SLAUGHTER ON THE EASTERN FRONT
Operation Barbarossa was the start of the most savage theatre in World War II. Dr Alex Kay looks at the Nazis’ horrific policies as they invaded the USSR
When German forces invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the brutal nature of the ensuing conflict was unlike anything seen before. While more combatants were killed than in any other theatre, it’s the horrific violence against cultural and racial groups for which the front was infamous. “Operation Barbarossa was the first campaign during World War II in which the systematic mass murder of Jews and other racial groups was instigated, and this starts from the very first day of the campaign,” says Dr Alex Kay, senior lecturer and the chair of Military History/history of Violence at Potsdam University, Germany.
While atrocities had been committed on other fronts, the premeditated, planned mass murder of specific racial and cultural groups was hitherto unseen before this stage of the war. What was it that made the USSR different in the eyes of the Nazi elite? “Soviet Russia was really associated in Hitler’s mind with the worst form of Jewish rule,” says Kay. “From his point of view, it was the only country that was completely controlled by Jews.” In Mein Kampf, written in 1924, Hitler had stated as much when he said: “In Russian Bolshevism we must see the attempt undertaken by the Jews in the 20th century to achieve world domination.” As a result, Operation Barbarossa was seen by Hitler not only as a chance to obtain the land and resources he so desperately needed, but as a battle he had been anticipating for over a decade. “The murders began on the very first day of Operation Barbarossa and that gives an indication of how the campaign had been planned,” Kay explains. “By the end of July, 63,000 people had been murdered by the Einsatzgruppen [mobile killing units of the SS] alone, and more than 90% of those victims were Jews.”
One particularly shocking mandate, the Commissar
Order, was issued two weeks before the invasion began. The Commissars were officials of the Communist Party within the Red Army, whose role it was to prevent desertion and promote party propaganda within the military. The Nazi order dictated that: “The originators of barbaric, Asiatic methods of warfare are the political commissars… Therefore, when captured either in battle or offering resistance, they are to be shot on principle.” In a blatant breach of international law the resulting slaughter was horrific. “Perhaps as many as 10,000 Soviet political officers were murdered between June 1941 and May 1942, when the order was rescinded,” says Kay. “This is the premeditated and systematic murder of regular uniformed prisoners of war.”
These two groups were not the only ones targeted, however. “The Asian prisoners, or those who had such
an appearance in the eyes of their German captors, were repeatedly separated out from other POWS and shot,” Kay tells us. “In addition to that, the SS, police and Wehrmacht units began killing Soviet psychiatric patients from August 1941, and nomadic Roma were also being targeted.” In the POW camps, those captured by the Wehrmacht were often treated appallingly and, as food shortages became more acute, were often left unfed. “Soviet prisoners of war were targeted as direct competitors of the Wehrmacht for scarce food and starved to death,” says Kay. “In occupied Poland, in camps like Stalag 342 in Belarus, you have examples of prisoners, tormented by hunger, requesting the Wehrmacht guard in writing to end their suffering by shooting them.”
In July of 1941, however, the German advance began to face difficulties. “You had leading figures in the military concerned about high enemy resistance, high casualties and especially the security of the rear areas,” Kay explains. “On 10 July, less than three weeks into the campaign, Army Group Centre was actually forced to go on the defensive.” The weak security forces in the rear areas meant that supply lines were potentially vulnerable to Soviet resistance. “It’s in this context that the Nazi regime decided to radicalise occupation security policies and escalate the violence,” says Kay. “During the second half of July 6,000 additional policemen and 11,000 additional SS were deployed, alongside the original 3,000, resulting in a total of almost 20,000 troops, just for these tasks. By the end of July 1941 they were starting to kill women and children, and then entire communities.”
Even for those not targeted as part of these mass murder operations, life during Operation Barbarossa was still extremely treacherous. In particular, lack of food was a very real threat faced by those living in occupied zones, with many dying of starvation. “A conservative estimate of hungerinduced mortality in the zone of operations of Army Group Centre alone amounts to 200,000 deaths from either outright starvation or related diseases,” Kay reveals. Within many of the major cities, residents were targeted by the ‘starvation policy’. “This effectively stole foodstuffs from occupied Soviet territories to feed the Wehrmacht and also to send back to the home front,” says Kay. This was not the only threat facing non-combatants: Kay states that during 1942 alone around
1.4 million Soviet civilians were sent to Germany for forced labour. “In short, it’s fair to say that normal life was no longer possible,” Kay continues. “For anybody living in the Soviet territories practically every family experienced either death, hunger, forced labour, requisitioning or violence in one form or another.”
By the end of the conflict on the Eastern Front, the estimated number of Soviet dead is shocking. “The most recent figures come to 26.6 million people,” says Kay. “Red Army dead account for about 14.6 million, but this still leaves 12 million Soviet civilian deaths. If we add the threeplus million Soviet troops who perished as POWS, deduct those from the total of Red Army dead and add them to the civilian, it becomes clear that the majority of Soviet war dead comprise civilians and unarmed captured soldiers.”
The violence unleashed during Operation Barbarossa would have a lasting impact on the final years of the war. “Even in the context of WWII this violence was unprecedented,” Kay concludes. “It provided a precedent. It meant that such tactics and such a level of violence was no longer unthinkable.”