SS Einsatzgruppen: Nazi Death Squads, 1939-1945

130 Pages·2018·56.23 MB·English

by  Gerry Van Tonder

EINSATZGRUPPEN
NAZI DEATH SQUADS, 1939–1945
GERRY VAN TONDER
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Liudmila Titova (Людмила Титова) was a Jewish-Ukrainian
poetess from Kiev, who wrote the epic poem 'Babi Yar'.
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by
PEN AND SWORD MILITARY
an imprint of
Pen and Sword Books Ltd
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Copyright © Gerry van Tonder, 2018
ISBN 978 1 526729 09 5
The right of Gerry van Tonder to be identified as the author of this work
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CONTENTS
Timeline 5
Introduction 10
1. My Loyalty Is My Honour 13
2. Power Through Terror 37
3. Death Was Their Tool 47
4. Mass Slaughter 61
5. This World’s Biggest Murder Case 115
Index 126
Acknowledgements & Sources 128
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SS Einsatzgruppen
4
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TIMELINE
1921
September: The loose-knit, brown-shirted Saalschutzabteilung, or meeting hall
protection detachment, of the German Labour Party, becomes informally
known as the Sturmabteilung, or Storm Detachment (SA).
4 November: At a public meeting in the Munich Hofbräuhaus, elements of the SA
beat up dissenters in the crowd. From this time, the SA title becomes official.
1925
9 November: Official formation date of the Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squad (SS).
1929
6 January: Adolf Hitler appoints Heinrich Himmler SS-Reichsführer.
1931
1 August: Reinhard Heydrich is made head of a newly created SS ‘Ic Service’ intel-
ligence agency.
December: Heydrich is promoted to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer.
1932
Himmler appoints Heydrich as chief of the Nazi Security Service, the
Sicherheitsdienst (SD).
1933
30 January: Adolf Hitler, as chancellor, and the Nationalsozialist Deutsche
Arbeiterpartei, or National Socialist German Labour Party (NSDAP), come to
power in a coalition government.
3 February: Hitler reveals his Lebensraum programme.
15 March: Dachau Camp is established at an old gunpowder factory at this town
near Munich.
26 June: Himmler takes Theodor Eicke out of a mental hospital and appoints him
commandant of Dachau.
July: The Nazis are now in full control in Germany.
9 November: Himmler enhances the status of the SD to that of amt (office), and
promotes Heydrich to the rank of Brigadeführer.
5
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SS Einsatzgruppen
1934
22 April: Heydrich is appointed head of the Geheime Staatspolizei, or Gestapo,
along with his position as chief of the SD.
9 June: The SD is designated the only SS and Nazi intelligence service.
30 June: Almost 200 critics of the NSDAP, including senior members of the SA,
are rounded up and subsequently executed by SS death squads.
4 July: Eicke is placed in control of all concentration camps in the Reich. He cre-
ates Totenkopf, or Death’s Head units, recruiting from within the ranks of the
camp guards.
20 July: Hitler separates the SS from the Sturmabteilung.
14 December: Himmler reorganizes the SS into three departments: the
SS-Verfügungstruppe, or Combat Support Force, comprising armed politi-
cal squads, concentration camp guards, and the General SS for the remaining
functions.
1936
10 February: The Gestapo is placed above the law.
1937
1 July: Himmler orders that all Jewish issues be handled by the SD.
1938
January: Himmler introduces a programme of incarcerating ‘asocials’, including
the work-shy, gypsies, pimps and others unable to fit into the German
community – the Four-Year Plan.
9–10 November: Kristallnacht, or Crystal Night, pogrom against all Jews in Nazi
Germany.
8 December: Himmler issues a diktat that all matters relating to gypsies be dealt
with on the basis of race.
1939
15 March: German troops invade Czechoslovakia and occupy Prague.
21 March: German troops enter Lithuania.
26 July: Heydrich’s deputy, Adolf Eichmann, heads up the ‘emigration’ office for
Jews in Prague.
1 September: Nazi Germany sends her troops into Poland; Heydrich forms the
Einsatzgruppen to follow the invading German forces.
6
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Timeline
21 September: SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich instructs
Einsatzgruppen commanders to give ‘practical thought’ to achieving the ‘final
aim’; Jewish ghettos are established in German-occupied Poland.
22–27 September: The SD and Sicherheitspolizei, or Security Police (SiPo),
are merged to form the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or Reich Main Security
Office (RSHA), headed by Heydrich. Jewish ghettos are established in
German-occupied Poland.
28 September: Poland capitulates.
1940
January: Mass shootings of Jews carried out.
25 January: A new German concentration camp is established at the Polish town
of Oswiecim – Auschwitz.
April–May: The NKVD massacres 26,000 Polish officers at Katyn Forest near
Smolensk.
30 April: The first Jewish ghetto is sealed off in Łód´z, Poland, entrapping
230,000 Jews.
14 June: Paris falls to the Germans.
10 August: Anti-Jewish laws promulgated in Romania.
23 September: Himmler sets up a special SS bank account, under the name ‘Max
Heiliger’, for deposits of gold (including from teeth), silver, jewellery and cur-
rency taken from murdered or incarcerated Jews.
October: Jews are compelled to pay and erect a wall around their own ghetto in
Warsaw.
20–24 November: Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia join the Axis powers.
1941
25 March: Yugoslavia joins the Axis.
May: Personnel for the Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos are recruited,
organized and prepared for the occupation of the Balkans, the Soviet Union
and for Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of Britain.
22 June: Operation Barbarossa sees the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. In the
Soviet village of Virbalis, Einsatzgruppen machine-gun all adult Jews.
2 July: Heydrich instructs the Einsatzgruppen and Kommandos participating
in Operation Barbarossa to execute communist office holders, Jews in state
employment, and other ‘radical elements’.
15 July: Smolensk is captured by German troops.
7
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SS Einsatzgruppen
31 July: Hermann Göring authorizes Heydrich to implement Endlösung der
Judenfrage – the Final Solution in all German-held territories.
August: Tens of thousands of Jews are murdered throughout the western Soviet
Union, Lithuania, Romania and Latvia, the majority by Einsatzgruppen squads.
September: The use of explosives and motor-vehicle exhaust fumes to kill large
numbers of people are tested on asylum patients at the Novinki and Mogilev
asylums near Minsk; Kiev, capital of the Ukraine, falls to the German army.
27 September: Heydrich is appointed Deputy Reich Protector of the Protectorate
of Bohemia and Moravia, and moves to Prague.
10 October: Heydrich chairs a meeting of the RHSA in Prague to finalize plans
for the deportation of 50,000 Jews in the territory to ghettos in Minsk and Riga.
29–30 September: The Babi Yar massacre of Jews in Kiev, in which 34,000 men,
women and children are murdered.
12 October: Heydrich disseminates Report No. 111, stating: ‘The principal targets
of execution by the Einsatzkommandos will be: political functionaries … Jews
mistakenly released from POW camps … Jewish sadists and avengers … Jews in
general’.
December: The widespread murder of Jews in the east continues;
Einsatzkommando 3 reports killing over 136,000 Jews since June 1941.
16 December: Governor-General of German-occupied Poland, Hans Frank, notes
that there are 3,500,000 Jews resident in his region.
1942
20 January: Top Nazi and SS officers meet in Wannsee, Berlin, to coordinate the
final solution to the Jewish question.
May: Heydrich orders the obliteration of evidence of Einsatzgruppen massacres
in the east.
4 June: Heydrich dies of sepsis from wounds sustained in an assassination
attempt in Prague on 27 May; in reprisal, all males over the age of 16 in the vil-
lages of Lidice and Ležáky are executed.
1943
30 January: SS-Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner succeeds Heydrich as
head of the RHSA.
1944
May: The incineration of bodies massacred by the Einsatzgruppen to destroy
evidence commences.
20 July: Senior German army officers fail in their attempt to assassinate Hitler.
8
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Timeline
1945
30 April: Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker.
6 May: Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, Hitler’s successor, strips Himmler of all his
positions.
8 May: Nazi Germany surrenders, ending the war in Europe.
12 May: Ernst Kaltenbrunner is arrested.
21 May: Heinrich Himmler is arrested.
23 May: Himmler commits suicide.
Otto Adolf Eichmann, the leading architect of the ‘deportation’ of Eastern
European Jews to extermination camps in Nazi-occupied territories, in the
yard of Ayalon Prison in Israel, 1961. (Photo GPO, Israel)
9
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