On this date, October 20, 1939 a mass
execution of 15 local residents was carried out in Kórnik, part of Operation Tannenberg. I will post information about the SS paramilitary
death squads of Nazi Germany known as the Einsatzgruppen from Wikipedia and other links.
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Symbol of Einsatzgruppen
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.metal-archives.com/bands/Einsatzgruppen/3540390745]
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The Einsatzgruppen
operated under the administration of the Schutzstaffel (SS)
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Killing of Jews at
Ivanhorod, Ukraine, 1942. A woman is attempting to protect a child with her own
body just before they are fired on with rifles at close range.
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Agency
overview
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Formed
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c. 1939
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Preceding Agency
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Einsatzkommando
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Jurisdiction
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Nazi Germany
Occupied Europe |
Headquarters
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RSHA, Prinz-Albrecht-Straße, Berlin
52°30′26″N 13°22′57″E |
Employees
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~ 3,000 c. 1941
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Minister responsible
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Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS
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Agency executives
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SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich,
Director, RSHA (1939–1942)
SS-Obergruppenführer Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Director, RSHA (1943–1945) |
Parent agency
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Allgemeine SS and RSHA
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Einsatzgruppen (German for "task forces", "deployment
groups"; singular Einsatzgruppe; official full name Einsatzgruppen
der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD) were Schutzstaffel (SS)
paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass
killings, primarily by shooting, during World War II. The Einsatzgruppen
had a leading role in the implementation of the Final Solution of the Jewish
question (Die Endlösung der Judenfrage) in territories conquered by Nazi
Germany. Almost all of the people they killed were civilians, beginning with
the Polish intelligentsia and swiftly progressing to Soviet political
commissars, Jews, and Gypsies throughout Eastern Europe.
Under
the direction of Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler and the supervision of
SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, the Einsatzgruppen
operated in territories occupied by the German armed forces following the
invasion of Poland in September 1939 and Operation Barbarossa (the invasion of
the Soviet Union) in June 1941. The Einsatzgruppen carried out
operations ranging from the murder of a few people to operations which lasted
over two or more days, such as the massacre at Babi Yar (33,771 killed in two
days) and the Rumbula massacre (25,000 killed in two days). As ordered by Nazi
leader Adolf Hitler, the Wehrmacht cooperated with the Einsatzgruppen
and provided logistical support for their operations. Historian Raul Hilberg
estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen and related
auxiliary troops killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million
Jews. The total number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust is estimated at
5.5 to 6 million people.
After
the close of the World War II, 24 senior leaders of the Einsatzgruppen
were prosecuted in the Einsatzgruppen Trial in 1947–48, charged with crimes
against humanity and war crimes. Fourteen death sentences and two life
sentences were handed out. Four additional Einsatzgruppe leaders were
later tried and executed by other nations.
Formation
and Action T4
The
Einsatzgruppen were formed under the direction of SS-Obergruppenführer
Reinhard Heydrich and operated by the Schutzstaffel
(SS) before and during World War
II. The Einsatzgruppen had its origins in the ad hoc Einsatzkommando
formed by Heydrich to secure government buildings and documents following the Anschluss
in Austria in March 1938. Originally part of the Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police; SiPo),
two units of Einsatzgruppen were stationed in the Sudetenland in October
1938. When military action turned out not to be necessary because of the Munich
Agreement, the Einsatzgruppen were assigned to confiscate government
papers and police documents. They also secured government buildings, questioned
senior civil servants, and arrested as many as 10,000 Czech communists and
German citizens. From September 1939, the SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt
(Reich Main Security Office; RSHA) had overall command of the Einsatzgruppen.
As
part of the drive to remove undesirable elements from the German population,
from September to December 1939 the Einsatzgruppen and others took part
in Action T4, a programme of systematic murder of the physically and mentally
handicapped and psychiatric hospital patients undertaken by the Nazi regime. Action T4 mainly took place from 1939 to 1941, but
continued until the end of the war. Initially the victims were shot by the Einsatzgruppen
and others, but gas chambers were put into use by spring 1940.
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Execution
of Polish hostages by an SS-task force on 10.20.1939 in occupied Kórnik (during
the German Nazi occupation of 1939-45).
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Invasion
of Poland
Main
articles: Intelligenzaktion
and Operation
Tannenberg
In
response to Führer und
Reichskanzler Adolf Hitler's
plan to invade Poland,
Heydrich re-formed the Einsatzgruppen to travel in the wake of the
German armies. Membership at this point was drawn from the SS, the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service;
SD), and the police. Heydrich placed SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Best in command, who chose leaders
for the task forces and their subgroups, called Einsatzkommandos, from among educated
people with military experience. Some had previously been members of
paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps.
Numbering
some 2,700 men at this point, the Einsatzgruppen's mission was the
forceful de-politicisation of the Polish people and the elimination of groups
most clearly identified with Polish national identity: the intelligentsia,
members of the clergy, teachers, and members of the nobility. As stated by
Hitler: "... there must be no Polish leaders; where Polish leaders
exist they must be killed, however harsh that sounds". The Sonderfahndungsbuch
Polen — lists of people to be killed — had been drawn up by the
SS as early as May 1939. The Einsatzgruppen performed these murders with
the support of the Volksdeutscher
Selbstschutz, a paramilitary group consisting of ethnic Germans
living in Poland. Members of the SS, the Wehrmacht, and the Ordnungspolizei (Order
Police; Orpo) also shot civilians during the Polish campaign. Approximately
65,000 civilians were killed by the end of 1939. In addition to leaders of
Polish society, they killed Jews, prostitutes, Romani people, and the mentally ill.
Psychiatric patients in Poland were initially killed by shooting, but by spring
1941 gas vans were widely used.
Seven
Einsatzgruppen of battalion strength operated in Poland. Each was
subdivided into four Einsatzkommandos of company strength.
- Einsatzgruppe I, commanded by SS-Standartenführer Bruno Streckenbach, acted with 14th Army
- Einsatzgruppe II, SS-Obersturmbannführer Emanuel Schäfer, acted with 10th Army
- Einsatzgruppe III, SS-Obersturmbannführer und Regierungsrat Dr. Herbert Fischer, acted with 8th Army
- Einsatzgruppe IV, SS-Brigadeführer Lothar Beutel, acted with 4th Army
- Einsatzgruppe V, SS-Standartenfürer Ernst Damzog, acted with 3rd Army
- Einsatzgruppe VI, SS-Oberführer Erich Naumann, acted in Wielkopolska
- Einsatzgruppe VII, SS-Obergruppenführer Udo von Woyrsch and SS-Gruppenführer Otto Rasch, acted in Upper Silesia and Cieszyn Silesia
Though
they were formally under the command of the army, the Einsatzgruppen
received their orders directly from Heydrich and for the most part acted
independently of the army. Many senior army officers were only too glad to
leave these genocidal actions to the task forces, as the killings violated the
rules of warfare as set down in the Geneva Conventions.
However, Hitler had decreed that the army would have to tolerate and even offer
logistical support to the Einsatzgruppen when it was tactically possible
to do so. Some army commanders complained about unauthorised shootings,
looting, and rapes committed by members of the Einsatzgruppen and the Volksdeutscher
Selbstschutz, to little effect. For example, when Generaloberst Johannes Blaskowitz
sent a memorandum of complaint to Hitler about the atrocities, Hitler dismissed
his concerns as "childish", and Blaskowitz was relieved of his post
in May 1940. He continued to serve in the army but never received promotion to field
marshal.
The
final task of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland was to round up the remaining
Jews and concentrate them in ghettos
within major cities with good railway connections. The intention was to
eventually remove all the Jews from Poland, but at this point their final
destination had not yet been determined. Together, the Wehrmacht and the Einsatzgruppen
also drove tens of thousands of Jews eastward into Soviet-controlled
territory.
Preparations
for Operation Barbarossa
Main
articles: The Holocaust in Belarus, The Holocaust in Ukraine and The Holocaust in Russia
On
13 March 1941, in the lead-up to Operation Barbarossa, the planned invasion
of the Soviet Union, Hitler dictated his "Guidelines in Special Spheres
re: Directive No. 21 (Operation Barbarossa)". Sub-paragraph B specified
that Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler would be given "special
tasks" on direct orders from the Führer, which he would carry out
independently. This directive was intended to prevent friction between the
Wehrmacht and the SS in the upcoming offensive. Hitler also specified that
criminal acts against civilians perpetrated by members of the Wehrmacht during
the upcoming campaign would not be prosecuted in the military courts, and thus
would go unpunished.
In
a speech to his leading generals on 30 March 1941, Hitler described his
envisioned war against the Soviet Union. General Franz
Halder, the Army's Chief of Staff, described the speech:
Struggle between two ideologies. Scathing evaluation of Bolshevism, equals antisocial criminality. Communism immense future danger ... This a fight to the finish. If we do not accept this, we shall beat the enemy, but in thirty years we shall again confront the Communist foe. We don't make war to preserve the enemy ... Struggle against Russia: Extermination of Bolshevik Commissars and of the Communist intelligentsia ... Commissars and GPU personnel are criminals and must be treated as such. The struggle will differ from that in the west. In the east harshness now means mildness for the future.
Though
General Halder did not record any mention of Jews, German historian Andreas Hillgruber argued that because of
Hitler's frequent contemporary statements about the coming war of annihilation
against "Judeo-Bolshevism", his generals would have
understood Hitler's call for the destruction of the Soviet Union as also
comprising a call for the destruction of its Jewish population. The genocide
was often described using euphemisms such as "special tasks" and
"executive measures"; Einsatzgruppe victims were often
described as having been shot while trying to escape. In May 1941 Heydrich
verbally passed on the order to kill the Soviet Jews to the SiPo NCO School in
Pretzsch, where the commanders of the reorganised Einsatzgruppen were
being trained for Operation Barbarossa. In spring 1941, Heydrich and the First
Quartermaster of the German Army, General Eduard
Wagner, successfully completed negotiations for co-operation between the Einsatzgruppen
and the German Army to allow the implementation of the "special
tasks". Following the Heydrich-Wagner agreement on 28 April 1941, Field
Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch ordered that when
Operation Barbarossa began, all German Army commanders were to immediately
identify and register all Jews in occupied areas in the Soviet Union, and fully
co-operate with the Einsatzgruppen.
In
further meetings held in June 1941 Himmler outlined to top SS leaders the
regime's intention to reduce the population of the Soviet Union by 30 million
people, not only through direct killing of those considered racially inferior, but by depriving
the remainder of food and other necessities of life.
Organisation
starting in 1941
Further
information: List of Einsatzgruppen
For
Operation Barbarossa, initially four Einsatzgruppen were created, each
numbering 500–990 men to comprise a total force of 3,000. Einsatzgruppen
A, B, and C were to be attached to Army Groups North, Centre, and South; Einsatzgruppe
D was assigned to the 11th Army. The Einsatzgruppe for Special Purposes
operated in eastern Poland starting in July 1941. The Einsatzgruppen
were under the control of the RSHA, headed by Heydrich and later by his
successor, SS-Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Heydrich gave them a
mandate to secure the offices and papers of the Soviet state and Communist
Party; to liquidate all the higher cadres of the Soviet state; and to instigate
and encourage pogroms against Jewish populations. The men of the Einsatzgruppen
were recruited from the SD, Gestapo, Kriminalpolizei
(Kripo), Orpo, and Waffen-SS. Each Einsatzgruppe was under the
operational control of the Higher SS Police Chiefs in its area of
operations. In May 1941 General Wagner and SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg agreed that the Einsatzgruppen
in front-line areas were to operate under army command, while the army provided
the Einsatzgruppen with all necessary logistical support.
Each
Einsatzgruppe was led by SD, Gestapo, and Kripo officers, and its
members included recruits from the Orpo, Waffen-SS, and local volunteers
such as militia groups. Each death squad followed its assigned army as they advanced
into the Soviet Union. Each Einsatzgruppe was assigned a reserve
battalion of Orpos and Waffen-SS as well as support personnel such as
drivers and radio operators. During the course of their operations, the Einsatzgruppen
commanders received assistance from the Wehrmacht. Heydrich acted under orders
from Reichsführer-SS Himmler, who supplied security forces on an
"as needed" basis to the local SS and Police Leaders.
Many
Einsatzgruppe leaders were highly educated; for example, nine of
seventeen leaders of Einsatzgruppe A held doctorate
degrees. Three Einsatzgruppen were commanded by holders of doctorates,
one of whom (SS-Gruppenführer Otto Rasch)
held a double doctorate.
Additional
Einsatzgruppen were created as additional territory was conquered. Einsatzgruppe
E operated in Independent State of Croatia under three commanders, SS-Obersturmbannführer
Ludwig Teichmann, SS-Standartenführer Günther Herrmann, and lastly SS-Standartenführer
Wilhelm
Fuchs. The unit was subdivided into five Einsatzkommandos located in
Vinkovci, Sarajevo,
Banja Luka,
Knin, and Zagreb. Einsatzgruppe
F worked with Army Group South. Einsatzgruppe G operated in Romania, Hungary,
and Ukraine, commanded by SS-Standartenführer Dr. Josef Kreuzer. Einsatzgruppe
H was assigned to Slovakia. Einsatzgruppen K and L, under SS-Oberführer
Dr. Emanuel Schäfer and SS-Standartenführer Dr. Ludwig Hahn,
worked alongside 5th and 6th
Panzer Armies during the Ardennes offensive. Hahn had previously been in
command of Einsatzgruppe Griechenland in Greece.
Other
Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos included Einsatzgruppe
Iltis (operated in Carinthia, on the border between Slovenia and Austria)
under SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel, Einsatzgruppe Jugoslawien
(Yugoslavia) Einsatzkommando Luxemburg (Luxembourg), Einsatzgruppe
Norwegen (Norway) commanded by SS-Oberführer Dr. Franz Walter
Stahlecker, Einsatzgruppe Serbien (Yugoslavia) under SS-Standartenführer
Wilhelm
Fuchs and SS-Gruppenführer August Meysner, Einsatzkommando Tilsit
(Lithuania, Poland), and Einsatzgruppe Tunis (Tunis), commanded by
SS-Obersturmbannführer Walter
Rauff.
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The surviving teenage
son of this murdered family is brought up to the murder site. He was then
murdered by a shot to the neck by the German officer standing behind him.
Zboriv, Ukraine, 5 July 1941.
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Killings
in the Soviet Union
After
the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the Einsatzgruppen's
main assignment was to kill civilians, as in Poland, but this time its targets
specifically included Soviet Communist Party commissars and Jews. In a letter
dated 2 July 1941 Heydrich communicated to his SS and Police Leaders that the Einsatzgruppen
were to execute all senior and middle ranking Comintern officials; all senior
and middle ranking members of the central, provincial, and district committees
of the Communist Party; extremist and radical Communist Party members; people's
commissars; and Jews in party and government posts. Open-ended instructions
were given to execute "other radical elements (saboteurs, propagandists,
snipers, assassins, agitators, etc.)." He instructed that any pogroms
spontaneously initiated by the occupants of the conquered territories were to
be quietly encouraged. On 8 July, he announced that all Jews were to be
regarded as partisans, and gave the order for all male Jews between the ages of
15 and 45 to be shot. On 17 July Heydrich ordered that the Einsatzgruppen
were to kill all Jewish Red Army prisoners of war, plus all Red Army prisoners
of war from Georgia and Central Asia, as they too might be Jews. Unlike in
Germany, where the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 defined as Jewish anyone with
at least three Jewish grandparents, the Einsatzgruppen defined as Jewish
anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent; in either case, whether or not the
person practised the religion was irrelevant.
As
the invasion began, pogroms did break out, particularly in Latvia, Lithuania,
and Ukraine. Some of these were provoked by the Germans. Within the first few
weeks of Operation Barbarossa, 40 pogroms led to the deaths of 10,000 Jews, and
by the end of 1941 some 60 pogroms had taken place, claiming as many as 24,000
victims. Canadian historian Erich Haberer has written that incidents such as
the Jedwabne pogrom were not incidental, but rather
"integral" to the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, as without local
help, the Nazis could not have murdered so many so quickly. However, SS-Brigadeführer
Franz Walter Stahlecker, commander of Einstazgruppe
A, reported to his superiors in mid-October that the residents of Lithuania
were not spontaneously starting pogroms, and secret assistance by the Germans
was undertaken. A similar reticence was noted by Einsatzgruppe B in
Russia and Belarus and Einsatzgruppe C in Ukraine; the further east the Einsatzgruppen
travelled, the less likely the residents were to be prompted into killing their
Jewish neighbours.
All
four main Einsatzgruppen took part in mass shootings from the early days
of the war. Initially the targets were adult Jewish men, but by August the net
had been widened to include women, children, and the elderly—the entire Jewish
population. Initially there was a semblance of legality given to the shootings,
with trumped-up charges being read out (arson, sabotage, black marketeering, or
refusal to work, for example) and victims being killed by a firing squad. As
this method proved too slow, the Einsatzkommandos began to take their
victims out in larger groups and shot them next to, or even inside, mass graves
that had been prepared. Some Einsatzkommandos started to use automatic
weapons, with survivors being killed with a pistol shot.
As
word of the massacres got out, many Jews fled; in Ukraine, 70 to 90 per cent of
the Jews ran away. This was seen by the leader of Einsatzkommando VI as
beneficial, as it would save the regime the costs of deporting the victims
further east over the Urals. In other areas the invasion was so successful that
the Einsatzgruppen had insufficient forces to immediately kill all the
Jews in the conquered territories. A situation report from Einsatzgruppe
C in September 1941 noted that not all Jews were members of the Bolshevist
apparatus, and suggested that the total elimination of Jewry would have a
negative impact on the economy and the food supply. The Nazis began to round
their victims up into concentration camps and ghettos and rural districts were
for the most part rendered Judenfrei (free of Jews). Jewish councils were set up
in major cities and forced labour gangs were established to make use of the
Jews as slave labour until they were totally eliminated, a goal that was
postponed until 1942.
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A member of
Einsatzgruppe D is about to shoot a man sitting by a mass grave in Vinnytsia,
Ukraine in 1942. Present in the background are members of the German Army, the
German Labor Service, and the Hitler Youth. The back of the photograph is
inscribed "The last Jew in Vinnitsa"
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Babi
Yar
Main
article: Babi Yar
The
largest mass shooting perpetrated by the Einsatzgruppen took place on 29
and 30 September 1941 at Babi Yar, a ravine northwest of Kiev, a city in
Ukraine that had fallen to the Germans on 19 September. The perpetrators
included a company of Waffen-SS attached to Einsatzgruppe C under
Rasch, members of Sonderkommando 4a under SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln, and some Ukrainian auxiliary police. The Jews of Kiev were told
to report to a certain street corner on 29 September; anyone who disobeyed
would be shot. Since word of massacres in other areas had not yet reached Kiev
and the assembly point was near the train station, they assumed they were being
deported. People showed up at the rendezvous point in large numbers, laden with
possessions and food for the journey.
After
being marched two miles north-west of the city centre, the victims encountered
a barbed wire barrier and numerous Ukrainian police and German troops. Thirty
or forty people at a time were told to leave their possessions and were
escorted through a narrow passageway lined with soldiers brandishing clubs.
Anyone who tried to escape was beaten. Soon the victims reached an open area,
where they were forced to strip, and then were herded down into the ravine.
People were forced to lie down in rows on top of the bodies of other victims,
and they were shot in the back of the head or the neck by members of the
execution squads.
The
murders continued for two days, claiming a total of 33,771 victims. Sand was
shovelled and bulldozed over the bodies and the sides of the ravine were
dynamited to bring down more material. Anton Heidborn, a member of Sonderkommando
4a, later testified that three days later that there were still people alive
among the corpses. Heidborn spent the next few days helping smooth out the
"millions" of banknotes taken from the victims' possessions. The
clothing was taken away, destined to be re-used by German citizens. Jeckeln's
troops shot more than 100,000 Jews by the end of October.
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Einsatzgruppe
A members shoot Jews on the outskirts of Kovno, 1941-1942. Novosti Press,
Moscow
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Killings
in the Baltic states
Main
articles: The Holocaust
in Lithuania, The Holocaust in
Latvia and The Holocaust
in Estonia
Einsatzgruppe
A operated in the formerly Soviet-occupied Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia,
and Lithuania. According to its own reports to Himmler, Einsatzgruppe A
killed almost 140,000 people in the five months following the invasion: 136,421
Jews, 1,064 Communists, 653 people with mental illnesses, 56 partisans, 44
Poles, five Gypsies, and one Armenian were reported killed between 22 June and
25 November 1941.
Upon
entering Kaunas, Lithuania, on 25 June 1941, the Einsatzgruppe released
the criminals from the local jail and encouraged them to join the pogrom which
was underway. Between 23–27 June 1941, 4,000 Jews were killed on the streets of
Kaunas and in nearby open pits and ditches. Particularly active in the Kaunas
pogrom was the so-called "Death Dealer of Kaunas", a young man who
murdered Jews with a crowbar at the Lietukis Garage before a large crowd that
cheered each killing with much applause; he occasionally paused to play the
Lithuanian national anthem "Tautiška giesmė"
on his accordion before resuming the killings.
As
Einsatzgruppe A advanced into Lithuania, it actively recruited local
nationalists and antisemitic groups. In July 1941, members of the Baltaraisciai
movement joined the massacres. A pogrom in Riga in early July killed 400 Jews.
Latvian nationalist Viktors Arājs
and his supporters undertook a campaign of arson against synagogues. On 2 July,
Einsatzgruppe A commander Stahlecker appointed Arājs to head the Arajs Kommando, a Sonderkommando
of about 300 men, mostly university students. Together, Einsatzgruppe A
and the Arājs Kommando killed 2,300 Jews in Riga on 6–7 July. Within six
months, Arājs and his men would kill about half of Latvia's Jewish population.
Local
officials, the Selbstschutz, and the Hilfspolizei (Auxiliary Police) played
a key role in rounding up and massacring Jewish Lithuanians, Latvians, and
Estonians. These groups helped the Einsatzgruppen and other killing
units to quickly identify Jews. The Hilfspolizei, consisting of
auxiliary police organised by the Germans and recruited from former Latvian
Army and police officers, ex-Aizsargi, members
of the Pērkonkrusts, and
university students, assisted in the murder of Latvia's Jewish citizens.
Similar units were created elsewhere, and provided much of the manpower for the
Holocaust in Eastern Europe.
With
the creation of units such as the Arājs Kommando, the Rollkommando Hamann
in Lithuania, and the Omakaitse militia
in Estonia, the attacks changed from the spontaneous mob violence of the
pogroms to more systematic massacres. With extensive local help, Einsatzgruppe
A was the first Einsatzgruppe to attempt to systematically exterminate
all the Jews in its area. Latvian historian Modris Eksteins wrote:
Of the roughly 83,000 Jews who fell into German hands in Latvia, not more than 900 survived; and of the more than 20,000 Western Jews sent into Latvia, only some 800 lived through the deportation until liberation. This was the highest percentage of eradication in all of Europe.
In
late 1941, the Einsatzkommandos settled into headquarters in Kovno,
Riga, and Tallinn. Einsatzgruppe A grew less mobile and faced problems
because of its small size. The Germans relied increasingly on the Arājs
Kommando and similar groups to perform massacres of Jews.
Such
extensive and enthusiastic collaboration with the Einsatzgruppen has
been attributed to several factors. Since the Russian
Revolution of 1905, the Kresy Wschodnie
and other borderlands had experienced a political culture of violence. The
period of Soviet rule had been profoundly traumatic for residents of the Baltic
states and areas that had been part of Poland until 1939; the population was
brutalised and terrorised by the imposed Soviet rule, and the existing familiar
structures of society were destroyed.
Historian
Erich Haberer notes that many survived and made sense of the "totalitarian
atomization" of society by seeking conformity with communism. As a result,
by the time of the German invasion in 1941, many had come to see conformity
with a totalitarian regime as socially acceptable behaviour; thus, people
simply transferred their allegiance to the German regime when it arrived. Some
who had collaborated with the Soviet regime sought to divert attention from
themselves by naming Jews as collaborators and killing them.
Rumbula
Main
article: Rumbula massacre
In
November 1941 Himmler was dissatisfied with the pace of the exterminations in
Latvia, as he intended to move Jews from Germany into the area. He assigned SS-Obergruppenführer
Jeckeln, one of the perpetrators of the Babi Yar massacre, to liquidate the Riga ghetto. Jeckeln selected a site about
10 kilometres (6.2 mi) southeast of Riga near the Rumbula railway station,
and had 300 Russian prisoners of war prepare the site by digging pits in which
to bury the victims. Jeckeln organised around 1,700 men, including 300 members
of the Arajs Kommando, 50 German SD men, and 50 Latvian guards, most of
whom had already participated in mass killings of civilians. These troops were
supplemented by Latvians, including members of the Riga city police, battalion
police, and ghetto guards. Around 1,500 able-bodied Jews would be spared
execution so their slave labour could be exploited; a thousand men were
relocated to a fenced-off area within the ghetto and 500 women were temporarily
housed in a prison and later moved to a separate nearby ghetto, where they were
put to work mending uniforms.
Although
Rumbula was on the rail line, Jeckeln decided that the victims should travel on
foot from Riga to the execution ground. Trucks and buses were arranged to carry
children and the elderly. The victims were told that they were being relocated,
and were advised to bring up to 20 kilograms (44 lb) of possessions. The
first day of executions, 30 November 1941, began with the perpetrators rousing
and assembling the victims at 4:00 am. The victims were moved in columns
of a thousand people toward the execution ground. As they walked, some SS men
went up and down the line, shooting people who could not keep up the pace or
who tried to run away or rest.
When
the columns neared the prepared execution site, the victims were driven some
270 metres (300 yd) from the road into the forest, where any possessions
that had not yet been abandoned were seized. Here the victims were split into
groups of fifty and taken deeper into the forest, near the pits, where they
were ordered to strip. The victims were driven into the prepared trenches, made
to lie down, and shot in the head or the back of the neck by members of
Jeckeln's bodyguard. Around 13,000 Jews from Riga were killed at the pits that
day, along with a thousand Jews from Berlin who had just arrived by train. On
the second day of the operation, 8 December 1941, the remaining 10,000 Jews of
Riga were killed in the same way. About a thousand were killed on the streets
of the city or on the way to the site, bringing the total deaths for the
two-day extermination to 25,000 people. For his part in organising the
massacre, Jeckeln was promoted to Leader of the SS Upper Section, Ostland.
Second
Sweep
Einsatzgruppe B, C, and D did not immediately follow Einsatzgruppe
A's example in systematically killing all Jews in their areas. The Einsatzgruppe
commanders, with the exception of Einsatzgruppe A's Stahlecker, were of
the opinion by the fall of 1941 that it was impossible to kill the entire
Jewish population of the Soviet Union in one sweep, and thought the killings
should stop. An Einsatzgruppe report dated 17 September advised that the
Germans would be better off using any skilled Jews as labourers rather than
shooting them. Also, in some areas poor weather and a lack of transportation
led to a slowdown in deportations of Jews from points further west. Thus, an
interval passed between the first round of Einsatzgruppen massacres in
summer and fall, and what American historian Raul Hilberg called the second sweep, which
started in December 1941 and lasted into the summer of 1942. During the
interval, the surviving Jews were forced into ghettos.
Einsatzgruppe
A had already murdered almost all Jews in its area, so it shifted its
operations into Belarus to assist Einsatzgruppe B. In Dnepropetrovsk in February 1942, Einsatzgruppe
D reduced the city's Jewish population from 30,000 to 702 over the course of
four days. The German Order Police and local collaborators provided the extra
manpower needed to perform all the shootings. Haberer wrote that, as in the
Baltic states, the Germans could not have killed so many Jews so quickly
without local help. He points out that the ratio of Order Police to auxiliaries
was 1 to 10 in both Ukraine and Belarus. In rural areas the proportion was 1 to
20. This meant that most Ukrainian and Belarusian Jews were killed by fellow
Ukrainians and Belarusians commanded by German officers rather than by Germans.
The
second wave of exterminations in the Soviet Union met with armed resistance in
some areas, though the chance of success was poor. Weapons were typically
primitive or home-made. Communications were impossible between ghettos in
various cities, so there was no way to create a unified strategy. Few in the
ghetto leadership supported resistance for fear of reprisals on the ghetto
residents. Mass break-outs were sometimes attempted, though survival in the
forest was nearly impossible due to the lack of food and the fact that escapees
were often tracked down and killed.
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A destroyed
Magirus-Deutz van found in 1945 in Koło (Kolo), Poland, not far from the Kulmhof
(Chelmno) extermination camp. The same type of van was used by the Nazis for
suffocation, with the exhaust fumes diverted into the sealed rear compartment
where the victims were locked in. This particular van has not been modified
yet, as explained by World
War II Today (read) sourced to Office of the United States Chief Counsel
for Prosecution of Axis Criminality publication Nazi Conspiracy and
Aggression – Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Office, 1946, Vol III, p. 418;
nevertheless it gives a good idea about the whole process.
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Transition
to gassing
See
also: Final Solution
After
a time, Himmler found that the killing methods used by the Einsatzgruppen
were inefficient: they were costly, demoralising for the troops, and sometimes
did not kill the victims quickly enough. Many of the troops found the massacres
to be difficult if not impossible to perform. Some of the perpetrators suffered
physical and mental health problems, and many turned to drink. Historian Christopher
Browning notes three categories of potential perpetrators: those who were eager
to participate right from the start, those who participated in spite of moral
qualms because they were ordered to do so, and a significant minority who
refused to take part. A few men spontaneously became excessively brutal in
their killing methods and their zeal for the task. Commander of Einsatzgruppe
D, SS-Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf, particularly noted this propensity
towards excess, and ordered that any man who was too eager to participate or
too brutal should not perform any further executions.
During
a visit to Minsk in August 1941, Himmler witnessed an Einsatzgruppen
mass execution first-hand and concluded that shooting Jews was too stressful
for his men. By November he made arrangements for any SS men suffering ill
health from having participated in executions should be provided with rest and
mental health care. He also decided a transition should be made to gassing the
victims, especially the women and children, and ordered the recruitment of
expendable native auxiliaries who could assist with the murders. Gas vans,
which had been used previously to kill mental patients, began to see service by
all four main Einsatzgruppen from 1942. However, the gas vans were not
popular with the Einsatzkommandos, because removing the dead bodies from
the van and burying them was a horrible ordeal. Prisoners or auxiliaries were
often assigned to do this task so as to spare the SS men the trauma. Some of
the early mass killings at extermination camps
used carbon monoxide fumes produced by diesel engines, similar to the method
used in gas vans, but by as early as September 1941 experiments were begun at Auschwitz
using Zyklon B, a cyanide-based pesticide gas.
Plans
for the total eradication of the Jewish population of Europe—eleven million
people—were formalised at the Wannsee Conference,
held on 20 January 1942. Some would be worked to
death, and the rest would be killed in the implementation of the Final
Solution of the Jewish question
(German: Die
Endlösung der Judenfrage).
Permanent killing centres at Auschwitz, Sobibor,
Treblinka, and other Nazi extermination
camps replaced mobile death squads as the primary method of mass killing. The Einsatzgruppen
remained active, however, and were put to work fighting partisans, particularly
in Belarus.
After
the fall of Stalingrad
in February 1943, Himmler realised that Germany would likely lose the war, and
ordered the formation of a special task force, Sonderkommando
1005, under SS-Standartenführer Paul Blobel. The unit's assignment
was to visit mass graves all along the Eastern
Front to exhume bodies and burn them in an attempt to cover up the
genocide. The task remained unfinished at the end of the war, and many mass
graves remain unmarked and unexcavated.
By
1944 the Red Army had begun to push the German forces out of Eastern Europe,
and the Einsatzgruppen retreated alongside the Wehrmacht. By late 1944,
most Einsatzgruppen personnel had been folded into Waffen-SS
combat units or transferred to permanent death camps. Hilberg estimates that
between 1941 and 1945 the Einsatzgruppen and related agencies killed
more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews. The total number of
Jews murdered during the war is estimated at 5.5 to six million people.
Plans
for the Middle East and Britain
According
to research by German historians Klaus-Michael
Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, an Einsatzgruppe was created in
1942 to kill the half-million Jews living in the British
Mandate of Palestine and the 50,000 Jews of Egypt. Einsatzgrupppe Egypt, standing by in Athens, was prepared to go to Palestine once German
forces arrived there. SS-Obersturmbannführer Walter Rauff was to lead the unit. Given
its small staff of only 24 men, Einsatzgrupppe Egypt would have needed
help from local residents and from the Afrika Korps to complete their
assignment. Its members planned to enlist collaborators from the local
population to perform the killings under German leadership. Former Iraqi prime
minister Rashid Ali
al-Gaylani and the Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem Haj Amin
al-Husseini played roles, engaging in antisemitic radio propaganda,
preparing to recruit volunteers, and in raising an Arab-German Battalion that
would also follow Einsatzgrupppe Egypt to the Middle East. Commander of
the Afrika Korps Field Marshal Erwin Rommel promised the co-operation of
his corps in these assignments. In an agreement signed in July 1942 between the
two groups, Rommel promised logistical support for Einsatzgrupppe Egypt,
which was to serve under command of the Wehrmacht. The group never left Greece,
however; the plans were set aside after the Allied victory at the Battle of El
Alamein.
Had
Operation Sea Lion,
the German plan for an invasion of the United Kingdom been launched, six Einsatzgruppen
were scheduled to follow the invasion force into Britain. They were provided
with a list called die Sonderfahndungsliste, G.B. ("Special Search
List, G.B"), known as The Black Book
after the war, of 2,300 people to be immediately imprisoned by the Gestapo. The
list included Churchill, members of the cabinet, prominent journalists and
authors, and members of the Czechoslovak
government-in-exile.
 |
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Page 6 of the Jäger
Report shows the number of people killed by Einsatzkommando III alone in
the five-month period covered by the report as 137,346.
|
Jäger
Report
The
Einsatzgruppen kept official records of many of their massacres and
provided detailed reports to their superiors. The Jäger Report, filed by Commander SS-Standartenführer
Karl Jäger on 1 December 1941 to his
superior, Stahlecker (head of Einsatzgruppe A), covers the activities of
Einsatzkommando III in Lithuania over the five-month period from 2 July
1941 to 25 November 1941.
Jäger's
report provides an almost daily running total of the liquidations of 137,346
people, the vast majority of them Jews. The report documents the exact date and
place of massacres, the number of victims, and their breakdown into categories
(Jews, Communists, criminals, and so on). Women were shot from the very
beginning, but initially in fewer numbers than men. Children were first
included in the tally starting in mid-August, when 3,207 people were murdered
in Rokiškis on 15–16 August 1941. For the most
part the report does not give any military justification for the killings;
people were killed solely because they were Jews. In total, the report lists
over 100 executions in 71 different locations. Jäger wrote: "I can state
today that the goal of solving the Jewish problem in Lithuania has been reached
by Einsatzkommando 3. There are no more Jews in Lithuania, apart from
working Jews and their families." In a February 1942 addendum to the
report, Jäger increased the total number of victims to 138,272, giving a
breakdown of 48,252 men, 55,556 women, and 34,464 children. Only 1,851 of the
victims were non-Jewish.
Jäger
escaped capture by the Allies when the war ended. He lived in Heidelberg under
his own name until his report was discovered in March 1959. Arrested and
charged, Jäger committed suicide on 22 June 1959 in a Hohenasperg prison while
awaiting trial for his crimes.
Involvement
of the Wehrmacht
Main
article: War crimes of the Wehrmacht
The
killings took place with the knowledge and support of the German Army in the
east. On 10 October 1941 Field Marshal Walther von Reichenau drafted an order to be
read to the German Sixth Army on the Eastern Front. Now
known as the Severity Order, it read in part:
The most important objective of this campaign against the Jewish-Bolshevik system is the complete destruction of its sources of power and the extermination of the Asiatic influence in European civilization ... In this eastern theatre, the soldier is not only a man fighting in accordance with the rules of the art of war, but also the ruthless standard bearer of a national conception ... For this reason the soldier must learn fully to appreciate the necessity for the severe but just retribution that must be meted out to the subhuman species of Jewry.
Field
Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt of Army Group South expressed
his "complete agreement" with the order. He sent out a circular to
the generals under his command urging them to release their own versions and to
impress upon their troops the need to exterminate the Jews. General Erich von Manstein, in an order to his troops on
20 November, stated that "the Jewish-Bolshevist system must be
exterminated once and for all." Manstein sent a letter to Einsatzgruppe
D commanding officer Ohlendorf complaining that it was unfair that the SS was
keeping all of the murdered Jews' wristwatches for themselves instead of
sharing with the army.
Beyond
this trivial complaint, the Army and the Einsatzgruppen worked closely
and effectively. On 6 July 1941 Einsatzkommando 4b of Einsatzgruppe
C reported that "Armed forces surprisingly welcome hostility against the
Jews". On 8 September, Einsatzgruppe D reported that relations with
the German Army were "excellent". In the same month, Stahlecker of Einsatzgruppe
A wrote that Army Group North had been exemplary in co-operating with the
exterminations and that relations with the 4th
Panzer Army, commanded by General Erich
Hoepner, were "very close, almost cordial". In the south, the
Romanian Army worked closely with Einsatzgruppe D to massacre Ukrainian
Jews, killing around 26,000 Jews in the Odessa massacre. Moreover, most people on the
home front in Germany had some idea of the massacres being committed by the Einsatzgruppen.
British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper noted that although Himmler had forbidden
photographs of the killings, it was common for both the men of the Einsatzgruppen
and for bystanders to take pictures to send to their loved ones, which he felt
suggested widespread approval of the massacres.
The
Wehrmacht tried to justify their considerable involvement in the Einsatzgruppen
massacres as being anti-partisan operations rather than racist attacks, but
Hillgruber wrote that this was just an excuse. He states that those German
generals who claimed that the Einsatzgruppen were a necessary
anti-partisan response were lying, and maintained that the slaughter of about
2.2 million defenceless civilians for reasons of racist ideology cannot be
justified.
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Otto Ohlendorf
testifying on his own behalf in the Einsatzgruppen Trial in Nuremberg, Germany,
1947/48.
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Einsatzgruppen
Trial
After
the close of the World War II, 24 senior leaders of the Einsatzgruppen
were prosecuted in the Einsatzgruppen Trial in
1947–48, part of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials held under
United States military authority. The men were charged with crimes against
humanity, war crimes, and membership in the SS (which had been declared a
criminal organization). Fourteen death sentences and two life sentences were
among the judgments; only four executions were carried out, on 7 June 1951; the
rest were reduced to lesser sentences. Four additional Einsatzgruppe
leaders were later tried and executed by other nations.
Several
Einsatzgruppen leaders, including Ohlendorf, claimed at the trial to
have received an order before Operation Barbarossa requiring them to murder all
Soviet Jews. To date no evidence has been found that such an order was ever
issued. German prosecutor Alfred Streim noted that if such an order had been
given, post-war courts would only have been able to convict the Einsatzgruppen
leaders as accomplices to mass murder. However, if it could be
established that the Einsatzgruppen had committed mass murder without
orders, then they could have been convicted as perpetrators of mass
murder, and hence could have received stiffer sentences, including capital
punishment.
Streim
postulated that the existence of an early comprehensive order was a fabrication
created for use in Ohlendorf's defence. This theory is now widely accepted by
historians. German historian Peter Longerich notes that most orders received by
the Einsatzgruppen leaders—especially when they were being ordered to
carry out criminal activities—were vague, and couched in terminology that had a
specific meaning for members of the regime. Leaders were given briefings about
the need to be "severe" and "firm"; all Jews were to be
viewed as potential enemies that had to be dealt with ruthlessly. British
historian Sir Ian Kershaw argues that Hitler's apocalyptic remarks before
Barbarossa about the necessity for a war without mercy to
"annihilate" the forces of "Judeo-Bolshevism" were
interpreted by Einsatzgruppen commanders as permission and encouragement
to engage in extreme antisemitic violence, with each Einsatzgruppen
commander to use his own discretion about how far he was prepared to go.
Most
of the perpetrators of Nazi war crimes were never charged, and returned
unremarked to civilian life. The West German Central Prosecution Office of Nazi
War Criminals only charged about a hundred former Einsatzgruppe members
with war crimes. And as time went on, it became more difficult to obtain
prosecutions; witnesses grew older and were less likely to be able to offer
valuable testimony. Funding for trials was inadequate, and the governments of
Austria and Germany became less interested in obtaining convictions for wartime
events, preferring to forget the Nazi past.
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