The Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass shootings during World War II

The Einsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass shootings during World War II.

They targeted members of the intelligentsia, members of the priesthood, Jews, Soviet political commissars, Romani, and actual or alleged partisans, beginning to carry out these atrocities when they liquidated Polish priests, Polish Jews, and Polish intellectuals during the 1939 invasion of Poland. Heinrich Himmler directed the Einsatzgruppen and Reinhard Heydrich supervised them, and they killed 33,771 Jews in two days at Babi Yar and 25,000 in two days at Rumbula. Adolf Hitler had the regular Wehrmacht military cooperate with the Einsatzgruppen during Operation Barbarossa in 1941, and they killed over 2,000,000 people (including 1,300,000 Jews) during the war.