Jägerbataillon: ‘Hunter Battalion’, special forces unit.
Kennkarte: Identity card.
Kok-saghyz: Also known as Kazakh dandelion, kautsjuk, a perennial dandelion plant with a high content of rubber.
Kolkhoz: Soviet collective farm.
Kripo: Kriminalpolizei, the Criminal Police.
Kübelwagen: Jeep-like light military vehicle.
Lebensborn: ‘Fount of life’. SS-initiated breeding programme with the aim of propagating a master race.
Machtergreifung: Hitler’s seizure of power, 30 January 1933.
Master bomber: Pathfinder plane among bombers, whose task it was to find and mark the target.
NKVD: The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, Soviet law enforcement agency, ran the Gulag labour camps.
Obersekunda: Upper tier of the German Gymnasium.
Orpo: Ordnungspolizei, the ‘order’ police, regular police force.
Passierschein: Official safe conduct pass.
Puszcza: Polish word for large forest.
Rassenschande: ‘Racial defilement’. Nazi term for sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans, punishable by law.
RKFDV: Reichskommissariat für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums, the Reich’s Commission for the Strengthening of the German People. In Belarus, this body was charged with ascertaining the racial value of orphans or children of German soldiers. If such children were found to be Aryan, they were sent to Germany and brought up there, often in the children’s homes of the Lebensborn project.
RSO: Raupenschlepper Ost. Lightweight caterpillar vehicle often used to transport artillery to the Eastern Front.
Sanitäter: Medical attendant.
Schächtmesser: Knife used for kosher slaughter (German: Schächten, cf. Hebrew: shechita).
SchuMa (Schutzmannschaft): Local police auxiliary in occupied territories.
SD (Sicherheitsdienst): SS intelligence arm, ‘security service’.
Sd.Kfz 222: Light armoured reconnaissance vehicle.
Slavic campaign of 928: The East Francian king, Heinrich der Finkler (Henry the Fowler), waged several wars against the Slavic people of present-day Poland, Ukraine and Hungary, during which he enlisted bandits, poachers, etc. who were granted safe conduct during battle and allotted land following conquests. As such, they were a kind of medieval cossacks.
Soldbuch (pl. Soldbücher): Identity document of German military personnel.
Sonderkommando 1005: Facetiously termed ‘special commando’ of labourers. A number appended to the title of Sonderkommando referred to a specific task. Sonderkommando 1005 thus carried out Sonderaktion 1005 (more simply Aktion 1005), the ‘special action’ of systematically removing all trace of the mass killings of Jews by exhuming their corpses and burning them in mass graves. Also known as the ‘corpse commando’.
SS-Dienststelle: Administrative entity of the SS.
SS-Hauptsturmführer: (Hstf.) SS Head Storm Leader, SS commissioned rank equivalent to British captain.
SS-Oberführer: SS Senior Leader, SS commissioned rank between British colonel and brigadier.
SS-Obergruppenführer: SS Senior Group Leader, SS commissioned rank equivalent to a British lieutenant colonel
SS-PF: SS- und Polizeiführer, SS and Police Leader, rank immediately below HSS-PF.
SS-Rottenführer: SS Band Leader, non-commissioned officer of the SS, equivalent to British corporal.
SS-Scharführer: SS Company Leader, non-commissioned officer of the SS, equivalent to the short-lived British WWII rank of platoon sergeant major.
SS-Schütze: Private of the SS, ‘rifleman’.
Stalag: Stammlager, prisoner-of-war camp for Russian rank-and-file soldiers and non-commissioned officers.
SS-Standartenführer: SS Standard Leader, commissioned SS rank equivalent to British colonel.
SS-Sturmmann: ‘SS Storm Man’, stormtrooper, rank equivalent to British lance corporal.
Stützpunkt (pl. Stützpunkte): Military support point.
Tante Ju: ‘Iron Annie’, nickname for the Junkers Ju 52 transport aircraft.
Totenkopf: ‘Death’s Head’. Skull emblem worn by the SS. Unit name of the 3rd SS-Panzer Division of the Waffen-SS, whose skull insignia differed slightly from the regular emblem.
Trawniki: Concentration camp guard trained in the Trawniki camp.
Untersekunda: Lower tier of the German Gymnasium.
Window: Later known as chaff (German: Düppel), small, thin pieces of aluminium dropped from bombers during air raids in order to disrupt radar signals. First used during Operation Gomorrah.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Naja Marie Aidt, Niels Beider, Karen Vad Bruun, Eigil Bryld, Benni Bødker, Christian Dorph, Helle Ann-Britt Grubert, Poul Hæstrup, Kasper Pasternak Jørgensen, Birthe Melgård, Gita Pasternak, Johannes Riis, Anna Sandberg, Jakob Sandvad, Therkel Stræde, Jenny Thor, Sofie Voller.
LIST OF REAL PERSONS AND EVENTS
Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski
, 1899–1972, SS-Obergruppenführer and General der Polizei, HSS-PF of Heeresgruppe Mitte 1941–43, in charge of anti-partisan operations in Belorussia from 1941 and the entire Eastern Front from July 1943. Led the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Was never convicted of any war crime.
Oscar Dirlewanger
, 1895–1945. Oberführer, head of Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger. Took part in anti-partisan operations in Belorussia and the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Presumed beaten to death by Holocaust survivors in a prison camp, June 1945.
Curt von Gottberg
, 1896–1945, SS-Gruppenführer and General der Polizei, deputy for Bach-Zelewski, Generalkommissar of Weissruthenien, head of anti-partisan operations, Heeresgruppe Mitte. Led the Kampfgruppe von Gottberg, which took part in the majority of anti-partisan operations between 1941 and 1944. Committed suicide in May 1945.
Wilhelm Kube
, 1887–1943. One of the first members of NSDAP. Gauleiter for Brandenburg. Generalkommissar of Weissruthenien 1941–43. Assassinated in September 1943.
Zarah Leander
, 1907–81. Swedish actress contracted to the UFA film studios from 1936. Leander became one of German film’s biggest stars due to her roles in films such as
Die grosse Liebe
(The Great Love), 1942. She appeared in a number of Nazi propaganda films. She left Germany in 1943.
Operation Gomorrah
, the RAF’s night bombings of Hamburg, 24 July to 3 August 1943. The exact number of dead has never been ascertained, but estimates suggest that the eleven days of bombing cost in the region of 40,000 German lives, some 30,000 alone in the firestorm of 27–28 July. The district of Hamm remained uninhabitable until the 1950s.
Operation Hermann
took place in the Naliboki forests between Lida and Minsk, 13 July to 8 August 1943, an anti-partisan operation with the additional purpose of rounding up forced labour. According to the German reports, 4,280 bandits were killed and ‘20,944 imported to the Reich’ as labour, 9,065 of these being men, 7,701 women and 4,178 children. Kok-saghyz was never planted in the area.
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