Were There Any Good Guys During WW2?

Braunschweig, Germany. An elderly German lady watches bodies of German boys killed in Allied air raids.
Image Source: Deutsches Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archive), Bild 146-1979-025-19A

This article by Richard Dayton published in the Guardian is refreshing because it is "honest". We do not condone the mass killing conducted by Nazi fanatics of innocent people, just because they were Jews or Untermenschen. But it is important to get the facts right. The Allies were no "good guys" either.

In 1945, as at the end of all wars, the victor powers spun the conflict's history to serve the interests of their elites. Wartime propaganda thus achieved an extraordinary afterlife. As Vladimir Putin showed yesterday, the Great Patriotic War remains a key political resource in Russia. In Britain and the US, too, a certain idea of the second world war is enthusiastically kept alive and less flattering memories suppressed.

Five years ago, Robert Lilly, a distinguished American sociologist, prepared a book based on military archives. Taken by Force is a study of the rapes committed by American soldiers in Europe between 1942 and 1945. He submitted his manuscript in 2001. But after September 11, its US publisher suppressed it, and it first appeared in 2003 in a French translation.

We know from Anthony Beevor about the sexual violence unleashed by the Red Army, but we prefer not to know about mass rape committed by American and British troops. Lilly suggests a minimum of 10,000 American rapes. Contemporaries described a much wider scale of unpunished sex crime. Time Magazine reported in September 1945: "Our own army and the British army along with ours have done their share of looting and raping ... we too are considered an army of rapists."

The British and American publics share a sunny view of the second world war. The evil of Auschwitz and Dachau, turned inside out, clothes the conflict in a shiny virtue. Movies, popular histories and political speeches frame the war as a symbol of Anglo-American courage, with the Red Army's central role forgotten. This was, we believe, "a war for democracy". Americans believe that they fought the war to rescue the world. For apologists of the British Empire, such as Niall Ferguson, the war was an ethical bath where the sins of centuries of conquest, slavery and exploitation were expiated. We are marked forever as "the good guys"and can all happily chant "Two world wars and one world cup."

All this seems innocent fun, but patriotic myths have sharp edges. The "good war" against Hitler has underwritten 60 years of warmaking. It has become an ethical blank cheque for British and US power. We claim the right to bomb, to maim, to imprison without trial on the basis of direct and implicit appeals to the war against fascism.

When we fall out with such tyrant friends as Noriega, Milosevic or Saddam we rebrand them as "Hitler". In the "good war" against them, all bad things become forgettable "collateral damage". The devastation of civilian targets in Serbia or Iraq, torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, the war crime of collective punishment in Falluja, fade to oblivion as the "price of democracy".

Our democratic imperialism prefers to forget that fascism had important Anglo-American roots. Hitler's dream was inspired, in part, by the British Empire. In eastern Europe, the Nazis hoped to make their America and Australia, where ethnic cleansing and slave labour created a frontier for settlement. In western Europe, they sought their India from which revenues, labour and soldiers might be extracted.

American imperialism in Latin America gave explicit precedents for Germany's and Japan's claims of supremacy in their neighbouring regions. The British and Americans were key theorists of eugenics and had made racial segregation respectable. The concentration camp was a British invention, and in Iraq and Afghanistan the British were the first to use air power to repress partisan resistance. The Luftwaffe - in its assault on Guernica, and later London and Coventry - paid homage to Bomber Harris's terror bombing of the Kurds in the 1920s.

We forget, too, that British and US elites gave aid to the fascists. President Bush's grandfather, prosecuted for "trading with the enemy" in 1942, was one of many powerful Anglo-Americans who liked Mussolini and Hitler and did what they could to help. Appeasement as a state policy was only the tip of an iceberg of practical aid to these dictatorships. Capital and technology flowed freely, and fascist despots received dignified treatment in Washington and London. Henry Ford made Hitler birthday gifts of 50,000 marks.

We least like to remember that our side also committed war crimes in the 1940s. The destruction of Dresden, a city filled with women, children, the elderly and the wounded, and with no military significance, is only the best known of the atrocities committed by our bombers against civilian populations. We know about the notorious Japanese abuse of prisoners of war, but do not remember the torture and murder of captured Japanese. Edgar Jones, an "embedded" Pacific war correspondent, wrote in 1946: "'We shot prisoners in cold blood, wiped out hospitals, strafed lifeboats, killed or mistreated enemy civilians, finished off the enemy wounded, tossed the dying into a hole with the dead, and in the Pacific boiled flesh off enemy skulls to make table ornaments."

After 1945, we borrowed many fascist methods. Nuremberg only punished a handful of the guilty; most walked free with our help. In 1946, Project Paperclip secretly brought more than 1,000 Nazi scientists to the US. Among their ranks were Kurt Blome, who had tested nerve gas at Auschwitz, and Konrad Schaeffer, who forced salt into victims at Dachau. Other experiments at mind control via drugs and surgery were folded into the CIA's Project Bluebird. Japan's Dr Shiro Ishii, who had experimented with prisoners in Manchuria, came to Maryland to advise on bio-weapons. Within a decade of British troops liberating Belsen, they were running their own concentration camps in Kenya to crush the Mau Mau. The Gestapo's torture techniques were borrowed by the French in Algeria, and then disseminated by the Americans to Latin American dictatorships in the 60s and 70s. We see their extension today in the American camps in Cuba and Diego Garcia.

War has a brutalising momentum. This is the moral of Taken By Force, which shows how American soldiers became increasingly indiscriminate in their sexual violence and military authorities increasingly lax in its prosecution. Even as we remember the evils of nazism, and the courage of those who defeated it, we should begin to remember the second world war with less self-satisfaction. We might, in particular, learn to distrust those who use it to justify contemporary warmongering.

Richard Drayton is senior lecturer in history at Cambridge University.

A propaganda tool that made money too. "Commando" comics

Source: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/heroesvillains/g1/images/g1cs3s3b.jpg

 Charred remains of victims of one of the attacks on Tokyo.(Image: US. Library of Congress.)

The book in German that chronicles the crimes by the Allies. (BUY THE BOOK, BUY THE VIDEO)

People of Dresden were reduced to charcoal by the Allied bombings

Image: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/heroesvillains/g1/images/g1cs3s3b.jpg

American sailors watch as a naked emaciated Japanese POW scrubs the deck of an American warship 

VIDEO: TERROR BOMBING BY ALLIES ON GERMAN CITIES DURING WW2

EINSATZGRUPPEN: NAZI EXTERMINATORS

Going about their daily work. Einsatzgruppe killing Poles.

Einsatzgruppen. In German it means an innocuous, "task force". In reality it embodied the evil side of Nazism. During World War Two it killed about 1.3 million Jews, gypsies and Soviet commissars. They were terminators, exterminators. Giving flesh and bones to Hitler's visceral hatred of Jews and the Untermenschen.

What is frightening is that they did the killings in a professional, well organised manner. Without pity. Just a mad devotion to the Fuehrer. It is certain that many of them were sadists. Nobody could kill such large number of humans without being slightly kinky in the head. 

Of course, WW2 made almost everybody insane with hatred. The brutality of the Russian soldiers in Germany after it lost and even the many incidents of British and American soldiers' bestial behaviour towards German Waffen SS soldiers hardly shows them with a halo over their heads.

Nazism took roots in Germany only because the Allies humiliated it after WW1. It all starts with fear, hatred and the desire to dominate others. The vicious cycle never ends. But that is another story.

 Einsatzgruppen in action

Formed by Heydrich, they comprised some 3,000 men in four groups of roughly battalion size. And, although Waffen-SS apologists have tried to deny any link between the Waffen-SS and these murder squads, the simple fact is that over a third (34 per cent) of their strength was drawn from the ranks of existing Waffen-SS formations. 

Moving close behind the advancing front line so that few could evade their net, the Einsatzgruppen brutally shot, bayoneted, burnt, tortured, clubbed to death or buried alive almost half a million Jews in the first six months of the campaign. People were shot in the stomach to die in agony while their exterminators stood around joking and taking bets on how long they would last; babies had their heads smashed against walls to save ammunition; nobody was safe.

Yet even the men of the Einsatzgruppen sickened of the horror, von dem Bach-Zelewski himself suffering a nervous breakdown and others committing suicide through a surfeit of guilt. When Himmler attended the execution of 200 Jews in Minsk, even he was so revolted at the carnage that he ordered a new method to be found. From this stemmed the gas trucks and the later ovens. 

The men of the Einsatzgruppen used all manner of psychological tricks to persuade themselves that what they were doing was 'right' after basic ideology failed. The Jews were not just civilians, but partisans, arsonists, saboteurs, couriers, spies and criminals. 

Later, the Einsatzgruppen were actually to fight in an anti-partisan role as the Army (which cannot therefore absolve itself of guilt either) found their activities so 'useful'. Haider, the Army Chief of Staff in December 1941, said: 'these people [the Einsatzgruppen] are worth their weight in gold to us. They guarantee the security of our rear communications and so save us calling upon troops for this purpose'.

MIND OF THE EINSATZGRUPPEN MAN
(Special Motivation - The Motivation and Actions of the Einsatzgruppen by Walter S. Zapotoczny)

The Einsatzgruppen story offers insight into a fundamental Holocaust question of what made it possible for men, some of them ordinary men, to kill so many people so ruthlessly. The members of the Einsatzgruppen had developed a special motivation to kill. 

 The training that SS recruits received before their arrival in Pretzsch, prepared them very well for the new mission of the Einsatzgruppen. The SS was to be the living embodiment of the Nazi doctrine of the superiority of Nordic blood, and of the Nazi conception of a master race. SS candidates were thoroughly examined and checked. They were asked for the political reputation record of their parents, brothers and sisters, the record of their ancestry as far back as 1750 and their physical examination and any records from the Hitler Youth. Further, they were asked for a record of hereditary health showing that no hereditary disease exists in their parents and in their family. Last, but perhaps most important, was a certification from the race commission.This examining commission was composed of SS leaders, anthropologists, and physicians. The very process of selection and acceptance gave the new member a sense of superiority. Only pureblooded Germans in good health could become a member. He must have been of excellent character, had no criminal record, and been well versed in all National Socialist doctrines. The members had to be ready and willing tools, prepared to carry out tasks of any nature, however distasteful. Absolute obedience was therefore the necessary foundation stone of the SS. Obedience had to be unconditional. It corresponded to the conviction that the National Socialist ideology must reign supreme. Every SS man was prepared, therefore, to carry out blindly every order that was issued by the Fuhrer. The SS troops were also taught a view of the past based on racial struggle and Lebensraum (Living Space). The past provided a sense of continuity and showed the recruit that the Jews and Slavs had always been the enemies of Germany. This meant that the need for living space and a solution to the Jewish question was deemed inevitable. The SS soldiers, as well as the other men who arrived in Pretzsch, had also been exposed to the ideas of Euthanasia. 

 The killing by shooting, especially of women and children, had a devastating effect on many of the Einsatzgruppen member's mental state, which even heavy drinking of hard liquor (of which they were given a generous supply) could not suppress. A few committed suicide and some asked for transfer to other units. Units began experimenting with methods that would ease the burden on the shooters. 

Clearly, the Einsatzgruppen record is one of brutality and devastation. They were indoctrinated to view Jews, Slavs, partisans, and Bolsheviks as threats to the German people. They viewed this people as sub-human. Through indoctrination and training, they developed a special motivation to conduct violence. This special motivation not only enabled them to kill, it enabled them to carry out cruel and bestial acts on their victims. 

One theory that accounts for their behavior is based upon causal rather than correlation evidence is the violent-socialization theory of the American criminologist Lonnie Athens. Richard Rhodes describes his theory, in detail. Athens did not study violent officials. Some violent officials (notably police) are self-selected and come to the profession already experienced with violence, as many of the Einsatzgruppen did. For those officials who acquire their violent skills in official training, there are clear parallels between their training experiences and the four-stage development process that Athens identified in the backgrounds of violent criminals Since violence, official or private, is learned through violent experience, such parallels are to be expected and should not be surprising. The violent socialization process, Athens found, divides into four stages, which he calls: brutalization; belligerency; violent performances and virulency. The stages are sequential. Each stage has to be fully experienced before the subject advances to the next one, a process that can occur cataclysmically in a short period of time or across a period of years. That violence is a choice rather than a compulsion or a release is taken for granted in the military and among police. 

The attitude of most of the Einsatzgruppen can be summed up in a quote from SS General Otto Ohlendorf, commander of Einsatzgruppen D, during the Nuremburg Trials: The men, women, deeply excavated antitank ditches. Then they were shot, kneeling or standing, and the corpses thrown into the ditch. I never permitted the shooting by individuals in group D, but ordered that several of the men should shoot at the same time in order to avoid direct personal responsibility. He, like most of the Einsatzgruppen, expressed no remorse for his actions and was more concerned about the moral strain on those carrying out the executions than those actually being executed. He went to the gallows believing he had done his duty for his country. He, like most of the Einsatzgruppen, had a special motivation to carry out their work.

Einsatzgruppen A. Is man really any better than animals?

Notably, the Einsatzgruppen included many high-ranking officers, intellectuals and lawyers. Otto Ohlendorf, who commanded Einsatzgruppe D, had earned degrees from three universities and achieved a doctorate in jurisprudence. One of the commanders of Einsatzgruppe C, Ernst Biberstein, was a Protestant pastor, theologian and church official. 

jewishvirtuallibrary.org

Jewish women before their execution in Liepeja, Latvia. Sheer insanity. Hatred is terrible.

EINSATZGRUPPEN NOT MERE KILLERS.... 

Axishistory

They were also a great source of intelligence on the conditions of the areas occupied by the German Army. In 1941-1942, clerks of the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt - RSHA) compiled summaries of the reports they had received from the Action Groups (Einsatzgruppen) of the German Security Police and Security Service (Sicherheitspolizei und Sicherheitsdienst - Sipo u. SD) for very limited circulation. In 1945 a collection of most of these summaries, individually captioned "Operational Situation Reports USSR" and later "Reports from the Occupied Eastern Territories," was captured by American troops and subsequently used as evidence in the "Einsatzgruppe trial" conducted by a US military tribunal at Nuernberg. 

Operational Situation Report USSR No. 20

Einsatzgruppe B:
Location: Minsk

The industrialized areas are only slightly damaged. The town is without light and water. Political and government officials have fled. The population is very depressed. Many people have lost their shelter and the food situation is worsening. To protect the communication lines and prevent acts of sabotage, the Field Commander ordered the arrest of all male inhabitants between the ages of 18-45. The civil prisoners are being screened at this time. The attitude of the population toward the Germans is one of wait-and-see. The Byelorussians show a friendlier attitude towards the Germans. However, the entire population hopes that the occupation will enable them to live a normal life in the near future.

According to the last report of Einsatzgruppe B, wooden houses in the western part of Minsk were set afire. Apparently the houses were set on fire by Jews because the Jews were supposed to evacuate their homes for returning Byelorussian refugees. At present the population is in a mood to launch a pogrom. Their fury caused certain anti-Jewish actions. A number of Jews were liquidated for this act.

Einsatzgruppe C:
Location: Rovno
1. Actions
On July 5, 1941, 15 Jews were executed as reprisal for the bestial murder of the Ukrainian nationalist leader Dr. Kirnychny in Rudki. The Ukrainian population on their part set the synagogue and Jewish houses on fire. 150 Ukrainians were found murdered in Stryj. In the course of a search, it was possible to arrest 12 Communists who were responsible for the murder of the Ukrainians. It concerns 11 Jews and 1 Ukrainian who were shot with the participation of the entire population of Stryj.

Einsatzkommando 1b:
Location: Chernovtsy, Vorkommando at Khotin. The following was ascertained at Chernowitz:
1. The Rumanians declare North Bukovina to be Rumanian territory.
2. A great number of Jews of the poorer class are in Rumanian prisons. Nearly no intelligentsia.
3. The Rumanians are inclined to exterminate the upper echelon of Ukrainian leadership in order to settle the Ukrainian problem in the North Bukovina once and for all, taking advantage of the present situation. 22 Ukrainians are under Rumanian arrest in Chernowitz. lb has been given the following orders in this respect:
a. To influence the Rumanian authorities to take severe measures concerning the Jewish question. They must raid Jewish meetings and uncover conspiracies in order to stimulate Rumanian activities against the Jewish intelligentsia and to enable us to take a hand ourselves.
b. To hold or to turn over to us important Ukrainians; similarly, Ukrainian Communists will be put at the disposal of the Rumanians.

Einsatzgruppe C:
Location: Zhitomir
Zhitomir had a population of 90,000, of which about 30% were Jews, 15% Poles, the rest Ukrainians, and about 4,000 Volksdeutsche. Now there are approximately 40,000.
Zhitomir is heavily damaged by arson committed by the Russians. The population greets the Germans as they march in.
Einsatzgruppe D:
Location: Piatra-Neamt

The Chief of the Security Police and the SD
Berlin July 20, 1941
36 copies
(27th copy)

Operational Situation Report USSR No. 28

Einsatzgruppe A:
Location: Pleskau [Pskov]

Einsatzgruppe A has transmitted secret instructions (a copy of which is enclosed) concerning the deportation of anti-Soviet elements from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.

I. Following consultations with Army Group South, the agreement stands that all the Einsatzkommandos as well as the Group staff stay close to the fighting troops whenever possible. This guarantees that the advance Kommandos as well as the main Kommandos will march into Kiev as soon as possible after its capture, which is expected shortly.

II. According to the report of an eyewitness from Tarnopol, an officer of the German Air Force was led through the city by the Russian police, followed by a large crowd of Jews, and was insulted and ill treated. The population is in general convinced that it is mostly the Jews who should be held responsible for the atrocities that are committed everywhere.

IV. So far, a total of 240 executions have been carried out in Rovno: mostly Jewish Bolshevik agents and informers of the NKVD. The advanced Kommando Lublin for special tasks arrived here yesterday and together with the militia will now proceed to undertake the further purging of the town and its environs.

As it was learned that the Russians before they left have either deported the Ukrainian intelligentsia, or executed them, that is, murdered them, it is assumed that in the last days before the retreat of the Russians, about 100 influential Ukrainians were murdered. So far the bodies have not been found — a search has been initiated.

About 100-150 Ukrainians were murdered by the Russians in Kremenets. Some of these Ukrainians are said to have been thrown into cauldrons of boiling water. This has been deduced from the fact that the bodies were found without skin when they were exhumed. In retaliation, the Ukrainians killed 130 Jews with sticks.

In Dubno, where the activities have essentially come to an end, a total of 100 executions were carried out. Among them was a Ukrainian who since 1940 has worked without interruption for the NKVD. He confessed he was responsible for the murder or deportation of Ukrainians into Central Russia; in addition, two Communist officials and confidants of the NKVD who instigated sniper-warfare; one Communist who had revealed every activity of the Ukrainian nationalists to the Russians and had initiated the evacuation or deportation of many local families. Finally, there were also two Russians who were found in possession of shoulder-straps, leather-wear and army under-wear of German soldiers. Before leaving Dubno, the Russians, as they had done in Lvov, committed extensive mass-murder.

Altogether 127 executions were carried out in Tarnopol. Before their flight, as in Lvov and Dubno, the Russians went on a rampage there. Disinterments revealed 10 bodies of German soldiers. Almost all of them had their hands tied behind their backs with wire. The bodies revealed traces of extremely cruel mutilations such as gouged eyes, severed tongues and limbs.

The number of Ukrainians who were murdered by the Russians, among them women and children, is set finally at 600. Jews and Poles were spared by the Russians. The Ukrainians estimate the total number of victims since the occupation of the Ukraine by the Russians at about 2,000. The planned deportation of the Ukrainians al-ready started in 1939. There is hardly a family in Tarnopol from which one or several members have not disappeared. In the town, containing about 40,000 inhabitants, among them 12,000 Ukrainians, 18,000 Jews, and 10,000 Poles, there are fewer than 10,000 Ukrainians left. The entire Ukrainian intelligentsia is destroyed. Since the beginning of the war, 160 members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia were either murdered or deported.

Inhabitants of the town had observed a column of about 1,000 civilians driven out of town by police and army early in the morning of July 1, 1941.

As in Lvov, torture chambers were discovered in the cellars of the Court of Justice. Apparently, hot and cold showers were also used here (as in Lemberg) for torture, as several bodies were found, totally naked, their skin burst and torn in many places. A grate was found in another room, made of wire and set above the ground about 1m in height, traces of ashes were found underneath. A Ukrainian engineer, who was also to be murdered but saved his life by smearing the blood of a dead victim over his face, reports that one could also hear screams of pain from women and girls.

The troops passing by who saw these horrors, in particular the bodies of the murdered German soldiers, killed approximately 600 Jews and burned down their houses.

 Smart uniforms, but they were killers

The Chief of the Security Police and the SD
Berlin, July 28, 1941
43 copies (32nd copy)

Operational Situation Report USSR No. 36

Einsatzgruppe B:
Location: Minsk
I. Police Activity:

a. In the course of an extensive search action, 38 more persons were arrested in cooperation with the GFP. A larger number of weapons, radios and files has been secured. Further action led to the liquidation of 193 Jews. Two armed robbers caught red-handed were also liquidated. A Jewish-Polish secret organization was discovered and was infiltrated by secret agents. They will be uncovered only after more details are available. An organization plan of the NKVD and NKGB was set up in Vilnius with the assistance of secret agents. For the time being, one cannot know for certain if this plan is complete in all its details.

b. Until further notice, about 200 persons are being liquidated daily in Minsk. This concerns Bolshevik officials, criminals, Asiatics, etc. They are being sorted out from among civilian-camp prisoners. Among those already liquidated were also the former politically oriented staff commissar, Gregory Bylich, born 1890 in Lesog, and his wife. Both had been very active in the deportation of Byelorussians to Siberia. Actions were further carried out in Rakov, about 40 km from Minsk, and in the forest region north of the Minsk-Borissov-Krupka line. 58 Jews, Communist officials, and agents, prison inmates as well as soldiers in plain clothes suspected of having contact with partisan groups, were liquidated. In addition, 12 Jewesses who were proven to be agents for the KP during the Polish campaign were shot.

c. Concerning their KP memberships: Our experience up to now shows that a majority of members at heart rejected the Bolshevik Weltanschauung [world outlook]. The Soviet leading class had exerted strong pressure on the population to join the KP Those who refused were in many cases sent to Siberia, thrown into prison or shot. The percentage of the population that was forced to join the party varied, however, within the diverse groups of peoples. In general, the Jews belong to the party out of inner conviction. The same goes for the Russians who lived in Byelorussian areas. Also the Poles were forced into memberships.

However, coercion to join the KP was often the case with the Byelorussians. The Kommandos have been ordered to consider these facts carefully in the course of the liquidations.

II. Civilian Life Activity:

a. The activity of the Roman Catholic Church, which has in the Byelorussian area mainly Polish leadership, is very noticeable and clearly attempts, with the Byelorussian clergy, to do missionary work.

b. Preference of Byelorussian personnel for "leading and organizational" positions in the former Polish areas as well as gradual removal and relief of the Poles partly causes reactions in their mood.

c. Ruthless requisitions have had a negative influence on the general public mood as well as the prevailing conditions in Minsk and its rural environs. A price list has been drawn up, and the question of wages was handled in Minsk. Free trade will be opened up soon. The Reichskreditkasse has granted the city of Minsk a substantial loan for its reconstruction expenses. For the time being financial re-sources are drawn from forced loans from the Jewish population. The appointed head of the Minsk district has appointed an administrator of the kolkhozes [collective farms]. The following immediate projects have been ordered:

A survey of cattle and cultivated fields has to be drawn up; further-more, all the distributions in the kolkhoz-factories were cancelled. The immediate publication of a newspaper in the Byelorussian language is planned. The first 5,000 copies are to be printed. The con-tent: general information, German Army reports and news from the front. For the time being, political issues are not to be touched. Radio station Baranovichi lacks material to transmit; there are not enough records either.

d. It is evident that the population rejects the Bolshevik rule in the area around Orscha, Krupka, and Shklov, 200 km east of Minsk; how-ever, this is so mainly for economic and social reasons. The population is still greatly intimidated. Economic life is completely paralyzed, food very scarce. The population rummages in demolished places for things which they could use. Einsatzkommando 7b has set up appointed town administrations in Krupka, Shklov and other places. Four-fifths of Shklov are destroyed, mainly by arson. Citizens are afraid to assume an office in the town hall for fear that the leaders of the Komsomol might take revenge. We succeeded nevertheless in forming a city council consisting of 8 Russians who carried out the following:

1. Clearing of houses inhabited by Jews and placing the Jews in ghettos (cases of leprosy and scabies were observed among the Jews).

2. Distribution of flour to the population from army reserves.

3. Work in city kolkhoz was begun.

e. The antagonism between Poland and Lithuania continues in the district of Vilnius. Poles feel disadvantaged in the distribution of goods.

Lithuanians believe that they have the right to arrest Poles and to confiscate their belongings. There is, however, a general agreement with the measures taken by the Germans, particularly with the proceedings against the Jews. It was established that the above-mentioned Lithuanian organization has dissolved spontaneously with the advance of the German forces. The active forces went over to the activist [collaborating] groups. Activity of Schaulists has increased in the university. Tension between Fascist and Catholic groups can be noticed there. Fascist groups are in the minority.

  (Click to enlarge map)

Einsatzgruppen killing fields in Russia, June 1941 to November 1942  (Click to enlarge map)

 Einsatzgruppen's work in USSR, November 1941 (Click to enlarge map) 

 Jews being led to Babi Yar. Kiev. September 1941

Another government department. Einsatzgruppen administration in Russia

 USSR 1941. Jews being made to undress being being shot by the Einsatzgruppen

Pinsk, Belarus. 1941

 Lubny, Ukraine, Einsatzgruppen C SS officers in the unit club, 1941.

The killers in action.

Slutz, Belarus. Hunting for Jews. Hard to forget this.

AN AVERAGE EINSATZGRUPPEN KOMMANDO'S LETTER HOME....

THE EINSATZGRUPPEN HALL OF FAME

Eberhard Karl Schöngarth (22 April 1903 — 16 May 1946) was a German Nazi, appointed SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Polizei (Brigadier General) on Himmler’s orders in 1943. He was a war criminal who perpetrated mass murder and genocide in occupied Poland during the Holocaust.

Schöngarth was captured by the allies at the end of the war. After investigating his background, he was charged with the crime of murdering a downed Allied pilot (on 21 November 1944) and tried by a British Military Court in Burgsteinfurt. He was found guilty of this offence on 11 February 1946 and sentenced to death by hanging. Schöngarth was hanged by Albert Pierrepoint on 16 May 1946 at Hameln Prison.

SS-Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe (13 November 1894 – 21 March 1945) perpetrated mass murder in the Holocaust, serving as commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe B deployed in the Bezirk Bialystok district (modern Belarus) behind Army Group Centre during the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Arthur Nebe was involved in various plots including the 20 July 1944, bomb plot against Hitler. As part of the plot, Nebe was to lead a team of 12 policemen to kill Himmler but the signal never reached him. Historian Reitlinger characterized Nebe as "a very questionable member of the Resistance Circle at the time of the great bomb plot." After the failure of the assassination attempt he went into hiding on an island in the Wannsee but was later arrested after a rejected mistress betrayed him. Nebe was sentenced to death by the Volksgerichtshof (People's Court) and according to official records, was executed in Berlin at Plötzensee Prison on 21 March 1945, by hanging with piano wire from a meat hook as that was the punishment ordered by Hitler – who wanted the July 20 conspirators to be "hanged like cattle"

Karl Jaeger (20 September 1888 – 22 June 1959) was a Swiss-born SS-Standartenführer (Colonel) and Einsatzkommando leader.

Among all Nazi documents detailing calculated acts of mass murder and other atrocities, the "Jäger Report" is one of the most horrifying. It provides a detailed account of the murderous rampage of this "special squad" in Nazi-occupied Lithuania. Jaeger was instrumental in the brutal and systematic destruction of the Jewish community of Lithuania. 

 Jaeger escaped capture by the Allies when the war ended, assumed a false identity, and was able to assimilate back into society as a farm hand until his report was discovered in March 1959. Arrested and charged with his crimes, Jaeger committed suicide in prison in Hohenasperg while he was awaiting trial in June 1959.

Otto Ohlendorf (4 February 1907 – 8 June 1951) head of the Inland-SD (responsible for intelligence and security within Germany), a section of the SD. Ohlendorf was the commanding officer of Einsatzgruppe D, which conducted mass murder in Moldova, south Ukraine, the Crimea, and, during 1942, the north Caucasus.

During the trial against Einsatzgruppen leaders, Ohlendorf was the chief defendant, and was also a key witness in the prosecution of many other indicted war criminals. Ohlendorf's frank, apparently reliable testimony was attributed to his distaste for the corruption that was rampant in Nazi Germany and a stubborn commitment to duty. He expressed no remorse for his actions, telling the prosecutor that the Jews of America would suffer for what the prosecutor had done, and seemed to have been more concerned about the moral strain on those carrying out the executions than those actually being executed. Otto Ohlendorf was sentenced to death and hanged at the Landsberg Prison in Bavaria shortly after midnight on 8 June 1951.

Dr. Martin Franz Erwin Rudolf Lange (18 April 1910 – 23 February 1945?) was a prominent Nazi police official. He served as commander of the SD and SIPO in Riga, Latvia. He participated in the Wannsee Conference, and was largely responsible for implementing the extermination of Latvia's Jewish population (Einsatzgruppe A killed over 250,000 people in little less than six months).

Lange was said to be killed in action in Posen, Warthegau in February 1945; he may have committed suicide, but records are unclear. He was one of the few SS officers to receive the German Cross in Gold medal on 6 February 1945. Lange was said to have been a favorite student of Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler. He demanded unconditional obedience from his subordinates. Joseph Berman, a survivor of one of the concentration camps administered by Lange, described him as follows:

As far as Lange is concerned, he was the biggest murderer I have ever known. To write a book about him would definitely not be enough. As he is dead, it is no use talking about him. I would, however, mention that he was one of the most notorious anti-Semites in the twentieth century. He hated Jews so much that he could not look at them; one never wanted to pass him either in the motor pool or anywhere else

Bruno Heinrich Streckenbach (7 February 1902 – 28 October 1977)

Streckenbach was taken prisoner by the Soviets and, in 1952, he was sentenced to serve twenty-five years in prison, but was released on 10 October 1955. During the Nuremberg trial, defendant SS-Brigadeführer Otto Ohlendorf stated that Streckenbach, in mid-June 1941, had transmitted the extermination order, at a meeting concerning the missions of the Einsatzgruppen. The West German government eventually brought Streckenbach to trial in 1973 but the case was dismissed due "to the defendant's poor health". He died on 28 October 1977, at home, in his birthplace Hamburg.

Franz Walter Stahlecker (10 October 1900 – 23 March 1942) commanded Einsatzgruppe A, the most murderous of the four Einsatzgruppen. He was killed in action on 23 March 1942, in a clash with Soviet partisans near Krasnogvardeysk, Russia.

Suggested Reading

Masters of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of the Holocaust by Richard Rhodes

Excepts

The German sponsored violence against Jews in Lithuania

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The Eastern Front In 1944

Ostfront 1944: The German Defensive Battles on the Russian Front 1944 (Schiffer military history)
By ALEX BUCHNER
Excerpts

INTRODUCTION

Adolf Hitler was legally named Chancellor of the German Reich on January 30, 1933 by the then Reichspräsident von Hindenburg. Strengthened by domestic and foreign political successes, he quickly became the all-powerful dictator of Germany. Hitler was leader of the political party he had built, the National Socialist German Workers Party, with all of its ubiquitous sub-organizations. He became head of state, Reichskanzler and Reichspräsident in one, and from 1938 was also Commander-in-Chief of all the German Armed Forces. To the German people he remained simply der Führer. In 1939 Hitler launched the campaign against Poland, which widened into the Second World War. Following the subsequent victorious campaigns in Holland, Belgium, France, Norway, Yugoslavia, Greece, Crete and North Africa he was hailed by German propaganda as the "greatest strategist of all time."

By the beginning of the Russian Campaign Hitler had lost sight of what could be realistically expected from the armed forces which he commanded, subordinating such considerations to his political and economic interests, as well as to thoughts of his own prestige. His unlimited self-overestimation was summed up in one sentence when he took over command of the army during the Winter of 1941: "The little matter of operational command on the Eastern Front is something anyone can do."

At the latest, Hitler's unsuccessful conduct of the war became apparent with the destruction of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad in the Winter of 1942/43 and the final abortive German offensive near Belgorod-Orel in the summer of 1943. From then on the growing Soviet forces launched one offensive after another along the entire front, from Finland to the Black Sea, while the ever more depleted German divisions were constantly on the retreat. The result for the German Army was heavy defeats and disasters which could no longer be made good. Hitler's estimation of the Soviets was such that he always believed they were just about finished.

 This was wishful thinking, because exactly the opposite was true. His whole strategy in the face of the continual enemy advances exhausted itself in obstinacy: no surrender of a single square meter of captured ground , a defense at any price, which made the change to a flexible conduct of the war impossible and denied an elastic defence. Frederick the Great had said: "He who wants to defend everything, defends nothing." With Hitler, on the other hand, unwilling to listen to reason, the watchwords were: hold! - stay put! - not one step back! The bridgeheads, "fortified locations", great advances of the front, and so on, which he demanded, underline this obstinate and stubborn thinking. On the situation maps he saw only the many pencilled-in German divisions and corps without considering that these had long since ceased to possess capabilities equivalent to their designations, and often possessed only half their authorized strengths. Hitler considered the senior commanders at the front, themselves Field Marshals and commanders of armies, as mere takers of orders whom he replaced at will, and who often enough were made scapegoats for his own command errors.

Their freedom of decision was so restricted that any withdrawal or the smallest realignment of the front, even the deployment of a single division, had to be approved by Hitler from his distant headquarters in Rastenburg, East Prussia, or from his home in Berchtesgaden. Two examples should illustrate just how vigorously this policy was enforced: When, in the winter of 1941, General Sponeck dared to withdraw his corps (which consisted of only a single division) from the Crimea on his own initiative because it was in danger of being cut off, he was brought before a court martial on Hitler's orders, sentenced to death and later shot. In early 1944 Hitler declared Rovno in the Ukraine a "fortified location" with a garrison of 600 men. The enemy had already entered the city and there were no reserves available. Generalleutnant Koch therefore ordered his forces to pull back to positions just southwest of Rovno. For this independent order he was sentenced to death by a court martial on Hitler's orders for "reckless disobedience." Massive protests by the army group and army led to Koch's return. Demoted to the rank of Major, he was sent back to the front to "prove himself." To sum up, Hitler saw things as he wished them to be, refusing to admit the facts. The reality was very, very different.

By far the strongest branch of the German Armed Forces, or Wehrmacht, the Army, which by the beginning of 1944 had been forced to wage a more than four year-long war, had already suffered heavy losses, with about 1.6 million dead, including 33,700 officers. These losses weighed especially heavy, because in the face of personnel and materiel shortages they could no longer be replaced. During the almost ceaseless battles of defence and withdrawal on the Eastern Front since mid-1943 the German divisions had literally been burned out, their strength exhausted.

Divisions were now more or less large battle groups. Regiments, battalions and companies, as well as independent battalions and batteries, had sunk to far below their authorized strengths, a large percentage of weapons and equipment had been lost, the units in many cases lacked mobility due to missing equipment, and the men were exhausted as a result of the continuous strain without adequate time to rest and recover. The inadequate numbers of young and inexperienced replacements which reached the front could not make good or replace the heavy losses in experienced soldiers, NCOs and officers, no matter how willing to fight they were. In the field of armaments the most acute shortages were in artillery, assault guns, prime movers, self-propelled weapons, anti-aircraft guns and heavy antitank guns. The one-man anti-tank weapon which had been urgently demanded for so long was only just entering service (the Panzerfaust). As a result, the Soviet tank remained the greatest threat to the German infantryman.

In the panzer force, which had made possible the spectacular "lightning victories" of the early war years - when tanks were employed for strategic purposes for the first time - the divisions had virtually all been reduced to the status of battle groups, and there was a shortage of armored vehicles. Commanders now employed panzer divisions only for local, limited counterattacks and thus they were used up and frittered away. Then there was the defensive system, which due to the shortage of forces scarcely warranted the title. It always consisted of a linear disposition of divisions, one unit beside the other, without any great depth. The line consisted of simple earthworks reinforced by wooden beams, which offered no protection against a direct hit by a heavy artillery shell or a bomb.

These shelters, which also served as the soldiers' quarters, were designated as bunkers. The most forward part of the system of positions formed the Main Line of Resistance (HKL, or Hauptkampflinie), which consisted of a few trenches, infantry positions and earth bunkers, with barbed-wire and mine obstacles in front. Then there was the Main Defensive Position (HKF, or Hauptkampffeld) which was about four or five kilometers in depth. Within this zone were located the positions of the heavy weapons (heavy machine-guns, heavy mortars, anti-tank guns, light and heavy infantry guns), command posts and - when these had made their way up - a limited number of reserves. Behind these were the artillery positions and the supply train areas with their billets - and then the end of the defensive line. Still farther to the rear there were usually well-built blocking, intermediate and rear defence positions, but these were unmanned and therefore worthless. Once the limited depth of the HKL and the HKF had been pierced and the troops manning the defensive line were under constant pressure from the enemy, it was virtually impossible for them to regroup and settle down again in the rear positions. Hitler placed no value in such positions in the rear areas and was often against them. ("They encourage the Generals to have an eye to the rear," he once observed.) As a rule, the available reserves were one division for each army, one battalion for each division and one company for each regiment - a laughable number. It was obvious that any major Soviet offensive must lead to the immediate penetration and breakthrough of such a defence, with all of the unavoidable consequences.

The Luftwaffe still had moderate resources available in early 1944 and provided valuable support. However, following the invasion in the West and the increasingly heavy bombing raids on Germany that summer, its presence diminished. The long-time German command of the air over the Eastern Front was lost. Contrary to what Hitler had so often prophesied, the Russian colossus was not on the verge of collapse. On the contrary, The Red Army had recovered surprisingly quickly from the many defeats of 1941 and 1942, and had become more powerful than ever thanks to the tremendous reserves of man-power in the East, an immense armaments production and the deliveries of materiel from the Allies.

Stalin, dictator of the Soviet Union and Hitler's opposite number, had taken a decisive step when he called not for the defence of the Soviet state, which was loved by few Russians, but appealed to Russian patriotism and proclaimed the "Great Patriotic War." Every Russian understood and approved of the defence of "Mother Russia." A new group of military commanders had replaced the old, which had often failed. They had learned enough of the German principles of command: breakthroughs and subsequent advances without regard to lengthening, open flanks; quick, sweeping movements by tanks and motorized units; pincer operations and double-sided envelopments; encirclement of the enemy with following infantry armies, and so on. Offensives by the individual large formations (Fronts Armies) were always closely coordinated by the senior operations staffs.

The Russian infantry had not become better than the German, but their shattered and decimated units were rebuilt in quick time from the Soviet Union and the recaptured territories, while their vast resources allowed them to form new, fresh and powerful front-line units. Outfitting of the troops with automatic weapons was good, and plenty of anti-tank weapons were on hand. Mobility was increased through growing motorization and the unique Soviet style of infantry riding into battle aboard tanks. Soviet tank units, initially parcelled out in brigades and battalions to support the infantry, had now been concentrated in tank armies and corps.5 These represented extremely mobile operational units possessing considerable striking power. Already streaming from the Soviet tank factories was the proven T-34, supplemented towards the end of the war by the super-heavy "Stalin" tank and large numbers of assault guns. The total production of the Soviet tank industry was enormous.

Stalin himself had declared that artillery was "the God of War." In addition to the lavish numbers of artillery pieces (some of which were quite outstanding, especially the 7.62-cm multi-purpose gun, the much-feared "Ratschbum") supplied to individual divisions, there were independent mortar regiments, artillery divisions and even artillery corps. The concentrations of artillery and the preparatory bombardment before a Soviet offensive were always overwhelming. The greatest surprise in 1944 was the Soviet Air Force, which appeared to have been almost destroyed after the first years of the war, but which now intervened in every battle with tremendous numbers of new bombers and close-support aircraft. In addition to the Soviet arms industry, which in contrast to Germany's was not threatened by enemy air attack and therefore could produce on a tremendous scale, the Red Army was also strengthened by the unhindered deliveries of tanks, aircraft, motor vehicles, weapons and military equipment of every description from the Allies, which reached their peak in 1944.

 Thus in a few sentences the question is answered as to why the Soviets could destroy so many still effective German Eastern Front divisions, often within a brief period of time. In addition to the completely misguided senior German command and the steadily decreasing strength of the German Army, it was the tremendous numerical superiority of the Red Army in soldiers, tanks, artillery and aircraft, in addition to the improved morale brought about by its successes, that had transformed it into an overpowering opponent.6 Germany's military situation at the beginning of 1944 was as follows: The setbacks on the Eastern Front had begun with three major Soviet offensives in the South between November 1942 and January 1943, which had led to the collapse of the entire southern sector.

The Sixth Army had been lost at Stalingrad and Army Group A was forced to evacuate the Caucasus. Not until mid-March 1943 was the Soviet offensive brought to a halt near Kharkov. Germany's attempt to regain the initiative through Operation "Zitadelle" failed when the Red Army succeeded in breaking into the flank and rear of the German Army Group Center near Orel. The Soviet general offensive broke out on July 17, beginning on the Donets. Russian forces, far superior in men and materiel, recaptured the entire area between the Sea of Azov and the Upper Dniepr, cutting off the German-occupied Crimea. On January 4, 1944, Soviet divisions crossed the former Russian-Polish border at Wolhynien. As on all other fronts, the military initiative in the East had passed to the enemy. The battle in North Africa had ended on May 13, 1943, with the surrender of Army Group Afrika in Tunis, and it was only two months later that Allied forces landed in Sicily. Germany's Italian allies could take no more and concluded a cease-fire with the enemy. Encouraged, the Allies landed in southern Italy a few days later.

A new third front had been created, after the battle against the growing strength of the Greek and Yugoslavian partisans had become the second front. And finally, with the landing of the Allies in Normandy on June 6, 1944, there was added a fourth front in the West. The battle by German U-Boats in the Atlantic had been lost and Germany lay increasingly helpless under the bombing attacks of the Allied air forces. The "Battle for Europe", a catch-phrase which originated at that time, had begun. At the beginning of this catastrophic year German divisions in the East were still deep inside Russia in the Crimea, the lower Dniepr and before Leningrad; by the end of the year they had been pushed back to Budapest, the Vistula and as far as East Prussia. Of four German Army Groups, two had been lost, of eleven Armies, six had been destroyed and five badly battered. In the six Eastern Front battles described herein, over 600,000 German soldiers were killed, posted missing or taken prisoner.

A withdrawal of the entire Eastern Front behind an "East Wall" at the beginning of 1944 could have helped avoid these tremendous losses and protected Germany's frontiers in the East.

Downfall: Germans Lose Ukraine: 1943-44

Vision of hell. German machine-gunner in the burning heart of Zhitomir. Ukraine, in November 1943. The town fell to the Russians on November 12, 1943

The fate of the German Sixth Army surrounded in Stalingrad was decided in early 1943, marking the turning point in the eastern campaign. From then on the German forces were steadily on the retreat in the face of continual Soviet offensives. As 1944 began, the superiority of the Red Army had become so crushing, aided by the obstinacy at the highest levels of German command, that the German Eastern Front, which was under heavy pressure everywhere, suffered a number of disasters which cost the eastern armies alone more than half a million German soldiers killed, missing and wounded.

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Situation map published in the "Charlotte News" on April 4, 1944

 SS officers meet to discuss strategy. Mayerdress SS Erwin and SS Kurt Meyer over a map of combat operations. The commander of the 1st Company, 3rd Tank Regiment SS Division "Totenkopf" -  Hauptsturmführer  SS Erwin Mayerdress (Hubert-Erwin Meierdress) and commander of the 1st razvedyvatelnog Battalion of Division "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler"  Obersturmbannführer   SS Kurt Meyer (Kurt Adolf Wilhelm Meyer) over a map of combat operations. Part of the 1st SS Division and the 3rd SS Division, advancing on Kharkov, met in a village near Kharkov Peresechnaya March 9, 1943.

Red Army engineers build a bridge across the River Dnieper, north-east of Kiev

READ "DNIEPER-CARPATHIAN OFFENSIVE" in Wikipedia

German soldiers, armed with assault rifles, StG-44 near Pripyat, Ukraine. February 1944.

German machine gun crew prepares MG firing position on the banks of the Dnieper. 1943. Seen in the river is a destroyed bridge.
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German prisoners file past a Soviet T-70 tank that was captured and repainted by the Germans. Near Kiev, 1944. August 16, 1944.

German POWs marched on the streets of Kiev. August 16, 1944. Local residents and Red Army soldiers watch standing. The residents of Kiev hurled abuses at the passing German prisoners. 

A German self-propelled gun, "Hummel", destroyed by Soviet artillery near Lvov, 1944.

Soviet soldiers inspect a "Panther" tank captured in Uman, March 13, 1944.

German tank Pz.Kpfw. VI (Tiger) of the 506 th Heavy Tank Battalion in western Ukraine. May 4, 1944.

Russians re-take Kharkov. August 1943

The Germans  testing telephone lines, laid across the river Dnieper. In 1943.

German 88-mm antitank gun PaK 43 mounted in position on the banks of the Dnieper. September 1943.

German soldiers charging behind a Tiger tank during battle. Ukraine. Winter 1943-44

Liberated Odessa in 1944. Russian soldiers ride on horses through a street in Odessa which is strewn with debris of destroyed German war vehicles

Image source (Right click to see entire image)

A group of German prisoners of war near Odessa. July 13, 1944.

German prisoners of war in central Ukraine. In 1943.

Group of German prisoners in a Ukrainian village. January 1944.

Indefatigable men from SS Division "Viking". The battle for Kovel (Volyn region, Ukraine), March-April 1944.

German Marder II self-propelled gun waits in ambush, between the houses, in a Ukrainian village. In 1944.

The Red Army enters the town of Vinnitsa. 1944

Attack of the Soviet infantry during the liberation of Odessa, in April 1944.

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