Einsatzgruppen

• Einsatzgruppe B ( Sonderkommandos 7a and 7 B, Einatzkommandos 8 and 9)

• Einsatzgruppe C ( Sonderkommandos 4 has and 4 B, Einsatzkommandos 5 and 6)

• Einsatzgruppe D ( Sonderkommandos 10 has and 10 B, Einsatzkommandos 11a, 11b and 12): 11th army (Bessarabia, south of the Ukraine, the Crimea and the Caucasus)

Organization of the massacres: mobile operations of slaughter

Preparation

The role of Einsatzgruppen had already been mentioned in instructions of the commander-in-chief Wilhelm Keitel, on March 13rd, 1941 1

Within the framework of the operations of the army and with an aim of preparing the political organization and administrative occupied territories, the Reichsführer S assumes, in the name of Führer, the responsibility for the special missions which will result from the need for putting an end to the confrontation between two opposite political systems. Within the framework of these missions, the Reichsführer will act in all independence and under its only responsibility| Wilhelm Keitel, March 13rd, 1941 1.

These instructions are detailed via an agreement negotiated between Reinhard Heydrich, chief of RSHA and the general Wagner, dated March 26th, 1941 1, supplemented in May 1941 after discussions between Wagner and Walter Schellenberg.

First massacres in Shoah by ball

The attempts at cleaning on behalf of the elements anticommunists or anti-semites in the zones which will be occupied should not be constrained. On the contrary, they should be encouraged, but without leaving traces, so that these militia of self-defense cannot claim later that them political orders or concessions were given. For obvious reasons, such actions will not be possible that during the initial phase of the military occupation| Reinhard Heydrich, June 29th, 1941.

As of its entry with Kaunas, in Lithuania, on June 23rd, 1941 1, units of the Einsatzgruppe has cause spontaneous attacks of the local population against the Juif S: the Pogroms which ensanglantent the city make several thousands of victims. Pogroms also take place in Ukraine. In this area, the Nazis exploit the assassination by NKVD of approximately twenty thousand prisoners. Even if there is no bond between the victims of the pogroms and the torturers of the NKVD, to unchain the hatred of crowd, the Nazis indicated like reponsables the " judéo-communistes".
June 17th, 1941 1, at a meeting with the chiefs of the Einsatzgruppen , Reinhard Heydrich draws up the list of the people with assssiner.

All civils servant of the Comintern, majority of those having to be politicians of career; civils servant of high ranking and intermediate rows as well as the extremists of the Communist party , the central committee and the regional committees and buildings; police chiefs of the people; Jewish S occupying of the functions within the Communist party or the government, like all the other elements extremists, saboteurs, propagandists, franc-tireurs, assassins, agitators… |Reinhard Heydrich, June 17th, 1941.

July 29th, 1941 1, Himmler arrives at Kaunas to accelerate the rate/rhythm of the assassinations of mass. It continues then its inspection in the area of Minsk, where it meets von dem Bach-Zelevski.

The Einsatzgruppen continue their macabre work, in particular in Western Ukraine. At the end of July, the 45e battalion of the police force of reserve massacres there all the Jewish population of the small town of Chepetovka, between Lviv and Kiev, men, women and children. Between on July 27th and on August 11th, 1941 1, on the direct orders of Himmler, two regiments of the brigade of cavalry of Waffen-SS, ordered by Hermann Fegelein kill all the Jews of the area of the marshes of Polésie, without reference of age or sex.

The decision to exterminate the Jews of Eastern Europe was made in March 1941, but the Einsatzgruppen accepted the explicit order to kill all the Jews without distinction only in August; also they exterminated the only individuals of male sex during the first weeks.

Methods of assassination

The Sonderkommando 7a of the Einsatzgruppe B, ordered by Walter Blume, colonel of the Ordnungspolizei , leads the executions to Minsk and Vitebsk “according to the military method”, i.e. while making draw on each victims by three men. If this method results in a great consumption of ammunition, it makes it possible to dilute the responsibility, each gunner which cannot determine which is the ball which put an end to the days of the victim.

In Ponary, close to Vilnius, of the Lithuanian auxiliaries, under the orders of the Einsatzkommando 9a, oblige their victims to strip themselves to the belt and to cover the face of their shirt before assassinating them, a group of ten men shooting at ten Jews; they also use a light machine-gun before completing the casualties of a ball in the head.

In Ukraine, the units of the Höherer S und Polizeiführer Friedrich Jeckeln force the vicimes to lengthen on the ground, face against ground, before killing them out of a ball in the nape of the neck.

The extension of the murders of mass to the women and the Jewish children still increases the brutality of the torturers. Viktors Arajs, chief of a Sonderkommando composed of auxiliary Latvians explains why if its killers jettents the children in the air before drawing to them above, they are not because they are kids jokers , but to avoid dangerous rebounds on the ground.

These terrible methods do not prevent that a certain routine settles:

The operations started in the night, at the very first hours of the morning. If the number of victims were of, let us put, two hundreds, all was finished for the breakfast. With other occasion, they worked until midday and later. At the end of the operation, and sometimes during, of the schnapps and the zakouskis were been useful. The members of the group were always rewarded by alcohol places, but those which assembled the guard or were punished were to await the return to the general headquarter|Andrew Ezergailis, Latvian historian, in connection with the massacres of Riga.

Initially, the Einsatzgruppen carried out their victims by shooting, in particular by gathering them in a pit, after they were stripped. The nature and the course of their operations pose several problems with the persons in charge of the program of extermination: the massacres with the firearm are expensive in ammunition and mobilize many men for a limited effectiveness, cause psychological disorders and a tendency to alcoholism at part of the executors, of which some are traumatisés by it.

Several leaders of Einsatzgruppen claim consequently another method of extermination, psychologically more bearable for the torturers. The argument was all the more listened by RSHA that the mass graves were sometimes photographed by soldiers of the Wehrmacht or people living in the vicinity. The method of substitution for the shooting was the use of arranged trucks, killing by poisoning with exhaust fumes. When the decision was made, at the end of 1941, to exterminate the Jews of Western Europe in their turn, the method of gazage (Carbon monoxide, then Zyklon B in the camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau) was adopted preferably with the shooting.

When the killers estimated that the extermination would take time, they made create ghettos to park the survivors there, while waiting for their elimination. But in several cases, this creation was not necessary, in particular with Kiev: thirty-three thousand Jews were assassinated in a few days, with Babi Yar ( the Ravine of Large the Mothers ).

Their action was supplemented by units formed by the chiefs of the S and the Police force, by the Sicherheitsdienst of the general Government of Poland and by the Gestapo of Tilsit. It is the case, in particular, with Memel (several thousands of victims), Minsk (2 278 victims), Dniepropetrovsk (fifteen thousand victims) and Riga. Rumanian troops also take part in the shootings.

Accomplices of the Einsatzgruppen

They were assisted by part of the Wehrmacht. In many cases, the soldiers raflèrent themselves the Jews so that the Einsatzkommados shoot them, took part themselves in the massacres, or shot, under pretext of reprisals, of the Jews. Thus, in Minsk, several thousands of “Jews, criminals, civils servant Soviet and Asian” were gathered in a camp of internment, then assassinated by members of Einsatzgruppe B and Secret police of countryside.

Einsatzgruppen can also count on the active collaboration of the battalions of the Ordnungspolizei and on that of the supreme leaders of the police force and the S like Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski.

The Einsatzgruppen endeavoured to cause Pogrom S buildings, at the same time to decrease their workload and to imply a maximum share of the local population in the destruction of the Jews. The bureaucrats of the RSHA and the commanders of the army did not wish that such methods were employed, the ones because these forms of slaughters appeared primitive to them, and thus of a poor effectiveness compared to the careful extermination of the Einsatzgruppen ; others because these pogroms made bad impression. The pogroms thus took place, mainly, in territories where the military command was still badly ensured of its authority: in Galicie and in the Baltic States, particularly in Lithuania. In a few days, Lithuanians massacred 3.800 Jews with Kaunas. The Einsatzgruppen found a help more important and more durable by forming auxiliary battalions in the local population, at the beginning of the summer 1941. They were created, for the majority, in the Baltic States and in Ukraine. Einsatzkommando 4a (of the Einsatzgruppe C) thus decided not to shoot more but the adults, the Ukrainians being given the responsability to assassinate the children. Sometimes, the ferocity of the local collaborators frightened to the executives of the Einsatzgruppen themselves. It is the case, in particular, of the members of the Einsatzkommando 6 (of the Einsatzgruppe C), literally terrified by the thirst for blood what expressed a group of Ethnic Germans Ukrainians.

Recruitment in Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia was all the more easy as a fort Antisémitisme prevailed there before the war - with the difference of Estonia, where the hatred of the Jews was almost non-existent.

It should however be recalled that the majority of the torturers were citizens of Reich, Germans or Austrians. In a broader context, S.T. Possony, on the basis of figure coming from Israel' S War Crime Investigation Office, estimates that on the 95.000 people implied in anti-Jewish measurements, massacres and deportation, one counts 45.000 Germans and 8.500 Austrians, 11.000 Baltic, 11.000 Ukrainians, 9.000 Russians and Belorusses, 7.500 Polish and 3.000 west Europeans. Moreover, the local collaborators who took part in the massacres constitute only one negligible minority of the populations concerned.

Assessment

At the end of a calculation partial obtained thanks to the reports/ratios of Einsazgruppen, and the report/ratio of Heinrich Himmler with Adolf Hitler in December 1942, Raul Hilberg adds up: 900000 victims. In addition to the Jews not entered but actually killed by Einsatzgruppen, it is necessary to add, written Hilberg, those which were killed by the second wave of mobile units of slaughter, part after Einsatzgruppen, and of similar composition, although they do not bear this name, Jews killed by the German army and the Rumanian army. On the whole, it estimates that 1,4 million Jews was killed by the mobile units of slaughter during the Second world war.

Interpretations

The chiefs of Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommados were mainly graduate people, often exerting liberal professions. They almost never expressed the least remorse or regret.

The motivations of the men engaged in the mobile units of slaughters, in the same way moreover as the other executants of Shoah, are the subject of an often rough debate historiographic. Browning insists on the ordinary aspect of the killers, who agreed to carry out their task above all by docility.

Contrary, for Daniel Goldhagen, the principal explanation is in adhesion with the Nazi project of extermination, adhesion coming from the anti-semitism “eliminationnist”, developed in Germany, it and-with-to say the will to separate physically from the Jews, by expulsion or extermination.

For Richard Rhodos, the theory of Goldhagen “is tautological , since it includes the effect (elimination) in the cause (anti-semitism)”. He criticizes in particular the assertion of Goldhagen according to which “the individuals must be motivated in kill some out of others, if not they would not do it” by describing it of naive and Lapalissade, the belligerency, the violent behavior and virulence.

See too

Related articles

• Poland during the Second world war
• Lawsuit of Einsatzgruppen