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

1941–1944’ in VfZ 52 (2004), 1–75, demonstrates

that it is impossible to calculate the percentage of soldiers who were involved in crimes.

See most recently Dieter Pohl, Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht. Deutsche Militärbesatz-

ung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion 1941–1943 (Munich, 2008).

176. NOKW 2510.

177. NOKW 1654.

178. IMT xxxiv. 129 ff., 4064-PS.

179. NOKW 1693.

180. Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 223 ff.

181. See ibid. 235. At the mass murder of the Kiev Jews in September 1941, for example, the leaflets that summoned the Jews to the collection points were printed by a Wehrmacht

propaganda company (ZSt, 204 AR-Z 269/60, judgement of 29 Nov. 1968). A loud-

speaker van from a propaganda company was sent for the executions in Zhitomir (see

above, p. 200). See also NO 4234, interrogation of Braune, leader of Commando 11b:

‘The 11th Army had given an order that the executions in Sinfernopol should be

completed before Christmas. We therefore received trucks, petrol and personnel

from the army for this purpose.’

182. Lutsk (see above, p. 200); Kodyma (p. 202); Liepa

$ ja (Libau, p. 196). Members of the

Military Police took part in the shooting of the Jews of Feodosia in December 1941 (N.

Kunz, ‘Feld- und Ortskommandanturen auf der Krim und der Judenmord’, in W. Kaiser,

ed., Täter im Vernichtungskrieg; der Überfall auf die Sowjetunion und der Völkermord an

den Juden (Berlin, 2002), 68–9).

183. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 537–8.

184. Thus the order from Reichenau of 10 August forbade Wehrmacht members to take

part in shootings that had not been ordered by the military; however, it permitted the

deployment of teams of men to seal off certain areas if the SD approached the local

commandant (NOKW 1654). The commanding general of the xxx corps also banned

voluntary participation in executions on 2 August 1941; these had to be under the

command of army officers (NOKW 2963). Cf. Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgrupppen’, 240–1,

who has further details on this issue.

185. Compilation in Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 228 ff.

186. Including Lvov and Tarnopol: details in Longerich, Politik, 338 and 340. In Uman on 21

October members of the Wehrmacht took part in excesses committed by the Ukrain-

ian militia against the Jewish population (EM 119).

187. For example from the civilian camps set up by the Wehrmacht, including Minsk and

Zwiahel: (details in Longerich, Politik, 336 and 674). For further examples see Kraus-

nick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 236.

Notes to pages 243–245

519

188. For example by the intelligence officer of the 17th Army on 22 September 1941, who

asked Sonderkommando 4b for reprisals against the Jews in Kremenchuk because of

sabotage attacks (NOKW 2272); other examples include Zhitomir, Chmielnik, and

Zwiahel (details in Longerich, Politik, 383, 343f, 338 and 368).

189. See for example EM 32 (EG B): ‘With the assistance of the Secret Field Police,

intelligence troops, and the Military Police the series of operations against Bolshevist

agents, political Commissars, members of the NKVD, etc. was continued. In Barano-

wicze a further 381 people were liquidated. They were Jewish activists, functionaries

and looters.’ In EM 128 Einsatzgruppe C complains that despite excellent cooperation

with the Wehrmacht in general terms, when it came to the ‘Jewish question’, there was

‘no complete understanding demonstrated by the lower Wehrmacht agencies, with the

exception of the Secret Field Police, the intelligence service, and intelligence officers.

For further examples see Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 242–3; Theo Schulte, The

German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia (Oxford, 1989), 203; Hannes

Heer, ‘The Logic of the War of Extermination: The Wehrmacht and the Anti-Partisan

War of Extermination’, in Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann, eds, War of Extermin-

ation: The German Military in World War II 1941–1944 (New York, 2004), 92–126,

Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 538–9.

190. Bila Zerkva (see above, p. 226), Einsatzkommando Tilsit (p. 197). The massacre at Babi Yar was planned on 26 September in the presence of the city commandant; the one in

Zhitomir was planned in conjunction with the field commandant’s office (see above,

pp. 224 and 226). Field and city commandants were also involved in preparations for the

major ‘operations’ against the Jews in Kharkov in which 20,000 people were killed in

December 1941 and January 1942 (Bernd Boll and Hans Safrian, ‘On the Way to Stalingrad:

The 6th Army 1941/42’, in Heer and Naumann, eds, War of Extermination, 237–71).

Similar cooperation has been shown to have taken place in the Crimea; see Kunz, ‘Feld-

and Ortskommandanturen’. Pohl, Wehrmacht, 248ff. continous these research findings

191. Reference should be made here once more to the situation in Belarus as described by

Gerlach: in the autumn and winter of 1941 the large-scale ‘ghetto operations’ were

taking place precisely in the eastern area that was under military occupation (Genlach,

Kalkulierte Morde, 585 ff.). The Commandant responsible for the Rear Army Area in

the southern segment of the front, 553, reported that more than 20,000 Jews were killed

between August 1941 and summer 1942 (Schulte, Army, 231). There has not yet been a

systematic, comprehensive investigation of annihilation policies in the occupied Soviet

Union that draws a comparison between military areas and those under civilian

administration. It would only be able to come to valid conclusions with the help of a

comprehensive assessment of the materials in East European archives.

192. State Archive. Minsk, 378-1-698 (copy in USHM, Minsk-films, roll 2), Commandant in

Belarus, 10 Oct. 1941.

193. BAM, RH 26–707/2, 10 Nov. 1941.

194. NA, T 77, R 1179.

195. State Archive, Minsk, 378-1-698 (copy in USHM, Minsk-films, roll 2), Commandant in

Belarus, 24 Nov. 1941.

196. BAM, RH 26–707/5, 8 Dec. 1941.

197. See above, p. 232 ff. On this ‘cleansing operation’ by the Wehrmacht, see in particular Hannes Heer, ‘Killing Fields: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belorussia 1941–

1942’, in Heer and Naumann, eds, War of Extermination, pp. 55–79.

520

Notes to pages 246–249

198. BAM, RH 26–221/21, Commander of the 350th Infantry Regiment, 19 Aug. 1941; cf.

Heer, ‘Killing Fields’, 66–7.

199. Christian Gerlach, ‘German Economic Interests, Occupation Policy and the Murder of the Jews in Belorussia, 1941/43’ in Ulrich Herbert, ed., National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, 2000), 210–39, 231.

200. See the examples in Boll and Safrian, ‘Way’, 267–8 (for the 6th Army).

201. See in particular Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front 1941–1945: German Troops and

the Barbarization of Warfare (Houndmills, 1985); Truman Anderson, ‘Die 62. Infant-

erie-Division. Repressalien im Heeresgebiet Süd, Oktober bis Dezember 1941’, in Heer

and Naumann, Vernichtungskrieg, 297–323, proves that for this formation and the

Army Rear Area there were isolated ‘reprisal operations’