Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews

by Peter Longerich

  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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  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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  Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

  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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  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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  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