27. Meaning the OKH order of 28 April, which corresponded to the Wagner–Heydrich
draft made on 26 March (see above, pp. 182–3).
28. Angrick, Besatzungspolitik, 56 ff.
29. Originally the Wehrmacht had obviously tried to accommodate all the Order Police
battalions in permanent tactical subordination to its own security formations, but had
not succeeded in doing so (Halder, KTB ii. 371).
30. At a meeting on 8 July 1941 Himmler made it unambiguously clear that the units under
the command of the command staff would be deployed in the areas under political
administration. ‘It is possible to deploy the larger formations in the Army Rear Areas.
Members of the command staff and of the units under its command have in principle
no business in the operational area or the Army Rear Area’: Command staff, note Ia,
meeting of 8 July 1941 (YV, M 36/3).
31. On the formation of Einsatzgruppen see Angrick, Besatzungspolitik, 74 ff.; Helmut
Krausnick, ‘Die Einsatzgruppen vom Anschluss Österreichs bis zum Feldzug gegen die
Sowjetunion. Entwicklung und Verhältnis zur Wehrmacht’, in Helmut Krausnick and
Hans-Heinrich Wilhelm, DieTruppe des Weltanschauungskrieges. Die Einsatzgruppen
den Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1938–1942 (Stuttgart, 1981), 19 ff.; Peter Klein, ed., Die Einsatzgruppen in der besetzten Sowjetunion 1941/42. Die Tätigkeits- und Lageberichte
des Chefs der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD (Berlin, 1997); Hans-Heinrich
Wilhelm, ‘Die Einsatzgruppe A der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1941/42. Eine
exemplarische Studie’, in Krausnick and Wilhelm, Truppe, 281 ff.; Hans-Heinrich
Wilhelm, Die Einsatzgruppe A der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD 1941/42 (Frankfurt
a. M., 1996), 11 ff.
32. In the cases of the campaigns against Denmark and Norway and of the war in the West
the Wehrmacht had largely succeeded in preventing the formation of such units. See
Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 107 ff., and Krausnick, ‘Hitler und die Befehle an die
Einsatzgruppen in Sommer 1941’, in Eberhard Jäckel and Jürgen Rohwer, eds, Der
Mord an den Juden in Zweiten Weltkrieg: Entschlussbildung und Verwirklichung
(Stuttgart, 1985) (the publication of a note by Heydrich of 2 July 1940).
496
Notes to pages 185–186
33. The 909 members of Einsatzgruppe A in February 1941 were made up as follows: 37 SD
members, 55 Kripo employees, 85 Stapo workers, 134 Order Police, 257 Waffen-SS men,
185 truck drivers, 53 emergency services personnel (who had for the most part not been
part of the SS or Police), 9 telex operators, 23 radio-operators, 22 female employees, 26
administrators, 3 special representatives.
34. Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 180–1.
35. Ulrich Herbert, Best. Biographische Studien über Radikalismus, Weltanschauung und
Vernunft 1903–1989 (Bonn, 1996), gives further details of this type.
36. Wilhelm, ‘Einsatzgruppe A’, in Krausnich and Wilhelm, Truppe, 281 ff.
37. On the Order Police see Andrej Angrick et al., eds, ‘Da hätte man schon ein Tagebuch führen müssen’. Das Polizeibataillon 322 und die Judenmorde im Bereich der Heeresgruppe Mitte
während des Sommers und Herbstes 1941’, in Helga Grabitz et al., Die Normalität des
Verbrechens (Berlin, 1994), 325–85; Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police
Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York, 1992); Daniel J. Goldhagen,
Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York, 1996);
Konrad Kwiet, ‘Auftakt zum Holocaust: Ein Polizeibataillon im Osteinsatz’, in Wolfgang
Benz, ed., Der Nationalsozialismus: Studien zur Ideologie und Herrschaft (Frankfurt a. M., 1993), 92–110; Jürgen Matthäus, ‘What about the “Ordinary Men”? The German Order
Police and the Holocaust in the Occupied Soviet Union’, (HGS) 10 (1996), 134–50; Klaus-
Michael Mallmann, ‘Vom Fussvolk der “Endlösung”. Ordnungspolizei, Ostkrieg und
Judenmord’, Tel Aviver Jahrbuch 25 (1997), 355–91; Edward B. Westermann, Hitler’s Police
Battalions. Enforcing Racial War in the East (Lawrence, 2005). The work of Hans-Joachim
Neufeldt, Jürgen Huck, and Georg Tessin, Zur Geschichte der Ordnungspolizei, i and ii
(Koblenz, 1957) omits the whole complex of the role of the police in the murder of the
European Jews, but is indispensable for an understanding of the organizational history of the Order Police; see in particular Part II: Georg Tessin, Die Stäbe und Truppeneinheiten der Ordnungspolizei, 5–19, to which the current section of the present study is heavily indebted.
38. See BAB, R 19/97, a lecture by Kurt Daluege at the meeting of the commanders and
inspectors of the Order Police, 1 to 4 Feb. 1942, and the unused manuscript by Daluege,
‘Der Winterkampf der Ordnungspolizei im Osten’ (BAB, R 19/382). On individual
units, see Longerich, Politik, 308–9.
39. Ibid.
40. This was the ‘increased police protection’, made up of men born between 1901 and 1909, authorized at a level of 95,000 at the start of the war (BAB, R 19/382, address by
Daluege, 16 Jan. 1941). At the beginning of 1940, of the 64,872 police reservists called up, there were only 8,513 in the battalions (OS, 500-5-26a, address by Daluege, 19 Jan. 1940).
At the start of 1942 this figure was only 7,325 from a total of 117,525 reservists called up (BAB, NS 19/335, lecture by Daluege at the meeting, 1–4 Feb. 1942). The overall strength
of all the battalions was just over 60,000 (BAB, NS 19/335, memo from the Chief of the
Order Police, 20 Aug. 1940).
41. The volunteers from the so-called ‘26,000-man-campaign’ were taken from those born
between 1918 and 1920 (applicants to join the police) or 1905 and 1912 (employment as
patrolmen) (Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (BHSt.A), Reichsstatthalter Epp, decrees of
the RFSS of 11 Oct. 1939 and 31 Oct. 1939; decree of the Reich Minister of the Interior of 25 Oct. 1939). Volunteers were deployed in a total of 31 battalions, which means (not
Notes to pages 186–187
497
counting the officers and NCOs) some 400–50 volunteers per battalion, or only half of
the 26,000 recruited (cf. NS 19/395, memo from the Chief of the Order Police of 20 Aug.
1940).
42. See Tessin, Stäbe, 14. According to the Chief of the Order Police, Daluege, only one in four of the applicants fulfilled the police criteria: of the 160,000 applications made in the context of the ‘26,000-man-campaign’ at the beginning of 1940, 51,000 had been
enrolled to date, of whom ‘7,100 born between 1905 and 1912 and roughly 6,000 from
between 1918 and 1920 were enrolled as fit for police duty’ (OS, 500-5-26a, address by
Daluege, 19 Jan. 1940).
43. BAB, NS 6/821, decree of the Party Chancellery, A 28/41 from 4 June 1941 concerning
the political assessment of recruits to the SS Police Division and the Police Battalions.
As a result, the commanders of the Police Training Battalion sought political assess-
ment of their recruits from the NSDAP district leaders.
44. See above, pp. 44 ff.
45. See Browning, Ordinary Men; Goldhagen, Executioners. On the Goldhagen debate, see
Introduction, n. 18.
46. Bernd Wegner, Hitlers Politische Soldaten: Die Waffen SS 1933–1945 Leitbild, Struktur und Funktion einer nationalsozialistischen Elite, 4th edn (Paderborn, 1982), 142 and 49 ff.
47. Leaflet signed by Himmler, September 1938: StA Munich, PolDir. 8466.
48. See above, p. 45.
/> 49. National Archives Washington DC (NA), T 175 R 6, 15 Apr. 1937 and decree of 5 June
1937.
50. BHSt.A, Reichsstatthalter Epp, 366, Richtlinien für die Durchführung der weltanschau-
lichen Schulung der Ordnungspolizei während der Kriegszeit.
51. Wegner, Soldaten, 110 ff. On the ideological indoctrination of the Order Police, see also Jürgen Matthäus, ‘Antisemitism as an Offer: The Ideological Indoctrination of the SS
and Police Corps during the Holocaust, Lessons and Legacies’ in Dagmar Herzog ed.,
Lessons and Legacies, vii: The Holocaust in International Perspective (Evanston, 2006),
116–28.
52. See Yehoshua Büchler, ‘Kommandostab Reichsführer SS: Himmlers Personal Murder
Brigades in 1941’, HGS 1/1 (1986), 13–14; Martin Cüppers, Wegbereiter der Shoah. Die
Waffen SS, der Kommandostab Reichsführer SS und die Judenvernichtung 1939–1945
(Darmstadt, 2005), 64 ff.
53. BAB, NS 19/3508, SS-Leadership Office, 24 Apr. 1941 and 6 May 1941.
54. For details, see Cüppers, Wegbereiter, 33 ff.
55. BAB, NS 19/3508, order by Himmler of 17 June, effective from 21 June 1941.
56. BAM, M 806 (copies from the Military Archive in Prague), actual strength at the end of July 1941.
57. Ohlendorf spoke in his testimony at the main trial (Case 9, IfZ, MB 19, German
transcript, roll 13, pp. 484 ff., esp. p. 525) of a ‘special order’ that read, ‘that over and above the general tasks of the Security Police and the SD, the Einsatzgruppen and
Einsatzkommandos had the additional responsibility of keeping the rearguard clear by
killing Jews, Roma, Communist functionaries, active Communists and all persons who
might endanger the troops’. At his interrogation on 24 April 1947 (NOU2890) and in his
testimony at the Trial of the Major War Criminals he also always spoke of ‘Jews’ and
498
Notes to pages 187–188
‘Communists’ and other groups in one breath when describing the designated victims.
Cf. Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 49 ff.
58. Paul Blobel, Sk 4a. IfZ MB 19, roll 14, pp. 746 ff. (esp. 752); Walter Blume, Sk 7a, (ibid., roll 15, pp. 208 ff. (esp. 218); see also NO 4145, interrogation on 29 June 1947); Gustav Nosske, Einsatzkommando 12, and Martin Sandberger, Sk 1a. IfZ MB 19, roll 15,
pp. 596 ff. (esp. pp. 610 ff.).
59. IfZ, MB 19, roll 14, pp. 139 ff. (esp. pp. 168–9, 170, 177 ff., 191 ff.).
60. IfZ, MB 19, roll 13, pp. 314 ff.
61. Judgement of the District Court in Ulm of 29 Aug. 1958 See Irene Sagel-Grande et al., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen. Sammlung deutscher Strafurteile wegen nationalsozialistischer Tötungsverbrechen, 22 vols (Amsterdam, 1968–81), xv, no. 465. See also Kraus-
nick’s report for the Auschwitz Trial (published as Krausnick, ‘The Persecution of the
Jews’, in Buchheim et al., Anatomy, 1–74 and his expert witness statement in the trial
against Kroeger (Zentralstelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen zur Aufklärung national-
sozialistischer Verbrechen (ZSt), 204 AR 1258/66, p. 23, transcript of the main proceed-
ings, pp. 97–8); the second expert witness, Seraphim, challenged this version, however.
There was a similar confrontation between the two expert witnesses in the Darmstadt
trial of Sonderkommando 4a (Judgement of the District Court in Darmstadt, 19 Nov.
1968, ZSt, 204 AR-Z 269/60); the court took Krausnick’s line, as did the Hanover
District Court in the trial of Einsatzgruppe 2 (ZSt, II 207 ARZ 18/58, judgement of 14
Oct. 1971), and rejected Seraphim’s view ‘that an order to annihilate the Jews had not
been given to the Einsatzgruppen or Einsatzkommandos before the start of the Russian
campaign but only in the second half of July 1941 after it had transpired that the
pogroms had not had their desired effect’. Some courts were not convinced by the
thesis of an early comprehensive order: see the judgement of the District Court in
Düsseldorf of 5 Aug. 1966 (ZSt, II 204 ARZ 266/59), which took Seraphim’s view, or the
judgement of the same court of 9 Jan. 1973 (where the expert witness was Wolfgang
Scheffler).
62. The version of an early comprehensive order was accepted by the following cases (in
addition to those listed in n. 61): Judgement of District Court I in Munich of 21 July 1961
(Einsatzkommando 8) (¼ Sagel-Grande et al., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen Die deutschen
Strafverfahren wegen nationalsozialistischen Tötungsverbrechen. Zusammengestellt im
Institut für Strafrecht der Universität von Amsterdam von Prof. C. F. Ritter and Dr W.
de Mildt (Justiz und NS-Verbrechen), xvii, no. 519); ZSt, 204 AR-Z 269/60, Judgement of
the District Court in Darmstadt of 29 Nov. 1968 (Sonderkommando 4a); II 202 ARZ
81/59, Judgement of the District Court in Cologne of 12 May 1964 (Einsatzkommando
8); II 202 AR 72a/60, Judgement of the District Court in Berlin of 6 May 1966
(Einsatzkommando 9); Judgement of the District Court in Essen of 29 Mar. 1965
(Sonderkommando 7a) (¼ Sagel-Grande et al., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, xx,
no. 588). The Judgement of the District Court in Cologne of 12 May. 1964 (Einsatz-
kommando 8) (¼ Sagel-Grande et al., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, xx, no. 573) represents
an exception in that the Court worked on the basis of a comprehensive order to
annihilate the Jews but did not indicate when it believed this order was given. The
view that orders were given step by step, with only the commando leaders informed at
first, as taken by the Darmstadt District Court (ZSt, 204 AR-Z 269/60, 19 Nov. 1968),
Notes to pages 188–189
499
was the basis of the judgement of the Munich District Court of 15 Nov. 1974 (II 213 AR
1902/66). The District Court in Tübingen took a similar view on 10 May 1961 (EK Tilsit)
(¼ Sagel-Grande et al., Justiz und NS-Verbrechen, xvii, no. 509).
63. Krausnick, ‘Einsatzgruppen’, 150 ff.
64. For references see the Introduction, p. 2, nn. 1,2.
65. On 9 November 1948 Ohlendorf testified to the effect that in the areas where they had been stationed, ‘alongside the regular tasks of defence and reporting the Einsatzgruppen
and Einsatzkommandos received the additional order that for security reasons they
were to kill political commissars, Communist activists, Jews and Gypsies and all other
persons who are a danger to our security’. He then stated unambiguously that ‘as far as
the killing of the Jews was concerned, the activities of the Einsatzgruppen had nothing
to do with the so-called final solution for the Jewish question’ (AR-Z 269/60, supple-
mentary vol. viii; see also IfZ, Gd 01.54). In his appeal for clemency made to Military
Court II in July 1950, he also stated that the order from the Führer transmitted in the
areas where the troops had been stationed was ‘not a criminal programme of racial
annihilation’ (quoted from Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 49–50).
66. His presence in Pretzsch can be explained relatively easily by the fact that Streckenbach had the additional responsibility of being the Inspector for the Security Police School.
67. After Streim’s critique of Krausnick in Alfred Streim, Die Behandlung sowjetischer
Kriegsgefangener im ‘Fall Barbarossa’: Eine Dokumentation (Heidelberg, 1981), 74 ff.,
the two sides clashed in 1985 at the Stuttgart conference on the ‘Final Solution’ (see the debate in Eberhard Jäckel and Jürgen Rohwer, eds, Der Mord an den Juden im Zweiten
Weltkrieg. Entschlußbildung und Verwirklic
hung (Stuttgart 1985), 88–106). The contro-
versy was continued in the SWCA 4 (1987), 309–28, 6 (1989), 311–29 and 331–47.
Longerich, ‘Vom Massenmord zur “Endlösung”. Die Erschießungen von jüdischen
Zivilisten in den ersten Monaten des Ostfeldzuges im Kontext des nationalsozialis-
tischen Judenmordes’, in Wegner, Zwei Wege, 251–74, has further information on this
controversy.
68. Angrick, Besatzungspolitik, 98 ff.; Browning, ‘Beyond “Intentionalism” and “Function-
alism”. The Decision for the “Final Solution” Reconsidered’, in Browning, The Path to
Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge, 1992), 101; Phillipe
Burrin, Hitler and the Jews: The Genesis of the Holocaust (London, 1994), 93 ff.; Konrad
Kwiet, ‘ “Juden und Banditen”. SS Ereignismeldungen aus Litauen 1943/1944’, Jahrbuch
für Antisemitismusforschung 2 (1983), 406; Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 47 ff.; Michael
Wildt, Generation der Unbedingten. Das Führungskorps des Reichssicherheitshapu-
tamtes (Hamburg, 2002), 553 ff. On the other hand, Breitman, Architect, 290, regards
Krausnick’s position, which confirms his own view of an early plan for annihilation, as
more convincing.
69. Biberstein was not executed and the document he passed to his lawyer is available at
ZSt, 415 AR 1310/63, 45, 8128 ff. Biberstein made it clear that no order from the Führer to murder the Jews was ever issued to the Einsatzgruppen in the occupied Eastern areas.
He suggested that the comprehensive shootings in the first phase of the war, which far
exceeded the bounds of the original liquidation orders, had been initiated by Higher SS
and Police Commander Jeckeln and a few ‘ambitious and fanatical Einsatzgruppe
leaders such as Stahlecker, Nebe, Rasch and Ohlendorf’. The ‘Final Solution’, he
500
Notes to page 189
claimed, only began when the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos had been
transformed into offices of the Security Police, in other words after the autumn of
1941. The Einsatzgruppen were therefore not the instrument of a ‘final solution’ that had already been determined upon, but an important tool in its accomplishment that only
became possible after the mass murders of Jews by the Einsatzgruppen—however
Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Page 90
