Bydgoszcz: military rule, police selection and execution

Walter Braemer’s military command represents the first layer after the Wehrmacht entered Bydgoszcz: proclamations, hostage measures and collective punishment. Helmut Bischoff’s Einsatzkommando 1/IV and Jakob Lölgen’s local detachment of Einsatzkommando 16 show the following police layer and its connection with arrests and executions.

Lölgen’s detachment participated in selecting prisoners from the Bydgoszcz internment camp and in executions of members of the Polish intelligentsia. Reading the three profiles together shows a transition of authority and cooperation among institutions without erasing the distinction between military command, mobile Security Police units and local execution.

Scope limitation: the dossier does not transfer to these three men every crime committed in Bydgoszcz or across Pomerania. In particular, it does not collapse Wehrmacht repression, Einsatzkommando operations, Selbstschutz violence and later civil administration into one undifferentiated chain.