Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (55 page)

the reports reaching intelligence officers.
180
In addition, units of the Wehrmacht supported mass shootings by the Police and the SS in a variety of ways, such as

providing transport and munitions, for example.
181
Members of the Wehrmacht took part directly in these ‘operations’, either sealing off the areas in which they

took place or joining the firing squads themselves.
182
Christian Gerlach has provided a number of examples that prove how, during the conquest of Belarus

in the summer of 1941, front-line troops made attacks on Jews that sometimes

involved carrying out shootings.
183

Troop leaders sometimes evidently had some difficulty in keeping their soldiers’

participation in such executions within the bounds of ‘due order’. The fact that the

willing participation of soldiers in executions was repeatedly forbidden is an

indication of how volunteering in this manner was not merely confined to isolated

instances.
184
The same analysis can be made of the numerous orders that were issued by various Wehrmacht formations in the early months of the Russian

campaign that forbade the participation of soldiers in pogroms, looting, arbitrary

shootings, and other attacks on the Jewish civilian population.
185
That such attacks were part of the everyday reality of war can be demonstrated with a large number

of individual examples.
186

The role of the Wehrmacht in the annihilation of the Jewish civilian population

was by no means exhausted by instances of excess such as those, or by isolated

examples of support for the SS and Police during executions. Agencies and units

of the Wehrmacht, and in particular military intelligence, the security divisions,

the Secret Field Police, and the military police as well as local or field command

posts, did in fact cooperate so closely with the SS and the Police that one can

legitimately speak in this context of a systematic cooperation and division of

labour. ‘Suspect’ civilians—mostly Jews—were routinely handed over to the SD;
187

as the next section will show, the Wehrmacht delivered Jewish prisoners of war

and others defined by racist or political criteria, to the SS; Einsatzkommandos and

police units were requested by offices of the Wehrmacht for ‘cleansing’ or ‘pacifi-

cation operations’, or for ‘collective reprisal measures’;
188
intelligence officers, the military police and the Secret Field Police made themselves available for

‘operations’.
189
In putting anti-Jewish measures such as registration, marking out, 244

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

and ghettoization into place, local command posts created the structural conditions

for the murder of the Jews. In particular, it can be proved that large-scale murder

‘operations’ in the military zone of occupation were set up and carried out by the

relevant local or field command posts of the Wehrmacht in close consultation with

SS and Police units.
190
There is some evidence that the military occupation authorities showed a similar degree of cooperation in this respect as the civilian authorities

in the areas further to the west.
191

The role of the Wehrmacht in the annihilation of the Jewish civilian population

of the Soviet Union was not limited to the ideological indoctrination of the troops

and direct support for ‘operations’ carried out by the SD and the Police. Substan-

tial formations from the Eastern Army took part directly in the mass murder of

Jews within the broader context of large-scale operations. We have already seen

that Police Battalion 11 under the 707th Division carried out a ‘cleansing oper-

ation’ in Belarus with the support of the Secret Field Police and the Division’s

Company of Engineers that claimed several thousand Jews as its victims. The

orders of the 707th Division, which are preserved in the State Archive in Minsk,

demonstrate that this was not an operation initiated by the SS or Police in which

the Wehrmacht merely played a supporting role. This ‘operation’ was part of a

comprehensive approach to annihilation in which the Division played a decisive

role.

On 16 October, thus immediately after the end of the ‘major campaign’ in the

area around Smilovichi in Rudensk, the Divisional Commander ordered an

increased deployment of patrols by his formation and noted, ‘as far as these

patrols are concerned, we have to ensure that the Jews are well and truly removed

from the villages. We are continually finding that they are the only support that

the partisans have for surviving now and over the winter. Their annihilation must

therefore be carried out uncompromisingly.’
192

In his report for the period between 11 October and 10 November, the

Divisional Commander (who also had the title ‘Commandant in Belarus’)

noted, ‘it has been observed that the Jews often leave their homes and move out

into the countryside, probably southwards, in an attempt to escape the operations

targeted at them. Because they persist in making common cause with the Com-

munists and partisans, this alien element will be completely eradicated. The

operations that have been carried out so far took place in the east of the district

rather than in the old Soviet border areas and on the stretch of railway between

Minsk and Brest-Litovsk. And in addition, in the area under the Commandant in

Belarus the Jews in the countryside will be assembled in ghettos in the larger

towns.’
193

An officer of the War Economy and Armaments Department, who was in

Minsk on 25 October 1941 for a meeting, passed on in his report the following

suggestion from the First Officer of the General Staff of the Division to his office:

‘All Jews and other disruptive elements should be replaced by specialist workers

Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population

245

from amongst the prisoners of war.’ For the ‘security formations’ deployed in

Belarus ‘the only appropriate instructions are those associated with the worlds of

Karl May and Edgar Wallace’ is how the First Officer [Ia] of the Division

characterized the mood prevailing in his unit.
194

An order to the 707th Division from 24 November is quite unambiguous in this

respect: ‘As previous orders have already indicated, the Jews must disappear from

the flat lands and the Gypsies must also be destroyed. The implementation of

large-scale anti-Jewish operations is not the task of units from this Division. These

will be carried out by civilian or police authorities, where appropriate on the

instructions of the Commandant in Belarus if he has the necessary units at his

disposal, or if there are reasons of security or collective measures at issue. Where

small or moderate-sized groups of Jews are encountered in the countryside they

can either be dealt with at once or brought together in ghettos in the larger towns

that have been identified for this purpose where they will then be handed over to

the civilian authorities or the SD. Whenever operations of any size are carried out

the civilian authorities are to be informed in advance.’
195

In his report for November, the First Officer of the Division wrote, ‘The

measures instigated against the Jews as supporters of Bolshevism and leaders of

the partisan movement have had noticeable success. We will continue to gather

them together in ghettos and liquidate Jews found guilty of partisan activity and

rabble-rousing and thereby best promote the pacification of the countryside.’
196

This meant therefore that the ‘cleansing’ of the ‘flat lands’ that Reichskommissar

Lohse had already ordered in his ‘guidelines’ for handling the Jewish question on

18 August was a task apportioned between the civilian administration, the Police

and SS, and the Wehrmacht.
197
The Wehrmacht combed the ‘flat lands’ and

‘cleansed’ them of Jews and Gypsies, which is to say that it liquidated them or

transferred them to ghettos. Larger-scale ‘operations’ were not the responsibility

of the Division but fell to the Police; more substantial ‘operations’ like this could

also be carried out by the Division if it had appropriate units at its disposal or if

there were particular military grounds for doing so, such as ‘reasons of security’ or

‘collective measures’.

The unit commanders of the 707th Division therefore had fairly broad room for

manoeuvre within the scope of these orders. If they encountered Jews in a given

town they had three possibilities if they decided not to leave the whole matter to

the Police: they could take action against the Jews they encountered either ‘for

reasons of security’, or using the pretext of collective reprisal measures, or within

the context of general instructions for ‘cleansing’ the territory. In the matter of

whether the Jews thus encountered should be ‘dealt with’ by the Division itself or

handed over for imprisonment in a ghetto the unit leaders of the 707th Division

also had plenty of freedom for manoeuvre.

Whether the operations of the 707th Division aimed at ‘cleansing the flat lands’

were one component in a programme of annihilation carried out by the other

246

Mass Executions in Occupied Soviet Zones, 1941

security divisions of the army cannot be stated with complete confidence on the

basis of documentary material currently available. There is, however, an indica-

tion that the procedures of the 707th Division were by no means to be attributed to

an isolated initiative on the part of a single Divisional Commander. As early as

August 1941, a Regimental Commander in the 221st Security Division had made

his assessment of the situation known to his superiors and it conforms to the

pattern of the activities of the 707th: ‘The Jewish question must be solved in a

radical manner. I suggest the confinement of all the Jews living in the countryside

in assembly camps and work camps under guard. Suspect elements must be

removed.
’198
The 354th Infantry Regiment also took part in the massacres carried out by Einsatzkommando 8 that ensured that the area around Krupka in Belarus

was rendered ‘free of Jews’.
199

There is in addition much evidence that units from the Wehrmacht were taking

measures against the Jewish civilian population as part of anti-partisan or reprisal

‘operations’ in accordance with the distorted image they had been fed of the

‘Jewish-Bolshevist complex’. How widespread this practice was—whether it is true

that the Wehrmacht was generally a participant in the genocide and acting on the

pretext of a war against partisans or of collective reprisals—cannot be established

with certainty on the basis of research carried out so far.
200
There is significant evidence that, as the conduct of the war by the military became increasingly brutal

overall, there was less and less differentiation between different sections of the

population.
201

Although there is considerable evidence to suggest that the Eastern Army was

implicated in the annihilation of the Jewish civilian population—right down to

large-scale ‘cleansing operations’—it would in my view be inaccurate and in-

appropriate simply to align the Wehrmacht with the death squads of the Police

and the SS without further differentiation. It is much more important to stress

precisely the distinctive functions of the Police and the SS on the one hand as

bodies inflicting terror and aiming at the annihilation of the Jews and the

Wehrmacht on the other as a military organization. At the same time, however,

it is vital not to lose sight of the functional interplay of these different remits

within the context of the war of annihilation. The basis for the division of

functions between the Wehrmacht and the SS/Police is of particular importance

here: as a matter of principle the military left the mass murder of Communists and

Jews to Himmler’s forces. This distinction in principle still pertained even if it was

treated very flexibly in practice. Thus, just as formations of the SS and Police could

be used for front-line duties, Wehrmacht units and military agencies frequently

participated in, and even helped organize, the ‘cleansing operations’ behind the

front line.

In any discussion of how to assess the role of the Wehrmacht in the murder of

the European Jews it is important not to underestimate the fact that the division

of responsibilities in principle was much more significant than the participation of

Extension of Shootings to Whole Jewish Population

247

individual Wehrmacht units in specific ‘operations’ whose extent is sometimes

difficult to ascertain. However, because the Wehrmacht leadership declared itself

satisfied with the basic principles of the ideological war and permitted a second

war against the civilian population behind its front line, it too, bears the respon-

sibility for implementing the Holocaust.

The Fate of Jewish and Non-Jewish Prisoners of War

From the very earliest stages, the policies for annihilating the Jewish population of

the Soviet Union particularly affected the Jewish soldiers of the Red Army. They

were amongst those groups of prisoners who were separated out in the camps and