The HIPO Corps (
Danish: HIPO-korpset) was a
Danish auxiliary police
Auxiliary police, also called special police, are usually the part-time reserves of a regular police force. They may be armed or unarmed. They may be unpaid volunteers or paid members of the police service with which they are affiliated. The po ...
corps, established by the
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
Gestapo
The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one orga ...
on 19 September 1944, when the
Danish civil police force was disbanded and most of its officers were arrested and
deported to
concentration camps in Germany. The majority of HIPO members were recruited from the ranks of
Danish Nazi collaborators. The word ''HIPO'' is an abbreviation of the German word ''
Hilfspolizei'' ("auxiliary police").
The purpose of HIPO was to assist the Gestapo as an auxiliary police unit. HIPO was organized under, and along quite similar lines to, the Gestapo. Some men were uniformed in order to be visible while others worked secretly in plain clothes. The uniformed men wore a black uniform with Danish police insignia. HIPO, like the Gestapo, had their own informers. The major difference was that most of the Gestapo were Germans working in an occupied country, while the HIPO Corps consisted entirely of Danes working for the
German occupiers.
During the last winter of the war a number of HIPO members were tortured and killed by
Danish resistance members. In retaliation and as a warning, the corps terrorized the civil population and blew up houses, factories, and even the
Tivoli Gardens
Tivoli Gardens, also known simply as Tivoli, is an amusement park and pleasure garden in Copenhagen, Denmark. The park opened on 15 August 1843 and is the third-oldest operating amusement park in the world, after Dyrehavsbakken in nearby Kla ...
.
The
Lorenzen Group
The Lorenzen group (Danish: ''Lorenzengruppen'') was an armed paramilitary group of Danish collaborators, subordinate to the HIPO Corps, which was active during the period December 1944 - May 1945.
The group is named after its founder Jørgen Lor ...
, also known as section 9c, was an armed
paramilitary
A paramilitary is an organization whose structure, tactics, training, subculture, and (often) function are similar to those of a professional military, but is not part of a country's official or legitimate armed forces. Paramilitary units carr ...
group of Danes subordinate to the HIPO Corps.
After the war, service in the HIPO corps was one of the crimes of
collaborationism that
retroactively became
capital offenses. Some two to three hundred HIPO members were prosecuted under these laws. About a dozen were
executed between 1946 and 1950. A somewhat larger number received death sentences that were later reduced to long prison terms or parole.
Bibliography
* Matthias Bath: ''Danebrog gegen Hakenkreuz.'' Wachholz, 2011, .
* Erik Haaest: ''Hipofolk Lorenzen-gruppen – Danske Terrorister i Nazitiden.'' Documentas 2007.
See also
*
Deportation of the Danish police
*
Occupation of Denmark
At the outset of World War II in September 1939, Denmark declared itself neutral. For most of the war, the country was a protectorate and then an occupied territory of Germany. The decision to occupy Denmark was taken in Berlin on 17 Decem ...
References
*
External links
Webpage with details about HIPO Corps
{{Danish Nazi collaborationism
Collaborators with Nazi Germany
Danish collaborators with Nazi Germany
Defunct law enforcement agencies of Denmark
Local participation in the Holocaust
The Holocaust in Denmark