Republican Germany was divided into a series of constituent federal states (Länder), each with its own governmental infrastructure that mirrored that of the sovereign Weimar government, responsible for running major public services such as education and police. Though the Reichswehr had only 100,000 men, there had been no limitations placed on police force membership and many military and Freikorps veterans enlisted in the Landespolizei, creating a disciplined militarised police force, useful for keeping control of the greatest perceived threat to the republic – communist revolutionaries – while also maintaining a valuable reserve of trained men for potential future military purposes.

Though relative peace settled over the German Länder from 1924, the Weimar Republic remained inherently unpopular among much of the population. Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party (NSDAP) prospered in the hard times that followed the 1929 world economic crash. Elections in 1932 failed to yield a clear majority government: the NSDAP achieved 196 of the 293 required seats. Facing political and social turmoil, the ageing President Paul von Hindenburg was persuaded to pre-empt further elections and appoint Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany, which he did on 30 January 1933. However, there had been no sweeping Nazi victory and Germany still lay on the brink of political disaster with six million people unemployed and a resurgent communist party determined never to concede defeat to the National Socialists. As was his prerogative as Chancellor, Hitler was able to appoint a new Minister of the Interior for Prussia, the largest and most important Land. To this post, Hitler despatched the politically astute Hermann Göring: former First World War fighter ‘ace’, loyal member of the NSDAP since 1922, former head of the SA and, from 2 February, Reich Commissar for Aviation (whereupon he instigated the covert reconstruction of a German air force).

Göring immediately set about clearing the Prussian Ministry of the Interior of all but adherents to the NSDAP, dismissing twenty-two of the thirty-two Prussian police chiefs and 1,457 men in total, as well as dissolving the Prussian state parliament and replacing it with an ‘Advisory State Council’. In his purge of Prussia’s huge Landespolizei Göring was assisted by Major Walther Wecke. A former artillery officer and member of a Freikorps, ‘Freiwilligen Brigade Reinhard’, Wecke had joined the Berlin Schutzpolizei on 24 June 1919. An early adherent to the principles of National Socialism, Wecke became Chairman of the National Socialist Association of Police Officials and during March 1932 he compiled dossiers on the ‘ideological reliability’ of individual Prussian policemen – later used by Göring and the newly appointed Prussian police chief, Generalmajor der Landespolizei (and SS Obergruppenführer) Kurt Daluege – before officially joining the NSDAP that November. On 5 January 1933, Wecke was elected chairman of the Association of Prussian Police Officers and later became a key contact point between the NSDAP and Prussian police force.

To consolidate his hold on Prussian security, on 23 February 1933, Göring ordered the formation of a motorised police unit under Wecke’s command that would be devoted primarily to the National Socialist cause above all other considerations and principally concerned with protection of the Reich government. Thus two days later the Polizei Abteilung z.b.V. ‘Wecke’ (z.b.V. = zur besonderen Verwendung, ‘for special duties’) was activated in Berlin, formed from fourteen officers and 400 men of the Prussian Landespolizei.1 Honouring its original members, a decree issued by Göring ruled that the police emblem of the former German East African colony was to be worn by men of the first Hundertschaft (approximately a company, 100 men strong); that one of the first identifying insignias displayed by this new formation was the ‘Cross of the South’ – a small woven shield worn on the lower left sleeve – displayed a traditional connection to Germany’s imperial past.

Wecke’s unit comprised a command Abteilung, three Polizeibereitschaften (each a company strong), a motorcycle platoon (Zug) and signals platoon. The three main components were:

Before long the unit also received two armoured cars (Polizei Sonderwagen) each armed with a pair of turreted heavy machine guns. Wecke’s men were initially quartered in Berlin’s Kreuzberg quarter, within the former barracks of the Imperial Prussian Königin Augusta Garde-Grenadier-Regiment Nr. 4 on Jüterboger Straße, the men recognisable as police in their standard dark blue Schutzpolizei uniforms with shako. While undergoing a military training regime, they mounted their first raids on Berlin’s Communist headquarters during the early morning of 2 March 1933. During this, Police Battalion ‘Wecke’ arrested twenty-seven communist leaders and seized significant quantities of weapons and explosive material. Over the days that followed, workers’ quarters were repeatedly raided in an attempt to destroy Berlin’s Communist Party infrastructure. This concerted assault followed on the heels of the Reichstag Fire and subsequent passing by Hindenburg of the ‘Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State’ that suspended civil liberties and invoked what was, to all intents and purposes, martial law. The suppression of German communists was legally intensified, ultimately resulting in a Nazi coalition government with the conservative German National People’s Party (DNVP) emerging from fresh elections on 5 March, subsequent passing of Hitler’s Enabling Act – the power to enact laws without the involvement of the Reichstag – and the final triumph of Hitler as dictatorial leader of Germany.

Early attempts to create a more consistent national police service had been met with strong opposition from each of the Länder, which were unwilling to relinquish their differing legal codes. The predominantly Catholic Bavaria was particularly vociferous in its refusal as it feared encroachment on its legal decision-making by Protestant Prussia. However, the rise of the National Socialists ended this wrangle and Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler was determined to amalgamate the sixteen separate Land police forces into a single nationwide entity. Eventually he created the national Ordnungspolizei that incorporated all uniformed police forces after being named Chief of German Police in the Interior Ministry on 17 June 1936 following a decree by Hitler unifying ‘control of police duties within the Reich’.

Göring was in control of Prussia’s police forces for years before Himmler’s success. Wecke’s unit was redesignated Landespolizeigruppe ‘Wecke’ z.b.V. on 17 July 1933 and its appearance changed: it became the first police unit to be equipped with a Reichswehr green uniform, complete with light green arm-of-service piping (Waffenfarbe), on trouser seams and around the collar. The same uniform would become standard among Prussian police units by June the following year. Wecke’s Gruppe now more closely resembled infantrymen than policemen, with the traditional police shako being replaced by a Reichswehr steel helmet, its left side bearing the national tricolour emblem, the right a large swastika. They were also presented with a special Landespolizei standard on 13 September in a ceremony presided over by Göring in his Reichswehr general’s uniform. The standard comprised a large white swastika with the Prussian eagle at its centre set on a green background. During the ceremony, Göring sketched his burgeoning desire for a private army when he stated that his goal was to ‘make the Prussian state police a sharp weapon for Germany and, if the day comes that we are called against an external enemy, to hand it over to Führer on equal terms to the Reichswehr’.2 Further change followed on 22 December of that same year when the unit became Landespolizeigruppe ‘General Göring’. Men of the renamed formation were also authorised to wear a new cuff-title on the lower left sleeve: a dark green band with the words ‘L.P.G. General Göring’ machine-embroidered in white Gothic script, edged with white borders top and bottom for NCOs, executed in hand-woven silver-grey wire for officers.

Göring had secured the germ of his own personal army, one he envisioned would reach a strength of 56,000 men and initially intended to rival both Himmler’s SS and the Reichswehr, though neither ambition would be realised. Nonetheless, as an instrument of solidifying his own powerbase, his Landespolizeigruppe operated with considerable autonomy at the behest of their namesake commander-in-chief and in a clearly politically motivated manner. Indeed, on 2 December 1933 Wecke remarked in a letter to SS-Obergruppenführer Kurt Daluege: ‘We now have a National Socialist police force.’3 Wecke, promoted to Polizei Generalmajor at the beginning of 1934, steadily accumulated volunteers until the number of men available to him amounted to a force of six battalions.

On 6 June 1934 the architect of the unit, Wecke, was sidelined when he was transferred from his command position to the operations staff (Führungsstab) of the Prussian Police, replaced by Oberstleutnant Friedrich-Wilhelm Jakoby. The new man was a former infantryman, Jakoby having volunteered for the 5. Westfälischen Infanterie-Regiments Nr. 53 in 1915 and ended the war a Leutnant der Reserve. He left the Army in October 1919, entering the Prussian Landespolizei as a Polizeileutnant, reaching the rank of Polizeihauptmann by August 1932. The day following the formation of Hitler’s government, 31 January 1933, Jakoby was appointed adjutant to the newly appointed Minister of Aviation and Prussian Minister of the Interior, Hermann Göring. Promoted to Polizeimajor on 20 April 1933, Jakoby had assisted Wecke in the purge of non-National Socialist officers from the Landespolizei headquarters before succeeding him as commander.

Jakoby was in command when, on 30 June 1934, Landespolizeigrupp...