Einsatzgruppen (a German military term meaning "mission squads") were semi-military groups formed in Nazi Germany before and during World War II. These death squads belonged to the S.S. and followed the Wehrmacht in their attacks first on Poland and then the Soviet Union. Their mission was to eliminate all sources of resistance to German domination, increasingly radicalized in their ambition by racial principlies. They killed "undesirable" people ("anyone who gives us sharp looks", as Hitler said), almost exclusively civilians, without judicial review and later without semblance of legality (no reading of sentences of martial or administrative law were read), starting with the Polish intelligentsia and eventually including Jewish women and children.

After the occupation of Poland in 1939, they killed Poles belonging to the intelligentsia, such as priests and teachers. The Nazis considered all Slavic people untermenschen, or sub-humans, and wanted to use the Polish lower classes as servants and slaves. The mission of the Einsatzgruppen was therefore the forceful depoliticisation of the Polish people and the elimination of the groups most clearly identified with Polish national identity.

After the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the Einsatzgruppen's main assignment was to kill Communist officers and Jews which they did on a much larger scale than in Poland. They were under control of the RSHA; i.e., under Reinhard Heydrich and his successor Ernst Kaltenbrunner. They executed more than half a million Jews, Communists, prisoners of war, and Roma ("Gypsies") in total. They also assisted Wehrmacht units and local anti-Semites in killing half a million more. They were mobile forces in the beginning of the invasion, but settled down after the occupation.

The standard method employed by the Einsatzgruppen was to post a proclamation ordering all the Jews and other condemned people in an occupied area to gather on a certain day. Once their victims were assembled, the squads led them to their place of execution, which was usually an open, isolated area where mass graves had been prepared. Sometimes, natural features of the landscape like the ravine at Babi Yar were used. The victims were forced to surrender their belongings and undress, after which they were positioned either on the edge of the grave or in it and shot.

The Nazis were not satisfied with shooting as a method of mass murder, however. It was costly in ammunition and effort, there were too many potential witness to the murders, and the constant, close-quarters killing of defenseless men, women and children took a heavy psychological toll on the killers themselves. The men in charge of the Final Solution began searching for an alternative.

In some areas, the Einsatzgruppen also brought along specialized trucks called gas vans, developed for the since-terminated T4 euthanasia program operated by the Reich Chancellery. Victims were forced into the backs of vehicles into which the exhaust from the engine was routed. The victims were then variably suffocated, poisoned, and/or asphyxiated from the carbon monoxide accumulating within the truck compartment as the vehicle traveled to a burial pit. Gas trucks were subsequently employed at the Chelmno extermination camp. The stationary gas chambers of the subsequent death camps of Poland were an outgrowth of this idea, resourced by T4 staff on loan to the SS.

Organization

• Einsatzgruppe A for the Baltic Republics with the Sonderkommandos 1 a and 1 b (German for special forces, not to be confused with the Sonderkommandos in the concentration camps) and the Einsatzkommandos 2 and 3. Attached to Army Group North.
• Einsatzgruppe B for Belarus with the Sonderkommandos 7a and 7 b, the Einsatzkommandos 8 and 9, and also with a special force in case Moscow was captured . Attached to Army Group Centre.
• Einsatzgruppe C for the Northern and central Ukraine with the Sonderkommandos 4 a and 4 b and the Einsatzkommandos 5 and 6. Attached to Army Group South.
• Einsatzgruppe D for Bessarabia, the Southern Ukraine, the Crimea and (eventually) the Caucasus with the Sonderkommandos 10 a and 10 b and the Einsatzkommandos 11 a, 11 b and 12. Attached to Army Group South.

Einsatzgruppen leaders

• Group A: SS-Brigadeführer Dr. Franz Walter Stahlecker (until 23 March 1942)
• Group B: SS-Brigadeführer Artur Nebe (until Oct. 1941)
• Group C: SS-Gruppenführer Dr. Otto Rasch (until Oct. 1941)
• Group D: SS-Gruppenführer Prof. Otto Ohlendorf ( until June 1942)

See also

• Babi Yar
• Rumbula
• Einsatzgruppen Trial
• Generalplan Ost
• Holocaust
• Odessa Massacre
• Operation Barbarossa
• Operation Tannenberg
• World War II atrocities in Poland

External links

• The Einsatzgruppen
• Einsatzgruppen at the Holocaust Encyclopedia.
• Einsatzgruppen - Mobile Killing Units