Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (41 page)

Laying the Ground for Racial Annihilation

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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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 also 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

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: 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,