Ostkrieg (15 page)

The troops must be made aware:

1. In this struggle to show consideration and apply principles of international law to these elements is wrong. They are a danger for our own security and the rapid pacification of the conquered areas.

2. Political commissars are the originators of barbaric, Asiatic methods of fighting. Thus, they have to be dealt with immediately and . . . with the utmost severity. As a matter of principle, therefore, they will be shot at once.

Significantly, only commissars apprehended in rear areas were required
to be turned over to the Einsatzgruppen for disposal; otherwise, they were to be shot immediately by the army units that had captured them. During the Polish campaign, some army commanders had been repelled by the executions carried out by the SS murder squads. On the eve of Barbarossa, they had now, despite a few protests, become accomplices to premeditated murder.
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How had this come to pass? In part, it was but the latest in a process of accommodation to Nazi criminality dating to the June 1934 Röhm purge. Once again, as in the past, army leaders made acquiescence tolerable, this time through several supplementary decrees issued by Brauchitsch that seemed to give commanders some autonomy in carrying out these orders: according to circumstances, officers could choose to impose lesser penalties on commissars; soldiers would not be allowed to do as they pleased; officers were to maintain discipline and avoid arbitrary outrages. Then, too, the army leadership was anxious not to lose any more power and influence to the SS, as had happened following the Polish campaign. Poland proved significant in another way as well. Eighteen months of brutal occupation and subjugation of the Poles had seemingly hardened the attitudes of many in the officer corps, who had come to regard the Poles as racially inferior colonial subjects.
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The Commissar Order also struck a raw nerve in the officer corps, whose attitudes had been shaped by both tradition and two haunting World War I experiences: the blockade that had slowly strangled Germany's ability to wage war and caused the starvation deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the traumatic collapse of 1918, when the “stab in the back” by the November criminals (Communists, socialists, and Jews) had destroyed their world. In addition to a traditional contempt for the Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe, then, most senior army officers supported Hitler in his contention that political commissars were criminal and had to be dealt with accordingly. At various gatherings, officers expressed opinions hardly at variance with those of the Führer. Germany had to secure its food supply, Colonel-General Georg von Küchler, head of the Eighteenth Army, emphasized to his divisional commanders, and the only means was by the conquest of European Russia. In any case, he stressed, “A deep chasm separates us ideologically and racially from Russia. . . . The aim has to be to annihilate European Russia. . . . The political commissars and GPU people are criminals.” Colonel-General Erich Hoepner, the commander of Panzergruppe 4, who would be executed three years later for his part in the plot to kill Hitler, expressed his sentiments even more bluntly: “The war against the Soviet Union is an important part of the struggle for existence of the German people. It is the
old battle of Germans against the Slavs, the defense of European culture against Muscovite-Asiatic inundation, the repulse of Jewish-Bolshevism. This struggle . . . has to be conducted with unprecedented severity. Every military encounter . . . must be directed . . . toward the merciless and complete annihilation of the enemy. In particular, there is to be no mercy for the supporters of the current Russian-Bolshevik system.” The mentality of Germany's military elite, then, hardly varied from that of the Führer. Both saw the world in social Darwinist terms, accepted the need for Lebensraum, regarded the Slavs as inferior and fitting subjects for German domination, and viewed communism as a malignancy that had to be eliminated. Crucially, both also accepted the need for a war of annihilation, within which the destruction of the Jews played a key role.
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Even as the army leadership fell into line ideologically, the SS had been busy preparing for its role. Heydrich not only supervised the negotiations that granted his special units broad authority as well as logistic support from the army but also initiated the process of selecting and training suitable leaders. Four Einsatzgruppen composed of between six hundred and one thousand men each, further subdivided into
Einsatzkommandos
and
Sonderkommandos
, would accompany the army into Russia. For the most part, the commanders of these various units came from educated backgrounds, with academics, lawyers, economists, civil servants, an opera singer, and even a Protestant minister among them; three of the four Einsatzgruppen commanders, in fact, totaled four doctorates among them. Heydrich drew the top leadership almost exclusively from the ranks of the Security Police and the SD, men who were ambitious, energetic, ruthless, prone to take the initiative, ideologically reliable, and staunchly anti-Semitic. In the second half of May, the roughly three thousand men selected for these killing squads received training at a police school near Leipzig. Heydrich visited the school on a number of occasions to remind the men of the necessity of their special tasks, to reinforce the life-and-death nature of the upcoming struggle, and to stress the special danger posed by the Jews.
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Despite the later prominence and notoriety of the Einsatzgruppen, they constituted only one part, and the smallest at that, of the forces to be deployed in this ideological war. In addition, numerous battalions of the Order Police and the Reserve Police, together numbering perhaps twenty thousand men, were made available for participation in these special tasks, as were the First SS Brigade and the SS Cavalry Brigade, with another eleven thousand men. The Order Police units, in particular, three-quarters of whose officers were party members, had been educated for toughness and inculcated with a spirit of “soldierly warriors”
and, thus, could be expected to carry out their murderous duties with brutal efficiency. Throughout the Order Police units, a process of institutional socialization had instilled an ethos focused on ruthlessness, German racial superiority, the need for Lebensraum, and hatred of Communists and Jews. By the time of the invasion of Russia, then, Hitler, leading party officials, the army command, the heads of the SS, and top bureaucrats had crossed the threshold to planned, deliberate murder. For Hitler, military operations against the Soviet Union designed to gain Lebensraum and political-police measures aimed at the extermination of ideological and racial enemies were simply different facets of the same war. As Ian Kershaw aptly observed, “The genocidal whirlwind was ready to blow.”
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Unlike the Phony War, this second interregnum, between the summer of 1940 and June 1941, did not benefit the Germans but instead illuminated the weaknesses of their position. Great Britain had used the respite to strengthen itself substantially, most vitally by gaining assurance of material aid from the United States, which itself increasingly geared up for war. Despite the logic of the Mediterranean strategy, Hitler had to concede that Germany had neither the strength to bring it off on its own nor the ability to coerce its reluctant allies into action and, thus, had no way to force England to make peace. The economic situation also remained precarious as, far from solving their food and raw material problems, the Germans' conquests had added the burden of feeding the occupied populations of Western Europe without the benefit of imports, which were cut off by the British blockade. The twin Italian fiascos in Greece and North Africa struck at the prestige of the Axis and promised to drain limited German resources, nor could the Japanese be persuaded to strike at Singapore in order to distract and weaken the British.

Operations in the Balkans now proved necessary in order to protect key supplies of raw materials and the southern flank of the intended invasion of Russia. German triumphs over Yugoslavia and Greece and the daring airborne conquest of Crete certainly reinforced the image of the invincible Wehrmacht but came at a considerable price. They strained the German logistic system on the eve of Barbarossa, added considerable wear and tear to vital mechanized units, and persuaded Hitler and the army command of the uselessness of airborne operations just as the Germans had the most need for mobile assault forces that could seize key river crossings or block enemy retreats. Ironically, despite later claims to the contrary, the one thing they did not do was significantly affect the timing of Barbarossa, which would have been delayed
in any case by German economic and transportation difficulties as well as the flooded condition of most of western Russia in the spring of 1941.

As the confident expectation of an imminent end to the war faded, the mood in Germany grew cloudy. During the autumn of 1940, Goebbels anxiously tracked the deterioration in popular opinion, which resulted not only from the prolongation of the war but also from the persistent British air attacks on the civilian populations of German cities, which necessitated the unpopular evacuation of children from many urban areas. Although Goebbels undertook a propaganda blitz that stabilized the situation, the popular attitude remained a concern: average Germans wanted an end to the war. Instead, rumors swirled of worsening relations with Russia, of troop concentrations in the east, of further cuts in food rations. Nor could there be much reassurance when they heard Hitler speak of “a hard year ahead of us” and of providing better weapons for German soldiers for use in the “next year.”
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In the last weeks before Barbarossa, Hitler became characteristically jittery and irritable. Although a gambler willing to play for the highest stakes, before every major coup the Führer would lapse into a state of hesitancy, vacillation, nervousness, and anxiety. In a conference with Mussolini on 2 June, he kept his Italian ally in the dark about his plans, although rumors circulated as to the reason behind the German buildup in the east. The Japanese ambassador better understood the broad hints but remained noncommittal about possible cooperation. On 14 June, Hitler held his last military conference before the start of Barbarossa, where once again confidence was expressed that, although the Russians possessed a numerical advantage, German qualitative superiority would prove decisive. He reemphasized the reasons for attacking the Soviet Union, stressing that every soldier had to know what was at stake. The Russians would fight tenaciously, he observed, but had to be crushed in order to save Europe from Bolshevization. Was he having second thoughts? A few days before Barbarossa, Goering sought to flatter him that his greatest triumph was at hand. Hitler sternly rebuked the Reichsmarshall. “It will be our toughest struggle yet—by far the toughest. Why? Because for the first time we shall be fighting an ideological enemy, and an ideological enemy of fanatical persistence at that.”
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On the afternoon of 16 June, Hitler summoned Goebbels to the Reich Chancellery—he entered through a back door in order to avoid detection—to discuss the situation and, perhaps, to gain a bit of reassurance. The Führer looked superb, Goebbels thought, despite “living in a state of tension that is not to be described.” Clearly in a state of nervous excitement, with words pouring out seemingly at random, Hitler
laid before his propaganda minister his thoughts and justifications for the impending invasion. The Greek campaign had taken a toll on German equipment, but it should be ready for Barbarossa. The weather had delayed the wheat harvest in Ukraine, which gave hope that most of it could be seized. The attack would be the largest in history and would avoid the mistakes of Napoléon, a remark that perhaps revealed his innermost fear. The Russians had massed their troops on the border, a perfect situation to ensure their destruction. “The Führer estimates the action at around four months,” Goebbels noted. “I estimate much less. Bolshevism will collapse like a house of cards. We stand before a victory march without comparison.”
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“We must act,” Hitler insisted, then sketched a surprisingly accurate assessment of Stalin's intentions. “Moscow will remain out of the war until Europe is exhausted and bled white. Then Stalin would act to Bolshevize Europe.” The coming struggle would not be geographically limited, he noted, but would continue until Russian military power no longer existed. In addition to his usual strategic arguments, Hitler now added a new one: Tokyo would not move against the United States as long as Russia loomed intact in its rear. This was, he claimed in rather inverted logic, “a preventive war” designed to avoid a two-front war since “Russia would attack us when we are weak.” He also stressed the economic advantages to be gained from the invasion, from raw materials and foodstuffs to the freeing of large numbers of German soldiers to return to the factories. In any case, “The Bolshevist poison had to be driven from Europe. . . . That which we have fought against our entire lives will now be annihilated. . . . Whether right or wrong, we must triumph. . . . Once we have won, who will ask us about the methods?” Despite his nervous ramblings, virtually all the key components of his ideology were on display, from Lebensraum and anti-Bolshevism to the conspiratorial notion that Germany was surrounded by rapacious enemies. The other crucial element, anti-Semitism, emerged clearly four days later when Goebbels met again with Hitler, along with Hans Frank, the governor-general of Poland. Frank talked of the situation in the General Government and his joy that the Jews would soon be “pushed out.” Then Goebbels noted, “The Jews are bit by bit falling to ruin in Poland. A just punishment for their incitement of the peoples and instigation of the war. The Führer had also prophesied that about the Jews.”
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The next day, the twenty-first, in oppressive, muggy heat, Hitler appeared completely worn out, pacing for hours in his apartment in nervous agitation, dictating his proclamation to the German people, and discussing minutiae such as the fanfare to be played on the radio when the
attack was announced. Hitler clearly still wrestled with his momentous decision. Himmler conveyed to Heydrich his impression that “the Führer is not so optimistic as his military advisors.” As the time for the attack approached, Goebbels noticed that Hitler became calmer: “The Führer is freed from a nightmare, the closer the decision comes. It is always that way with him. . . . All the fatigue appears to have gone from him.” Indeed, Hitler seemed once more to have resolved in his own mind the correctness of his decision: “There is nothing else for us to do but attack. This cancerous growth has to be burned out.” As Goebbels remarked, “He has worked since last July [on preparations for the invasion], and now the time is at hand. Everything has been done that could have been done. Now the fortunes of war must decide.” At 2:30
A.M
. on the twenty-second, Hitler absented himself to get a bit of sleep. Goebbels, too agitated to rest, went in pitch blackness to his office. There he received the first news of the attack at 3:30
A.M
., then two hours later read Hitler's proclamation to the German people. It was, Halder noted with scorn, a “long-winded manifesto . . . in a predominant political tenor,” a thin justification of German action based on the claim that the Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy sought to destroy Germany. “The hour has now therefore arrived,” Hitler declared, “to counter this conspiracy of the Jewish-Anglo-Saxon warmongers and the equally Jewish rulers of the Bolshevik headquarters in Moscow.” To Goebbels, “The burden of the last weeks and months fell away.” Months later, however, Hitler admitted to his own doubts. “At the moment of our attack, we were entering upon a totally unknown world. . . . On June 22 a door opened before us and we did not know what was behind it. . . . The heavy uncertainty took me by the throat.”
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