Sonderkommando SS “Künsberg” - on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was involved in the confiscation of archives, and also participated in the large-scale looting of art collections and libraries in the occupied countries.
Content
- 1 History
- 2 Command
- 3 Composition
- 4 References
History
The battalion began its activity with the robbery of cultural property in France occupied by fascists in August 1940, then in the occupied European countries it was supposed to seize and send to Germany documentation and property of ministries of foreign affairs, embassies and representative offices. Later, like the Operational Headquarters, the battalion significantly expanded its powers. It should be noted that it was von Künsberg who first began to rob the cultural values of the Soviet Union: in the very first hours of the German attack on the USSR, experts from the Kunstbatalon broke into the USSR Embassy on Unter den Linden and began to take out property: documents, furniture, including seized twelve paintings transferred to the embassy from the State Tretyakov Gallery (there is such a representative practice). With the attack on the USSR, his first company was given to the expeditionary force under the command of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in Africa (along the way, he visited Italy), the second company to Army Group North , the third to Army Group Center , and the fourth to Group Army "South" .
In autumn 1941, the second company of the SS Hauptsturmführer SS Gauboldt from Tsarskoye Selo, according to pre-prepared lists, cleaned out the contents of Catherine the Great's palace: Chinese silk wallpapers and gilded carvings were removed from the walls, the stacked floor of a complex pattern was taken apart. From the palace of Alexander the First, the same company took out seven thousand volumes of French-language antique furniture and a unique library, among which there were many works by Greek and Roman classics and military memoirs, as well as five thousand old manuscripts and books in Russian.
The Sonderkommando worked in Warsaw, Kiev, Kharkov, Kremenchug, Smolensk, Pskov, Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Melitopol, Rostov, Krasnodar, Bobruisk, Yaroslavl. The loot that came to Berlin was distributed among vaults and private collections.
After February 1942, the Künsberg Sonderkommando (304 soldiers and officers) took part in counterguerrilla operations, patrolling the Crimean coast and training three companies of the Crimean Tatars. From August 1, 1942 it became known as the “ Waffen-SS Special Forces Battalion”.
Command
Sturmbannfuhrer SS Baron Eberhard Max Paul von Kunsberg
Composition
Each company of the battalion (300 SS soldiers) had forty experts and trucks. The platoon consisted of a commander, four squad leaders, four referents, a doctor, thirty-six soldiers, nine sappers, twenty-two drivers, four radio operators, and a courier. The platoon had four cars and six trucks, a field kitchen, a mobile radio station, an ambulance and two motorcycles.