The second group of war aims linked the conquest of Lebensraum from the
outset with a ‘policy of unbridled robbery and looting’. 3 It was planned right from the start to feed the troops from the very land they were invading and furthermore
to export agricultural produce back into the Reich. Industry in the Soviet Union
was to be largely closed down, maintaining production only in a series of areas of
interest to Germany, notably in the sphere of raw materials. From the standpoint
of the Nazi leadership, both the confiscation of agricultural produce and the
seizure of raw materials played an important part in securing Germany against
potential blockade and in ensuring that the war against the British Empire could
be successfully sustained over a long period.
At the same time, a third set of war aims planned to use the Eastern campaign
as a means of annihilating ‘Jewish Bolshevism’—that conglomerate, therefore, that
only existed in the distorted vision of the National Socialists, which they saw as
having been formed out of the cooperation of both of Germany’s principal
enemies. The image of ‘Bolshevism as the domination of the Slavic masses in
Soviet Russia by the Jews’ had been one of National Socialism’s ideological
constants since its very earliest days. 4 At the same time, this regime was credited with possessing an almost paradoxical combination of external aggressiveness and
internal weakness: whilst ‘Russian Bolshevism’, in Hitler’s words, represented ‘the
attempt by the Jews to achieve world domination for themselves’, 5 the regime allegedly established in Russia by ‘the Jews’ looked like a house of cards that only
needed to be nudged from the outside for it to collapse. It was precisely this
ambivalent assessment of ‘Jewish Bolshevism’—belligerent on the outside, feeble
on the inside—that offered a form of legitimation for a war in the East that
bordered on self-delusion: from this angle it appeared both as a legitimate
means of self-defence against alleged plans for world domination harboured by
the ‘Jewish Bolsheviks’ and as a historically unique opportunity to conquer a vast
empire with relatively little effort.
A fourth cluster of war aims was focused on the radicalization process that
would of necessity occur within the ‘Third Reich’ as a consequence of an ideo-
logically motivated conflict conducted with the utmost brutality and thereby far
exceeding the bounds of conventional warfare. Such a process would inevitably
shift the balance of power once and for all in favour of the National Socialist
movement and at the expense of the conservative elites. This process was realized,
for example, in the fact that in the preparatory stages before the war began the
Wehrmacht appropriated for itself the ideological material of National Socialism
and translated it into basic instructions that directly exhorted an army of several
million conscripted men to implement radical ideological aims. As this process of
radicalization progressed, the Russian campaign offered further possibilities for
finding a ‘final solution’ to the Jewish question in Europe.
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181
It is obvious that long-term aims such as these, linked by the National Socialist
leadership with the conquest of the Soviet Union, would by definition entail the
death of huge numbers of people. Not only was it planned to liquidate the entire
local leadership, the ‘Jewish Bolsheviks’, but German plans for the ruthless
occupation of Lebensraum and for the economic exploitation of the countryside
would necessarily also deprive the native population of its basis for survival and
thereby bring about the deaths of many millions of people. This policy had to be
directed primarily, but by no means exclusively, at those who were at the bottom
of the Nazis’ racial hierarchy—Jews, Gypsies, and other ‘racially inferior groups’.
From the beginning of 1941 the Germans’ early thoughts on the exploitation of
the areas to be conquered for food-supply purposes were developed into a full-
scale systematic starvation policy, which would inevitably lead to the deaths of
millions of people. This policy formed the basis for economic planning in the
eastern territories under attack. 6 The initiative for its formulation lay principally with the State Secretary in the Reich Ministry of Food, Herbert Backe, and its
execution was mostly the responsibility of the body concerned with the economic
exploitation of the Soviet Union, the Four-Year-Plan Organization, or its close
partner the Economic Organization for the East. 7
The figure of 30 million people—a number corresponding to the increase in
population in the areas to be conquered since 1914—was evidently a rough
estimate being used for the purposes of orientation. According to the Higher SS
and Police Commander, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, it was given by Himmler
at a meeting with senior SS officers in Wewelsburg Castle in January 1941; 8 the same figure was used by Goering with the Italian Foreign Minister Ciano, in
November 1941. 9 One of the outcomes of a meeting of State Secretaries on 2 May 1941 was the assertion that ‘without doubt x-million people will starve if we
remove what we need from the land they occupy’. 10
Reducing the population of the areas to be conquered by millions in this way
was seen as a necessary measure by the NS leadership—who remembered the
blockade imposed during the First World War—in order to secure Germany’s
‘food autonomy’. It was also seen as a measure designed to create the necessary
conditions for controlling the Lebensraum they viewed as essential.
In concrete terms what was envisaged was the removal of provisions from the
fertile ‘Black Earth Zone’ in the south of the Soviet Union on a massive scale and
the systematic under-provisioning of the nutrition deficiency area in the north
with its major industrial centres. In the economic guidelines for the future
Economic Organization East (Agricultural Group), issued on 21 May 1941, this
plan was formulated thus: ‘Many tens of millions of people in this area will
become surplus to requirements and will have to die or emigrate to Siberia.
Attempts to save the population there from starvation by fetching in surplus
provisions from the Black Earth Zone could only occur at the cost of under-
provisioning Europe. They will reduce Germany’s capacity to hold out during the
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war and damage the capability of Germany and Europe to resist blockade.’11 These principles formed part of the guidelines issued by Goering for the conduct of the
economy in the newly occupied Eastern zones, the so-called ‘Green Folder’. 12
It is against the background of economic policies such as these, policies that
factored in the death of millions of people, that the complex of orders and
guidelines issued in the months before ‘Barbarossa’ must be assessed. These
were instructions that were designed to prepare the Wehrmacht for a war of
annihilation based on the National Socialists’ racial ideology.
The orders that will be cited in the following paragraphs can only be under-
stood if the plans for structuring the regime of German occupation are als
o clearly
grasped. The basic assumption was that the swift advance of German formations
would lead to the rapid expansion of the occupied zones. The armies were initially
to set up nine Army Rear Areas to the west of the battle zone itself, 13 in order to pacify and control the districts just conquered. As the advance continued these
areas were to be handed over to the Rear Areas that were to be set up by the three
Army Groups. Gradually, these military authorities would be replaced by political
authorities whose precise structure and responsibilities would only be established
after the campaign had begun.
Orders and guidelines concerning the preparation of the war of annihilation were
then worked out in detail. The first of these, the ‘Guidelines for Special Areas relating to Instruction No. 21’, contains the following: ‘In the operational area of the army the
Reichsführer SS is to be given special responsibilities, according to orders from the
Führer, for the preparation of the political administration; these responsibilities are a consequence of the struggle between two opposing political systems that is finally to
be fought. ’14 What these special duties were hardly remained in doubt after Hitler had given General Jodl the following principle for drawing up the guidelines on 3
March: ‘the Jewish-Bolshevist intelligentsia, hitherto the “oppressor” of the people,
must be eliminated’, 15 and after Jodl himself had given the instruction, ‘all Bolshevist chiefs and commissars are to be neutralized immediately’. 16
As a result of this, the General Quartermaster of the Army, Eduard Wagner,
and the Head of the Security Police, Heydrich, were finally able to negotiate the
wording of a 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
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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: in the Army Rear Areas Sonderkom-
mandos of the Security Police and the SD would be deployed; further Sonderkom-
mandos (called Einsatzkommandos, to distinguish them) would be used in the
Rear Areas of the Army Groups; nine battalions of Order Police formations would
be tactically subordinated to the Security Divisions in the Rear Areas of the Army
Groups, with the Higher SS and Police Commanders authorized to assume direct
command for the purposes of ‘special assignments’; 29 further battalions of Order Police would be deployed in the Rear Areas of the Army Groups; and finally,
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185
Waffen-SS formations would be used in addition, albeit primarily in the areas
under political administration and only exceptionally in the Rear Areas of the
Army Groups, as later remarks by Himmler made clear. 30
All these formations were under the command of the Higher SS and Police
Commanders, who in the first phase of the war were assigned to the commanders
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