Introduction
I participated the entire time. The only time I paused was when my rifle was empty and I had to reload. It’s impossible for me to say how many Jews I murdered during this three to four-hour period.
SS man, ALFRED METZNER on shooting in Zyrowice, Belarus, ca. fall 19411
I only know one thing: there is something terrible, horrible going on, something inconceivable, which cannot be understood, grasped or explained.
IRYNA KHOROSHUNOVA, diary entry, September 29, 1941, Kiev2
According to German legend, the great former Holy Roman Emperor and warrior-king Frederick Barbarossa sleeps deep inside the Kyffhäuser Mountain with his knights, awaiting the moment when he is awakened to restore greatness to Germany. It is no coincidence that the codename for the German invasion of the Soviet Union was “Operation Barbarossa.” It is a terrible coincidence that the local 339th Infantry Division raised in that same area would participate in the wholescale murder of Jewish men, women, and children during the course of that operation. This program of murder is what brought such horrific experiences to people like Metzner and Khoroshunova.
All Hitler’s previous diplomatic and military gambits led to the conquest of the Soviet Union. If one divides World War II into two parts—the war that Hitler won and the war that he lost—the former (Rheinland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France) helped breed the optimism seen in the war against the Soviet Union. Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary on June 16, a few days before the invasion, “The Führer estimates that the operation will take about four months. I reckon on less. Bolshevism is going to crumble like a pack of cards.”3 The poor performance of the Red Army against Finland in the Winter War of 1939–40 no doubt fed his optimism. Hitler was not alone. Coming off indisputable masterstrokes in Poland and France, many of Hitler’s generals were also incredibly optimistic about the coming campaign. Less than two weeks after the invasion, Chief of Staff of the German Army, Franz Halder, wrote in his diary that he believed the war had been won.4 His almost fanatical optimism came from Nazi prejudices against the Soviet Union and an utter failure to gain accurate intelligence.5
No doubt, this optimism seemed warranted for the first several months. As three million German soldiers, more than 3,000 tanks, and 2,700 aircraft attacked from the Baltic Sea to the Black, the invasion was, as one historian noted, “the largest offensive in the history of war.”6 And it initially succeeded. Almost inexplicably, the German attack surprised the Soviets, despite increasingly clear indications of its coming. Soviet Marshal Zhukov described a deeply shocked Stalin as “somewhat depressed . . . when his belief that the war could be avoided was shattered.” Molotov recalled that, “Stalin was in a very agitated state. He didn’t curse, but he wasn’t quite himself.”7 Red Army units were overrun before they knew an attack was underway. 4,000 Soviet planes were destroyed on the ground.8 Fast-moving German units created massive pockets of enemy troops that surrendered in unprecedented numbers: 348,000 near Smolensk in Belarus and 665,000 near Kiev in Ukraine—put another way, over 1,000,000 prisoners in two operations in September 1941.9 Massive swathes of Soviet territory quickly fell under Nazi control. In two weeks, leading German formations reached Minsk (320 km from their starting point). By August 22, thirty percent of the Soviet Union’s Jewish population was under German control.10 By September, in Belarus alone, 225,000 sq. km and 9.8 million people were incorporated into the Reichskommissariat Weissruthenien occupation region.11 In this area alone, the Wehrmacht conquered a territory half the size of pre-war Germany.
However, it became clear that there would be no swift victory over the Soviet Union, despite Hitler’s claims that “what happened to Napoleon would not repeat itself.” The length of the campaign quickly exceeded his four-month prediction.12 Supply lines stretched over 1,000 miles. Contrary to popular mythology, the vast majority of the Army (90%) was not mechanized, and so 600,000 horses accompanied German soldiers into the USSR.13 Discouragement grew at the top and bottom. A corps commander noted already in September 1941: “no victorious Blitzkrieg, no destruction of the Russian army, no disintegration of the Soviet Union.”14 As the days passed, the brutal Russian winter advanced. The Army had received 50 percent of required gloves and 5 percent of winter boots by November 1941.15 Hitler, as Supreme Commander of the German Armed Forces, sent his men in conflicting directions, wasting time, resources, and momentum. And so, by December 1941, a combination of strategic blunders, logistical failures, inclement weather, and the increasingly dogged Soviet resistance stopped the Wehrmacht in its tracks and confronted it with vicious counterattacks.
When Wehrmacht tanks rumbled across the newly established border with the Soviet Union in the pre-dawn hours of June 22, 1941, they turned a disastrous and ultimately genocidal page in the story of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. Hitler, his generals, and many in the German population yearned for a “crusade” in the East, unlike the pragmatic conflict in the West. This ushered in an unprecedented period of violence including but not limited to the victimization of Jews and escalation in the murderous nature of the solution to the “Jewish Question.” Racist ideology and violence dominated both the foreground and the background of the military campaign. For this reason, the war and the Holocaust cannot be separated: threads of ideology, personnel, overlapping interests, situational conditions, and a thousand other common ties bind them together forever. In addition, during the campaign, the first concrete steps toward the Final Solution were made and the full colors of the Nazi genocidal palette emerged.
Planning a War of Annihilation: Preparations for Barbarossa
The Führer says whether we are right or wrong, we must win. This is the only way. And it is right, moral and necessary. And once we have won, who will ask us about the methods. In any case, we have so much to account for that we must win; otherwise our whole people—and we in the first place, and all that we love—would be erased.
From GOEBBELS’S diary, June 15, 194116
By the end of July 1940, less than a year after signing his pact with Stalin, Hitler ordered his General Staff to prepare for an invasion of Germany’s new ally . . . as he always planned to do. Though the loss of the aerial Battle of Britain became clearer by the day, Hitler thought a defeat of Russia instead would bring about England’s capitulation. “But if Russia suffered defeat the last hope of England would be gone,” he predicted. “Domination of Europe and the Balkans would then be Germany’s. Decision: in this conflict Russia must be finished off. Spring 1941. The sooner Russia is destroyed the better. The operation will only have meaning if we destroy this state in one blow.”17
Vitally important genocidal decisions were made before a shot was fired, alongside purely military planning. This massive cataclysm overshadowed all other theaters of World War II in men, materials, and casualties, and was designed to be unlike any war fought in modern history. Nazi planners intended that the war in the Soviet Union would not follow customary laws of war or applicable conventions (even those to which Germany was a signatory.) The justifications for this were embedded deeply in Nazi ideology. Its very worldview stressed that “life consisted of a constant struggle for survival, in which the best would win, or rather, in which the very fact of victory and survival would show the inherent physical and spiritual superiority of the winner, on the one hand, and the inferiority and moral depravity of the vanquished, on the other.”18 On March 30, 1941, Hitler explicitly told his generals that he “wanted to see the impending war against the Soviet Union conducted not according to customary military principles, but as a war of extermination against an ideology and its adherents, whether within the Red Army or in a non-military function.”19 An Austrian diplomat recorded from a conversation with a future Einsatzgruppen commander that “In Russia, all cities and cultural sites including the Kremlin are to be razed to the ground; Russia is to be reduced to the level of a nation of peasants, from which there is no return.”20 The genocidal Green Folder and Hunger Plan that Nazi theorists had developed were now to be implemented.
One might expect some German military resistance to the open and intentional violation of the customs of “civilized” warfare, but most leaders were stanchly conservative, anti-Communist, and more than happy to crush the Bolshevik threat in the East—and many owed their promotions to Hitler, receiving monetary bribes for their support.21 The Chief of the Army High Command, parroting Hitler, told his senior commanders in March 1941 that “the troops have to realize that this struggle is being waged by one race against another, and proceed with the necessary harshness.”22 That such a proclamation needed to be made suggests that the German Army required preparation for the violence that it would unleash. It also demonstrates quite clearly how Nazi racial ideology and military tactics were inextricably intertwined.
The Wehrmacht generated orders directing its troops to support Hitler’s vision of a “war of annihilation.” These orders contravened all accepted codes and customs of warfare of the time; regardless, senior leaders passed them on to the lowest levels so that each ordinary soldier knew what was expected. Three of these directives are most important: the Jurisdiction Order, the Commissar Order, and the Guidelines for the Behavior of the Troops. These three orders clearly defined the bloody role the Wehrmacht would play—both in the Holocaust and in the larger Nazi genocidal project—and each bears a short discussion, given the decisive impact they had on the behavior of the German Army and on the mentality of Nazi organizations in the East.
Military lawyers and commanders together developed the so-called “Jurisdiction Order” to address the issue of military crimes. The language of the final May 13, 1941, document was unambiguous. Citing the “great expanse” of the Eastern front and the staffing problems of military courts, it stated:
Punishable offenses committed by enemy civilians do not, until further notice, come any more under the jurisdiction of the courts-martial and the summary courts-martial . . .
For offenses committed by members of the Wehrmacht and its employees against enemy civilians, prosecution is not compulsory, not even if the offense is at the same time a military crime or violation.23
This order told soldiers that crimes against civilians were no longer military crimes and would not be prosecuted. It was a blank check for criminality. The only reason to prosecute was if a crime were detrimental to the war effort. The order also included guidelines for conducting reprisal killings of civilians.
The May 19, 1941, “Guidelines for the Behavior of the Troops,” also known as the Barbarossa Decree, addressed the Wehrmacht directly. “Bolshevism is the mortal enemy of the German people,” it proclaimed, “this war demands ruthless and aggressive action against Bolshevik agitators, snipers, saboteurs, and Jews and tireless elimination of any active or passive resistance.”24 It made no distinction between hostile behavior and the racial category of Jewishness. The message reaching soldiers was that Jews should be treated with the same ruthlessness as enemy combatants; that is, killed.
Finally, the Commissar Order, published on June 6, 1941, required the immediate murder of all Soviet Red Army political officers (or commissars). The murder of captured, uniformed combatants was unquestionably illegal under all the international treaties that Germany had signed. Regardless, the troops were instructed that “In particular, the political commissars of all kinds, who are the real bearers of resistance, can be expected to mete out treatment to our prisoners that is full of hate, cruel and inhumane.” As a result, “Political commissars operating against our armies are to be dealt with in accordance with the decree on judicial provisions in the area of Barbarossa. This applies to commissars of every type and rank, even if they are only suspected of resistance, sabotage or incitement to sabotage.”25 “Dealt with” here is a Nazi euphemism for “killed.” A memo a day prior declared, “Political commissars of the Army are not recognized as Prisoners of War and are to be liquidated at the latest in the transient prisoner of war camps.”26 On June 18, a military judge told the officers of the 11th Army that “Every officer must know that . . . political commissars are to be taken aside and finished off.”27 Despite postwar protestations, the documentary record suggests that ninety percent of units complied with the Commissar Order, resulting in the reported murders of at least but probably far more than 4,000 men.28
A flurry of other directives, some antisemitic and others simply directing brutal treatment of civilians, accompanied these orders. Together, these messages left little to the imagination of the common soldier as to what was expected in this new kind of war. The gloves were off, rules did not apply, and the stakes were higher than ever before in the history of Germany. The involvement of the Wehrmacht in the Holocaust also rightly expands our group of perpetrators. In the Army “ordinary men” who were not SS men or Nazi Party functionaries also willingly participated in genocide. The Army became involved in antisemitic policy as well as the disastrous POW policy quite quickly and readily. However, one more vital area of planning based on recent history required addressing for both the Nazis and the Wehrmacht: the Einsatzgruppen.
The Einsatzgruppen in Poland in 1939 had somewhat surprised the Army and caused confusion and consternation. A new and improved version of the Einsatzgruppen once again accompanied leading military units into the Soviet Union. However, this time, both the SS and the Wehrmacht pledged to reduce any friction before Barbarossa began. Thus began a series of negotiations primarily between the Wehrmacht Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner and the SS. At issue were the roles and responsibilities of the EG, vis á vis the Wehrmacht. These negotiations resulted, on March 26, 1941, in a plan of cooperation between the Army and the killing squads designed to maximize efficiency. The EGs were assigned to the Army for the purposes of logistics (food, fuel, ammunition, repair, etc.). However, their operational missions, described as “executive measures against the civilian population,” would come directly from the Reich Security Main Office, from Reinhard Heydrich. The military would be informed of these operations via a liaison officer, but would have no control (and hence no responsibility) for the actions of the SS.29 Though this agreement may have made it possible for some military leaders to feel separate from the “executive measures” of the EGs, in reality, it simply made them more complicit.
Many mistakenly believe that the war in Eastern Europe was an aberration, resulting from a “barbarization” process of increasing violence, while the war in Western Europe was a “normal” war. In fact, the opposite is true. A war based on racial ideology and the zero-sum annihilation of the enemy was precisely the “normal” state of war for the Nazi state. Western Europe presented an exception to this rule. Hitler told his generals as much, saying “This will be very different from the war in the West. In the east, harshness today means lenience in the future.”30 The Nazi worldview saw the French, for example, as “decadent” or “degenerate” but not racially inferior in the same way as Slavs or Jews, nor were they destined for subjugation or their land for colonization.31 Likewise, long historical relationships and Nazi racial views toward the British saw them as racially similar to Germans and as potential allies. Indeed, while massive killings took place in the East, German soldiers occupying the British Channel Islands were strictly forbidden from picking the flowers.32 The fundamental distinctions of the war in the East were the deep penetration of genocidal racial thinking into all aspects of Nazi policy, the unique place the East held in the German imagination, and its position as the focal point of the Holocaust.
German POW Policy: The First Million Victims
I have often thought so when watching yet another one of our prisoners lie dying. No priestly words. Carried out like a corpse. Such deaths occur by the millions. This is truly the work of the devil .
Sergeant KONRAD JARAUSCH, September 20, 194133
The treatment of Soviet prisoners of war as described by Jarausch remains one of the most forgotten elements of the Nazi genocidal project in the East. Approximately 3.3 million Soviet POWs are thought to have died during the war. Of these 3.3 million, 2 million died by February 1942, just eight months after the war began.34 Sixty percent of Soviet POWs died at German hands. To place this in context, only four percent of Western POWs died in German captivity and, even at the brutal hands of the Japanese in the Pacific, the death rate of Allied prisoners of war was “only” 27 percent.35 Put another way, “As many Soviet prisoners of war died on a single given day in autumn 1941 as did British and American prisoners of war over the course of the entire Second World War.”36 Eight times as many Soviet POWs died as American combat casualties.
After the war, those officers responsible claimed the unprecedented death toll resulted from unpreparedness for the immense number of prisoners. This was self-serving propaganda. The Nazis intended that Soviet POWs die in massive numbers, and it was only a pressing demand for labor that spared some of them (often only to be sent to a GULAG when liberated by their brothers in the Red Army).
Damning evidence remains of these German plans. Hitler’s famous phrase that the Soviet soldier is Keine Kameraden (no comrade in arms) sought to break down the common feeling of kinship among all soldiers over time. Instead, in the Nazi worldview, Red Army soldiers had been tainted by Communism in almost a biological sense and deserved none of the considerations given to surrendered combatants. This was codified before the first shot was fired. General Quartermaster Eduard Wagner, who negotiated cooperation with the Einsatzgruppen, also led the planning for the “care” of POWs. All evidence shows that he and the Army planned for them to die. High-level decisions made their way to lower-level units. For example, the 4th Army Corps issued orders on June 8, before the invasion, that “prisoners of war are to be fed with the most primitive rations (for example horseflesh). High quality and scarce food and luxury foods may not be given out to them.”37 By September 8, the general responsible for POWs published the final order for their treatment, reminding soldiers that the “bolshevist soldier has lost all claim to treatment as an honorable opponent in accordance with the Geneva Convention.”38
The intended suffering of Soviet POWs began at the moment of capture. Commissars were shot on the spot. Prisoners were often forced to march hundreds of miles on foot. Often, commanders refused POWs passage on empty trains returning from the front. The 4th Panzer Army refused access for “hygienic reasons.”39 Those lucky enough to be transported by train were crammed into open cars in the heat of summer and in the cold of winter. Many died there. The rest walked. Soviet prisoner Aleksei Maslov recalled, “The large and long column of prisoners slowly moved westward . . . It moved without stops, without rest, without water, and without food.”40 Another recalled how, during the march, he “watched with horror as they reduced healthy people to a state of complete helplessness and death.”41 Death rates on these transports could be as high as seventy percent.42
Those who survived at a transit camp (Durchgangslager or DULAG) had little cause to celebrate. These could hardly be called “camps” in any real sense. For example, the Drozdy camp outside of Minsk was simply an open field enclosed by barbed wire, holding 100,000 men. The nearby stream had been cruelly left outside the wire. Even a quartermaster in the 4th Panzer Army found the conditions “untenable” and noted that the “prisoners were completely exposed to the searing heat.”43 Shelter was absent, food scarce, and hardly edible; the caloric intake given POWs was simply insufficient to sustain life.44 German sergeant, Konrad Jarausch, in charge of the kitchens at one of these DULAGs, wrote home in August that “Their hunger drove them to the kitchens. Shots were fired to keep them in order. Some (not many) were killed. Others rolled around in the mud, howling from their hunger pains.”45 Soldiers guarding Drozdy recalled frequently killing prisoners storming the kitchens for food.46 Soviet prisoner Maslov recalled only receiving 16 ounces of sunflower seeds per day.47 Things got worse. An Army colonel described coldly “how “these cursed Untermenschen have been observed eating grass, flowers and raw potatoes. Once they can’t find anything edible in the camp they turn to cannibalism.”48 The more sympathetic Jarausch simply noted “We discovered another case of cannibalism today . . . the whole thing is already more murder than war.”49 Thousands died from rampant disease and starvation.
Killings also took place systematically. The Commissar Order continued to be enforced for those who had survived long enough to end up in a POW camp. Army units separated these men as well as Jewish Red Army soldiers and shot or turned them over to the Einsatzgruppen for similar treatment. One former POW recalled that “The Germans were looking for Jews and Red Army commissars, they also promised to reward any prisoners that helped point them out.”50 It is estimated that half a million POWs were shot by German troops and Einsatzgruppen.51
Lastly, Soviet POWs were subjected to forced labor, both locally and, later, in Germany and elsewhere. General Quartermaster Wagner noted in a meeting that “non-working POWs in POW camps must starve.”52 Indeed, only the recognition of their utility as laborers saved the remaining POWs from eventual death. Even so, the “labor” could be terrifying and brutal. In October 1941, the rear area commander in Belarus ordered that Soviet prisoners, especially Ukrainians and White Russians, be used to assist in mine clearing operations.53 One German noted that “Of the millions of prisoners only a few thousand are capable of work. Unbelievably many of them have died, many have typhus, and the rest are so weak and wretched that they are in no condition to work.”54
This discussion of the treatment and systematic murder of Soviet POWs is quite relevant to the Holocaust in the East. In fact, it demonstrates how deeply theoretical racial views of the Nazis became violent reality in the East. It is perhaps no small coincidence that the first people to be gassed—for experimental purposes—with Zyklon-B at Auschwitz were Soviet prisoners of war. Nazi POW policy shows how the SS and the Wehrmacht drew on experiences in Poland to improve cooperation and how POW policy incorporated the murder of Jews, tying it to the Holocaust and continuing an escalation of anti-Jewish policy. Of course, the largest escalation can be seen in the new Einsatzgruppen deployed to the East during Barbarossa.
The Holocaust by Bullets: the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union
Screams of thousands of people were heard from far away . . . They stood surrounded by many policemen and awaited their fate . . . The policemen drove groups of people to the ditches, where they undressed. Special SD details and the policemen of our battalion shot them at the nape of the neck. Adults were forced to lie down in the ditches and were shot, while children were torn away from their mothers and shot. Most of the shooters were drunk . . . People begged for mercy, mothers begged us to spare their children.
Company Sergeant ERICH DRACHENFELS (320th Police Battalion) describing the murder of 23,500 Jews of Rovno, November, 194155
The first truly systematic murder of European Jews occurred not in Germany or in Western Europe, but in the occupied East. Here, the first wholescale slaughter of men, women, and children as described in detail by Sergeant Drachenfels took place, and here, anti-Jewish policy evolved with increasing rapidity. Many of the same killers from Poland returned, this time with a larger mandate. In the East, too, however, these killers experienced the traumatic nature of daily face-to-face killing. This experience was one of many factors contributing to the development of the extermination camp. Historians speak of two killing sweeps (to which I would add a third):
•First Sweep (June 1941–end of 1941): Killings of mainly Jewish intelligentsia, leadership, as well non-Jewish Communist leadership but growing to include all Soviet Jews.
•Second Sweep (1942): Liquidation of Jews in ghettos incapable of work and consolidation of remaining Jews.56
•Third Sweep (1943–44): Liquidation of all ghettos and most remaining Jews—often carried out by a variety of perpetrators some of whom were Einsatzgruppen members who had taken up stationary positions.
The “Holocaust by Bullets” does not dominate our consciousness the same way as Auschwitz. However, it should. Somewhere around 1.5–2 million Jews from the Baltic Sea to the Crimea were murdered. They were marched through their own hometowns where they had lived most of their lives, past their neighbors and colleagues, and were then shot one by one into nearby pits. In fact, a large number of these victims were killed before any systematic gassing occurred.
The performance of the EGs in Poland in 1939 satisfied Himmler, but he sought a larger role for them in the Soviet Union, with its huge Jewish population. The mission of the EGs in the occupied Soviet Union differed fundamentally from their Polish iteration. Rather than simply “pacification” or removing leadership and intelligentsia that could provide resistance, the EGs in 1941 very quickly evolved into organizations tasked with the indiscriminate murder of Jews, though their initial mandate was limited.
That mandate is reflected in a March 13, 1941, memorandum issued by the OKW (Military High Command). It informed the leadership that “within the area of Army operations the Reichsführer SS will be entrusted, on behalf of the Führer, with special tasks for the preparation of the political administration—tasks which derive from the decisive struggle that will have to be carried out between the two opposing political systems. Within the framework of these tasks, the Reichsführer SS will act independently and on his own responsibility.” The document went on to order close “collaboration [by the military] to support the Reichskommissar his political tasks.”57 These “political” and “special” tasks were simply Nazi euphemisms for murder by the EG and other organizations under the direction of the SS.
The Einsatzgruppen personnel themselves received more specific instructions when they assembled at Preztsch, Germany, for training and organization. Reinhard Heydrich and Gestapo chief Müller visited them on multiple occasions. On June 17, 1941, Heydrich, Himmler’s deputy at the RSHA, addressed assembled EG officers in Berlin, and also later at a closing ceremony at Pretszch. In these meetings, he issued their final instructions before Operation Barbarossa. Heydrich summed up his remarks in a July 2 memorandum to the HSSPFs in the occupied territories. “All of the following are to be executed,” he ordered:
•Officials of the Comintern (together with professional Communist politicians in general)
•Top and medium-level officials and radical lower-level officials of the Party
•Central Committee and district and sub-district committees People’s Commissars
•Jews in Party and State employment and other radical elements (saboteurs, propagandists, snipers, assassins, inciters, etc.)58
Regarding Jews, we can see that “the briefings and lectures given at Pretzsch appear to have contained the essential elements for an ideological war that would involve extermination, but the exact shape lacked specificity.”59 However, they were also “open-ended enough in their formulation to have allowed for a rapid expansion of the murder campaign.”60
Who were the Einsatzgruppen that followed the German Army into the Soviet Union? These new EGs consisted of four units A, B, C, and D; EG A followed Army Group North, EG B followed Army Group Center, and EGs C and D followed Army Group South. Each EG had a number of subunits, known as Sonderkommandos or Einsatzkommandos. Not infrequently, even these subunits were broken up into smaller units temporarily, for specific missions.
The leadership of the EGs was carefully chosen, beginning in March 1941 for their experience and political reliability, with most coming from the SD. Some were higher-ranking officers in the SD and others commanded SD and Gestapo offices within Germany. These leaders were certainly out of the ordinary. Three of four EG commanders held four PhDs between them; seven of the SK and EK commanders held PhDs.61 Ironically, many of these criminals held doctorates in law.
TABLE 5Einsatzgruppen and their initial commanders, June 1941.
|
Unit |
Commander(s) |
|
Einsatzgruppe A (990 men)a |
SS-Brigadeführer Dr jur. Walter Stahlecker |
|
Sonderkommando 1a |
SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. Martin Sandberger |
|
Sonderkommando 1b |
SS-Obersturmführer Erich Ehrlinger |
|
Einsatzkommando 1b |
SS-Sturmbannführer Dr. jur. Hermann Hubig |
|
Einsatzkommando Ic |
SS-Sturmbannführer Kurt Graaf |
|
Einsatzkommando 2 |
SS-Sturmbannführer Rudolf Batz |
|
Einsatzkommando 3 |
SS-Standartenführer Karl Jäger |
|
Einsatzkommando Tilsit |
Kommandoführer Karl Böhme |
|
Einsatzgruppe B (665 men)b |
SS-Gruppenführer Artur Nebe |
|
Sonderkommando 7a |
SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr. jur. Walter Blume |
|
Sonderkommando 7b |
SS-Sturmbannführer Günther Rausch |
|
Einsatzkommando 8 |
SS-Sturmbannführer Dr Otto Bradfisch |
|
Einsatzkommando 9 |
SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr. jur. Alfred Filbert |
|
Vorkommando Moskow |
SS-Standartenführer Prof. Dr. Six |
|
Einsatzgruppe C (700 men)c |
SS Brigadeführer Dr. Otto Rasch |
|
Sonderkommando 4a |
SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel |
|
Sonderkommando 4b |
SS-Sturmbannführer Günter Hermann |
|
Einsatzkommando 5 |
SS-Oberführer Erwin Schulz |
|
Einsatzkommando 6 |
SS-Standartenführer Erhard Kroeger |
|
Einsatzgruppe D (600 men)d |
SS-Standartenführer Otto Ohlendorf |
|
Sonderkommando 10a |
SS-Obersturmbannführer Heinz Seetzen |
|
SS-Sturmbannführer Alois Persterer | |
|
Sonderkommando 11a |
SS-Sturmbannführer Paul Zapp |
|
Sonderkommando 11b |
SS-Sturmbannführer Hans Unglaube |
|
Einsatzkommando 12 |
SS-Sturmbannführer Gustav Nosske |
Sources: a. Wolfgang Scheffler, “Die Einsatzgruppe A: 1941/42,” in Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion, 1941/42: die Tätigkeits- und Lageberichte des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, ed. Peter Klein (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1997), 44; Helmut Krausnick and Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschauungskrieges: die Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, 1938–42 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1981), p. 286.
b. Christian Gerlach, “Die Einsatzgruppe B: 1941/42,” in Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion, 1941/42: die Tätigkeits- und Lageberichte des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD, ed. Peter Klein (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1997), p. 63.
c. Dieter Pohl, “Die Einsatzgruppe C: 1941/42,” ibid., ed. Peter Klein (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1997), pp. 83–4.
d. Andrej Angrick, “Die Einsatzgruppe D: 1941/42,” ibid., ed. Peter Klein (Berlin: Edition Hentrich, 1997), p. 105.
The EG selected the rank and file in a much more haphazard way, from the lower ranks of the Gestapo, Waffen-SS, and police. For example, the men of the EGs included a graduating class of SD cadets from Berlin, a class of Criminal Policemen, four companies from Reserve Police Battalion 9, and a battalion of Waffen-SS.62 Table 6 provides a representative breakdown of the 990 personnel in Einsatzgruppe A:
TABLE 6Personnel breakdown of EG A, October 1941.
|
Affiliation/Position |
Number |
|
Security Police (Sipo) |
89 |
|
Criminal Police (Kripo) |
41 |
|
Security Service (SD) |
35 |
|
Order Police (Orpo) |
133 |
|
Waffen-SS |
340 |
|
Drivers |
172 |
|
Auxiliary Police |
87 |
|
Translators |
51 |
|
Clerks, Secretaries, Communication specialists |
42 |
Source: Browning and Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution, p. 460.
Many of these men (and women) were not necessarily rabid antisemites. They had to eventually grow into their roles as killers and either adapt, or attempt to remove themselves from the killing process.
The EGs followed closely behind their supporting Army. Killing began almost immediately. The Einsatzgruppen openly sent frequent reports about their activities to Reimhard Heydrich at the RSHA in Berlin. These “Einsatzgruppen Reports” are a valuable source as they give us an idea of EG activities as they moved across the East. For example, EK 10 of EG D reported on July 17 that in the town of Belzy in Moldova, “considerable excesses were carried out repeatedly against Jews by Rumanian soldiers.”63 On July 22, EG C reported from Zhitomir in Ukraine that “187 Soviet Russians and Jews turned over by the army, some as civilian prisoners, were shot.”64 From Belarus, EG B informed Berlin that “Another 301 persons were thus liquidated in Baranovichi. This accounts for Jewish activists, officials, and looters.”65 By August 10, EG A reported from Novoselye in the Baltics that “partly with the assistance of Lithuanian and Latvian auxiliary units . . . 29,000 persons were liquidated in this district.”66
Soon after the invasion, the mission of the EGs and their collaborators drifted more and more toward wholescale murder. By July 1941, SS units were murdering men, women, and children regardless of age. This shift becomes apparent by the behavior of killing units, but a uniform order appears not to have been given simultaneously across the front. Some commanders seem to have instructed their units differently. The commander of Police Battalion 309, for example, told his men from the beginning that they would be killing all Jews.67 Elsewhere, it took time for this escalation to occur. It appears that Himmler, Heydrich, and the Higher SS and Police Leaders passed on oral orders to expand the killing process.
Throughout July and August 1941, Himmler visited Lwów, Kaunas, Riga, Baranovichi, and Minsk (cities representing each of the major operational zones.)68 During these visits, he passed along orders for an escalation of the killings decided upon in Berlin. Thus, a mass killing of all Jewish men in Bialystok occurred shortly after a visit by Himmler and Daluege in July. Likewise, two SS Cavalry Regiments began murdering Jewish men, women, and children in July. The 2nd SS Cavalry Regiment attempted to drown women and children and, remarkably, reported the failure of this technique, noting that “The driving of women and children into the marshes did not have the expected success, because the marshes were not so deep that one could sink.”69 As policy moved toward murdering all Jews across the Eastern front, it became clear that the 3,000 men of the Einsatzgruppen would simply not be sufficient. As a result, additional police battalions were called up. All in all, Himmler mobilized 21 battalions of Order Police, including reserve battalions made up of German policemen, adding a force of approximately 11,000 men to assist the EGs in their murderous work.70 These men, many middle-aged with families and civilian jobs as policemen, were often less ideologically prepared than the rank and file of the EGs, but they would adapt. By the end of the first year, there would be 101 Police Battalions operating with their Einsatzgruppen partners in the occupied East.71
Incitements to Violence: Pogroms—Homemade or Imported?
Did you see how Germans kill Jews? We will kill them all, and we will kill all Russians as well . . . Romanians and Germans will conquer all the world, while Russians with their hordes have failed.
Local perpetrator in Bessarabian village of Barboieni72
In addition to directly carrying out mass killings, the Einsatzgruppen were specifically tasked with fomenting pogroms against Jews by the local populations, some of whom felt like this Romanian man in Bessarabia. Himmler and Heydrich planned to leverage existing antisemitism to achieve the murder of Jews. In so doing, they sought to tap into the longer history of the pogrom in Eastern Europe. The future Minister for the East, Rosenberg, expressed this hope prior in the Spring of 1941: “The people itself will probably deal with its real oppressors, for it should be generally assumed that the population, especially in the Ukraine, will proceed to large-scale Jewish pogroms and murders of Communist functionaries.” “The Jewish question,” he continued, “can be solved to a significant extent by giving the population free rein for a certain length of time after we occupy the country.”73 The EGs were to encourage the local population to carry out these pogroms. Reinhard Heydrich reminded his commanders a week after the invasion that “no obstacle is to be placed in the way of the ‘self-cleansing efforts’ of anticommunist and anti-Jewish circle in the newly occupied territories. On the contrary, they are to be intensified and if necessary pointed in the right direction.”74
The extent to which the Germans successfully instigated these pogroms is a matter of some debate, as is the initiative of local populations. Local collaboration plays heavily as well in the national memory of Eastern European countries and how they view their role in the Holocaust. Pogroms varied in level of organization and the role of authorities. They also stemmed from a combination of local antisemitism, anger at Soviet crimes during the occupation, and varying roles of both German and local leadership.
However, without a doubt, pogroms did erupt throughout the East as the Germans arrived. A Jewish child from Drohobych in Ukraine recalled that the Germans “didn’t take possession of the town immediately, but let the Ukrainians run wild and start the first pogrom of the Jews.” “I never realized how antisemitic they were,” she remembered, “they also hated the Russians and smashed the figures of Lenin and Stalin in the middle of the town.”75 A Romanian witness in Bukovina observed that “the ringleaders provoked a panic in the village by shouting, ‘Jews and Bolsheviks are coming to kill Christians.’ The pogrom then started. Gentiles broke into the Jews’ houses, plundered their property, beat them severely, and robbed them of their belongings. A number of Jews were apprehended . . . were thrashed with pickets and pitchforks, then thrown into the water and drowned.”76 In the next sections, we explore three pogroms from Lithunia to Romania.
Kaunas, Lithuania (Late June 1941)
Even before German troops arrived in Kaunas, nationalists began laying the groundwork for violence. Nazi Germany sheltered members of the Lithuanian Activists Front (LAF) when they fled the Soviets in 1939. The LAF issued a directive in March 1941 providing instructions that “Local communists and other traitors of Lithuania must be arrested at once.” Ominously, a traitor could be pardoned if he “proves beyond doubt that he has killed one Jew at least.” The directive also carried a dark message for Lithuania’s Jews: “Inform the Jews that their fate has been decided upon. So that those who can had better get out of Lithuania now, to avoid unnecessary victims.”77
When the German Army occupied Kaunas on June 23, 1941, local Lithuanian militias and auxiliaries began taking over. Walter Stahlecker, commander of EG A, met with Lithuanian leadership in order to help instigate anti-Jewish violence. He insinuated that this could be one way to demonstrate their commitment to the anti-Bolshevik crusade underway against the Soviet Union.78 Violence began with spontaneous beatings, humiliation, and looting, and quickly escalated, as armed groups of the LAF took to the streets. The Lietūkis garage massacre became the most infamous example of this escalation.
This killing is so well known because it was very well documented. Locals drove Jewish men into the courtyard of a garage/gas station and humiliated them before they were brutally attacked by, among others, a man known as the “Death Dealer of Kaunas.” A German soldier reported that “a young man . . . with rolled up sleeves was armed with an iron crowbar. He dragged one man at a time from the group and struck him with the crowbar one or more blows on the back of his head. Within three-quarters of an hour he had beaten to death the entire group of forty-five to fifty people in this way. I took a series of photographs.”79 These photographs survived the war and provide a chilling glimpse into a pogrom in progress. In particular, they show a large crowd of Lithuanian men, women, and children watching. Much testimony comes from a passing German Army Bakery unit that witnessed the killings. One soldier remembered that “Lithuanian civilians could be heard shouting out their approval and goading the men on.” He also noted that the “soldiers did not express assent or disapprobation for what was happening.”80 Another soldier reported that “I had to leave the square because I could not watch any more. My friends went with me.”81 The photographer reported that the communal killing included an accordionist who would climb on the bodies and play the Lithuanian national anthem. The people would clap and sing, which he found “unbelievable.”82 More systematic murders followed, with EG men and Lithuanian auxiliaries taking part.
EK 3 reported on July 11 that “7,800 have been liquidated, partly through pogroms and partly through shooting by Lithuanian Kommandos.”83 Stahlecker reported on October 15, 1941, that “native anti-Semitic forces were induced to start pogroms against Jews during the first hours after capture [occupation] though this inducement proved to be very difficult.” Referring to Kaunas specifically, he wrote “This [local involvement in the killings] was achieved for the first time by partisan activities in Kaunas. To our surprise it was not easy at first to set in motion an extensive pogrom against Jews. Klimatis, the leader of the partisan unit . . . who was primarily used for this purpose, succeeded in starting a pogrom on the basis of advice given to him by a small advanced detachment acting in Kaunas, and in such a way that no German order or German instigation was noticed from the outside.”84
Thus, we can see the hand of the EG in these pogroms and the difficulty of increasing the scale of homegrown murder. Similarly, brutal pogroms took place in Vilnius and across the country. The German Army commander in Army Group North, Field Marshal von Leeb, referred to the pogroms in Kaunas, advising simply that “the only thing to do is to keep clear of them.”85 As for the Lithuanians, only one member of the Provisional Government objected. The Cabinet minutes read: “Minister [Landsebergis-] Žemkalnis reported on the extremely cruel torture of Jews at the Lietūkis garage in Kaunas.” The outcome was simply that “partisans and individuals should avoid public executions of Jews,” hardly a condemnation of the killings.86
Lwów, Poland (Late June–Early July 1941)
The city of Lwów in Eastern Poland fell under Soviet control in 1939. It was a cosmopolitan city—a former Austro-Hungarian “Paris of the East”—with Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews forming the bulk of the population. In 1941, around 160,000 Jews lived there. The German Army reached the city on June 29th, 1941, and set off a bloody pogrom, made particularly notable by the horrific photos taken of brutalized Jewish women.
Executions of “enemies of the state,” mainly local nationalists marked the Soviet occupation as a whole but particularly its end. Eastern Poland was no exception. The NKVD had amassed a huge inmate population in three prisons throughout Lwów and had no way to evacuate them, nor did they plan to. Therefore, they coldly began executions when Operation Barbarossa began. As one survivor recalled from the Brygidki prison, the “sound of shooting could clearly be heard in the cells.” By the end of the mass execution period, the NKVD sought to mask the sounds of killing with truck engines. They filled the cellars with dead and were forced to begin shooting prisoners in trenches in the prison yard.87 Estimates of the dead range from 4,000–10,000.
When Soviet forces retreated, an uneasy silence fell over the city, but only briefly. Soon ethnic Ukrainians flooded the streets, greeting the German Army with “flowers, laughter, joy, full of hope and illusions, as rescuers and liberators.”88 They expected to be granted some form of independence. Poles, meanwhile, warily stayed away, knowing the Nazi attitude toward them. Jews, especially, made themselves scarce, predicting accurately what would soon occur. The Nazis themselves had encouraged a surge of Ukrainian nationalism by harboring and supporting Ukrainian leaders in Germany beginning in the 1930s. Not coincidentally, therefore, two battalions of ethnic Ukrainians entered Lwów with the Wehrmacht.
The citizens of the city (Jews included) began flocking to the former Soviet prisons in search of their loved ones. Devastated, they discovered the whole-scale slaughters there. Yet, quickly, word on the street spread that Jewish members of the NKVD were responsible. What followed was at times a carefully staged propaganda event. First, Ukrainian militia and local police rounded up Jews and forced them to bury the bodies of those murdered in Soviet prisons. Sonderkommando 4a, supposedly tasked with arranging pogroms, had not even arrived.
After it did so, on July 2, violence escalated. Jews were brought to the same prisons and shot to support the idea of vengeance for Soviet killings. Radio and posters passed the message that “dead bodies of Ukrainians and Poles, shot down by ‘Bolsheviks and Judas’ has been discovered in prisons.”89 One survivor recalled burying the bodies of Jewish victims in a prison yard while German officers and military police “photographed the execution of completely innocent women, children, and the elderly.” German officials told him the graves were intended for victims of “Russian soldiers and Bolsheviks” which he knew clearly was untrue as he had just witnessed a mass shooting of Jews there.90 All the while, Nazis filmed the scene to create the message that Jews had been responsible for NKVD killings. Some of this film footage survived the war and can be seen today.91 These widely distributed films served to incite (or simply excuse) escalating violence against Jews.
The truth of the Soviet prison massacres did not matter in the Lwów pogroms that followed. As one Polish witness, Tadeusz Zaderecki, wrote, “The prisons that the Soviets left behind opened and dozens, hundreds of mutilated bodies of political prisoners were revealed . . . Who carried out the murders? The Jews! The fact that the murdered prisoners included Jews made no difference to anyone.”92 Einsatzkommando member Felix Landau wrote in his diary that Jews he saw leaving a Lwów prison were “under suspicion of having assisted with persecution of Ukrainians and Germans.” He observed that “there were hundreds of Jews with blood streaming down their faces, holes in their heads, broken hands, and eyeballs hanging from their sockets.”93
As the days went on, the violence spread into the streets. Zaderecki watched as “A rabble of drunken farmers flowed in from the countryside to Lvov.” “Something,” he predicted darkly, “was about to happen and it was planned.”94 In the following weeks known as the “July Days,” thousands of Jews were “horribly beaten with wooden clubs and iron rods.” Stores were also looted.95 Women were assaulted and raped. Humiliation of Jews became a common occurrence. A survivor suspected that the presence of German officers indicated that this was “no spontaneous Aktion.”96 Similar mob violence took place elsewhere in Galicia. In Jablonica, 143 miles to the south, a parish priest “praised local Ukrainians for drowning the Jews, and assured them that their deed would be ‘rewarded with paradise.’”97 Galician Jews prayed for the best. Adolf Folkmann hoped that “that our life would gradually revert to its normal course in time, and we could see no reason why it should not. It had always been like that before.”98
Iasi, Romania (June 26–Early July 1941)
Pogroms took place across the Eastern Front, not all of them instigated by the Germans, as they were in Kaunas and Lwów. The bloody Iasi pogrom is a good example of the different forms and motivations for violence against Jews in the early days of the war. First, Iasi, the capital of Moldavia, was not a territory of the Soviet Union conquered by the Germans. It was a major city already within the borders of Romania, and Romanian troops occupied it, though some Germans were present for the pogrom. Perhaps, more importantly, in comparison with the two pogroms above, neither EG D nor any SS unit was present in Iasi at the end of June 1941. While some German soldiers participated in the pogrom, their behavior has been characterized as “unorganized [and] chaotic.”99
Romanian authorities, on the other hand, had a very clear plan. Beginning with Romanian Prime Minister, Ion Antonescu, the killings of Jews in Iasi were to be part of a “‘greater plan’” that sought to rid Moldova of its Jews, together with the physical extermination of (‘cleansing the ground’) of the Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina.”100 He told his Council of Ministers that “I let the mob loose to massacre them. I withdraw to my citadel, and after the massacre, I restore order.”101 Deep-seated, long-held Romanian antisemitism was a key component in driving the Iasi pogrom. Shortly before the invasion, Prime Minister Ionescu instructed his Ministry of Propaganda to ensure that “all Judeo-Communist coffee shops in Moldavia be closed down, all kikes, Communist agents and sympathizers be identified by region.” Antonescu ordered that the Ministry of the Interior “be prepared to do with them whatever I shall order at the appropriate moment.”102
The Romanian authorities also created an organization “modeled on Einsatzgruppen D.” The Romanian Secret Service (SSI) created the First Operative Echelon, with 160 men and the official assignment to “protect the home front from acts of espionage, sabotage, and terror.”103 However, a colonel in the SSI testified after the war that “one of the secret and unofficial aims of the expedition of this Operative Echelon was do away with the Moldavian Jews by deportation or extermination.”104 Operation Barbarossa provided the cover for this operation.
After the invasion began, the war came to Iasi in the form of two Soviet bombing raids. The second raid, at 11 am on June 26 was “devastating.”105 Immediately, (unfounded) rumors circulated that some of the downed Soviet pilots were Jews and that Soviet agents and saboteurs were actively aiding the enemy in the town.106 The conflation of Jews and Communists was just as powerful in Romania as it was in Germany, Ukraine, and Lithuania. 207 Jews were arrested because they owned flashlights (presumably used to signal Soviet planes.)107 Two days later, on June 28, posters appeared declaring, “Romanians! Each kike killed is a dead Communist. The time for revenge is now!”108 Anti-Jewish violence began.
The local police, Romanian military, and First Operative Echelon, began carrying out the systematic parts of the pogrom, rounding up Jews and confining them to the Chestura or Police Headquarters. Here, and elsewhere throughout the city, mass executions took place. Around 3,500 Romanian Jews were collected in the Chestura courtyard on June 29. Around 2pm, German and Romanian soldiers along with local policemen fired into the mass of people.109 One eyewitness reported that “Soon, the dead and wounded piled up in the middle of the courtyard. Those who continued to be pushed in by the savage sentries at the entrance had no choice but to trample them.” A Jewish witness described the victims as “frenzied with fear.”110 At least a thousand Jews were murdered in this way.
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Romanian authorities then began to deport Jews in two trainloads. German soldiers and Romanian police together loaded the trains, nailed boards over the air vents to make breathing more difficult, and wrote “Communist Kikes” or “Murderers of German and Romanian Soldiers” on the outside of the cars. Conditions inside were dreadful and the trip was intentionally made excruciatingly longer than normal. On the first train, which left on June 30 and arrived at its destination a week later, 1,400 Jews died.111 A second train with 1,902 Jews was loaded the same day—1,194 died.112 Romanian authorities intentionally routed these trains on an agonizing journey to kill as many as possible.
Spontaneous and brutal outbursts by the local population accompanied the more organized killing at the Chestura and in the trains. On the night of the 28th, “a group of young gentiles led by the coachman Lepioskin, and accompanied by soldiers, went into the outskirts . . . and began plundering and killing.”113 Civilians often joined the police and military in raiding homes and rounding up Jews. One report stated that a group of Jews “were taken from their homes by several Romanian railway employees, who lived in the same neighborhood.”114 Horrific scenes blanketed Iasi. Tauba Greenberg, an eight-year-old girl “was found disemboweled in front of [presumably a Jewish store].”115 The violence was so bad that “many Christians who knew of the pogrom in advance left Iasi and went to stay with relatives, so as not to witness the hideous acts of murder.”116
Estimates of the Iasi pogrom death toll vary between ten and twelve thousand Jews murdered, either directly or on the death trains. The Romanian government explained the violence with an official communiqué claiming that “500 Judeo-Communists, who had shot from houses at German and Romanian soldiers, were executed.”117 Clearly, Romanian authorities played up the Judeo-Bolshevist myth to support a visceral antisemitic pogrom. As for the perpetrators, the head of the SSI called the Iasi massacres “the great deeds I accomplished in Moldavia.”118
The Iasi pogrom is significant for several reasons. First, it took place within the sovereign borders of Romania. Second, it shows that direct German influence was not necessary while illustrating how Germany’s allies could adopt its methods to deal with their own “Jewish Questions.” Third, the pogrom demonstrates the different proportions of antisemitism and Judeo-Bolshevism that could be brought to bear along with the varying degrees to which ordinary civilians and government organizations took part.
The vigor, brutality, and widespread nature of pogroms throughout newly occupied territories in the East are not debated. However, scholars and nations continue to dispute the degree to which Germans orchestrated these episodes of mass violence against the motivations and extent of local participation. The historical evidence reveals the following. First, pogroms and their execution differed across time and space. Second, Nazis, particularly the Einsatzgruppen, certainly attempted to encourage mass atrocities by local populations. Third, elements in local populations, particularly in the Baltic States and Ukraine, were complicit in murdering and abusing the neighbors. As we saw in Lwów, killings began before the EGs arrived. Fourth, some element of the Judeo-Bolshevist myth was decisive in most pogroms either as an excuse for violence or as a “legitimate” reason for vengeance against Jews. Lastly, pogroms tended to be more extreme in regions with strong feelings of nationalism and accompanying dreams that Nazi success would support nationalist goals.
On the other hand, it also soon became clear to the Einsatzgruppen themselves that they would not be able to solve the “Jewish Question” through “spontaneous” local pogroms alone. They were quite explicit on this point. “Spontaneous cleansing actions,” a report by Einsatzgruppe A pointed out, “were insufficient to stabilize the rear army area, especially as the eagerness of the local population was quickly waning.”119 In Belorussia, the EG reported in August 1941 that “Pronounced anti-Semitism is also missing . . . In general, the population harbors a feeling of hatred and rage toward the Jews and approves of the German measures . . . but is not able by itself to take the initiative in regard to the treatment of the Jews.”120 Therefore, the EG continued their own escalating mass killings.
Every village is a different crime scene. Every case is particular.
Father PATRICK DESBOIS121
Even with mixed success in inciting local populations to do their work, the EG killed the majority of their victims themselves or with the assistance of organized local auxiliary units. As a result, Eastern Europe is a landscape of graves, some of which Father Debois investigated when trying to reconstruct open-air killings there. Pogroms were simply too chaotic, too complex, with the added drawback of generating false hopes of national independence. Mass killings in the “first sweep” (1941) involved the shooting of Jews by EG units which then moved on (as opposed to killing non-workers or the liquidations of ghettos which followed.) Even so, these first steps toward mass murder varied in form and scale, as we will see in detail below.
Babi Yar, Ukraine (June 29–30, 1941)
The city of Kiev fell to the Wehrmacht on September 19, 1941, after a bitter struggle that resulted in 600,000 Soviet casualties and an additional 600,000 POWs who disappeared into the deadly Nazi POW system.122 The German army entered a town that greeted them warmly, with at least some of that warmth provided by the fires set by retreating Soviet forces. The NKVD (Soviet Secret Police) had left more surprises behind. On September 20, a large explosive device detonated in the former arsenal building housing German officers. The artillery commander and his chief of staff were killed.123 Four days later, another bomb destroyed the Grand Hotel, killing more high-ranking officers. Another exploded in a department store, killing Ukrainians standing in line to register with German authorities. Over two hundred German soldiers died in explosions or while fighting the fires that followed.124 These were part of a complex plan by the NKVD, including tons of explosives planted throughout the city timed to go off at set intervals.
Angry Germans and Ukrainians alike blamed the Jews for these “cowardly” attacks. They fit perfectly into the narrative of Jews as Bolsheviks and therefore partisans as well as the local anger at mass killings by the NKVD prior to its departure. Even local Jews recognized this scapegoating. One remarked that “They [the Bolsheviks] decided to play on us Jews one last trick. Without these terrible explosions, the Germans would have left us alone.”125 High-level German commanders openly endorsed antisemitic action. The German military commander of the city, General Kurt Eberhard, met with commanders of EG C and SK 4a, Otto Rasch and Paul Blobel, respectively on September 26 and suggested that Jews should be murdered as “retaliation.”126 The Jews had not, of course, planted the explosives. A lieutenant in SK4a recalled the agreed upon division of labor: “We had to do the dirty work. I will never forget how General Eberhard said to us in Kiev: You have to do the shooting.”127 The EG C and SK 4a Report for September 28 predicted, “Execution of at least 50,000 Jews planned. German Army welcomes measures and demands drastic procedure.”128
On September 28, Ukrainian militia posted notices that all Jews were to assemble and that “they must take with them documents, money, and valuables, and also warm clothing, underwear, etc.”129 Rumors spread throughout the Jewish community speculating about the meaning of this gathering. Some thought they were to be resettled or sent for forced labor. Others thought this was the preliminary stage for the creation of a ghetto in Kiev. It was neither. Some Jews suspected as much. A bystander overheard her Jewish neighbor tell her husband, “Khaim, why are you taking that pillow, for we are going to our death?”130
On September 29, elements of Einsatzgruppe C, Sonderkommando 4a, Police Regiment South, and Ukrainian auxiliaries drove the Jews of Kiev through the streets to a ravine called Babi Yar on the outskirts of town. Regular German Army soldiers guarded the route to prevent escape.131 There, Jews were forced to remove their clothes and were shot in an ongoing operation that lasted two days. Fritz Hofer, a driver in SK 4a, arrived at the ravine to load up the clothing of the murdered. He witnessed the killing taking place. He testified in 1959:
How many layers of bodies there were on top of each other I could not see. I was so astonished and dazed by the sight of the twitching blood-smeared bodies that I could not properly register the details. In addition to the two marksmen there was a “packer” at either entrance to the ravine. These “packers” were Schutzpolizisten, whose job it was to lay the victim on top of the other corpses so that all the marksman had to do as he passed was fire a shot.
When the victims came along the paths to the ravine and at the last moment saw the terrible scene they cried out in terror. But at the very next moment they were already being knocked over by the “packers” and made to lie down with the others. The next group of people could not see this terrible scene because it took place around a corner.
Most people put up a fight when they had to undress and there was a lot of screaming and shouting. The Ukrainians did not take any notice. They just drove them down as quickly as possible into the ravine through the entrances.132
Kurt Werner, also in SK4a, personally killed during the Babi Yar massacre. He later testified, “It’s almost impossible to imagine what nerves of steel it took to carry out that dirty work down there. It was horrible . . . I had to spend the whole morning down in the ravine. For some of the time I had to shoot continuously.”133 Ironically, while admitting to his participation in mass murder, Werner highlights the difficulty for him. Large numbers of ethnic Germans and Ukrainians, perhaps up to 1,500, greatly assisted German shooters.134
Over two days, the Einsatzgruppen and their collaborators murdered 33,171 Jews of Kiev. This constituted the majority of the Jewish population and the largest mass shooting of Jews in the entire war. After the killing, nine elderly Jews returned to Kiev and sat by the Old Synagogue. According to a witness, “there they sat for days and nights. No one gave them food or water and they died one by one.” When only two remained alive, a local approached a German guard; “He asked him, while pointing at the bodies, to shoot those two. The guard thought for a moment and did.”135 Wehrmacht engineers assisted in burying the bodies and “in concealing the massacre.”136 On October 10, less than two weeks after the massacre, the commander of the Sixth Army, responsible for the Kiev region, General Walter von Reichenau, reminded his soldiers that they “must have full understanding for the necessity of harsh but just punishment of the Jewish subhumans. It has the broader objectives of nipping in the bud any uprisings in the Wehrmacht’s rear, which experience shows have always been instigated by Jews.”137 The Einsatzgruppen epitaph for the Jews of Kiev was one sentence reporting the execution of 33,171 Jews.
Krupki (September 18, 1941)
Unlike Kiev in Ukraine, Krupki in central Belarus, northeast of Minsk, was a small rural town with a Jewish population of about 870 in 1939 out of a total of 3,455.138 It served mainly as a market town for the surrounding farmers with little other significance than its location on an important east-west highway. A Wehrmacht unit had occupied the town since July 28, 1941. Shortly before September 18, Werner Schönemann, commander of a Teilkommando (subunit of an EK) arrived at the battalion headquarters to arrange for the murder of the approximately 1,000 Jews in Krupki. Schönemann was a Gestapo officer who had been ordered from law school to Einsatzkommando 8. He often began shootings personally, even jumping into the graves “to set an example and to show that he did not shirk his duty.”139
He and Army officer, MAJ Johannes Waldow, worked out the details of the upcoming massacre. Waldow supplied manpower to round up, guard, and deliver the victims to the mass graves and Schönemann conducted the killings. An Army lieutenant even personally chose the killing site. The night before the executions, a platoon leader allegedly told his troops, “Men, we have a serious task ahead of us tomorrow. Whoever doesn’t trust himself to handle a sensitive and serious assignment does not need to be ashamed and can back out.”140
The next morning Schönemann said “Let’s get started,” and the Jews of Krupki were collected in the central square. Soldiers marched them to the killing site about half a mile outside of town. One soldier remembered allowing a Jewish woman to pull up her toddler’s pants but still marching her to the killing pits. Victims surrendered valuables at the grave site. The shooting took place all afternoon, with Wehrmacht soldiers eventually also killed. After all the Jews of Krupki had been murdered, the SS left with the valuables. Locals under the supervision of the Belarussian mayor covered the grave. The local population deepened its own complicity with a “fair” organized in the town where “everything was sold off, furniture, clothes.”141 And so the neighbors of the victims participated in the plunder of their property. In the reports of Einsatzgruppen B, Einsatzkommando 8, the mass killings in Krupki received a short mention:
Two larger actions were carried out by the unit . . . in Krupka and Sholopenitsche [sic]. In the first town 912 Jews were liquidated and in the second 822. With this, the Krupka region can be seen as Judenfrei.142
Army records make no mention of the events of September 18, even though the Wehrmacht had been deeply complicit in all aspects of the killing.
Einsatzgruppen killings spanned the entire length and breadth of the Eastern Front from Latvia to the Crimea. Numbers ranged from relatively small to large. Some killings were one-time affairs while other sites, like the Ponary Forest outside of Vilna, Lithuania, were used on a continuing basis to kill 50–60,000 people (mainly Jews) over the course of the war.143 As in Poland, when the first mobile phase of killing ended, the Einsatzgruppen transitioned into stationary units responsible for a specific region where they continued to carry out mass killings and assist in anti-partisan efforts. The Einsatzgruppen killings must also be seen in the context of the eventual “Final Solution,” the decision to physically exterminate all the Jews in Europe. Though initially targeting only men, the EGs very quickly began shooting all Jews in the occupied Soviet Union; this was the first systematic killing of Jews, long before any gas chambers or extermination camps had become operational.
As a result, the logistical and psychological difficulties in murdering so many people one at a time soon became apparent and influenced the unfolding of the later stages of the Holocaust. The experience of the “Holocaust by Bullets” was at least partly responsible for the evolution of the Nazi killing machine. The commander of Einsatzguppe B, Artur Nebe, noted as early as July 1941 that “a solution of the Jewish Question during the war seems impossible in this area [Belarus] because of the tremendous number of Jews.”144 The initial response was the calling up of additional Police Battalions and increased involvement of local auxiliaries, but even this would prove insufficient for the task at hand. Experiments with other methods began.
Himmler and others were also concerned with the traumatic nature of the mission, given the EG men. They recognized that this brutal method of killing affected the men. On December 12, 1941, Himmler secretly informed his EG commanders that “It is the sacred obligation of the higher SS leaders and commanders to see to it personally that none of our men who have to fulfill this heavy duty, become brutalized.”145 He advocated that killing units hold comradeship evenings to counteract the emotional damage of their work. Himmler himself experienced anxiety while witnessing an execution outside of Minsk in August 1941, when the experience shook him up and he fainted. A high-ranking official told him, “Look at the eyes of the men in this commando, how deeply shaken they are. These men are finished for the rest of their lives.”146 For Himmler and others, the trauma of face-to-face killing allowed them to paint the Germans as the victims, suffering from the difficulty of their “work.” However, it also appears to have been a concern that contributed to the development of new forms of killing.
The Initial Occupation of the East
Is the goal to permanently secure [these populations] some subsistence, or should they be totally eradicated?
ROLF-HEINZ HOEPPNER, Chief of Resettlement Office-Poznan to Eichmann, September 3, 1941147
The Nazi occupation of the Soviet Union would soon answer Hoeppner’s question; indeed, some policies had already been prepared in advance. The occupation, by definition, encompassed most of the countries of Eastern Europe with the exception of those allied to Hitler, which we will discuss later; this area included Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland. Many occupation policies developed in Poland were swiftly instituted in the occupied East. In addition, while the military had been at least somewhat reluctant to participate in anti-Jewish measures in Poland, Barbarossa marked a turning point where the Army fully participated in Nazi anti-Jewish policies. Even before the invasion, the military administration department published guidelines that “All male and female Jews aged 10 years or above in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union must wear a 10-cm yellow star on their left chest and on their back . . . In every settlement in which more than 50 Jews reside, a Jewish council will be established.”148 Thus, on July 8 in Vilna, the military commander ordered that Jews wear special insignia on their chest and back.149 In Kaunas, the military established a ghetto on July 10.150 It also began forcing Jews into labor. Throughout the occupied East, similar policies were put into place.
On August 1, 1941, much of the newly conquered territory came under the civilian control of Alfred Rosenberg’s Reichskommissariat Ostland and was further subdivided into smaller jurisdictions. Ghettoization, forced labor, and establishment of concentration camps continued to evolve under civilian rule.
The occupation of the Soviet Union also saw the uneven implementation of the previously mentioned Green Plan and Hunger Plans. Already, by September 16, Goering had ordered German troops to live “off the land.”151 This, of course, meant depriving local populations of necessary food. In addition, the war itself interrupted harvests, causing starvation across the East. Under Goering’s Four Year economic plan, all machinery, heavy equipment, factories, and raw materials were seized, with disastrous effects.152 The combination of Army food policy and general looting of the East proved lethal in some areas. In Kiev, a resident observed in December 1941 that while Germans celebrated Christmas, “the locals ‘all move like shadows, there is total famine.’”153
Nowhere were the effects of Nazi destructive economic planning and intended starvation of the local population more evident than in Leningrad and the surrounding region. While the city itself escaped capture, the German Army laid siege, preventing almost any attempt at resupply as it extracted food from the region. The siege began on September 8, 1941 and lasted until January 27, 1944. The Quartermaster General of the Army, Wagner, who had helped craft POW policy and the Hunger Plan, wrote his wife that all 3.5 million inhabitants of Leningrad would have to starve, as “sentimentality would be out of place.”154
The regions outside Leningrad fared little better. Even German police units noted the destructive effects of the combined military and civilian policy. Already in September, they were reporting that the “area occupied by Army Group North presents a uniform picture of economic and cultural misery . . . In several areas . . . nearly all cattle herds and horses have been carried off. German troops have requisitioned nearly the entire chicken population, so that the food situation is extraordinarily difficult for the civilian population.”155 A German medic reported from the Pavlosk region in December 1941 that:
A man is lying on the street, a civilian or a prisoner of war. He is completely broken down by exhaustion in the freezing weather, and steam rises off his still warm head. In general, ragged and starving civilians. They stagger and drag themselves till [their death], in −40-degree weather. Their houses are destroyed, either by the Bolsheviks or by us. No one can help them. With weakened arms, they try to hack pieces out of frozen horse cadavers. Many children are dying in the villages, one sees many with prematurely aged faces and with bloated stomachs. Children and women look through the horse excrement on the street . . . in the hope of making something edible.156
German authorities discovered multiple cases of cannibalism, including a woman who admitted having eaten five children. She was executed.157 In Leningrad, around one million men, women, and children starved to death before the siege ended.
Operation Barbarossa, the “Holocaust by Bullets,” and the German occupation of the occupied Soviet Union highlight the intimate connection between the war and the Holocaust. These events in the fall of 1941 and early part of 1942 also represent critical moments in the evolution of Nazi policy leading to the Final Solution. We must view Operation Barbarossa and the genocidal policies which accompanied it, directed against Jews and non-Jews, as the norm for Nazi rule. Based on German conceptions of Lebensraum, colonial aspirations in the East, and virulent antisemitism and anti-Bolshevism, the war against the Soviet Union was precisely the war the Nazis wanted to fight. Both the conquest and occupation of Western Europe that dominate much of our popular memory must therefore be seen as exceptions to the rule of Nazi terror and domination. As we move on to examine ghettoization, consider as an example of this difference that not a single ghetto was established in Western Europe.
Selected Readings
Arad, Yitzhak. The Holocaust in the Soviet Union. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.
Arad, Yitzhak, Schmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, eds. The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads’ Campaign against the Jews, July 1941-January 1943. New York, NY: Holocaust Library, 1989.
Beorn, Waitman Wade. Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.
Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: Harper Perennial, 1998.
Megargee, Geoffrey P. War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.