Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (48 page)

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 Mins
k36
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.

214

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

more radical. These massacres enabled the Higher SS and Police Commanders

once and for all to seize the initiative and take over the leading role in the process

of annihilation.

The deployment of the SS Brigades in the East had been planned since spring,

and it was clear that the brigades were to be used as a third team after the

Einsatzgruppen and police battalions. The starting signal for their deployment

was given at a meeting with Goering, Lammers, Rosenberg, and Keitel on 16 July

in which Hitler had set out some of the principles for the future occupation of the

Eastern territories and revealed his far-reaching plans for annexation and the

brutality with which he intended to deal with the indigenous population.
43

According to Hitler, ‘the fundamental need is to divide up the huge cake man-

ageably so that we can, first, control it, second, administer it, and third, exploit it’.

The partisan war that the enemy had launched had its advantages, he said: ‘it gives

us the chance to exterminate what stands in our way.’ He went on: ‘this huge area

must be returned to peace as soon as possible, of course, and this can best happen

if you shoot dead anyone who so much as blinks at you.’

The Führer’s decree on the Administration of the Newly Occupied Eastern

Areas established that, after the end of the military campaign, the administration

would be transferred into civilian hands. The basic structure of the occupation

administration was also set out, with Reichskommissars at its head under the

command of a newly appointed Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Terri-

tories, Alfred Rosenberg.
44
Rosenberg, however, had to take account of the special competences of other agencies, and these included, in particular, Himmler’s

special responsibilities, which Hitler had set out in his second decree, also signed

From Anti-Semitic Terror to Genocide

215

on 17 July, on Securing and Policing the Newly Occupied Eastern Areas.
45
This decree determined that ‘securing and policing the newly occupied Eastern areas is

the responsibility of the Reichsführer SS and the Head of the German Police’. He

was authorized to give the Reichskommissars instructions for carrying out these

tasks, and, in the case of ‘instructions of a general nature or of fundamental

political importance’, Rosenberg was to be involved. In order to ensure that these

areas were ‘effectively secured by police measures’ each Reichskommissar was

assigned a Higher SS and Police Commander, who was to be under his ‘direct and

personal’ command; similarly, the other commissars were also assigned SS and

Police Commanders. This decree conferred responsibility for the ‘police’ solution

of the ‘Jewish question’ in the occupied Eastern areas on Himmler.
46

The ‘major campaigns’ that were to be undertaken by the Higher SS and Police

Commanders in the weeks that followed (which will be described later in this

chapter) show how Himmler understood his responsibility to ‘secure through

police measures’ these areas. He saw his mission as gradually making large areas

‘free of Jews’, or in other words as extending the shootings on the one hand and

concentrating the surviving Jewish population in ghettos on the other. The

conduct of the SS and Police formations in the following weeks and months

does not allow us to infer without doubt that an order to murder all the Soviet

Jews was given to the Reichsführer SS in mid-July. Given the expectation of the

National Socialist leadership to end the war in a short time, and in any case not

later than the start of the winter, fulfilling such an order would hardly have been

possible with the forces they had at their disposal. Instead, we have to assume that

mass shootings and ghettoization were seen at that point as measures anticipating

the ‘Final Solution’ planned for after the end of the war—the deportation of the

Jews into a single area that would not be able to support them.

Settling the spheres of competence and responsibility in Himmler’s favour on

16–17 July corresponded to what had for months been the direction of planning for

the administration of the occupied Eastern territories. Hitler had by no means

been carried away by victory-induced euphoria to make the decision during the

discussions of 16 July for Himmler to be given far-reaching instructions to deploy

large-scale murder squads;
47
this deployment had long been planned and was merely set in motion on 16–17 July. Himmler’s decree of 21 May had already

mentioned the Higher SS and Police Commanders earmarked ‘to carry out the

special orders given to me by the Führer in respect of the area under political

administration’,
48
and a discussion amongst the Reichsführer SS’s Command Staff on 8 July suggests that the units under the Command Staff would mainly be

deployed in the area under political administration.
49
Only after the basic structural principles of the political administration had been determined by Hitler,

after the first Reichskommissars had been named and the priority of ‘securing and

policing the occupied Eastern areas’ had been established could the time come for

Himmler to deploy the third of his teams of police and SS forces, the SS Brigades.

216

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

Himmler had one very significant political motive in making his mission to

‘secure through police measures’ the Eastern areas as radical as possible and in

extending it in the direction of a war of ethnic annihilation: intensifying the mass

murder of the Jews in the East was a key component of his attempts to extend his

competence as Reichskommissar for the Strengthening of the German Nation as

soon as possible to the Eastern areas in order to bring them under the control of

the SS via a violent ethnic ‘reordering’ of the newly conquered ‘living space’.
50

Already in June, before the war had begun, Himmler had suggested to Lammers

that he should be entrusted with ‘politically securing and policing’ the occupied

East European areas and given the responsibility for ‘pacifying and consolidating

the political situation’, whereby he should ‘take into particular account the need to

fight Bolshevism and his task as the Reichskommissar for the Strengthening of the

German Nation’.
51
But these desires on Himmler’s part had met with resistance from Rosenberg and had not been taken into account by Hitler when areas of

responsibility were settled on 16 and 17 July: Hitler had specifically restricted

Himmler’s powers to ‘securing through police measures’, albeit after a long

debate. However, Himmler had not been distracted by this setback to his leader-

ship ambitions in the East, but had simply begun to take practical measures to