When people imagine how a modern society descends into state violence, they often picture chaos, extremists, or secret death squads. Nazi Germany offers a far more uncomfortable lesson. Some of the most devastating crimes of the regime were carried out not by elite fanatics, but by ordinary police units operating through familiar procedures, paperwork, and uniforms. Understanding how these police battalions were structured, staffed, and deployed is essential, because their crimes emerged not from disorder, but from the efficient, routine functioning of law enforcement itself. Part I : The police battalions of Nazi Germany were not ad hoc mobs or irregular auxiliaries but formally organized, bureaucratically administered, and ideologically conditioned units that operated across occupied Europe. Their existence challenges the comforting myth that mass violence was carried out only by elite SS formations. In reality, ordinary policing institutions were transformed into instruments of systematic repression and mass murder.

Oversight Democrats have one message for Speaker Johnson: Stop the Shutdown, Release the Files!