Einsatzgruppen Death Squads

Einsatzgruppen Death Squads

The Nazi Murder Machine

The Third Reich was built on violence. It governed through terror, dominated Europe with brutality, and ultimately provoked the violent retaliation that destroyed it, as historian Richard Rhodes notes in Masters of Death (2002, p. 19). At the vanguard of this violence were the Einsatzgruppen (special task forces). Operating as mobile killing squads, these units followed the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) into invaded territories. Their primary role was to identify and immediately liquidate anyone deemed an enemy of the Reich.

Administratively deployed by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA—the Reich Main Security Office) and working in close coordination with the German Security Police, these squads carried out a ruthless campaign of mass murder. Driven by pseudo-scientific Nazi racial ideology and a paranoid obsession with security, they slaughtered an estimated two million men, women, and children. This "Holocaust by bullets" was only the beginning of the regime's systemic genocide; millions more would soon perish inside the industrialised death factories established across occupied Poland.

Operation Tannenberg and the Evolution of the Einsatzgruppen

Einsatzgruppen operations began in earnest with "Operation Tannenberg," the codename for the systematic rounding up of the Polish intelligentsia following the 1939 German invasion. Prior to crossing the border, the SS had compiled extensive hit lists of potential targets slated for immediate arrest and liquidation. This pre-emptive strike aimed to decapitate Polish society, preventing the population from organising a coherent resistance movement against German rule.

To execute this strategy, Reinhard Heydrich initially established four Einsatzgruppen, a number that swelled to seven as the campaign progressed. Each group was subdivided into smaller Einsatzkommandos (special commandos) consisting of 100 to 150 personnel. Bureaucratically meticulous, each unit was required to log its actions daily and transmit precise operational reports back to Berlin. These highly mobile commandos aggressively combed their assigned sectors for victims—a brutal framework that established the infrastructure for the squads' later, catastrophic role in liquidating millions of Jews, Communists, and partisans during the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union.

The Einsatzgruppen (special task forces) were mobile paramilitary units that followed the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) into occupied territories. Their primary mandate was to identify, target, and immediately liquidate any perceived enemies of the Reich. Professionally managed by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA—the Reich Main Security Office), these squads operated in lockstep with the German Security Police. Remarkably, a core force of only about 3,000 personnel—heavily augmented by local collaborators—managed to systematically butcher between 1.5 and 2 million men, women, and children. To cover vast territories, they split into smaller, hyper-mobile detachments known as Einsatzkommandos and Sonderkommandos. These units aggressively combed their assigned jurisdictions to hunt down, capture, and summarily execute Jews, Communists, partisans, intellectuals, and saboteurs.

 

Einsatz breakdown and Areas of Responsibility:

Einsatzgruppen A

Commanded by SS Colonel Dr Walter Stahlecker. 

Attached to: Army Group North.

Operated within the Baltic state such as Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia

Sub Units Consisted of:

      Sonderkommando 1a (Martin Sandberger)

      Sonderkommando 1b

      Einsatzkommando 2

      Einsatzkommando 3 (Karl Jäger)

 

Einsatzgruppen B

Commanded by SS-General Arthur Nebe,

Attached to: Army Group Centre.

Operated within the areas of Byelorussia and central Russia itself.

Sub Units consisted of:

      Sonderkommando 7a

      Sonderkommando 7b

      Sonderkommando 7c

      Einsatzkommando 8 (Arthur Nebe)

      Einsatzkommando 9 (Alfred Filbert)

      Vorkommando Moskau

 

Einsatzgruppen C

Commanded by SS-Brigadier General Dr Otto Rasch

Attached to: Army Group South

Operated within northern and central Ukraine.

Sub Units consisted of:

      Einsatzkommando 4a

      Einsatzkommando 4b

      Einsatzkommando 5

      Einsatzkommando 6

Einsatzgruppen D

Commanded by SS-Colonel Professor Otto Ohlendorf

Attached to: Army Group South.

Operated within southern Ukraine including the Crimean Peninsula.

Sub Units consisted of:

      Einsatzkommando 10a (SS-Obersturmbannführer Zeezen)

      Einsatzkommando 10b

      Einsatzkommando 11a

      Einsatzkommando 11b

      Einsatzkommando 12 (Emil Haussmann)

Operationally, the Einsatzgruppen and their respective task forces relied entirely on the Wehrmacht for core logistics, including food, fuel, and quarters. This relationship extended far beyond administrative support; the killing squads frequently called on regular army units to secure perimeters, round up victims, and guard execution sites during massacres. Conversely, Wehrmacht commanders regularly requested intervention from the Einsatzgruppen to eliminate perceived security threats, relying on the paramilitary squads to execute Jews and political opponents under the pretext of anti-partisan pacification campaigns. This deep institutional cooperation shattered the postwar myth of a clean, un-complicit German military.

Administratively, each Einsatzgruppe was required to submit meticulous, regular reports directly to Berlin. These detailed dispatches—later known as the Operational Situation Reports—combined strategic intelligence assessments with chillingly precise, categorised tallies of the men, women, and children they had executed.

To ensure total administrative dominance over the genocide, Heinrich Himmler positioned a senior commander within the geographic zone of each invading army group. These men held the title of Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF). Hans Prützmann was initially assigned to the Army Group North sector (later swapped with Friedrich Jeckeln), Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski was deployed to Army Group Centre, and Jeckeln originally oversaw Army Group South. Reporting directly back to Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, these high-ranking executioners bypassed standard military channels, exercising absolute operational control over the respective Einsatzgruppen moving through their territories.

On 25 July 1941, Heinrich Himmler established auxiliary forces called Schutzmannschaften in the Baltic regions. These units assisted the Einsatzgruppen with local security and the mass murder of Jewish populations and other targeted groups.

Other Groups involved in the Slaughter:

Sipo-SD

Reserve Police Battalion 101

Police Battalion 307

Police Battalion 30

SS Cavalry Brigade

1st SS Infantry Brigade

11th Lithuanian Police Battalion

A Survivors Report:

One survivor of a massacre in Ukraine described the actions of the collaborating police forces:

"As soon as the small children got down from the trucks, the police took them from their parents and broke their spinal column against their knees. Small babies were thrown in the air and shot at or caught on bayonets and then flung into the trenches." (Cesarani, pp. 424–425).

Major General Walter Bruns’s Description of the Execution of Jews Outside Riga on 1 December 1941 (Surreptitiously Taped Conversation, 25 April 1945)

"I'll tell you something: some of the details may have been correct, but it was remarkable that the firing squad detailed that morning—six men with tommy guns were posted at each pit; the pits were 24 metres in length and 3 metres in breadth—they had to lie down like sardines in a tin, with their heads in the centre. Above them were six men with tommy guns who gave them the coup de grâce. When I arrived, those pits were so full that the living had to lie down on top of the dead; then they were shot and, in order to save room, they had to lie down neatly in layers. Before this, however, they were stripped of everything at one of the stations—here at the edge of the wood were the three pits they used that Sunday, and here they stood in a queue one and a half kilometres long which approached step by step: a queuing up for death.

As they drew nearer, they saw what was going on. About here they had to hand over their jewellery and suitcases. All good stuff was put into the suitcases and the remainder thrown on a heap. This was to serve as clothing for our suffering population, and then, a little further on, they had to undress and, 500 metres in front of the wood, strip completely; they were only permitted to keep on a chemise or knickers. They were all women and small two-year-old children. Then came all those cynical remarks. If only I had seen those tommy gunners, who were relieved every hour because of over-exertion, carry out their task with distaste; but no, they made nasty remarks like: 'Here comes a Jewish beauty.' I can still see it all in my memory: a pretty woman in a flame-coloured chemise. Talk about keeping the race pure: at Riga they first slept with them and then shot them to prevent them from talking.

Then I sent two officers out there, one of whom is still alive, because I wanted eyewitnesses. I didn't tell them what was going on, but said: 'Go out to the forest of Šķirotava, see what's up there and send me a report.' I added a memorandum to their report and took it to [General] Jakobs myself. He said: 'I have already received two complaints sent to me by Engineer Battalions from Ukraine.' There they shot them on the brink of large crevices and let them fall down into them; they nearly had an epidemic of plague, or at any rate a pestilential smell. They thought they could break off the edges with picks, thus burying them. That loss there was so hard that two Engineer Battalions were required to dynamite the edges; those battalions complained. Jakobs had received that complaint. He said: 'We didn't quite know how to tell the Führer. We'd better do it through Canaris.' [Admiral] Canaris had the unsavoury task of waiting for a favourable moment to give the Führer certain gentle hints. A fortnight later I visited the Oberbürgermeister, or whatever he was called then, concerning some other business. Altenmeyer triumphantly showed me: 'Here is an order, just issued, prohibiting mass shootings on that scale from taking place in future. They are to be carried out more discreetly.' From warnings given to me recently, I knew that I was receiving still more attention from spies."

Alex Kurzem:  The Nazis Mascot:

In 1941, five-year-old Alex Kurzem escaped into a Belarusian forest as Nazi death squads liquidated his village. After surviving on his own, he was turned over to a Latvian police battalion operating under German command. Facing a firing squad, the young boy walked up to a commanding sergeant and begged for food. The sergeant inspected the child, discovered he was Jewish, but unexpectedly decided to save him

To hide his identity, the soldiers declared him a Russian orphan and adopted him as their unit mascot. He was given a miniature uniform and paraded in Nazi newsreels as "the Reich's youngest soldier". Kurzem survived the war with his secret intact, later emigrating to Australia. Decades later, investigative genetic genealogy confirmed his Jewish heritage, validating one of the most unusual survival stories of the Holocaust. (https://www.forensicmag.com/570262-Genetic-Genealogy-Confirms-Story-of-Alex-Kurzem-the-Nazi-s-Little-Jewish-Mascot/)

For further reading on this account, see Mark Kurzem, The Mascot: The Extraordinary Story of a Young Jewish Boy and an SS Extermination Squad (Viking, 2007).

 

Above: Alex Kurzem in the uniform of the Latvian SS Death Squad.

Einsatzgruppe H (Slovakia)

Established in August 1944, Einsatzgruppe H was tasked with suppressing anti-German partisans and liquidating the remaining Jewish population in Slovakia. SS-Obersturmbannführer Josef Witiska (later promoted to SS-Standartenführer) commanded the unit, collaborating closely with local Volksdeutsche paramilitary groups and the Hlinka Guard Emergency Divisions.

The force was structured into several primary operational subunits:

Einsatzkommando 13: Successively commanded by Otto Kosloski and Karl Schmidt.

Einsatzkommando 14: Commanded by Georg Heuser.

Sonderkommando 7a: Attached to the main command structure.

z.b.V. Kommandos 15, 27, and 29: Special duty units deployed for rapid operations.

In the post-war aftermath, Josef Witiska committed suicide while in transit to a Czechoslovak tribunal, and Czechoslovak authorities executed Otto Kosloski in 1947. Although various national courts secured occasional convictions, the overwhelming majority of Einsatzgruppe H personnel escaped prosecution, reflecting the systemic failure to bring the broader Einsatzgruppen to justice.

Einsatz Group H - Slovakia

Einsatzgruppe H was created in August 1944 with the aim of removing what was left of the Jewish population in Slovakia and to take part in anti-partisan activities. SS-Obersturmbannführer Josef Witiska (later promoted to SS-Standartenführer) was given control of this unit who collaborated with the Hlinka Guard Emergency Divisions as well as local Volksdeutsche paramilitary units.

It consisted of two Kommandos: Einsatzkommandos 13 and 14.

Einsatzkommando 13 was originally led by Otto Kosloski and then Karl Schmidt

Einsatzkommando 14 was controlled by Georg Heuser.

Each Kommando was further broken down into smaller units. These units were: Sonderkommando 7a, zb-V Kommandos 15, 27 and 29.

After the war and whilst in American hands, Josef Witiska committed suicide and Otto Kosloski was executed by the Czechoslovakian authorities in 1947. Other members of the Einsatzgruppe were convicted within other national courts, but like the Einsatzgruppen as a whole, most of their personnel never stood trial.