to endanger their supply lines or cause other difficulties because of problems with
refugees, they resorted to more radical ‘solutions’ during the month of August, as
will be shown in detail below. Whilst Einsatzgruppe C murdered refugees in what
was at that stage a massacre of unparalleled scale and savagery in Kamenetsk-
Podolsk, Einsatzgruppe D initially attempted to drive the refugees back using
brutal means, which meant that the weakest of them were simply shot. It even-
tually came to an agreement with the Romanians to intern all the Jews living in the
area in question in concentration camps. 22
Towards the end of the summer, yet another problem arose. Both the German
occupation authorities and the central agencies in the Reich gradually began to
cast their eyes towards the potential labour that the Jews represented. At first they
had made every possible effort to replace the Jewish workforce with non-Jewish
labour, but from September 1941 onwards there was a gradual realization that,
during the war, it would not be possible to manage without Jewish workers
altogether. 23 As we shall see, this problem also emerged in the areas controlled by the Einsatzgruppen. During the summer, the victims of mass shootings had
principally been Jewish men of military age; but, from the autumn onwards, the
selection principle was reversed and Jews capable of work were exempted from the
annihilation measures. 24 The occupation authorities adopted a new approach in which the Jewish population was divided into ‘useful’ and ‘superfluous’, which had
consequences for the way the Jewish minority was fed and housed, particularly in
the cities.
Christian Gerlach has developed this line of argument and sees a direct
connection between the expansion of the programme of shootings in September
and October 1941—the transition to the systematic liquidation of ghettos—and the
problems with feeding and housing Jews that were gradually becoming manifest.
He has argued that the murder of the Jewish minority can be attributed directly to
the failure of the systematic starvation policy that had been in place since the
beginning of the war. Because the original plan to starve the general population of
cities proved impossible to fulfil, the occupying power concentrated above all on
the destruction of the two groups that it had in the meantime isolated from the
outside world—the Jews, who represented a considerable proportion of the
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population of the cities that could no longer be fed, and prisoners of war. 25 In addition, the difficulties with providing food and shelter had a radicalizing effect
on the conduct of individual authorities with the respect to the ‘Jewish question’. 26
However, Gerlach has not succeeded in proving this hypothesis about anti-
Jewish policy empirically and unambiguously. For, although it seems perfectly
plausible that problems with food and shelter did have a certain radicalizing effect
on anti-Jewish policy in the occupied zones, his basic proposition—that the
expansion of the programme of shootings in summer and autumn 1941 can be
attributed above all to the material shortcomings that the occupying power was
experiencing—does not seem to me to be an adequate explanation of what took
place. Extending the programme of shootings, in my view, represents a process
whereby German organizations were gradually steered by their leadership away
from a ‘security policing’ approach and towards a policy of ethnic annihilation.
The presupposition for this radical shift was first and foremost a changed
perception of the situation by these organizations: during the summer the
Einsatzgruppen and other SS and police units were forced to conclude that the
original security policing approach could not lead to a solution to the ‘Jewish
question’ for reasons suggested above. They therefore became more and more
ready to accept a new and more comprehensive approach that the leadership
brought in very gradually—with the help of a massive reinforcement of the deadly
commandos—the approach that envisaged the blanket ethnic annihilation of
the Jewish population.
Extending the campaign of shootings, therefore, had a variety of causes,
although a fundamental factor was the racist hierarchy on which the occupying
power based its assessment and treatment of the indigenous population and in
which the Jews occupied the lowest rung. This way of viewing things, rather than
any objective assessment of the difficulties of the situation, was decisive in the
occupying power’s belief that the annihilation of the Jews would solve a broad
range of different problems.
The longer the war lasted, the more completely what was originally a fairly
abstract idea of the Jews as the pillars of the Bolshevist regime was replaced by a
concept whereby the Jews were endowed with the capacity to present a variety of
concrete threats. They were seen as the source of many and various forms of
resistance to the occupying power—they spread rumours, sabotaged measures
taken by the Germans, started fires, and maintained contact with Soviet partisan
groups; they spread plagues, and were active on the black market; by virtue of their
mere existence they created problems in the fields of supplies, housing, and
labour. Such perceptions make it clear how the racist and radically anti-Semitic
attitude of the occupiers created its own distorted image of reality.
The reports of the Einsatzgruppen show that Einsatzgruppen B and C, in
particular, displayed some considerable perplexity about the ‘solution to the
Jewish question’ in the newly occupied Eastern zones. The staff officers of
From Anti-Semitic Terror to Genocide
211
Einsatzgruppe B reasoned thus about the situation in Belarus in July 1941: ‘The
solution to the Jewish question during the war seems impossible in this area and
given the extra-large numbers of Jews it can only be reached via evacuation and
resettlement.’ They described the Jews’ ‘accommodation in ghettos’, which was in
train across the board, as ‘a matter of high priority and, in the light of the large
number of Jews, a particularly difficult one’. 27
After August the matter of the labour deployment of the Jewish population also
began to emerge in the reports from the Einsatzgruppen. Einsatzgruppe C, for
example, reported on the developments in the Ukraine in the first half of August
and suggested that the Jews should be exhausted in cultivating the extensive Pripet
Marshes and those on the north bank of the Dnieper or on the Volga.
In an incident report for September 1941, 28 on the basis of their previous observations Einsatzgruppe C came to the following conclusion: ‘The work of the Bol-
shevists depends on Jews, Russians, Georgians, Armenians, Poles, Latvians, and
Ukrainians: the Bolshevist apparatus is not by any means identical with that of the
Jewish population. . . . If we entirely dispense with the Jewish labour-force, then the
economic rebuilding of Ukrainian industry or the expansion of urban administrative
centres is virtually impossible. There is only one possibility, which the German
administration in the General Government
has neglected for a long time: the
solution of the Jewish question via the full-scale deployment of the Jewish labour-
force. That would bring with it the gradual liquidation of Jewry, a development that
corresponds perfectly with the economic conditions of the country.’
Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C, which according to an incident report
of 12 September had drawn attention to the fact that 70–90 per cent of the Jewish
population of many central and eastern Ukrainian towns had fled—rising to 100
per cent in some cases—drew the following striking conclusion from this phe-
nomenon: ‘this can be seen as a success deriving indirectly from the work of the
Security Police, since the cost-free deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews—
mostly over the Urals, to judge by the results of interrogations—makes a substan-
tial contribution to the solution to the Jewish question in Europe.’29
This problem had been brewing since July and had produced a situation that
was very difficult grasp as a whole. Pogrom activity was declining, more and more
Jews were fleeing, although there were refugees turning up in the areas that the
commandos were leaving behind, it was impossible to control the vast areas of
territory with such small units, there was an ever-increasing need for a larger
labour-force, and the food supply was increasingly precarious. The original
‘security policing’ approach had been designed for the duration of a short war
and had essentially consisted of overwhelming Jewish communities with a sudden
wave of terror immediately upon occupation; as the war dragged on, this policy
was clearly reaching its limits.
Mass executions in August had killed tens of thousands of people and in the
light of this the units that were carrying them out began to question the mid- and
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Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941
longer-term perspectives for continued Jewish persecution in the occupied East-
ern zones. How broadly should the range of victims be drawn? And where would
the human resources for carrying out further murders be found? How were they
to prevent Jews escaping murder by fleeing? How could the mass murder of Jewish
skilled workers be justified in the face of the growing need for labour?
This degree of uncertainty on the part of the commandos explains their
readiness to adjust to the new and far more radical approach to Jewish persecution
in the East that had been pursued by the SS leadership since July. Indeed, it
explains how their commitment towards the success of this new approach,
involving a high degree of initiative on their own account, tentatively in July,
but thereafter massively, especially in August and September, contributed towards
its breakthrough. The Einsatzkommandos, now considerably strengthened in
terms of personnel, started to expand the range of the executions by murdering
women and children, whilst at the same time collaborating with the military and
civil authorities to confine the survivors of these massacres in ghettos. In this
manner rural districts in particular were rendered ‘free of Jews’. Because the
survivors were often absorbed into the labour force by the German authorities,
the goal of the complete annihilation of the Jewish minority was initially post-
poned, but only until 1942.
The step-by-step implementation of the annihilation policies included a com-
plementary role for Jewish ghettos. 30 These began to be set up from the second half of July onwards, initially primarily in order to keep the Jewish population
under control, to free up living space (principally in devastated cities), and to gain
the capacity to set up Jewish labour gangs for clearing operations and the like. At
the same time Jews could thereby also be excluded from participation in the
economic life of their communities. Just as with the occupation of Poland, the
formation of ghettos was by no means a standardized procedure.
At first ghettos were set up in response to pressure from the Wehrmacht. The
economic staff of the Wehrmacht was demanding the immediate ghettoization of
the Jews in the occupied Eastern territories as early as 14 July. 31 A meeting between the head of the Military High Command’s armaments section, Georg Thomas,
and the state secretary for the Four-Year Plan, Paul Körner, on 31 July came to a
similar conclusion: ‘quarter the Jews in barracks and use them in units as labour
gangs’. 32 Nevertheless, the Army High Command did not issue the order that recommended the establishment of ghettos until 19 August, and then under
certain conditions. The commanders of the Rear Army Areas North, Central,
and South gave differing instructions in this respect. 33
Alfred Rosenberg, the Reich Minister for the Eastern Territories, had described
the ‘establishment of ghettos and labour gangs’ as the ‘key solution’ to the ‘Jewish
problem’ in a directive for the Reichskommissar for the Ukraine, who had yet to
be appointed, 34 and the civilian administration was similarly demanding the formation of ghettos in many towns. 35 The Einsatzgruppen were just as strongly From Anti-Semitic Terror to Genocide
213
in favour, too. A plan for the establishment of ghettos in Kaunas and Minsk36 by Einsatzgruppen A and B can be found in the incident reports for mid-July. The
Minsk ghetto was in fact set up on the orders of the Field Commandant dated 19
July, and that in Kaunas was sealed on 15 August. 37
It was also in mid-July that Einsatzgruppe B—which had described the ‘solution
to the Jewish question during the war’ as ‘impossible’ in the old Soviet areas—
suggested the establishment of Jewish councils in all cities, in order to identify
Jews and deploy them for the purposes of forced labour, but above all to set up
ghettos across the whole area: in fact, the ‘implementation of this task’ was
‘ongoing’. 38 The same group reported further success at the end of July:39 ‘where it was necessary and possible, and with the agreement of the responsible local and
field command posts, ghettos were being set up, councils of Jewish elders formed,
the visible identification of Jews implemented and work gangs established, etc.’
Einsatzgruppe D evidently also did not see the ‘solution to the Jewish question’
at the end of August 1941 in the immediate and total annihilation of the Jews, as
can be seen in an incident report from the 25th of that month:40 ‘the solution to one of the most important problems, the Jewish question, has also been tackled,
even if tentatively. In Kishinev there were 60,000–80,000 Jews before the war. . . .
On the initiative of the Einsatzkommando the Romanian town commandant set
up a Jewish ghetto in the old town. This currently comprises some 9,000 Jews.
They have been formed into work gangs and set to work for various German and
Romanian agencies on clearing and other operations.’
The same Einsatzgruppe reported at the beginning of October that ‘the first part
of the Jewish question has been solved’. The nature of this ‘solution’ emerges from
the remainder of the report, and consisted in the registration and marking-out of
Jews, the formation of Jewish councils, ghettoization, and enforced labour. 41
The establishment of ghettos, the ‘first part’ of the ‘solution to the Jewish
question’, was thus a provisional measure in the eyes of the Einsatzgruppen,
which was initially planned only for the duration of the war. This explains why
the Einsatzgruppen both extended the range of the murders during the summer to
include women and children, making whole districts ‘free of Jews’ and, at the same
time, took measures that were aimed at preserving part of the Jewish population.
It was still the case that, from their perspective, the ‘Final Solution’ to the ‘Jewish
question’—the complete annihilation of the Jews—had been postponed until after
the war. They were still mainly concerned with murdering as many of those Jews
who were not capable of work as possible. Ghettos played an important part in
this approach because they achieved the necessary degree of control over the
Jewish workforce, which for the moment the authorities were unwilling to dis-
pense with. This view gradually prevailed during the summer of 1941 in place of
the previous approach, which favoured selective terrorization of the Jewish lead-
ership, and was still predominant during the autumn and winter of 1941 to 1942.
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Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941
At that point, and with massive acceleration from spring 1942, there followed a
third phase in which the population of the ghettos was selectively screened and
murdered, and in which whatever remained of the Jewish population living
outside the ghettos was traced and killed in so-called ‘cleansing campaigns’ that
were generally described as anti-partisan measures. This third phase will be
described in a later chapter. 42
Himmler’s ‘Mission’ and the Deployment
of the SS Brigades
As the original ‘security policing’ approach to the ‘Jewish question’—a selective
campaign of terror—was replaced by policies aiming at total ethnic annihilation,
the SS Brigades under the command of the Higher SS and Police Commanders for
Russia South and Russia Centre played a decisive role at the end of July and in
early August. The mass murders perpetrated by these formations attained new
dimensions of horror and made the whole process of annihilation considerably
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