WEEK 5 A War of Annihilation in the East: Operation Barbarossa and Mass Shootings of Jews and ...

22 Pages·2017·3.14 MB·English

WEEK 5
A War of Annihilation in the East: Operation Barbarossa
and Mass Shootings of Jews and Other Soviets
Prepared by Tony Joel and Mathew Turner
Week 5 Unit Learning Outcomes
ULO 1. evaluate in a reflective and critical manner the consequences of racism and prejudice
ULO 3. synthesise core historiographical debates on how and why the Holocaust occurred
ULO 4. recognise important linkages between the Second World War and the Holocaust,
and question Hitler’s role in these events
Introduction
On 22 June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa: the invasion of the Soviet
Union. Coinciding with the war in the East was a further radicalisation of anti-Jewish
policy that culminated in the decision to systematically exterminate all European Jews.
That radicalisation occurred was no coincidence. The invasion of the Soviet Union was
conceptualised and waged as a “war of annihilation” against longstanding “racial” and
ideological enemies pejoratively referred to as “Jewish-Bolsheviks.” In the first few
months, more than a million Jews residing in eastern Europe — the Soviet Union,
eastern Poland, and the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia — were
murdered by Germans and their non-German collaborators. It was a period of intense,
decentralised killing that involved mass shootings being conducted across vast
amounts of enemy territory. The months between June 1941 and January 1942 were the
most critical in the evolution of the Holocaust. Through mass shootings the Nazi
régime and its collaborators were “bringing death to Jews,” but by the end of this
period the process was reversed so that they would be “bringing Jews to death”
instead.1 In late 1941 and early 1942, the infrastructure was put into place to construct
extermination camps. The “Final Solution” would see millions of Jews from across
Europe deported to these extermination camps where they were gassed.
This week’s learning module asks some critically important questions with which
historians have grappled over many decades. Section 1 examines Operation
Barbarossa, and asks you to consider whether the mass murder of Soviet Jews through

1 These contrasting phrases are borrowed from your set text edited by Peter Hayes.
LEARNING MODULE 5. Section 2: Operation Barbarossa 2

decentralised shootings was a primary objective of the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Moreover, given the scale of killing and the transition from shootings to gassings that
began from late 1941 onwards, you need to question whether the systematic
extermination of Soviet Jews through mass shootings represented the first stage in a
plan to exterminate all European Jews. How was the establishment of gas chambers,
and the decision to exterminate all of Europe’s Jews, related to these mass shootings?
At first glance, it may appear to be a question with an obvious answer. As you engage
with the material in Section 1, however, you will realise that, in preparing for the
invasion of the Soviet Union, the Nazis had a number of bloodthirsty ambitions. Their
goals were multifaceted: the destruction of Bolshevism (and Bolsheviks); the
enslavement and wide-scale starvation of Slavic “subhumans” (Untermenschen); the
gaining of further “living space” in the East; and the mass killing of Jews. But what is
the relationship between these various brutal objectives? It cannot be assumed that the
links are necessarily direct, automatic, or even planned at all. How historians — and
students of history — answer these questions reflects their approach to the broader,
critical issue of Holocaust planning and intentions.
Section 2 of this week’s learning module examines a related, important, and similarly
contested topic: what motivated Holocaust perpetrators to kill? In addressing German
and non-German perpetrators alike, the section essentially asks you to consider: were
they “willing executioners” motivated by antisemitism and ideological zeal? Or were
they otherwise “ordinary men” who, when placed in extraordinary circumstances,
suddenly became capable of committing genocide?
After completing this learning module, you will continue your evaluation, in a reflective
and critical manner, the consequences of racism and prejudice. Furthermore, you will
continue to grapple with and synthesise core historiographical debates on how and why
the Holocaust occurred. Along the way, you should recognise important linkages between
the Second World War and the Holocaust, and question Hitler’s role in these events.
Section 1. Operation Barbarossa
This section examines Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, which was
launched on 22 June 1941, and considers the reasons that possibly motivated Hitler to
attack. It provides an overview of the ways in which this conflict was intended and
designed to be fought as an ideological war of annihilation with strong racial
underpinnings, as evidenced by the issuance of pre-invasion orders authorising
murderous actions against political and racial enemies. Importantly, Operation
Barbarossa provided the context and cover for the first systematic mass shootings of
Jews in the East by the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads). It also enabled
Romania, a German ally with a long history of virulent antisemitism, to embark on its
own program of murdering Jews immediately. Similar scenes quickly unfolded in
Lithuania, too, with public massacres of local Jews occurring within days of the
German assault on the Soviet Union.
LEARNING MODULE 5. Section 2: Operation Barbarossa 3

a) The Decision to Invade the Soviet Union
The discussion here examines the issue of why Germany went to war against the Soviet
Union. Was the war prosecuted primarily for “conventional” strategic reasons? Or was
ideology the chief motivation with Hitler’s main objective being the annihilation of
Jews and other local “racially inferior” populations more generally?
Doris Bergen stresses that war with the Soviet Union always had been at the forefront
of Hitler’s mind as a means of implementing his policies of racial resettlement and
“ethnic cleansing” in the East.2 Bergen convincingly argues that Hitler’s aggression
against the Soviet Union was by no means a defensive reaction to perceived, let alone
actual, provocation on Stalin’s behalf. Unparalleled destruction was part of the
planning, not merely a consequence. The question — one that remains contested by
historians — is whether military-strategic considerations took precedence over racial-
ideological priorities, or vice versa, in forming the catalyst for Hitler’s ultimate
decision to invade the Soviet Union in mid-1941. In this sense, the same considerations
apply to the examination of Hitler’s motivations for invading the Soviet Union as they
do to the invasion of Poland two years earlier (as explored in Week 3).
The German historian Jürgen Förster outlines the background to the decision to invade
the Soviet Union.

READING EXCERPT: Please read Jürgen Förster’s piece
entitled “Why did Hitler Invade the Soviet Union?”

The Förster reading reveals that planning for the invasion of the Soviet Union already
had commenced by late July 1940. This is when it became clear to Hitler that, despite
his conquest of continental western Europe, Britain would not agree to withdraw from
the war. Hitler had planned to defeat Britain quickly through aerial bombardment and
invasion by sea, and to further strengthen his position through a rapid invasion of the
Soviet Union. An invasion of the Soviet Union also was aimed at counteracting the
possibility of the United States entering the war.
Britain weathered the Battle of Britain (the German aerial assault) and this meant
Operation Sea Lion (Hitler’s planned sea invasion of Britain) never eventuated. These
developments seem to have reinforced in Hitler’s mind the urgency of a Soviet

2 Doris Bergen, War & Genocide. (Rowman & Littlefield, London, 2009) pp. 145-46.
LEARNING MODULE 5. Section 2: Operation Barbarossa 4

invasion. The degree of support offered to Britain by the still neutral United States
during the Battle of Britain (through the Lend Lease program of economic assistance)
and the preparations being made by the United States for war against Japan
highlighted for Hitler the dangers of American intervention. Hitler feared the
possibility of a re-run of the outcome of the First World War when the United States
had entered the conflict as late as 1917, but in doing so played a decisive role in the
final outcome turning against Germany. After failing to defeat Britain quickly in 1940,
Hitler’s attention subsequently turned to the option of attacking the Soviet Union.
Critically, however, in the reading Förster concludes that such strategic arguments
became intertwined with ideological considerations:
In the summer of 1940 Hitler linked the realisation of his twenty-year-old
living-space programme — which united expansion towards the east,
annihilation of Bolshevism, and extermination of Jewry — with the strategic
necessity of securing Germany’s sphere of power against the growing challenge
of the Anglo-American naval powers.
Förster makes the further insightful point that, although Hitler resolved in the summer
of 1940 to begin planning for war against the Soviet Union, this did not necessarily
represent a final or irreversible decision. He still could have changed his mind in
response to differing circumstances as events unfolded. Nonetheless, the formulation of
plans did entail a series of political, military, and supply commitments that developed
“their own dynamic,” building up expectations that an ideologically-driven apocalyptic
war in the East was imminent if not inevitable.
Hitler’s strategic dilemmas in western Europe magnified in his mind the possible threats
posed by the United States entering the war. It appeared imperative for Germany to
move to protect its eastern boundaries by invading the Soviet Union. Such a strategy had
the added advantage of enabling Hitler to carry out his ideologically-shaped vision of
racial obliteration in the Soviet Union. Strategy and ideology became intertwined to
influence decision-making about the planned invasion of the Soviet Union.
b) A War of Annihilation
If the decision to invade the Soviet Union was framed in a strategic logic, an intensely
ideological framework marked the conceptualisation of how such a war should be
fought and what were to be its key objectives. War with the Soviet Union, while
securing Germany’s strategic position and unlimited economic opportunities through
the exploitation of agricultural riches, would enable Germany to destroy once and for
all the perceived threat of “Jewish Bolshevism.”
Importantly, it was not only Hitler who held such views but also the military
leadership. Many ordinary soldiers, furthermore, were infused with antisemitic
ideology. Erich Hoepner, a Generaloberst (colonel general, the second-highest rank in
the Wehrmacht) and the commanding officer of a Panzer tank unit at the time that
LEARNING MODULE 5. Section 2: Operation Barbarossa 5

Operation Barbarossa was launched, kept a wartime diary. Hoepner, in a May 1941
diary entry quoted by Jürgen Förster, commented:
The war against Russia is an important chapter in the struggle for existence of the
German nation. It is the old battle of the Germanic against the Slav peoples, of the
defence of European culture against Moscovite-Asiatic inundation, and the
repulse of Jewish Bolshevism. The objective of this battle must be the destruction
of present-day Russia and it must therefore be conducted with unprecedented
severity. Every military action must be guided in planning and execution by an
iron will to exterminate the enemy mercilessly and totally. In particular, no
adherents of the present Russian-Bolshevik system are to be spared.3
At the time that preparations for Operation Barbarossa were being finalised, Hoepner
clearly was totally committed to Hitler and convinced that he was about to engage in an
ideological war of an extraordinary nature. His comments raise issues that bear on the
relationship between ideology and planning for war against the Soviet Union in a
general sense as well as the relationship shared by the Wehrmacht and the SS in
particular. (Despite his earlier unwavering commitment to the national socialist cause,
facing insurmountable odds Hoepner defied Hitler’s orders in December 1941 and
instructed his Panzer group to retreat. An enraged Hitler summarily dismissed Hoepner
from the Wehrmacht. Later, Hoepner became involved in the July 20 bomb plot — a
failed assassination attempt against Hitler in 1944. Hoepner was put on trial and found
guilty by the Volksgerichtshof, and hanged at Berlin’s Plötzensee Prison in August 1944.)

(l) While still a highly-respected Generaloberst in the Wehrmacht and a Panzer Group leader, Hoepner
being congratulated by Hitler (with SS chief Heinrich Himmler standing directly behind him, showing
the close ties between the army and the SS).
(r) Hoepner on trial in August 1944. He was hanged a week later.
Sources: “Erich Hoepner,” Getty Images. http://www.gettyimages.com.au/photos/erich-
hoepner?excludenudity=true&sort=mostpopular&mediatype=photography&phrase=erich%20hoepner
http://www.gettyimages.com.au/detail/news-photo/verhandlung-im-kammergericht-an-
derelssholzstrasse-in-news-photo/545962931?#verhandlung-im-kammergericht-an-derelssholzstrasse-in-
erich-hoepner-picture-id545962931 [Accessed 25 March 2017]

3 Jürgen Förster, “The German Army and the Ideological War against the Soviet Union,” in Gerhard
Hirschfeld (ed.) Genocide: Jews & Soviet Prisoners of War in Nazi Germany. (The German Historical
Institute, Allen & Unwin, 1986). p. 18.
LEARNING MODULE 5. Section 2: Operation Barbarossa 6

• How were ideological intentions translated into the planning for battle?
• What specific plans were made to kill Jews? (Hoepner’s diary entry points to a
racially- and politically-motivated campaign in which Jews appear as part of a
generalised racial struggle, not as the objects of a systematically planned program of
destruction.)
Two elements in the planning and practice of war in the Soviet Union determined its
emergence as an ideologically-driven war of annihilation:
• The so-called “Criminal Orders” that authorised, indeed required, members of
Germany’s military to conduct atrocities against Red Army troops and Soviet
civilians alike;
• Mobilisation of the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing squads) to “pacify” occupied
territory behind the front.
The “Criminal Orders”
What have now become retrospectively known as the “Criminal Orders” were a series
of formal instructions negotiated between Hitler and his Supreme Command of the
German Armed Forces (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, OKW) in the lead-up to
invading the Soviet Union. They paved the way for the Wehrmacht to break all
previous humanitarian conventions and international laws of war when it came to
waging war in the East. They established inter alia:
• The Barbarossa Decree, 13 May 1941
o German soldiers could not be courtmartialled for atrocities against civilians
in the Soviet Union (unless their actions posed a direct threat to Wehrmacht
interests)
o All suspicious civilians were to be killed on sight
• The Guidelines for the Conduct of Troops in Russia, 19 May 1941
o Portrayed Soviet populations as inherently dangerous and not to be trusted
o Justified any treatment towards those regarded as a threat
• The so-called Commissar Order, 6 June 1941
o Authorised the shooting of civilian political commissars attached to Red Army
German soldiers received the Guidelines for the Conduct of Troops in Russia in June,
and its first paragraphs set the tone for how they were expected to behave:
1. Bolshevism is the deadly enemy of the National-Socialist German Nation. It is this
undermining ideology and its supporters at which Germany’s struggle is aimed.
LEARNING MODULE 5. Section 2: Operation Barbarossa 7

2. This struggle demands ruthless and energetic measures against Bolshevist
agitators, guerrillas, saboteurs, Jews, and the complete elimination of all active or
passive resistance.
3. Strictest reserve and utmost vigilance toward all members of the Red Army —
including the prisoners — is vindicated, since treacherous fighting methods are to
be expected. Especially the Asiatic soldiers of the Red Army are obscure,
unpredictable, insidious, and callous.
From the perspective of a unit studying the Holocaust, what is striking about these
Guidelines is that “Bolsheviks,” especially those in the Red Army, and not
specifically or exclusively Jews, were the primary target. Jews were subsumed into a
broader list and yet once the war was underway Jews were the main group targeted
among the civilians. Nonetheless, the German historian Wigbert Benz observes that
the Guidelines were the first example of military orders “directly” identifying Jews
collectively as an enemy group.4

Three Soviet civilians, Krill Trous, Masha Bruskina, and Volodya Sherbateivich, being marched to
their public execution in Minsk, Byelorussia (present-day Belarus), in October 1941.
Bruskina, a seventeen-year-old Jewish girl, was forced to wear a placard that stated in German and
Russian: “We are partisans and we shot at German soldiers.”
Source: “Masha Bruskina gehängt als Partisanin in Minsk 26.10.1941.” geocities.ws
http://www.geocities.ws/epjacobs4/masha.htm
[Accessed 25 March 2017]

4 Wigbert Benz, Der Hungerplan im “Unternehmen Barbarossa” 1941. (WVB, Berlin, 2011)
LEARNING MODULE 5. Section 2: Operation Barbarossa 8

Why did the Wehrmacht accept, with apparently so little resistance and perhaps even
some enthusiasm, its transformation into an instrument of Nazi ideology?
The OKW agreed for a number of reasons:
• first, key military leaders such as Wilhelm Keitel, the field marshal who served as
OKW chief for most of the Second World War, by and large shared Hitler’s belief
that Soviet soldiers and civilians were intrinsically barbaric and therefore agreed that
any measures taken against them were justifiable;
• second, the troops themselves were the products of the Nazi educational system. As
Philippe Burrin observes they welcomed and absorbed the extensive propaganda fed
to them as they trained for the invasion;5
• in addition, it was believed that German soldiers would be engaged in such brutal
warfare for only a few weeks — until the inevitable victory was achieved — and that
it was psychologically feasible to continue such a frenzy of violence for a short,
intensive period. What they did not believe they were being asked to do was to carry
out a sustained campaign over a long period of time;
• once the war continued and the Red Army responded with similarly tough and
brutal tactics or died like flies through malnutrition in prisoner of war camps,
however, the German view of Russians as subhuman was “confirmed,” further
reinforcing ongoing brutal treatment by the invading forces.

PRESCRIBED TEXT: Please read Timothy Snyder’s chapter
entitled “Racial War in the East,” pp. 285-98.

c) The Einsatzgruppen
You will note from Snyder’s chapter (pp. 296-97) that, as part of their intended war of
annihilation, the Nazis deployed mobile killing squads known as Einsatzgruppen.
These squads were comprised of members from a combination of SS and Police
organisations such as the SD (security police) and Order Police. Their task was to

5 Philippe Burrin, Hitler and the Jews: The Genesis of the Holocaust. (Edward Arnold, London, 1994) p. 113.
LEARNING MODULE 5. Section 2: Operation Barbarossa 9

“pacify” the area behind the troops’ frontlines in preparation for occupation. In
practice, this meant the mass shooting of Jews, often forced to dig their own graves
prior to their execution. The scale of mass murder undertaken by these mobile killing
squads is unfathomable. In one notorious act, perpetrated at Babi Yar, near Kiev in
Ukraine, an Einsatzgruppe liquidated over 30,000 Jews in just two days in September
1941. Indeed, around 50 per cent of Holocaust victims were murdered within close
vicinity to where they lived, as a result of German operations to clear newly occupied
areas of Jews through mass shootings. The killings often were conducted under the
noses of non-Jewish residents, who in turn frequently benefited from their Jewish
neighbours’ demise.6

Members of Einsatzgruppe B conduct a mass shooting in the Soviet Union.
Source: “Einsatzgruppen,” Justice Network.
http://www.nosue.org/the-holocaust-german-and-american-law/einsatzgruppen/ [Accessed 25 March 2017]

PRESCRIBED TEXT: Please read Richard Rhodes’
chapter entitled “Bringing Death to Jews,” pp. 455-61
(from the subheading “Babi Yar”).

6 Omer Bartov, “Wartime Lies and Other Testimonies,” in Omer Bartov (ed.) The Holocaust: Origins,
Implementation, Aftermath, second edition. (Routledge, New York, 2015). pp. 276-77.
LEARNING MODULE 5. Section 2: Operation Barbarossa 10

It should be stressed, too, that the SS and the Wehrmacht shared a remarkably good
relationship in the East. The Einsatzgruppen worked closely with the regular army,
which not only tolerated the SS operating in the rear of the military front but even
allowed SS troops to accompany the army at the frontline. The Wehrmacht actively
cooperated in measures taken against Jews. According to Christian Streit, despite
some initial reluctance the army also eventually agreed to hand over Jewish prisoners
of war to the SS.7
At first only 3,000 troops were deployed in the Einsatzgruppen. They were divided
into four groups as follows:
• Einsatzgruppe A (behind the army in the Baltic states)
• Einsatzgruppe B (into Byelorussia and Russia)
• Einsatzgruppe C (northern Ukraine)
• Einsatzgruppe D (southern Ukraine, including territory annexed by Romania, and the Crimea)

Map showing where each of the four Einsatzgruppe swept through eastern Europe following the German
army’s advance deep into Soviet territory.
Source: “Einsatzgruppen: The Nazi Killing Squads,” Illustrated History.
https://incredibleimages4u.blogspot.com.au/2011/01/einsatzgruppen-nazi-killing-squads.html
[Accessed 25 March 2017]

7 Christian Streit, “The German Army and the Policies of Genocide” in Gerhard Hirschfeld (ed.), The Policies
of Genocide: Jews and Soviet Prisoners of War in Nazi Germany. (Allen & Unwin, London, 1986) pp. 1-12.