The 15th SS Police Regiment (german: SS-Polizei-Regiment 15) was initially named the 15th Police Regiment (''Polizei-Regiment 15'') when it was formed in 1942 from existing
Order Police
The ''Ordnungspolizei'' (), abbreviated ''Orpo'', 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 w ...
units (''Ordnungspolizei'') to conduct
security warfare behind the
Eastern Front. The regiment was destroyed in January 1943 and its personnel was used to reconstitute it in Norway several months later from existing police units. The regiment was transferred to Italy in late 1943 and remained there for the rest of the war.
Operational history
The regiment was formed in July 1942 in
Russia from
Police Battalion 305,
Police Battalion 306
The Police Battalion 306 (''Polizeibattalion 306'') was a formation of the Order Police (uniformed police) during the Nazi era. During the Soviet-German war of 1941–45, it was deployed in German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union, as part of N ...
and
Police Battalion 310 which were redesignated as the regiment's first through third
battalions, respectively. Between 29 October and 1 November, 10 Company of the Third Battalion helped to liquidate the ghetto in
Pinsk,
Belarus, killing an estimated 20,000 Jews. I Battalion was redesignated as III Battalion of the
16th Police Regiment later in the year and was later replaced by II Battalion of the
28th Police Regiment from Norway. The regiment was ordered to be rebuilt in Norway on 29 March 1943 with the survivors consolidated into I and II Battalions. III Battalion was intended to be the redesignated IV Battalion of the
27th SS Police Regiment, but I Battalion of the 27th Regiment was ultimately used instead. In July the headquarters and I Battalion were garrisoned in
Sarpsborg, II Battalion was in
Mysen and III Battalion was stationed in
Bergen.
The regiment was transferred to Italy in late 1943 with the headquarters stationed in
Vercelli, I Battalion in
Turin, II Battalion garrisoned in
Milan and III Battalion located in
Trieste. It was later reinforced by an
anti-tank
Anti-tank warfare originated from the need to develop technology and tactics to destroy tanks during World War I. Since the Triple Entente deployed the first tanks in 1916, the German Empire developed the first anti-tank weapons. The first deve ...
company
A company, abbreviated as co., is a Legal personality, legal entity representing an association of people, whether Natural person, natural, Legal person, legal or a mixture of both, with a specific objective. Company members share a common p ...
and a
rocket-launcher battery
Battery most often refers to:
* Electric battery, a device that provides electrical power
* Battery (crime), a crime involving unlawful physical contact
Battery may also refer to:
Energy source
*Automotive battery, a device to provide power t ...
.
The unit controlled two ethnic SS Police units, the
SS Police Regiment Bozen
Polizeiregiment "Südtirol" (Police Regiment "South Tyrol"), later ''Bolzano, Bozen'', and finally SS-Polizeiregiment "Bozen", was a military unit of the German ("Order Police") recruited in the largely ethnic-German South Tyrol, Alto Adige regi ...
and the
SS Police Regiment Brixen engaged in
security warfare in Italy.
War crimes
The regiment has been implicated in twenty-six incidents of war crimes in Italy from December 1943 to February 1945 with almost 200 civilians killed.
Notes
References
* Arico, Massimo. ''Ordnungspolizei: Encyclopedia of the German Police Battalions'', Stockholm: Leandoer and Ekholm (2010).
*Desbois, Patrick, Father. ''In Broad Daylight: The Secret Procedures Behind the Holocaust by Bullets'', New York: Arcade Publishing (2018)
*
Megargee, Geoffrey P.
Geoffrey P. Megargee (November 4, 1959 – August 1, 2020) was an American historian and author who specialized in World War II military history and the history of the Holocaust. He served as the project director and editor-in-chief for the ''En ...
, ed. ''United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume II: Ghettos in German-Occupied Eastern Europe, Part B'', Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press (2011).
*Tessin, Georg & Kannapin, Norbert. ''Waffen-SS under Ordnungspolizei im Kriegseinsatz 1939–1945: Ein Überlick anhand der Feldpostübersicht'', Osnabrück, Germany: Biblio Verlag (2000).
{{Nazi war crimes in Italy
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