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

second agreement, on the ‘Regulation for the Deployment of the

Security Police and the SD within Army Formations’, 17 the content of which had been the subject of discussion between the two organizations since February

1941. 18 According to the decree, ‘carrying out certain Security Police tasks in areas outside the force itself necessitates the deployment of special units of the

Security Police (SD) within the area of operations’. These special units would be

charged with commandeering materials and taking individuals into custody

within the Army Rear Areas and with taking steps to ‘investigate and combat

activities hostile to the Reich’ and informing the appropriate commanders within

the Rear Areas of the Army Group. They would ‘bear responsibility’ for carrying

out their tasks but take orders from the armies or the commanders of the Rear

Laying the Ground for Racial Annihilation

183

Areas of the Army Group ‘with respect to mobilization, supplies and accommo-

dation’. 19

This made it clear that the planned liquidation of ideologically hostile groups

within the army’s sphere of operation (commissars, Communist functionaries,

and the ‘intelligentsia’)—in so far as these groups had not already been arrested

and killed by the Wehrmacht during the battle itself—was the preserve of SS units,

who could count on the logistical support of the army in carrying it out.

It is possible that, in delimiting the authority of the Security Police vis-à-vis the

military in this way, the Army High Command was also aware that the orders of

the SS units were in fact to be couched in more precise terms over a broader area

than the wording of the OKH guidelines actually specified. In the case of the

corresponding order from the High Command with respect to the Regulation of

the Deployment of the Security Police and the SD for the war to be fought in the

Balkans (the ‘Marita’ and ‘Twenty-Five’ campaigns), issued on 2 April 1941, the list

of enemies included ‘Communists, Jews’ in general. 20 But it does not seem plausible that the relevant instructions for the Balkan war would have been

expressed in tougher terms than those for the war in Russia.

Two programmatic speeches by Hitler to the Wehrmacht generals in March are

important for an analysis of these orders. In these Hitler left no doubt as to what

the nature of the imminent war would be. On 17 March he said that ‘the

intelligentsia deployed by Stalin must be annihilated. The leadership machinery

of the Russian empire must be destroyed. It is necessary to use force of the most

brutal kind in the greater Russian area. ’21 From another speech by Hitler on 30

March the Chief of the General Staff, Halder, noted the following key ideas: ‘Battle

of two opposing world-views. Devastating judgement of Bolshevism, equivalent to

asocial criminality. Communism monstrous danger for the future. We have to

move away from the standpoint of soldierly camaraderie. Communists are not

comrades, before or after. This is a battle of annihilation. If we do not see it in

those terms then whilst we may beat the enemy, in 30 years we will be faced once

more by the Communist foe. We do not wage war in order to preserve the enemy

intact. Battle against Russia: annihilation of Bolshevist commissars and of the

Communist intelligentsia.’22

The ‘Decree on the Exercise of the Law and on Special Measures by the Troops’

signed by Hitler on 13 May ordered that criminal offences perpetrated by members

of the Wehrmacht on the civilian population in the East only be pursued by the

Wehrmacht judiciary in exceptional cases. ‘Criminal offences perpetrated by

civilian personnel’ were not to be investigated by (drumhead) courts martial but

their presumed perpetrators should instead be ‘dealt with’ or ‘expunged’ by troops

on the spot. ‘Collective violent measures’ were to be implemented against towns

where members of the armed forces had been attacked ‘insidiously and in an

underhand manner’. 23

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Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

‘Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars’ signed by the Com-

mander-in-Chief of the Army, General Keitel, on 6 June gave instructions for

Soviet commissars to be ‘dealt with’ by troops as ‘the originators of barbarian

Asiatic methods of combat’. 24

Finally, the ‘Guidelines for the Conduct of Troops in Russia’ of 19 May (which

were distributed amongst the troops down to company level) described Bolshev-

ism as ‘the mortal enemy of the National Socialist German people’ and demanded

‘ruthless and energetic measures against Bolshevist agitators, irregulars, saboteurs,

Jews and the total elimination of all forms of resistance, active and passive’. 25

After the Security Police’s competences vis-à-vis the Wehrmacht had been

firmly delimited, on 21 May Himmler established the command-structure param-

eters for SS and Police formations in the Eastern zones to be occupied. 26 In this order Himmler determined that the Higher SS and Police Commanders, who were

the representatives of the Reichsführer SS on the ground elsewhere, would play a

central role in the occupied Eastern zones as well. They were to be assigned to the

heads of the planned political administrations, and, during a transitional period,

would be responsible for the Rear Area of the Army Group where they would be

subordinate to the commanders there ‘with respect to mobilization, supplies and

accommodation’. Each Higher SS and Police Commander would be assigned ‘SS

and Police troops and task units of the Security Police to facilitate carrying out the

tasks directly assigned to him by me’, and, according to Himmler’s guidelines for

the deployment of such forces: ‘The duties of the Security Police (SD) Einsatz-

gruppen and Einsatzkommandos’ had already been established ‘in the letter from

the Army High Command (OKH) of 26 March 1941’. 27 The Order Police troops were to complete ‘their tasks in accordance with my basic instructions’ with the

exception of the nine motorized Police Battalions that were under the tactical

authority of the Security Divisions. The Waffen-SS formations that had been

deployed had ‘tasks that are in broad terms similar to those of the Order Police

troops and special assignments received directly from me’. If the assignments of

the Einsatzegruppen had been discussed in detail with the Wehrmacht, then

Himmler had succeeded in securing a very much greater degree of autonomy

from the Wehrmacht for his Order Police and Waffen-SS formations. 28

In order to carry out the ‘special assignments on behalf of the Führer’, therefore,

three types of unit (Security Police, Order Police, and Waffen-SS) would be

deployed in a total of five different ways: