Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews Peter Longerich (grave mercy .TXT) 📖

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 Verwirklichung (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

motivated—seemed to have confirmed the distorted picture of the Jewish-Bolshevist

arch-enemy.

70. e.g. Nosske, ZSt, 76/59, 2, 315 ff., 30 July 1964 and II 213 AR 1902/66 main document XI, 13 Mar. 1969, 2610 ff., and in similar vein the testimony of defence counsel Rudolf

Aschenauer who had been involved in the Nuremberg trials, published in Hans-

Heinrich Wilhelm, Rassenpolitik und Kriegführung. Sicherheitspolizei und Wehrmacht

in Polen und der Sowjetunion (Passau, 1991), 227 ff.; cf. Angrick, Besatzungspolitik,

102 ff.

71. Erwin Schulz: ZSt, 207 AR-Z 76/59, vol. 6, pp. 58 ff., 22 Mar. 1971; cf. Ogorreck,

Einsatzgruppen, 82–3, with references to further interrogations; Gustav Nosske: ZSt, II 213

AR 1902/66, correspondence file 2, pp. 597 ff., 24 May 1971; similarly ZSt, 76/59, 2,

pp. 315 ff., 30 July 1964; Ogorreck, Einsatzgruppen, 91–2; Karl Tschierschky, ZSt, 207

AR-Z