Kurt Daluege
The "Ordnungspolizei" encompassed virtually all of Nazi Germany's law-enforcement and emergency response organisations, including fire brigades, coast guard, and civil defence. In the prewar period, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, and Kurt Daluege, chief of the Order Police, cooperated in transforming the police force of the Weimar Republic into militarised formations ready to serve the regime's aims of conquest and racial annihilation. Police troops were first formed into battalion-sized formations for the invasion of Poland, where they were deployed for security and policing purposes, also taking part in executions and mass deportations. During World War II, the force had the task of policing the civilian population of the occupied and colonised countries beginning in spring 1940. Orpo's activities escalated to genocide with the invasion of the Soviet Union, Operation Barbarossa. Twenty-three Order Police battalions, formed into independent regiments or attached to Wehrmacht security divisions and "Einsatzgruppen", perpetrated mass murder in the Holocaust and were responsible for widespread crimes against humanity and genocide targeting the civilian population.