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Goals of the Invasion
The destruction of the Soviet Union by military force, the permanent elimination of the perceived Communist threat to Germany, and the seizure of prime land within Soviet borders for long-term German settlement had been core policy of the Nazi movement since the 1920s. Adolf Hitler had always regarded the German-Soviet nonaggression pact, signed on August 23, 1939, as a temporary tactical maneuver. In July 1940, just weeks after the German conquest of France and the Low Countries, Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union within the following year. On December 18, 1940, he signed Directive 21 (code-named Operation "Barbarossa"), the first operational order for the invasion of the Soviet Union.
From the beginning of operational planning, German military and police authorities intended to wage a war of annihilation against the Communist state as well as the Jews of the Soviet Union, whom they characterized as forming the "racial basis" for the Soviet state. During the winter and spring months of 1941, officials of the Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres-OKH) and the Reich Security Main Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt-RSHA) negotiated arrangements for the deployment of Einsatzgruppen behind the front lines to physically annihilate Jews, Communists, and other persons deemed to be dangerous to establishment of long-term German rule on Soviet territory. Often known as mobile killing units, Einsatzgruppen were special units of the Security Police and the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst-SD).
The Invasion and Mass Murder
With 134 divisions at full fighting strength and 73 more divisions for deployment behind the front, German forces invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, less than two years after the German-Soviet Pact was signed. Three army groups—including more than three million German soldiers, supported by 650,000 troops from Germany's allies (Finland and Romania), and later augmented by units from Italy, Croatia, Slovakia and Hungary—attacked the Soviet Union across a broad front. This front stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Black Sea in the south.
Invasion of the Soviet Union
The German army (Wehrmacht) regarded the war in the east as a crusade against communism and not subject to the "normal rules" of war. After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Soviet soldiers followed a "scorched earth" policy to hinder the German advance. In this German newsreel footage, German soldiers approach a burning village, one of many destroyed during the invasion of the Soviet Union.
Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv
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For months, the Soviet leadership had refused to heed warnings from the western powers of the German troop buildup along its western border. Germany and its Axis partners thus achieved almost complete tactical surprise. Much of the existing Soviet air force was destroyed on the ground. The Soviet armies were initially overwhelmed. German units encircled millions of Soviet soldiers, who, cut off from supplies and reinforcements, had few options other than to surrender.
As the German army advanced deep into Soviet territory, SS and police units followed the troops. The first to arrive were the Einsatzgruppen. The RSHA tasked these units with identifying and eliminating people who might organize and carry out resistance to the German occupation forces, identifying and concentrating groups of people who were "hostile" to German rule in the East, establishing intelligence networks, and securing key documentation and facilities.
Einsatzgruppen
During the Holocaust, members of mobile killing units known as “Einsatzgruppen” (literally “operational groups”) murdered well over one million civilians, primarily in mass shootings in the Soviet Union.
US Holocaust Memorial Museum
The Einsatzgruppen initiated mass-murder operations, primarily against Jewish males, officials of the Communist Party and State, and Soviet Roma. Often with assistance from German Army personnel, they established ghettos and other holding facilities to concentrate large numbers of Soviet Jews.
Beginning in late July, with the arrival of Himmler's representatives (the Higher SS and Police Leaders) and significant reinforcement, the SS and police, supported by locally recruited auxiliaries, began to physically annihilate entire Jewish communities in the Soviet Union. Success both on the military front and in the murder of the Soviet Jews contributed to Hitler's decision to deport German Jews to the occupied Soviet Union beginning on October 15, 1941, initiating what would become "Final Solution" policy: the physical annihilation of the European Jews.
