Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews by Peter Longerich (booksvooks TXT) 📕

half of September. 172 The group staff of Einsatzgruppe C reported in September that during the previous days ‘6 asocial elements

(Gypsies) and 55 Jews had been dealt with’, amongst others, and Sonder-

kommando 6 reported in October that it had apprehended a ‘band of Gypsies’

and executed 32 people. 173 The next evidence of the murder of Gypsies is for spring 1942, when large numbers were killed. 174

The Participation of the Wehrmacht in the Murders

It has already become clear as this part has progressed that the Wehrmacht

actively supported many of the ‘operations’ of the Einsatzgruppen and other SS

and police units. This prompts the question of how far the Wehrmacht itself

played an active and material role in the annihilation of the Jewish population of

the Soviet Union. 175 Numerous appeals from officers in the higher echelons of the Wehrmacht show quite distinctly that the ideological war of annihilation against

the ‘Jewish-Bolshevist complex’ was waged with the same intensity within the

ranks of the Wehrmacht itself as in the guidelines and orders issued by the

leadership at the beginning of the war.

According to an order for Panzer Group 4 of 2 May, the war that was by then

imminent was to be ‘the age-old battle of the Teutons versus the Slavs, the defence

of European culture in the face of a Muscovite-Asiatic deluge, resistance to the

onslaught of Jewish Bolshevism’. Every act in battle was to be ‘motivated by an

iron will to achieve the total, merciless annihilation of the enemy’, and there

should be in particular ‘no quarter given to the proponents of today’s Russian

Bolshevist system’. 176 The Commander of the 6th Army, Walther von Reichenau, spoke in an order dated 10 August of the ‘necessary execution of criminal,

Bolshevist, and mainly Jewish elements’ that would have to be carried out by

the organs of the Reichsführer SS. 177 The Commander of the 11th Army, Erich von Manstein, described ‘Jewry’ in an order of 20 November as ‘the middle-man

between the enemy at our backs and the remains of the Red Army that are still

fighting on and the red leaders’. 178 The Commander of the 17th Army, Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel, gave an order on 30 July not to take indiscriminate

Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population

243

reprisal measures against the civilian population but—if the deed could not be

pinned on to the Ukrainians—to concentrate on ‘Jewish and Communist inhab-

itants’, amongst whom the ‘Jewish Komsomol members’ in particular were to be

‘regarded as perpetrators of sabotage and responsible for forming young people

into gangs’. 179

What effect did orders and guidelines such as these have on the conduct of the

troops? This part has already demonstrated a high degree of cooperation between

the Wehrmacht on the one hand and the Police and the SS on the other. It was not

merely the case that the Wehrmacht was informed in full detail about the

shootings perpetrated by the SS and Police formations, as can be shown from

the reports reaching intelligence officers. 180 In addition, units of the Wehrmacht supported mass shootings by the Police and the SS in a variety of ways, such as

providing transport and munitions, for example. 181 Members of the Wehrmacht took part directly in these ‘operations’, either sealing off the areas in which they

took place or joining the firing squads themselves. 182 Christian Gerlach has provided a number of examples that prove how, during the conquest of Belarus

in the summer of 1941, front-line troops made attacks on Jews that sometimes

involved carrying out shootings. 183

Troop leaders sometimes evidently had some difficulty in keeping their soldiers’

participation in such executions within the bounds of ‘due order’. The fact that the

willing participation of soldiers in executions was repeatedly forbidden is an

indication of how volunteering in this manner was not merely confined to isolated

instances. 184 The same analysis can be made of the numerous orders that were issued by various Wehrmacht formations in the early months of the Russian

campaign that forbade the participation of soldiers in pogroms, looting, arbitrary

shootings, and other attacks on the Jewish civilian population. 185 That such attacks were part of the everyday reality of war can be demonstrated with a large number

of individual examples. 186

The role of the Wehrmacht in the annihilation of the Jewish civilian population

was by no means exhausted by instances of excess such as those, or by isolated

examples of support for the SS and Police during executions. Agencies and units

of the Wehrmacht, and in particular military intelligence, the security divisions,

the Secret Field Police, and the military police as well as local or field command

posts, did in fact cooperate so closely with the SS and the Police that one can

legitimately speak in this context of a systematic cooperation and division of

labour. ‘Suspect’ civilians—mostly Jews—were routinely handed over to the SD; 187

as the next section will show, the Wehrmacht delivered Jewish prisoners of war

and others defined by racist or political criteria, to the SS; Einsatzkommandos and

police units were requested by offices of the Wehrmacht for ‘cleansing’ or ‘pacifi-

cation operations’, or for ‘collective reprisal measures’; 188 intelligence officers, the military police and the Secret Field Police made themselves available for

‘operations’. 189 In putting anti-Jewish measures such as registration, marking out, 244

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

and ghettoization into place, local command posts created the structural conditions

for the murder of the Jews. In particular, it can be proved that large-scale murder

‘operations’ in the military zone of occupation were set up and carried out by the

relevant local or field command posts of the Wehrmacht in close consultation with

SS and Police units. 190 There is some evidence that the military occupation authorities showed a similar degree of cooperation in this respect as the civilian authorities

in the areas further to the west. 191

The role of the Wehrmacht in the annihilation of the Jewish civilian population

of the Soviet Union was not limited to the ideological indoctrination of the troops

and direct support for ‘operations’ carried out by the SD and the Police. Substan-

tial formations from the Eastern Army took part directly in the mass murder of

Jews within the broader context of large-scale operations. We have already seen

that Police Battalion 11 under the 707th Division carried out a ‘cleansing