SS-Einsatzgruppen

Im Gegensatz zu den Aktivitäten der Einsatzgruppen, die nach dem
Angriff auf die Sowjetunion am 22. Juni 1941 in Hunderten von Orten
Massenerschießungen von Juden durchgeführt haben, ist die Geschichte
der bereits im September 1939, nach dem Angriff auf Polen, operierenden Einsatzgruppen weniger bekannt. Die Herausgeber dieses Bandes versuchen, das zu ändern, indem sie sämtliche Berichte dieser Einheiten in einem durchaus gut edierten Band präsentieren. Damit zeigen sie unter anderem, dass beim Angriff auf Polen die Juden nicht das einzige Hauptziel des Terrors der Deutschen waren, sondern in etwa demselben Maße wie diese Polen und andere nichtdeutsche Zivilisten verfolgt und ermordet wurden. Die Angreifer haben sich besonders vor den polnischen Nationalisten und der katholischen Kirche gefürchtet.
Durch das Studium dieser Dokumente wird auch deutlich, dass der Judenmord erst nach einigen Monaten zur Hauptaufgabe der Besatzungspolitik geworden ist, wobei man den Einfluss des rassistischen Antisemitismus auf die Wahrnehmung des Kriegsgeschehens und das Handeln der Einheiten bereits im Herbst 1939 nicht unterschätzen sollte. Die Zahl der nach dem Angriff auf Polen ermordeten Zivilisten war zwar deutlich geringer als jener, die knapp zwei Jahre später von den in den sowjetischen Gebieten operierenden Einsatzgruppen erschossen wurden, sie war jedoch trotzdem erschreckend hoch. Die Herausgeber gehen davon aus, dass bis Frühjahr 1940 über 60.000 Personen im besetzen Polen ermordet wurden und dass die in sieben Einsatzgruppen hinter der Wehrmacht wirkenden etwa 2.700 Funktionäre an diesem Mord maßgeblich beteiligt waren.

In this pioneering biography of a frontline Holocaust perpetrator, Alex J. Kay uncovers the life of SS Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Filbert, responsible as the first head of SS-Einsatzkommando 9, a mobile killing squad, for the murder of more than 18,000 Soviet Jews – men, women and children – on the eastern front. He reveals how Filbert, following the political imprisonment of his older brother, set out to prove his own ideological allegiance by displaying particular radicalism in implementing the orders issued by Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich. He also examines Filbert’s post-war experiences, first in hiding and then being captured, tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. Released early, Filbert went on to feature in a controversial film in the lead role of an SS mass murderer. The book provides compelling new insights into the mindset and motivations of the men, like Filbert, who rose through the ranks of the Nazi regime.

On April 7th, 1951, Holocaust perpetrator Otto Ohlendorf’s death sentence was carried out according to the ruling of the United States Military Courts in Nuremberg. In The United States vs. Otto Ohlendorf, et. al., leaders of the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units, were tried for war crimes which led to the deaths of millions of Jews and partisans.  Under Ohlendorf’s leadership of Einsatzgruppen D, more than 90,000 people were liquidated in the Ukraine.  After this assignment, Ohlendorf resumed his positions head of Domestic Security in the Reich Security Main Office.  As the war ended, he surrendered, and revealed the full scope of Einsatzgruppen activity, which eventually led to the second set of Nuremberg Trials. Outside of the Holocaust and the trial, little has been written on Ohlendorf.  His academic career and ideology are insufficiently analyzed.
This dissertation analyzes Ohlendorf’s life, career, and National Socialist ideology. The key factor in exploring his motivations is to fuse together careerism and ideology through his elite status as an Alter Kämpfer, “old fighter” and Nazi party member before 1933. From this designation, Ohlendorf enjoyed privileged employment, promotions, and a high level of trust within the party. Further explored is the placement of Ohlendorf into the historiographical debate, and how his ideology, career, trial, and death connected to his position as an Alter Kämpfer. Ultimately, analyzing the historiography reveals how memory has been fashioned in such ubiquitous topics as World War II, Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust.

The activity of the special SS-Unit "R" (Russia) in Transnistria is documented and analyzed on the basis of documents from the "Bundesarchiv" in Berlin-Lichterfelde. There is also indirect proof of the Holocaust and corresponding measures taken by this SS-unit.

Horrified by the Holocaust, social psychologist Stanley Milgram wondered if he could recreate the Holocaust in the laboratory setting. Unabated for more than half a century, his (in)famous results have continued to intrigue scholars. Based on unpublished archival data from Milgram’s personal collection, volume one of this two-volume set introduces readers to a behind the scenes account showing how during Milgram’s unpublished pilot studies he step-by-step invented his official experimental procedure—how he gradually learnt to transform most ordinary people into willing inflictors of harm. Volume two then illustrates how certain innovators within the Nazi regime used the very same Milgram-like learning techniques that with increasing effectiveness gradually enabled them to also transform most ordinary people into increasingly capable executioners of other men, women, and children. Volume two effectively attempts to capture how step-by-step these Nazi innovators attempted to transform the Führer’s wish of a Jewish-free Europe into a frightening reality. By the books’ end the reader will gain an insight into how the seemingly undoable can become increasingly doable.
It is not necessary to read Vol. 1 before reading Vol. 2 (Vol. 2 has a good summary of Vol. 1's key arguments).

This thesis analyzes the charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in the context of the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen trial (1947-48) and the role that each charge played in the formation of modern international criminal law. Prior to the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (1945-46), international law was designed to govern the laws and customs of combat between sovereign states. However, the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II prompted contemporary legal thinkers to consider expanding the purview of international law in order to protect the human rights of civilians. On the eve of the International Military Tribunal, Hersch Lauterpacht minted the concept crimes against humanity for use in the courtroom. The new legal phrase was used to prosecute Nazis who had committed atrocities against civilians as part of a state-sponsored campaign. Around the same time, Raphael Lemkin devised the word genocide to refer to the intent to destroy an ethnic, racial, or religious group in whole or in part.
The legal basis for the main Nuremberg Trial, Control Council Law No. 10, enabled each victorious Allied country to conduct their own series of trials against Nazi war criminals. American prosecutors conducted a series of twelve additional trials between 1946-49, which are now known as the subsequent Nuremberg proceedings (SNT). The Einsatzgruppen trial was the ninth SNT where American lawyers prosecuted twenty-two high-ranking officials who oversaw the murder of Polish and Soviet Jews by way of mass shootings.
In this thesis, I argue that the Einsatzgruppen trial represented the most apparent legal confrontation with the crime of genocide to date. However, the processes and politics surrounding the Nuremberg trials made the formal prosecution of genocide virtually impossible during the time that the trial was taking place. Instead, crimes against humanity was used as the principle charge during the Einsatzgruppen trial. The difficulties encountered by American lawyers at Nuremberg provide a reflection of the challenges faced by modern-day human rights lawyers in securing convictions for the charge of genocide.

After Stanley Milgram published his Obedience to Authority base-line experiment, some scholars drew parallels between his findings and the Holocaust—the so-called Milgram-Holocaust linkage. However, because Milgram's research has been shown to differ in many ways from the Holocaust's finer historical details, recent literature has challenged the linkage. This article argues that the Obedience studies and the Holocaust share two commonalities that are so significant that they may negate the importance others have attributed to the differences. These commonalities are (1) an end-goal of maximising " ordinary " people's participation in harm infliction and (2) a reliance on formally rational techniques of discovery to achieve this end-goal. Using archival documents, this article reveals the learning processes Milgram utilised during his pilot studies in order to maximise ordinary people's completion of the baseline experiment. This article then illustrates how certain Nazis relied on the same techniques of discovery during the invention of the Holocaust. In effect, during the Obedience studies and the Holocaust processes were developed that made, in each case, the undoable doable.

Popołudniu 13 czerwca 1940 r. więźniom politycznym więzienia w Tarnowie wydano depozyty i przewieziono do miejscowej łaźni. Było ich 758 mężczyzn, większości młodzi ludzi. Wśród uwięzionych byli żołnierze wojny obronnej 1939 r., którzy usiłowali przedrzeć się na Węgry, członkowie podziemnych organizacji niepodległościowych, uczniowie, nauczyciele, adwokaci, sportowcy i księża. Trafili do wielkiego więzienia tarnowskiego ze względu na to, że byli Polakami (obywatelami II RP). Przedruk z "Tygodnika Solidarność" 2000, nr 6.

The book In the Shadow of Giants: Pogroms of 1941 in the Former Soviet Occupation Zone: Historical, Social and Cultural Context pertains to the pogroms of 1941 in the former Soviet Union occupation zone in a broad political, historical and cultural context. The last part of this work presents a theoretical framework of the ethnic conflict labeled “pogrom”. This work, of close to five hundred pages, deals with an extensive area of East Central Europe from the Baltic countries, through the Polish eastern border of 1939, up to Northern Bukovina, and Bessarabia. In this vast region, in the summer of 1941, there were numerous pogroms carried out by the local population against the Jews. Therefore, the major part of the work (Part II) addresses these issues. In this section, based on extensive archival documentation – mainly testimonies of the victims but also relating to other material – are presented pogroms in the area. Introductory chapters of this part apply to the initial steps of Operation Barbarossa and the Einsatzgruppen that were allocated for specific tasks in the areas close to the front-line. However, many pogroms took place during the so-called “vacuum of power” after the evacuation of the Red Army yet before the arrival of the German troops. Those pogroms are clear evidence of the rapid degradation of the Jewish population in these areas during the “vacuum of power” when the old political and social structures broke up and when disorder and chaos reigned. After this period, followed by the invasion of German troops and their allies, further massacres took place. Thus, nearly all the bridges between local people and Jews built during hundreds of years were burnt within a few days. In order to properly place the events of 1941 in their historic context, the first part (Part I) of the book presents the situation of Jews during the interwar period in Central and Eastern Europe. Issues such as the political, economic, demographic and the cultural situation are also extensively discussed. One chapter offers a review of selected cases of pogroms since the early twentieth century until 1939. Accordingly, not only pogroms of 1941 are reported, but also other massacres that took place both in wartime and in peacetime. The last chapter in this section presents the period 1939–1941, when as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact and the war in September 1939 the Soviet Union occupied eastern areas of Poland. A similar fate befell other countries of Eastern Europe. The last part of the work (Part III) is a theoretical study on the development of the pogroms, presents a typology of pogroms, discusses factors affecting the development of pogroms, and analyzes phases of the pogrom. Other chapters of the last part deal with the effects of the pogroms and the relationship between the pogroms and the Holocaust. Indeed, this work may contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon of pogroms in Central and Eastern Europe and may give a new perspective of this occurrence in the context of an ethnic conflict. Theoretical investigation of the pogrom may well become the basis of studies of this phenomenon in a new and interdisciplinary manner.

El genocidio nazi fue un proceso complejo, llevado a cabo en varias etapas diferentes. Después de la invasión y la ocupación alemana de Polonia 1939 y, fundamentalmente, de la Unión Soviética en 1941, tuvo lugar la eliminación de comunidades judías enteras dichos territorios, principalmente mediante el fusilamiento. En dicha fase, muy diferente a aquella en la que se impuso la industrialización de la muerte a través de campos de concentración y de exterminio, muchos de los alemanes que participaron en aquellos asesinatos en masa registraron diferentes aspectos de ese sombrío fenómeno con sus cámaras. En este trabajo, entonces, proponemos un análisis de aquellas imágenes situándolas en una cultura visual más amplia, pues consideramos que en ellas pueden identificarse ciertos rasgos ideológicos y estereotipos que operaron en la conformación de la imagen de las víctimas, y de las situaciones de violencia a las que se vieron forzadas, por parte de los perpetradores. Sin embargo, no enfatizaremos en el antisemitismo, cuyo peso es indiscutible, sino que buscaremos trazar vínculos con el colonialismo en la configuración de la mirada, fundamento de la supuesta supremacía racial y, consecuentemente, justificativo naturalizado de la violencia ejercida sobre las poblaciones del este europeo.

The article deals with the circumstances of the establishment of the Jewish Councils (Judenraete) in the territories occupied by the German Reich. The author looks at the Nazis' actions in Germany, Austria and the Czech lands, leading to the establishment of a mock representation of the Jews. The author goes on to describe the process of setting up Jewish Councils in occupied Poland by SS officers from the so-called Einsatzgruppen and the circumstances of the establishment of the Judenrat in Warsaw. The author emphasizes that the establishment of Judenraete was an idea put forward by SS experts in Jewish affairs and was supposed to make it easier for the occupation forces to control Jewish communities.
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El genocidio nazi fue un proceso complejo, llevado a cabo en varias etapas diferentes. Después de la invasión y la ocupación alemana de Polonia 1939 y, fundamentalmente, de la Unión Soviética en 1941, tuvo lugar la eliminación de comunidades judías enteras dichos territorios, principalmente mediante el fusilamiento. En dicha fase, muy diferente a aquella en la que se impuso la industrialización de la muerte a través de campos de concentración y de exterminio, muchos de los alemanes que participaron en aquellos asesinatos en masa registraron diferentes aspectos de ese sombrío fenómeno con sus cámaras. En este trabajo, entonces, proponemos un análisis de aquellas imágenes situándolas en una cultura visual más amplia, pues consideramos que en ellas pueden identificarse ciertos rasgos ideológicos y estereotipos que operaron en la conformación de la imagen de las víctimas, y de las situaciones de violencia a las que se vieron forzadas, por parte de los perpetradores. Sin embargo, no enfatizaremos en el antisemitismo, cuyo peso es indiscutible, sino que buscaremos trazar vínculos con el colonialismo en la configuración de la mirada, fundamento de la supuesta supremacía racial y, consecuentemente, justificativo naturalizado de la violencia ejercida sobre las poblaciones del este europeo.

In dieser wegweisenden Biografie eines Direkttäters des Holocaust deckt Alex J. Kay das Leben des SS-Obersturmbannführers Alfred Filbert auf, der als erster Chef des SS-Einsatzkommandos 9 für die Ermordung von mehr als 18.000 sowjetischen Juden – Männer, Frauen und Kinder – hinter der Ostfront verantwortlich war. Er zeigt, wie Filbert sich nach der politisch motivierten Inhaftierung seines älteren Bruders daranmachte, seine Treue zum NS-Regime zu beweisen, indem er bei der Umsetzung der Befehle Hitlers, Himmlers und Heydrichs besondere Radikalität an den Tag legte. Kay schildert auch Filberts Leben nach dem Krieg: sein Untertauchen, die Verhaftung, den Prozess und die Verurteilung zu lebenslangem Zuchthaus. Vorzeitig entlassen, spielte Filbert 1984 im kontroversen Spielfilm "Wundkanal" des Regisseurs Thomas Harlan einen SS-Massenmörder – also gleichsam sich selbst.

In dieser wegweisenden Biografie eines Direkttäters des Holocaust deckt Alex J. Kay das Leben des SS-Obersturmbannführers Alfred Filbert auf, der als erster Chef des SS-Einsatzkommandos 9 für die Ermordung von mehr als 18.000 sowjetischen Juden – Männer, Frauen und Kinder – hinter der Ostfront verantwortlich war. Er zeigt, wie Filbert sich nach der politisch motivierten Inhaftierung seines älteren Bruders daranmachte, seine Treue zum NS-Regime zu beweisen, indem er bei der Umsetzung der Befehle Hitlers, Himmlers und Heydrichs besondere Radikalität an den Tag legte. Kay schildert auch Filberts Leben nach dem Krieg: sein Untertauchen, die Verhaftung, den Prozess und die Verurteilung zu lebenslangem Zuchthaus. Vorzeitig entlassen, spielte Filbert 1984 im kontroversen Spielfilm "Wundkanal" des Regisseurs Thomas Harlan einen SS-Massenmörder – also gleichsam sich selbst.