An Introduction to the Einsatzgruppen

Like every historical event, the Holocaust evokes certain specific images. When the Holocaust is mentioned most people immediately think of the concentration camps. They immediately envision emaciated victims in dirty striped uniforms staring incomprehensibly at their liberators or piles of corpses, too numerous to bury individually, being bulldozed into mass graves.

Those are accurate images. Those horrific scenes are real. They happened. But they are not all of the Holocaust. They are merely the end product of the systematization of the genocide committed by the Third Reich. The reality of that genocide began not in the camps or in the gas chambers but with four small groups of murderers known as the Einsatzgruppen formed by Himmler and Heydrich immediately before the invasion of the Soviet Union. They operated in the territories captured by the German armies during the invasion of the Soviet Union and, with the cooperation of German army units and local militias, murdered over a million men, women, and children. It was a story that did not end until 1952 when Otto Ohlendorf, the last surviving commander of an Einsatzgruppe (Einsatzgruppe D), climbed the steps of the gallows to pay for the more than 90,000 murders his command committed.

An article at the Holocaust History Project by Yale F. Edeiken introduces the Einsatzgruppen.

Before the Wannsee Conference Expansion of the Combat Zone

Seventy years ago, in December 1941, Japan began a war with the attack on Pearl Harbor that was joined a few days later by the Nazi Reich with its declaration of war on the USA. Thereby the European and Pacific wars became a world war.

On January 20, 1942, fifteen high-ranking bureaucrats of the Nazi regime came together for a conference, which later would become known as the "Wannsee Conference". It was no longer necessary at that time to come to a decision about the murder of the European Jews because it had already been underway for some time. The hitherto disenfranchisement, persecution and expulsion of the Jews had been replaced in the previous months by the extermination of the Jews.

In the following article, which appeared on December 11, 2011 in the Berlin daily "Tagesspiegel", the Berlin historian Ernst Piper describes the beginning of the Holocaust. Piper is known for his biography of Alfred Rosenberg, whom he characterized as "Hitler's principal ideologue". We thank Ernst Piper for his friendly permission to publish his article on our site, as well as the English translation by Gord McFee.

The German version is available here:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/piper/piper-deutsch.shtml

The English translation here:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/piper/piper-english.shtml

In the Nazis' Words

Gord McFee has put together a collection of quotations by Nazi leaders that speaks for itself. The common thread running through all of these quotations is the annihilation of the Jews. All quotations are from Nazi documents, books or speeches, and the German original has in most cases been provided.


The collection can be found at: http://www.holocaust-history.org/nazis-words/

August Hirt: Deadly Collector of the Victims of the Holocaust

August Hirt, like many Nazi doctors, is most closely associated with his role in the medical experimentation on and gassings of groups of Jewish prisoners. What makes him unique was motive: instead of seeing the gassing of prisoners as a quick and effective method of extermination, Hirt wanted to significantly expand the skull and skeleton collection for his institute at the University of Strasbourg.  He wanted to create a museum of "sub-humans, in which proofs of the degeneracy and the animality of the Jews would be collected." 

In an essay at The Holocaust History Project, Anne S. Reamey explains the history of August Hirt.  The article can be found at the following link:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/hirt/

Albert Speer's Edifice of Lies

Albert Speer, Hitler's Armaments Minister, was one of the twenty-two defendants at the trial of the major Nazi war criminals in 1945-1946. He was charged on all four counts of the indictment (planning aggressive war, crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity). The Tribunal acquitted him on counts 1 and 2, and found him guilty on counts 3 and 4. He was sentenced to twenty years imprisonment.

New evidence would appear to indicate that he was indeed present at the Posen speech of October 6, 1943 and must therefore have known about the extermination program. And the evidence comes from Speer himself.

The Holocaust History project has an article discussing this evidence in German and English.  The article was written by Sven Felix Kellerhoff, and is translated into English by THHP's Gord McFee. The article may be found at the link below.

http://www.holocaust-history.org/speer-know/

March 2004

March 16, 2004. Added Heinrich Himmler's Oct. 4, 1943 Speech at Poznan.