Ordnungspolizei, or Arpu for short, is a regular uniformed police force in Nazi Germany. They were sometimes called the Green Police because of their green uniforms. Or existed from 1936-1945. They became an integral part of the SS and police bureaucrats in Nazi Germany and were key contributors to the genocide and atrocities in German-occupied territories during World War II. Because of their green uniforms, Orpoke was also referred to as Ground Polizei (Green Police). This force was the first to establish the municipal, city, and rural uniformed police together as a central organization which was organized on a state-by-state basis.
On June 17, 1936, Hitler announced a judgment appointing Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, to the post of German police chief in the Interior Ministry following an order to “unify police duty control within the line.” During the Third Reform, Ordnungspolizei regularly collaborated with criminal police and the Gestapo at the local level to monitor and control social and political behavior and to enforce Nazi racist policies. However, the decree effectively put the police under the SS. Himmler asserted that all of Germany’s uniformed law enforcement agencies were integrated into the new ordnance, whose headquarters were populated by SS officials. In addition, the Ordnancepolisi structures took part in the 1937 acquisition of Austria and the occupation of Sudetenland. By 1939, the number of ordnancepologies was about 100,000. After the invasion of Poland in September of that year, the Occupied Territories ordered the formation of a police battalion to protect Himla. The Nazi notion of crime was racist and biological, as criminal traits had to be eradicated in order to purify German blood. As a result, even ordinary criminals were expelled from the German ethnic community (Volkjeminshaft) and eventually assigned to concentration camps to eradicate them. The use of police battalions in Poland set a precedent for the invasion of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union in 1944, with more than 100 police battalions taking part.
Ordnance means “order,” so Ordnangsplazy was given the responsibility of maintaining most of the law and order. Or had almost every type of law enforcement group, including state, municipal, rural, and traffic police. Ordnancepology units confiscated crops, forced the local population into slave labor, ran closed trains to death camps, took part in the conduct of the war, brutally suppressed suspected partisan activity, and killed nearly a million people in the East. Twenty-three Order Police Battalions, made up of separate regiments or affiliated with the Weatherman Security Department and Einstatgruppen, carried out Holocaust massacres and were responsible for widespread crimes against humanity and genocide targeting civilians.
