 from Bottrop - Oberhausen . Their murder operations bore
2074-503: The amalgamation of SS and police into a form of "State Protection Corps" ( Staatsschutzkorps ), and used the expanded reach the police powers gave him to persecute ideological opponents and "undesirables" of the Nazi regime such as Jews, freemasons , churches, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses , and other groups defined as " asocial ". The Nazi conception of criminality was racial and biological, holding that criminal traits were hereditary, and had to be exterminated to purify German blood. As
2135-628: The brunt of the Holocaust by bullet on the Eastern Front. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, this latter role was obscured both by the lack of court evidence and by deliberate obfuscation, while most of the focus was on the better-known Einsatzgruppen ("Operational groups") who reported to the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA) under Reinhard Heydrich . Order Police battalions involved in direct killing operations were responsible for at least 1 million murders. Starting in 1941
2196-427: The concentration camps. Frick was sentenced to death on 1 October 1946 , and was hanged at Nuremberg Prison on 16 October. Of his execution, journalist Joseph Kingsbury-Smith wrote: The sixth man to leave his prison cell and walk with handcuffed wrists to the death house was 69-year-old Wilhelm Frick. He entered the execution chamber at 2.05 am, six minutes after Rosenberg had been pronounced dead. He seemed
2257-516: The creation of the SS and Police Regiments, which were consolidated from earlier police security battalions. SS officers now routinely commanded police troops and police generals serving in command of military troops were granted equivalent SS rank in the Waffen-SS . In August 1944, when Himmler was appointed Chef des Ersatzheeres (Chief of the Home Army), all police generals automatically were granted Waffen-SS rank because they had authority over
2318-869: The end of the war. By 1941, the Orpo had been divided into the following offices covering every aspect of German law enforcement. The central command office known as the Ordnungspolizei Hauptamt was located in Berlin . From 1943 it was considered a full SS -Headquarters command. The Orpo main office consisted of Command Department ( Kommandoamt ), responsible for finance, personnel and medical; Administrative ( Verwaltung ) charged with pay, pensions and permits; Economic ( Wirtschaftsverwaltungsamt ); Technical Emergency Service ( Technische Nothilfe ); Fire Brigades Bureau ( Feuerwehren ); Colonial Police ( Kolonialpolizei ); and SS and Police Technical Training Academy ( Technische SS-und Polizeiakademie ). The Sonderpolizei were
2379-751: The ensuing Holocaust . While they were similar to Waffen-SS , they were not part of the thirty-eight Waffen-SS divisions, and should not be confused with them, including the national 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division . The battalions were originally numbered in series from 1 to 325, but in February 1943 were renamed and renumbered from 1 to about 37, to distinguish them from the Schutzmannschaft auxiliary battalions recruited from local population in German-occupied areas. The Order Police battalions , operating both independently and in conjunction with
2440-619: The eugenicist Hans F. K. Günther as a professor of social anthropology at the University of Jena , banned several newspapers, and banned pacifist drama and anti-war films such as All Quiet on the Western Front . He was removed from office by a Social Democratic motion of no confidence in the Thuringian Landtag parliament on 1 April 1931. When Reich president Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor on 30 January 1933 , Frick joined his government as Reichsminister of
2501-401: The force had the task of policing the civilian population of the occupied and colonised countries beginning in spring 1940. Orpo's activities escalated to genocide with the invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa . Twenty-three Order Police battalions , formed into independent regiments or attached to Wehrmacht security divisions and Einsatzgruppen , perpetrated mass-murder in
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2562-445: The former wife of the Nazi Reichstag MP Paul Schultze-Naumburg . Margarete gave birth to a son and a daughter. In Munich, Frick witnessed the end of the war and the German Revolution of 1918–1919 . He sympathized with right-wing Freikorps paramilitary units. Chief of Police Ernst Pöhner introduced him to Adolf Hitler , whom he helped willingly with obtaining permission to hold political rallies and demonstrations. Elevated to
2623-439: The outbreak of the Second World War , Frick was appointed by Hitler to the six-person Council of Ministers for Defense of the Reich which operated as a war cabinet. Following the rise of the SS , Frick gradually lost favour within the party, and in 1943 he was replaced by Heinrich Himmler as interior minister. Frick remained in the cabinet as a minister without portfolio until Hitler's death in 1945. After World War II, Frick
2684-587: The price for joining the coalition government of the Land (state) of Thuringia , the NSDAP received the state ministries of the Interior and Education. On 23 January 1930, Frick was appointed to these ministries, becoming the first Nazi to hold a ministerial-level post at any level in Germany (though he remained a member of the Reichstag). Frick used his position to dismiss Communist and Social Democratic officials and replace them with Nazi Party members, so Thuringia's federal subsidies were temporarily suspended by Reich Minister Carl Severing . Frick also appointed
2745-421: The putsch, Wilhelm Frick was elected a member of the German Reichstag parliament in the federal election of May 1924 . He had been nominated by the National Socialist Freedom Movement , an electoral list of the far-right German Völkisch Freedom Party and then banned Nazi Party . On 1 September 1925, Frick joined the re-established Nazi Party. On 20 May 1928, he was one of the first 12 deputies elected to
2806-399: The rank of an Oberamtmann and head of the Political department of the Munich police from 1923, he and Pöhner participated in Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch on 9 November. Frick tried to suppress the State Police 's operation, wherefore he was arrested and imprisoned, and tried for aiding and abetting high treason by the People's Court in April 1924. After several months in custody, he
2867-451: The rest of Europe. Notably, he had no authority over the police; in Germany law enforcement has traditionally been a state and local matter. Indeed, the main reason that Hindenburg and Franz von Papen agreed to give the Interior Ministry to the Nazis was that it was almost powerless at the time. A mighty rival arose in the establishment of the Propaganda Ministry under Joseph Goebbels on 13 March. Frick's power dramatically increased as
2928-432: The sole power to appoint the mayors of all municipalities with populations greater than 100,000 (except for the city states of Berlin and Hamburg , where Hitler reserved the right to appoint the mayors himself if he deemed it necessary). He also had considerable influence over smaller towns as well; while their mayors were appointed by the state governors, as mentioned earlier the governors were responsible to him. Frick
2989-422: The start of the Second World War in 1939, the SS had effectively gained complete operational control over the German Police, although outwardly the SS and Police still functioned as separate entities. The Ordnungspolizei maintained its own system of insignia and Orpo ranks as well as distinctive police uniforms. Under an SS directive known as the "Rank Parity Decree", policemen were highly encouraged to join
3050-414: The task of the Gestapo was combating espionage and political dissent . On 27 September 1939, the SS security service, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and the SiPo were folded into the Reich Security Main Office ( Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA). The RSHA symbolised the close connection between the SS (a party organisation) and the police (a state organisation). In broad terms, Himmler pursued
3111-410: Was convicted of high treason . He managed to avoid imprisonment and soon afterwards became a leading figure of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in the Reichstag . In 1930, Frick became the first Nazi to hold a ministerial-level post at any level in Germany in Thuringia as state Minister of the Interior. After Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Frick joined the new government and was named Minister of
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#17328520242353172-414: Was convicted of planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity , and for his role, as Minister of the Interior, in formulating the Enabling Act and the Nuremberg Laws – laws under which people were deported to concentration camps , many of them being murdered there. Frick was also accused of being one of the most senior people responsible for the existence of
3233-405: Was given a suspended sentence of 15 months' imprisonment and was dismissed from his police job. Later during the disciplinary proceedings, the dismissal was declared unfair and revoked, on the basis that his treasonous intention had not been proven. Frick went on to work at the Munich social insurance office from 1926 onwards, in the rank of a Regierungsrat 1st class by 1933. In the aftermath of
3294-410: Was greatly reduced in June 1936 when Hitler named Himmler the Chief of German Police, which effectively united the police with the SS. On paper, Frick was Himmler's immediate superior. In fact, the police were now independent of Frick's control, since the SS was responsible only to Hitler. A long-running power struggle between the two culminated in Frick's being replaced by Himmler as Reichsminister of
3355-404: Was instrumental in the racial policy of Nazi Germany drafting laws against Jewish citizens, like the " Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service " and the notorious Nuremberg Laws in September 1935. Already in July 1933, he had implemented the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring including forced sterilizations , which later culminated in the killings of
3416-404: Was nominally subordinate to Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick . However, the decree effectively subordinated the police to the SS . Himmler gained authority as all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies were amalgamated into the new Ordnungspolizei , whose main office became populated by officers of the SS . The police were divided into the Ordnungspolizei (Orpo or order police) and
3477-415: Was promoted to the official rank of a Regierungsassessor and, at his own request, re-assumed his post at the Munich Police Department in 1917. On 25 April 1910, Frick married Elisabetha Emilie Nagel (1890–1978) in Pirmasens. They had two sons and a daughter. The marriage ended in an ugly divorce in 1934. A few weeks later, on 12 March, Frick remarried in Münchberg Margarete Schultze-Naumburg (1896–1960),
3538-404: Was removed in favour of the central Nazi government (" Reich -ification", Verreichlichung , of the police). The Orpo was controlled nominally by the Interior Ministry , but its executive functions rested with the leadership of the SS until the end of World War II . Owing to their green uniforms, Orpo were also referred to as Grüne Polizei (green police). The force was first established as
3599-457: Was then appointed as Protector of Bohemia and Moravia , making him Hitler's personal representative in the Czech lands . Its capital Prague , where Frick used ruthless methods to counter dissent, was one of the last Axis -held cities to fall at the end of World War II in Europe . Frick was arrested, and was arraigned at the Nuremberg trials , where he was the only defendant besides Rudolf Hess who refused to testify on his own behalf. Frick
3660-430: Was tried and convicted of war crimes at the Nuremberg trials and executed by hanging . Born in the Palatinate municipality of Alsenz , then part of the Kingdom of Bavaria , Germany, the last of four children of Protestant teacher Wilhelm Frick sen. (d. 1918) and his wife Henriette (née Schmidt). He attended the gymnasium in Kaiserslautern , passing his Abitur exams in 1896. He went on studying philology at
3721-428: Was under the overall control of Reichsführer-SS Himmler as Chief of the German Police in the Ministry of the Interior. It was initially commanded by SS- Oberstgruppenführer und Generaloberst der Polizei Kurt Daluege . In May 1943, Daluege had a massive heart attack and was removed from duty. He was replaced by SS- Obergruppenführer und General der Waffen-SS und der Polizei Alfred Wünnenberg , who served until
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