Jews being executed by the Einsatzkommando during Operation Barbarossa, Lithuania, 1941

Jews being executed by the Einsatzkommando during Operation Barbarossa, Lithuania, 1941

Operation Barbarossa began on 22 June 1941 when three million German troops entered Soviet territory. Following the Wehrmacht came the 3000 or so members of the four Einsatzgruppen units and at least nine thousand Order Police—about 18 battalions in all.2 As the Germans rapidly advanced into Soviet territory, large numbers of Red Army soldiers were, as Himmler had predicted, captured and sent to Nazi labor camps like Auschwitz I.

Himmler had instructed Einsatzkommando Tilsit to carry out executions in response to sniper attacks against Germans. Between 24 and 27 June, Tilsit undertook three separate executions killing a total of 526 (mostly Jewish) Lithuanian men.3 These deaths signaled the start of the Holocaust in the Soviet interior.4 Himmler and Heydrich were apparently delighted with this early first effort.

On 25 June, the leader of Einsatzgruppe A, Franz Stahlecker, entered the Lithuanian city of Kaunas (or Kovno).6 In compliance with Heydrich’s orders, Stahlecker assessed the intensity of local antisemitic fervor and released convicts from a prison, thus instigating possibly the first pogrom of the campaign. On 27 June, a colonel in the Wehrmacht unwittingly stumbled on the pogrom. He saw a cheering crowd and, curious as to what was taking place, inquired further.

…I was told that the ‘Death-dealer of Kovno’ was at work and that this was where collaborators and traitors were finally meted out their rightful punishment! When I stepped closer, however, I became witness to probably the most frightful event that I had seen during the course of two world wars. […] a blond man of medium height, aged about twenty-five, stood leaning on a wooden club, resting. The club was as thick as his arm and came up to his chest. At his feet lay about fifteen to twenty dead or dying people. […] Just a few steps behind this man some twenty men, guarded by armed civilians, stood waiting for their cruel execution in silent submission. In response to a cursory wave the next man stepped forward silently and was then beaten to death with the wooden club in the most bestial manner, each blow accompanied by enthusiastic shouts from the audience. At the staff office I subsequently learned that other people already knew about these mass executions, and that they had naturally aroused in them the same feelings of horror and outrage as they had in me.7

As bizarre as it might sound, it was not unusual for members of the German armed forces to find this brutal hands-on brand of violence so offensive that they would step in to save the Jewish victims, at least for the time being.8 During the above three-week-long pogrom, Lithuanians killed about 3500 Jews.9 Jewish women and children were not targeted. In other locations across the Eastern front, there was more,10 less, and no interest at all in killing Jews.11 Lithuanians may not have killed all or even most Jews, but fewer Jews still meant a smaller Soviet “Jewish problem” for the SS to later deal with. On 29 June, Heydrich issued a written order to “remind” the Einsatzgruppen commanders of his earlier verbal instruction to encourage “self-defense circles….”12

At this very early stage of the invasion, however, only a minority of German security forces set out to kill all Jews. One salient example occurred as early as 27 June, thus in violation with the Commissar Order, which never demanded such wide-sweeping actions. In the city of Bialystok, Major Weiss encouraged PoliceBattalion 309 and the Wehrmacht’s 221st Security Division to kill over 2000 Jews—men, women, and children.13 At one point, at least 500 people were herded into a synagogue, which was dowsed in petrol and set alight with a stick of dynamite thrown through a window. When people desperately tried to escape the inferno through the building’s windows, Weiss’s men mowed them down with machine guns.14 One German police officer expressed his reservations over what was taking place and was informed, “You don’t seem to have received the right ideological training yet.”15 Even though these Germans exceeded their official orders—how are children instigators of “active or passive resistance” and a threat to security?—Matthäus suspects Himmler approved.16 Massacres early in the campaign where all Jews were killed were, however, exceptions to the rule. Typically, only Jewish men were targeted during these early executions.17 There were also examples of behavior at the very opposite end of this violence spectrum. For example, for almost a month following the Commissar Order (until mid-July 1941) the 10th Regiment of the 1st SS Brigade chose only to guard bridges.18 But it was not long before the demands of the SS leadership increased in both clarity and breadth. For example, on 2 July 1941 Heydrich instructed that, “all Jews in state and party positions” were to be executed.19

Then at a 16 July meeting that Browning regards as a “turning point” for the Holocaust,20Hitler informed a variety of inner-circle Nazis that Soviet territory was to be transformed into a “Garden of Eden.”21 Browning adds that Hitler, per usual, did not give explicit orders, but the meaning behind his words was clear. “What role could Jews have in a German Garden of Eden?”22 Congruent with Himmler and Heydrich’s strategy of controlled escalation, the next day the broadest killing orders yet were committed to writing for the first time: From 17 July 1941, according to Heydrich, “all Jews” in the Soviet interior were to be shot.23

Einsatzgruppe B commander, Artur Nebe, suggested around mid-July 1941 that with so few men, what was demanded was simply unachievable.24 Nevertheless, some leaders in the field came up with their own solution to this problem. For example, in early July the German security police in Kaunas formed a battalion consisting of Lithuanians, which came under the control of Karl Jäger’s Einsatzkommando 3 (a sub-unit of Stahlecker’s Einsatzgruppe A).25Also in early July, a fifth Einsatzgruppe was formed.26 As early as 27 June 1941, Himmler reacted to the emerging manpower issue when he commandeered his Kommandostab Reichsführer SS brigades from the army (a total of 25,000 men), arguing, “I need these units for other tasks.”27 Out of the 25,000 men, Himmler only intended to use Higher SS and Police Leader Friedrich Jeckeln’s 7000-strong SS Brigade One and SS and Police Leader Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski’s 4000-strong SS Cavalry Brigade to kill civilians.28 There was also another SS Brigade headed by Higher SS and Police Leader Hans-Adolf Prützmann.29 These men under Himmler’s “personal command” mainly provided a second wave to the Einsatzgruppen’s first murderous sweep of the new territories.30 According to Breitman, the men in these Brigades were, relatively speaking, “a less politicized force than the Einsatzgruppen,” and “not part of a political-ideological elite.”31

In terms of their destructive tasks, how did these ideologically more moderate Germans fare? By 10 July, Himmler had decided to use Bach-Zelewski’s men to search for Jews hiding in the Pinsk or Pripet marshes to the east of Lublin. About a week later, on 19 July, these men received orders to engage in the mass murder of all Jews.32 These orders—directly from Himmler—were repeated on 27 July.33 Although like many units elsewhere, Bach-Zelewski’s men found it fairly stressful to execute Jewish men, they found shooting women and children greatly exacerbated their stress.34 The existence of psychological difficulties among the execution forces is confirmed in the letters these men sent back to their families in Germany.35

Shooters were not the only ones to suffer from intense bouts of stress. Early in the Soviet campaign, SS-Obersturmführer August Häfner described Sonderkommando 4a leader Paul Blobel’s mental breakdown in July 1941, and his desperate call for a less stressful and more efficient killing method.

I found my unit, they were all running around like lost sheep. I realized that something must have happened and asked what was wrong. Someone told me that [Standartenführer] Blobel had had a nervous breakdown and was in bed in his room. […] He was talking confusedly. He was saying that it was not possible to shoot so many Jews and that what was needed was a plough to plough them into the ground. He had completely lost his mind.36

Other squad commanders who did not have to directly kill anybody also proved susceptible to mental breakdowns, including Einsatzkommando 3’s Karl Jäger,37 Higher SS/Police Leader Bach-Zelewski,38 and (twice) Einsatzgruppe B commander Nebe.39

As Himmler and Heydrich had suspected, the order to shoot defenseless civilians en masse generated what the men in the field themselves termed Seelenbelastung or “burdening of the soul.”40 The SS Cavalry Brigade’s mass shootings of all Jews in the Pripet marshes started to flounder. Similarly, despite Einsatzkommando Tilsit’s promising early efforts, Kwiet notes that some of the shooters also started to struggle to implement their orders.

[T]he attrition rate from psychological problems connected to the killings was not insignificant. Some marksmen in EK Tilsit succumbed to feelings of nausea and nervous tension during the massacres. […] In many cases killers suffered vomiting attacks or developed severe eczema or other psychosomatic disorders.41

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