The Einsatzgruppen

The Einsatzgruppen were formed in order to function as a special action group behind the advancing army. Their function was to liquidate the politically and racially undesirable -which meant Jewish people, since the Nazis equated Jewishness with Bolshevism. (Burleigh 230) Reports of the Einsatzgruppen frequently show that they also murdered the 'asocial', i.e. gypsies and mental patients. (Burleigh 230) Reinhard Heydrich, who was later assassinated by Czech resistance early in 1942, established the Einsatzgruppen. The Einsatzgruppen and its subsidiary Einsatzkommandos first appeared sometime after May of 1939 in Czechoslovakia. (datasync.com) They were formed in order to secure political life and any useful enterprises. The actions of the Einsatzgruppen were limited here.

In September of 1939, Poland was invaded and the Einsatzgruppen were formed into five kommandos. (datasync.com) The planned operations of the Einsatzgruppen were given the cover name "Tannenberg." (Bretiman 68) It was a name that almost every German knew. Himmler had been thirteen years old when the German victory over the Russian forces took place at Tannenberg, in East Prussia, in 1914. (Bretiman 68) The Einsatz groups had first been organized by Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich to follow German armies into Poland in 1939. They were to round up the Jews and put them in ghettos. (Shirer 958)

The Einsatzgruppen fully became organized during the planning of the invasion of Russia. It was not until the beginning of the Russian campaign nearly two years later that, they were ordered to follow the combat troops and carry out a phase of the "final solution." (Shirer 959) Mobile killing occurred as part of Operation Barbarossa, Germany's attack on the Soviet Union, and took place over a wide area, from the Baltic down to the Ukraine. (Landau 171) The Race and Resettlement Office of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA (Reich Central Security Office), sponsored them. (datasync.com) Four of these units were created, each with about 3500 members.

Group A, led by Brigadefuehrer Dr. Walter Stahlecker, followed Army Group North through the Baltic states to Leningrad, Group B, led by Arthur Nebe, was attached to Army Group Center between the Baltic and the Ukraine, Group C, headed by SS-Brigadefuehrer Dr. Otto Rasch, operated in the western areas (Lwow, Rowne, Zhitomir, Kiev, Kursk, Poltava, Kharkov), and Group D, led by Dr. Otto Ohlendorf, head of the inland SD, followed the Eleventh Army and was active in Besserabia and the Crimea. (Fischer 500) Within each group there were 350 Waffen-SS, 150 in the motor pool, 100 Gestapo members, 100 auxiliary policemen, 130 Ordungsplizei, 30 from the SD and 50 from the Kripo. (datasync.com)

Working alongside the army, police battalions, local police and regular non-Jewish locals, the Einsatzgruppen rounded up Jews. The Einsatz unit would enter a village or town and order the prominent Jewish citizens to call together Jews for "resettlement." (Shirer 959) From there, they were either herded or forced into ravines, pre-dug pits or wooded areas. Then Jews were to hand over their valuables and before execution, their clothing. They were transported to the place of executions, usually an antitank ditch, in trucks. (Shirer 959) This was done in order to keep the span of time from the moment in which the victims knew what was to happen to them until the time of their execution, as short as possible. They were shot, en masse, kneeling or standing, regardless of age or sex by firing squads in a military manner and the corpses were thrown into a ditch.

In the spring of 1942, General Ohlendorf of Einsatz D recounted; an order came from Himmler to change the method of execution of the women and children. In the future they were to be dispensed in "gas vans," specially constructed for the purpose. An SD officer described how these vehicles worked: "The actual purpose of these vans could not be seen from the outside. They looked like closed trucks and were so constructed that at the start of the motor the gas [exhaust] was conducted into the van causing death in ten to fifteen minutes." But these gas vans, as Ohlendorf would later testify, were entirely inadequate for the massacres on the scale which Hitler and Himmler had ordered. (Shirer 960) Most of these en masse killings lasted only a day or two, sometimes up to a week or more. Some of the larger aktions were in Lvov (7,000 killed), Kharkov (14,000 killed) and Rovno (15,000 killed). The most infamous aktion was at the Babi Yar Ravine, outside of Kiev. 35,000 Jews were shot to death in two days. The members of the killing squads had to work in shifts in order to complete the task. It is estimated that a total of 1.5 million were murdered.

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