Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (115 page)

119. EM 48.

120. IMT xxv. 302 ff., 212 PS v; dated to July or August by Uwe Adam, Die Judenpolitik im Dritten Reich (Düsseldorf, 1972), 306. English trans. in Nazism, ed. Noakes and

Pridham, iii. 507–9.

121. Lohse’s address is mentioned in his manuscript ‘Ostland baut auf’: YIVO, Occ E 3-3.

122. StA Riga, 1026-1-3.

123. EM 88.

124. Jäger report, OS, 500-1-25; ZSt, 207 AR-Z 14/58, 6, pp. 1151 ff., note from 27 Sept. 1961.

125. ZSt, 207 AR-Z 14/58, 6, pp. 1151 ff, note of 27 Sept. 1961; see also Arad, Ghetto, 102 ff.

516

Notes to pages 236–239

126. OS, 500-1-25.

127. ZSt, II 207 AR-Z 104/67, indictment of 9 Jan. 1976.

128. ZSt, 207 AR-Z 7/59, judgement of the Hamburg District Court on 23 Feb. 1973;

Ezergailis, Holocaust, 239 ff.; minutes of the interrogation of Jeckeln by the NKVD,

14/15 Dec. 1945 and testimony before the Riga Military Court as part of the proceedings

of 26 Jan. to 3 Feb. 1946; published in Wilhelm, ‘Einsatzgruppe A’, 566 ff.

129. War diary of the SS and Police Garrison Commander Liepa

$ ja (Libau), BAB, R 70 SU 12

(published in Wilhlem, ‘Einsatzgruppe A’, 571 ff.).

130. EM 111.

131. Cf. Wilhelm, ‘Einsatzgruppe A’, 203 ff.; ZSt, 207 AR-Z 246/59, 2, pp. 303 ff., final report of 7 Apr. 1960.

132. State Archive, Minsk, 378-1-698 (copy in USHM, Minsk-films, roll 2), Commandant in

Belarus, 10 Oct. 1941. See also the situation repory by the Commandant in Belarus, 1

Oct. 1941–15 Oct. 1941 (State Archive, Minsk, Impulevicius case); Res.Pol.Btl.11, situ-

ation report on the special deployment in Minsk, 21 Oct. 1941 (ibid.). See also

Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final

Solution in Poland (New York, 1992), 18–19; and Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 609 ff.

133. Interrogation of Lechthaler, 4 July 1960 (ZSt, 202 AR-Z 262/59, pp. 51 ff.).

134. OS, 500-1-25; Jäger, Bericht; English version in Ernst Klee et al., ‘The Good Old Days’

(New York, 1992), 46–58.

135. In letter of 1 Nov. 1941, NO 2456.

136. IMT, xxvii. 1 ff., 1104 PS, 30 Oct. 1941. The authenticity of these details is confirmed by the interrogation of Carl on 15 Dec. 1959 (ZSt, 202 5 AR-Z 262/59, pp. 51 ff.).

137. Situation report by the Commandant in Belarus, 1 Oct. 1941–15 Oct. 1941 (State

Archive, Minsk, Impulevicius case).

138. State Archive, Minsk, 378-1-698 (copy in USHM, Minsk-films, roll 2), Daily Orders of the Commandant in Belarus.

139. EM 140.

140. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 625.

141. Situation report by Area Commissar Gert Erren, 24 Jan. 1942, Centre de Documenta-

tion Juive Cointemporaine (CDJC), CXLVa-8 (IfZ, FB 104), published in Schoenber-

ger, ed., Wir haben es gesehen, 131 ff. The shooting of 9,400 Jews from the ghetto on 13

November is confirmed by Nachum Alpert, The Destruction of Slonim Jewry: The Story

of the Jews of Slonim during the Holocaust (New York, 1989), 84. On Slonim, cf.

Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 621 ff.

142. NO 2658.

143. See e.g. BAM, RH-18/91, Order from the Army High Command, 18, of 9 July 1941,

concerning the establishment of an auxiliary police.

144. For 1941 see Richard Breitman, ‘Police Auxiliaries in the Occupied Soviet Territories’, SWCA 7 (1990), 23–39.

145. BAB, R 19/326, 25 July 1941.

146. Ibid., 31 July 1941.

147. Breitman, ‘Police Auxiliaries’, 24–5.

148. Martin C. Dean, Collaboration in the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in Belorussia and Ukraine 1941–1944 (New York, 2000), 60.

Notes to pages 240–242

517

149. Dean, Collaboration, 65 ff.

150. BAB, R 19/326, 6 Nov. 1941. In addition there were fire-service teams and auxiliary

teams for work details and for guarding prisoners of war.

151. Latvian and Lithuanian battalions were deployed in this manner in Belarus, the

Ukraine, and the General Government. See the appendix in Tessin, Stäbe.

152. On the deployment of these volunteer battalions see cf. Breitmann, ‘Police Auxiliaries’, 26–7.

153. See the collection of documents edited by Angelika Ebbinghaus and Gerd Preissler ‘Die Ermordung psychisch kranker Menschen in der Sowjetunion. Dokumentation’, in

Götz Aly, Angelika Ebbinghaus, Matthias Hamann, et al., eds, Aussonderung und

Tod. Die klinische Hinrichtung der Unbrauchbaren (Berlin, 1985).

154. EM 88.

155. Report of 15 October, 180-L, IMT xxxvii. 670 ff.

156. EM 96.

157. EM 108.

158. For details, see below, p. 241.

159. EM 135.

160. EM 135.

161. EM 132.

162. EM 156 (16 Jan. 1942); cf. also the judgement of the Wuppertal District Court of 30 Dec.

1965, published in Justiz and NS-Verbrechen xxii, no. 606.

163. Ebbinghaus and Preissler, eds, ‘Ermordung’, 101 ff.

164. Breitman, Architect, 246. See also Breitman’s details (pp. 178 ff.) of the systematic extirpation of the Turkmenians interned in German camps.

165. See Ch. 10, n. 24.

166. BAM, RH 22/12. There is a similar tenor to the instructions compiled by the

Department of Wehrmacht Propaganda for dealing with propaganda in the case of

Barbarossa (BAM, RW 4/of 578) and the June issue of the paper, Information for the

Troops. On the nature of the propaganda in general, see Jürgen Förster, ‘Operation

Barbarossa as a War of Conquest and Annihilation’, in Horst Boog et al., eds,

Germany and the Second World War, vol. iv: The Attack on the Soviet Union (Oxford,

1996), 525 ff, and Pohl, Herrschaft, 254 ff.

167. George H. Stein, Geschichte der Waffen-SS (Düsseldorf, 1978), 113–14; cf. Breitman,

Architekt, 235.

168. EM 21.

169. EM 36.

170. EM 73.

171. EM 133, EG B.

172. Jäger’s report and EM 92; cf. Michael Zimmermann, Rassenutopie und Genozid. Die

nationalsozialistische ‘Lösung der Zigeunerfrage’ (Hamburg, 1996), 260.

173. EM 94 (25 Sept. 1941) and EM 119 (20 Oct. 1941).

174. For this reason Zimmermann’s claim (Rassenutopie, 262) that in the middle of August

1941, in parallel with the extension of the range of murders to include the entire Jewish population of the Soviet Union, ‘the order to murder [the Jews] had obviously been

extended to include the Gypsies’ is not plausible.

518

Notes to pages 242–243

175. See Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann, War of Extermination: The German Military in

World War II 1941–1944 (New York, 2004). This question has been widely debated in

Germany over past years, in particular in connection with the two exhibitions ‘Crimes

of the Wehrmacht’, designed by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research: Hannes

Heer and Klaus Naumann, Vernichtungskrieg. Verbrechen der Wehrmacht. Bilanz

einer Debatte (Hamburg, 1995) (English translation 2004); Verbrechen der Wehrmacht.

Dimensionen des Vernichtungskrieges 1941–1944 (Hamburg, 2002); Christian Hart-

mann, Johannes Hürter, and Ulrike Jüreit, eds, Verbrechen der Wehrmacht. Bilanz

einer Debatte (Munich, 2005); Karl-Heinrich Pohl, ed., Wehrmacht und Vernichtungs-

politik. Militär im nationalsozialistischen System (Göttingen, 1999); Christian Hart-

mann, ‘Verbrecherischer Krieg—verbrecherishe Wehrmacht? Überlegungen zur

Struktur des deutschen Ostheeres 1941–1944’ in VfZ 52 (2004), 1–75, demonstrates

that it is impossible to calculate the percentage of soldiers who were involved in crimes.

See most recently Dieter Pohl, Die Herrschaft der Wehrmacht. Deutsche Militärbesatz-

ung und einheimische Bevölkerung in der Sowjetunion 1941–1943 (Munich, 2008).

176. NOKW 2510.

177. NOKW 1654.

178. IMT xxxiv. 129 ff., 4064-PS.

179. NOKW 1693.

180. Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 223 ff.

181. See ibid. 235. At the mass murder of the Kiev Jews in September 1941, for example, the leaflets that summoned the Jews to the collection points were printed by a Wehrmacht

propaganda company (ZSt, 204 AR-Z 269/60, judgement of 29 Nov. 1968). A loud-

speaker van from a propaganda company was sent for the executions in Zhitomir (see

above, p. 200). See also NO 4234, interrogation of Braune, leader of Commando 11b:

‘The 11th Army had given an order that the executions in Sinfernopol should be

completed before Christmas. We therefore received trucks, petrol and personnel

from the army for this purpose.’

182. Lutsk (see above, p. 200); Kodyma (p. 202); Liepa

$ ja (Libau, p. 196). Members of the

Military Police took part in the shooting of the Jews of Feodosia in December 1941 (N.

Kunz, ‘Feld- und Ortskommandanturen auf der Krim und der Judenmord’, in W. Kaiser,

ed., Täter im Vernichtungskrieg; der Überfall auf die Sowjetunion und der Völkermord an

den Juden (Berlin, 2002), 68–9).

183. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 537–8.

184. Thus the order from Reichenau of 10 August forbade Wehrmacht members to take

part in shootings that had not been ordered by the military; however, it permitted the

deployment of teams of men to seal off certain areas if the SD approached the local

commandant (NOKW 1654). The commanding general of the xxx corps also banned

voluntary participation in executions on 2 August 1941; these had to be under the

command of army officers (NOKW 2963). Cf. Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgrupppen’, 240–1,

who has further details on this issue.

185. Compilation in Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 228 ff.

186. Including Lvov and Tarnopol: details in Longerich, Politik, 338 and 340. In Uman on 21

October members of the Wehrmacht took part in excesses committed by the Ukrain-

ian militia against the Jewish population (EM 119).

187. For example from the civilian camps set up by the Wehrmacht, including Minsk and

Zwiahel: (details in Longerich, Politik, 336 and 674). For further examples see Kraus-

nick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 236.

Notes to pages 243–245

519

188. For example by the intelligence officer of the 17th Army on 22 September 1941, who

asked Sonderkommando 4b for reprisals against the Jews in Kremenchuk because of

sabotage attacks (NOKW 2272); other examples include Zhitomir, Chmielnik, and

Zwiahel (details in Longerich, Politik, 383, 343f, 338 and 368).

189. See for example EM 32 (EG B): ‘With the assistance of the Secret Field Police,

intelligence troops, and the Military Police the series of operations against Bolshevist

agents, political Commissars, members of the NKVD, etc. was continued. In Barano-

wicze a further 381 people were liquidated. They were Jewish activists, functionaries

and looters.’ In EM 128 Einsatzgruppe C complains that despite excellent cooperation

with the Wehrmacht in general terms, when it came to the ‘Jewish question’, there was

‘no complete understanding demonstrated by the lower Wehrmacht agencies, with the

exception of the Secret Field Police, the intelligence service, and intelligence officers.

For further examples see Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 242–3; Theo Schulte, The

German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia (Oxford, 1989), 203; Hannes

Heer, ‘The Logic of the War of Extermination: The Wehrmacht and the Anti-Partisan

War of Extermination’, in Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann, eds, War of Extermin-

ation: The German Military in World War II 1941–1944 (New York, 2004), 92–126,

Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 538–9.

190. Bila Zerkva (see above, p. 226), Einsatzkommando Tilsit (p. 197). The massacre at Babi Yar was planned on 26 September in the presence of the city commandant; the one in

Zhitomir was planned in conjunction with the field commandant’s office (see above,

pp. 224 and 226). Field and city commandants were also involved in preparations for the

major ‘operations’ against the Jews in Kharkov in which 20,000 people were killed in

December 1941 and January 1942 (Bernd Boll and Hans Safrian, ‘On the Way to Stalingrad:

The 6th Army 1941/42’, in Heer and Naumann, eds, War of Extermination, 237–71).

Similar cooperation has been shown to have taken place in the Crimea; see Kunz, ‘Feld-

and Ortskommandanturen’. Pohl, Wehrmacht, 248ff. continous these research findings

191. Reference should be made here once more to the situation in Belarus as described by

Gerlach: in the autumn and winter of 1941 the large-scale ‘ghetto operations’ were

taking place precisely in the eastern area that was under military occupation (Genlach,

Kalkulierte Morde, 585 ff.). The Commandant responsible for the Rear Army Area in

the southern segment of the front, 553, reported that more than 20,000 Jews were killed

between August 1941 and summer 1942 (Schulte, Army, 231). There has not yet been a

systematic, comprehensive investigation of annihilation policies in the occupied Soviet

Union that draws a comparison between military areas and those under civilian

administration. It would only be able to come to valid conclusions with the help of a

comprehensive assessment of the materials in East European archives.

192. State Archive. Minsk, 378-1-698 (copy in USHM, Minsk-films, roll 2), Commandant in

Belarus, 10 Oct. 1941.

193. BAM, RH 26–707/2, 10 Nov. 1941.

194. NA, T 77, R 1179.

195. State Archive, Minsk, 378-1-698 (copy in USHM, Minsk-films, roll 2), Commandant in

Belarus, 24 Nov. 1941.

196. BAM, RH 26–707/5, 8 Dec. 1941.

197. See above, p. 232 ff. On this ‘cleansing operation’ by the Wehrmacht, see in particular Hannes Heer, ‘Killing Fields: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belorussia 1941–

1942’, in Heer and Naumann, eds, War of Extermination, pp. 55–79.

520

Notes to pages 246–249

198. BAM, RH 26–221/21, Commander of the 350th Infantry Regiment, 19 Aug. 1941; cf.

Heer, ‘Killing Fields’, 66–7.

199. Christian Gerlach, ‘German Economic Interests, Occupation Policy and the Murder of the Jews in Belorussia, 1941/43’ in Ulrich Herbert, ed., National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York, 2000), 210–39, 231.

200. See the examples in Boll and Safrian, ‘Way’, 267–8 (for the 6th Army).

201. See in particular Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front 1941–1945: German Troops and

the Barbarization of Warfare (Houndmills, 1985); Truman Anderson, ‘Die 62. Infant-

erie-Division. Repressalien im Heeresgebiet Süd, Oktober bis Dezember 1941’, in Heer

and Naumann, Vernichtungskrieg, 297–323, proves that for this formation and the

Army Rear Area there were isolated ‘reprisal operations’ against Jews carried out in

autumn 1941, but that from 1942 it was increasingly Ukrainians who were targeted. See

Boll and Safrian, ‘Way’, 286 ff., on the ‘indiscriminate terror inflicted on the whole of the civilian population’ (p. 289) from the end of 1941.

202. NO 3414, published in Jacobsen, ‘Kommissarbefehl’, 200 ff. For details on the issue of orders with respect to Soviet prisoners of war, see Alfred Streim, Die Behandlung

sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener im ‘Fall Barbarossa’ (Kaarlsruhe, 1981), 52 ff.; and Chris-

tian Streit, Keine Kameraden: Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen

1941–1945 (Stuttgart, 1978), 87 ff.

203. Ibid. The original of the order has not been preserved. Its content corresponds to section III of the Instructions for the Treatment of Soviet Prisoners of War issued on 8 Sept. 1941.

204. Streit, Keine Kameraden, 109.

205. BAB, R 58/272 and NO 3422, published in Jacobsen, ‘Kommmissarbefehl’, 205 ff. and 220–1.

206. Streim, Behandlung, 127–8; Streit, Keine Kameraden, 100 ff.

207. Streim, Behandlung, 97 ff.; Streit, Keine Kameraden, 94.

208. Streim, Behandlung, 127.

209. Ibid., 129 ff.; Streit, Keine Kameraden, 94 ff.

210. Ibid., 96 ff.

211. Streim, Behandlung, 244.

212. Streit, Keine Kameraden, 105, also does not give a definite figure. On the basis of

deployment orders 8 and 9 Reinhard Otto, Wehrmacht, Gestapo and sowjetische

Kriegsgefangene im deutschen Reichsgebiet 1941/42 (Munich, 1998), estimates the total

number of prisoners murdered in concentration camps in the area of the Reich at

38,000; those who were murdered in the occupied Soviet areas and the General

Government need to be added.

213. State Archive, Moscow, 7021-148-101 (also Central Office, Documentation 301, General Order of 23 Sept. 1941).

214. Streit, Keine Kameraden, 106 ff.

215. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 774 ff., gives various examples of this.

216. Ortwin Buchbender, Das tönende Erz. Die Propaganda gegen die Rote Armee im

Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart, 1978), 104.

217. Streit, Keine Kameraden, 137 ff.

218. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 796 ff.

219. IMT xxxvi. 107–8.

220. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, 799.

Notes to pages 249–259

521

221. NOKW 1535.

222. Elke Fröhlich, ed. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, Teil II: Band 2: Oktober-

Dezember 1941. Bearbeitet von Elke Fröhlich (Munich, 1996), 23 Oct. 1941, 161–2.

223. On the transportation and accommodation of prisoners, see Streit, Keine Kameraden,

162 ff. and Streim, Die Behandlung.

224. Instructions for the Treatment of Soviet Prisoners of 8 Sept. 1941 (NO 3417, published in Jacobsen, ‘Kommissarbefehl’, 217 ff.).

225. Streit, Keine Kameraden, 211.

226. Ibid. 136.

227. Ibid. 244 ff.

228. Einsatzgruppe A, overall report up to 15 Oct. 1941, report of 15 Oct. 1941, 180-L, IMT

xxxvii. 670 ff.; in addition there were 5,500 Jews murdered by Einsatzkommando Tilsit

and Jews murdered in ‘pogroms’: overall report by Einsatzgruppe A from 10 Oct. 1941

to 31 Jan. 1942, Ifz, Fb 101/35.

229. EM 133 and OS, 500-1-770, activity and situation report by Einsatzgruppe B for the

period between 16 and 28 Feb. 1942. The numbers of the victims of this Einsatzgruppe

are calculated in Christian Gerlach, ‘Einsatzgruppe B’, in Peter V. Lein, ed., Die

Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjet unions 194/42. Die Tätigkeits- und Lageberichte

des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD (Berlin, 1997), 62.

230. EM 128 (3 Nov. 1941).

231. EM 145 and EM 190.

14.

Plans for a Europe-Wide Deportation Programme after the Start of

Barbarossa

1. According to Richard Breitman, The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final

Solution (London, 1991) 145, a fundamental decision had already been made in the first

months of 1941; Himmler had then made the decisions for its execution in the summer

of 1941 (ibid. 167 ff.). An early decision by Hitler, which he only imparted gradually to his subordinates, is also accepted by Helmut Krausnick, ‘The Persecution of the Jews’,

in Hans Buchheim et al., Anatomy of the SS State (London, 1968), 17–139; Hermann

Graml, Reichskristallnacht. Antisemitismus und Judenverfolgung im Dritten Reich

(Munich, 1988), 207; Wolfgang Benz, The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines

the Holocaust (New York, 1999), 61 ff.

2. Raul Hilberg, ‘Die Aktion Reinhard’, in Eberhard Jäckel and Jürgen Rohwer, eds, Der