Einsatzgruppen

_The **Einsatzgruppen**_ were a paramilitary group in Nazi Germany created by the notorious Nazi SS-Gestapo Officer Reinhard Heydrich . They were part of the _Schutzstaffel_ (SS).  They helped make The Holocaust happen by murdering about 12 million people throughout Europe.  Almost all of the people they killed were civilians.

Sometimes, the _Einsatzgruppen_ would kill only a few people at once.  Other times, they would kill thousands of people in a few days.  For example, at Babi Yar, the _Einsatzgruppen_ killed 33,771 Jewish people in two days.

Most of the people the _Einsatzgruppen_ killed were Jews.  They killed between 5 and 6 million Jews.<sup>p. 257</sup>   However, they also killed hundreds of thousands of Polish people, Soviets, and Roma people in Eastern Europe.

After Nazi Germany lost World War II, 24 leaders of the _Einsatzgruppen_ were put on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials.  Sixteen were convicted.  Fourteen were sentenced to death, and two were sentenced to life in prison.  Other countries later tried four other _Einsatzgruppen_ leaders, convicted them, and sentenced them to death.<sup>pp=274–275</sup>

## Creation and Action T4

SS leader Reinhard Heydrich created the _Einsatzgruppen_ around 1938.

At first, in October 1938, Heydrich sent the _Einsatzgruppen_ to the Sudetenland.  Adolf Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany, wanted to take over the Sudetenland.  He was ready to use the Nazi military to invade the area.  However, in the Munich Agreement, world powers agreed that Hitler could have the Sudetenland.  The _Einsatzgruppen_ helped take over government buildings, and took all the government papers they could find.  They also arrested about 10,000 Czech communists and German citizens.<sup>pp. 405, 412</sup>

From September to December 1939, the _Einsatzgruppen_ took part in the Nazis' Action T4 program.  The Nazis believed that people with physical, intellectual, and mental disabilities did not deserve to live.  Action T4 was a plan to kill them all.  At first, the _Einsatzgruppen_ and other Nazis shot these people.  However, by spring of 1940, the Nazis started using gas chambers so they could kill people with disabilities more quickly.<sup>pp. 138–141</sup>

## Invasion of Poland

In 1939, Hitler decided to invade Poland.  Heydrich decided the _Einsatzgruppen_ would follow the regular German Army.<sup>p. 425</sup>  Their job would be to kill the most important people in Polish society, like clergy, teachers, and members of the academia.  They would also kill anyone who refused to agree with Nazi ideas or rules.<sup>p. 144</sup> Adolf Hitler said: "...there must be no Polish leaders; where Polish leaders exist they must be killed[.]"<sup>p. 143</sup>  The Einzatsgruppen followed this plan by killing about 65,000 civilians by the end of 1939.  These people included Polish leaders, Jews, prostitutes, Roma people, and people with mental illnesses.<sup>pp. 430–432</sup>

Finally, the _Einsatzgruppen_ forced the surviving Jews in Poland to move to ghettos in big Polish citiies. The Nazis planned to get rid of all the Jews in Poland, but they had not yet decided where to send them.<sup>pp. 227–228, 242-245</sup>  With the help of the German Army, the _Einsatzgruppen_ also forced tens of thousands of Jews eastward into the part of Poland that the Soviet Union had taken over.<sup>p. 429</sup>

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## Operation Barbarossa

In 1941, Hitler decided to invade the Soviet Union.  He called this plan Operation Barbarossa.  Hitler hated communism.  He wanted to take over the communist Soviet Union, and kill communism for good.<sup>pp. 95–96</sup>

In May 1941, Heydrich gave the _Einsatzgruppen_ an order to kill the Jews in the Soviet Union.<sup>pp. 94–95</sup>

In June 1941, Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, told other SS leaders that the Nazis planned to kill up to 30 million people in the Soviet Union.  The _Einsatzgruppen_ would play an important part in this by murdering people who the Nazis thought were inferior.  However, the Nazis would also use other strategies, like starvation, to kill other Soviets.<sup>p. 181</sup>

The _Einsatzgruppen_ were divided into seven battalions.<sup>p. 225</sup>  Hitler's army invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.  A few weeks later, the _Einsatzgruppen_ started working in eastern Poland, which was controlled by the Soviet Union.<sup>p. 185</sup>  Heydrich gave them three main jobs:<sup>p. 177</sup>
1. To take control of all of the offices and papers that belonged to the Soviet Union and the Communist Party;
1. To kill all of the top leaders of the Soviet Union; and
1. To start and encourage pogroms (riots and murders) against Jews

The _Einsatzgruppen_ did these jobs in many ways.  Sometimes, they would make lists of people who they thought were enemies, and would then murder them.  Other times, they would perform massacres of thousands of people over a few days.  For example, at Babi Yar, one _Einsatzgruppen_ battalion killed 33,771 Jews in two days; in the Rumbula massacre, another killed about 25,000 people in two days.

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## More _Einsatzgruppen_ are created

As the Nazis took over more and more countries, they created more _Einsatzgruppen_.  They also created smaller groups called _Einsatzkommando_ and _Sonderkommando_.  These included:
- _Einsatzgruppe E_, which worked in the Independent State of Croatia
- _Einsatzgruppe G_, in Romania, Hungary, and Ukraine
- _Einsatzgruppe H_, in Slovakia<sup>p. 419</sup>
- _Einsatzgruppe Iltis_, on the border between Slovenia and Austria
- _Einsatzgruppen Jugoslawien_ and _Serbien_, in Yugoslavia
- _Einsatzkommando Luxemburg_, in Luxembourg
- _Einsatzgruppe Norwegen_, in Norway
- _Einsatzkommando Tilsit_, in Lithuania and Poland<sup>p. 197</sup>
- _Einsatzgruppe Tunis_, in Tunis

### Orders to kill

After the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union, the _Einsatzgruppen_s main job was still to kill civilians, like they did in Poland.  However, this time, Heydrich ordered the _Einsatzgruppen_ to kill:

- Commissars (officers in the Soviet government)
- All top and middle-ranking members of Comintern, a group that supported world communism
- All top and middle-ranking members of the Communist Party
- All extremist Communist Party members
- All Jews that held jobs in the government or the Community Party

Between July 8 and July 17, Heydrich also ordered the _Einsatzgruppen_ to kill:
- All male Jews between the ages of 15 and 45<sup>p. 198</sup>
- All Jewish prisoners of war from the Soviet Red Army
- All Red Army prisoners of war from Georgia and Central Asia, since they might be Jews too<sup>p. 97</sup>
- All of the Roma people they could find, and all people with mental illnesses

### Killings

The Red Army retreated.  However, Heydrich thought there were Soviet guerrilla fighters still in the area and thought local Jews were helping them.  He ordered the _Einsatzgruppen_ to encourage anti-Jewish pogroms in the newly occupied territories.  Pogroms (some of which the _Einsatzgruppen_ started) broke out in Latvia, Lithuania, and Ukraine.<sup>p. 526</sup> Within the first few weeks of Operation Barbarossa, 10,000 Jews were killed in 40 different pogroms.  By the end of 1941, about 60 pogroms had happened, killing up to 24,000 people.<sup>p. 526</sup>

All of the main _Einsatzgruppen_ took part in mass shootings from the beginning of the war.<sup>pp. 196–202</sup>  At first, they shot only adult Jewish men.  However, by August, they were shooting all Jews, including women, children, infants, and the elderly.  At first, they killed people in firing squads.  When this became too slow, the _Einsatzkommandos_ began to shoot larger groups next to, or even inside, mass graves.<sup>p. 207</sup>  As news about these killings spread, many Jewish people ran away.

The Nazis began to send people to concentration camps and ghettos.  Rural areas were mostly _Judenfrei_ (free of Jews).<sup>pp. 211–212</sup>  The Nazis created forced labour gangs so they could make use of the Jews as slaves until the Nazis had killed them all.  The Nazis had put off that goal until 1942.<sup>pp. 212–213</sup>

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## Killings in the Baltic States

_Einsatzgruppe A_ worked in the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.  These countries had been occupied by the Soviet Union before the Nazis took them over.  _Einsatzgruppe A_ killed about 140,000 people between June and November 1941.<sup>p. 98</sup>

When _Einsatzgruppe A_ entered Kaunas, Lithuania, a pogrom was happening.  They let all of the criminals out of jail and encouraged them to join the pogrom.  In four days, 4,000 Jews were killed in the pogrom.<sup>p. 41</sup>

The head of _Einsatzgruppe A_ let a violent anti-Semitic man named Viktors Arājs start a smaller _Einsatzgruppe_ called the Arājs Kommando.  Together, the two groups killed 2,300 Jews in Riga, Lithuania.  Within six months, the Arājs Kommando killed about half of the Jews in Latvia.

Groups like the Arājs Kommando were created in Lithuania and Estonia too.  With their help, _Einsatzgruppe A_ was able to kill almost every Jew in its area.<sup>p. 182</sup>

### Rumbula massacre

In November 1941, Himmler decided that Latvians were not being killed fast enough.  He wanted to move Jews from Germany into Latvia.  He ordered that everyone living in the ghetto in Riga, Latvia, be murdered.<sup>pp. 206–209</sup>

The Nazis told the people in the ghetto they were being sent to another place to live.  They told them to bring their things and valuables.<sup>pp. 208–210</sup>

The Nazis moved people towards a nearby forest a thousand at a time.  They shot people who tried to run away or could not walk fast enough.  They took the things the Jews had brought with them, and made them take off their clothes.  Then, fifty at a time, they made the victims lie down in a mass grave and shot them.<sup>pp. 208–210</sup>

In two days, about 25,000 people were murdered by the _Einsatzgruppen_.<sup>pp. 210–214</sup>

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## Killing with poison gas

After a while, Himmler realized that the _Einsatzgruppen_s methods were not the best way to kill people as quickly and cheaply as possible.<sup>p. 197</sup>  He also found that many _Einsatzgruppen_ had trouble killing so many people.  Some had physical and mental health problems, and others became alcoholics.<sup>pp. 52, 124, 168</sup>  Himmler made a final decision after watching a mass execution in August 1941.  He decided that shooting Jews was too stressful for his men.<sup>pp. 547–548</sup>

Himmler decided that the answer to this problem was to kill Jews (and others) with poison gas.<sup>p. 167</sup>  Starting in 1942, all of the main _Einsatzgruppen_ began killing people using gas vans, which had been used to kill people with disabilities early on in Action T4.  In these vans, carbon monoxide exhaust fumes from the vans' engines were pumped into the back of the truck, killing the victims inside.  However, by September 1941, Nazis at Auschwitz concentration camp had begun experimenting with Zyklon B, a cyanide-like pesticide.<sup>pp. 280–281</sup>

At the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, the Nazis officially decided to kill all of the Jews in Europe (11 million people).  Some would be worked to death.  Others would be killed in extermination camps (death camps).().<sup>p. 555-556</sup>  The Nazis created death camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bełżec extermination camps with the goal of killing as many people as possible, as quickly as possible.  These death camps replaced the _Einsatzgruppen_ as the Nazis' main strategy of mass murder and genocide.<sup>pp. 279–280</sup>

At first, the _Einsatzgruppen_ were sent to fight partisans  people in Nazi-occupied territories who continued to fight back against the Nazis.<sup>p. 248</sup>  However, by 1944, most _Einsatzgruppen_ had become part of Waffen-SS fighting units or sent to guard death camps.

## Jäger Report

The _Einsatzgruppen_ kept careful records of their mass murders so they could write reports to their supervisors.  The Commander of _Einsatzgruppe A_ filed the Jäger Report on December 1, 1941.  it talks about _Einsatzgruppen A_s actions in Lithuania.

The report says that _Einsatzgruppen A_ killed 137,346 people.<sup>p. 215</sup>  Most were Jews, but others were communists, criminals, and other Nazi "enemies."<sup>p. 126</sup>  Starting in mid-August, when 3,207 people were murdered, the victims included children.<sup>p. 126</sup>

In February 1942, Jäger changed his estimates of how many people the _Einsatzgruppen_ killed. He said there were 138,272 victims, including:<sup>p. 126</sup>
- 48,252 men (35%)
- 55,556 women (40%)
- 34,464 children (25%)

Jäger also said that only 1,851 of the victims (1.3%) were not Jewish.<sup>p. 126</sup>

## Other reports

Many other papers and reports written by the _Einsatzgruppen_ talk about how many people the different units killed.  For example, one researcher looked at over 200 Operational Situation Reports (reports from the _Einsatzgruppen_ to their bosses about what they were doing).  He also looked at letters and reports written by _Einsatzgruppen_ bosses.  He found that as of 1942, _Einsatzgruppen A, B, C_, and _D_ had killed almost a million people:

|scope="col"|**As Of:**|scope="col"|**''Einsatzgruppe:**|scope="col"|**Smaller Group:**|scope="col"|**Number Killed:**|
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|July 1942|A||206,942|||||
|December 1942|B||134,298|||||
|January 1943||_Sonderkommando_ 7A|1,344|||||
|April 1943||_Sonderkommando_ 7B|6,788|||||
|May 1944||_Sonderkommando_ 7C|4,660|||||
|June-August 1944||_Einsatzkommando_ 8|74,740|||||
|October 1944||_Einsatzkommando_ 9|41,340|||||
|November 1942|C||118,341|||||
|February 1943||_Einsatzkommando_ 4A|59,018|||||
|March 1944||_Einsatzkommando_ 4B|6,329|||||
|May-December 1944||_Einsatzkommando_ 5|150,000|||||
|November 1944||_Einsatzkommando_ 6|5,577|||||
|January 1942-February 1944|D||91,728|||||
|**TOTAL KILLED**|**917,105**|||||||

## Infobox (government agency)

- **agency name**: _Einsatzgruppen_
- **logo**: Flag Schutzstaffel.svg
- **logo width**: 100px
- **logo caption**: The _Einsatzgruppen_ was controlled by the _Schutzstaffel_ (SS)
- **picture**: Jew_Killings_in_Ivangorod_(1942).jpg
- **picture width**: 250px
- **picture caption**: A Jewish operation in Ivanhorod. Photograph taken in Ukraine, 1942.
- **formed**: circa, c. 1939
- **jurisdiction**: Nazi Germany
Nazi-occupied territory, occupied Europe
- **employees**: About 3,000 c. 1941
- **minister1 name**: Heinrich Himmler
- **minister1 pfo**: Head of the SS
- **chief1 name**: Reinhard Heydrich
- **chief1 position**: Head of the _Einsatzgruppen_ (1939–1942)
- **chief2 name**: Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner
- **chief2 position**: Head of the _Einsatzgruppen_ (1943–1945)
- **parent agency**:  Allgemeine SS and Reich Main Security Office
- **footnotes**: Murdered 2 million people, including 1.3 million Jews