The Soldier in theWar

to Conquer Eastern Europe

Manfred Messerschmidt

intended tosolve its so-called Lebensraum

Germany problem by occupying Poland and the Soviet Union. The
occupation meant more than simple territorial expansion to
Hitler, the Security Services [the Nazi S.S.], administrative and
judicial agencies, and the armed forces. The population of the
territory to be occupied was represented by an ideologically dis
torted enemy image. The
German "right" to conquer was based
on the claim that a superior "race" had the right to evict or ex
terminate "inferior" peoples.
Hitler demanded "brutal methods" and that the "vital ener
gies" of the Polish people be "destroyed." During the expul
sion and extermination actions carried on by Himmler and Hey
drich's forces, General von Brauchitz, Supreme Commander of
the Army, stated that the "national/political tasks" that Hitler
ordered were necessary to "secure German Lebensraum." The
General Staff of the Army ordered its command posts not to
interfere with the operations of the Commander of the Security
Services. Military action and political power were intertwined,
as demonstrated by the brutal methods used to "liberate"
territory, and by the terror and murder used to subdue not only
resistance groups, but also populace and the "racial enemy."
The territory that Governor General Frank called the first
colonial territory of the German nation was territory outside the
rule of law. Some commanders in Poland distanced themselves
from "political" measures taken against the population during
the so-called action "Tannenberg," reasoning that, after all, they
had not been directly involved. The "blood-madness of the
Security Services"?as General Blaskowitz labelled it?was
known, but nothing was done to countermand it.
Clearly, a politics of extermination requires its agencies to
have a particular kind of enemy image. Since it was quickly
established that no "spectator role" could be sustained, willing
soldiers were also necessary.

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It has taken a long time to correct the false image generals

and officers constructed after the war against the Soviet Union.
Hitler and the Security Services were said to have been alone
responsible for lawlessness, massacres, and the politics of racial
extermination. In fact the military, especially the army, func
tioned as the steel tip of the occupying force, and as the power
which initially made it possible for the Special Forces of the
ideological war to operate. In this way the army was fully in
the service of National Socialist war goals. Over and over again,
commanders emphasized that ideological war called for special
methods of warfare. As early as the liquidations in Poland, the
Supreme Commander of the Army and the members of the
General Staff indicated to Himmler, who commanded the
Security Services, that they feared their troops were in danger
of "brutalization" during such actions. The harsh anti-Polish
measures themselves were of no concern to the army. Ideological
war produced ideological soldiers: men who were ready to kill
women and children, to kill Jews simply because they were Jews.
It is a fact that in the Soviet Union by the end of 1941?even
before the extermination camps were in use?about one million
Jews had been killed, directly under the eyes of the army, and
often with its support. The murder of more than 30,000 Jews
in the Babi Yar ravine at Kiev is only one example.
The leadership of the armed forces and the commanders of
the army tried to allay the soldiers' scruples with propaganda
and indoctrination. They gave ideological "meaning" to the
biggest murder-action ever planned and carried out by Germans.
They did not simply invent such "meaning." Rather, the mean
ing was already a part of their political credo. The "Guidelines
for the Behavior of Troops in Russia," issued to the soldiers
before the attack, presented an image of the enemy that made
the approaching exterminations acceptable. "Bolshevism is the
deadly enemy of the National Socialist German people.
Germany struggles against this poisonous ideology and those
who perpetuate it. Our struggle demands pitiless and drastic
action against bolshevic agitators, mercenaries, saboteurs, and
Jews, and we must eliminate totally all active and passive
resistance."
Such guidelines surely would subject the troops to the dangers
of the "brutalization" the leadership had feared in Poland. In
this instance, however, it was thought that the rule of the so

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called "Barbarossa Jurisdiction Decree" provided an effective

means for dealing with the problem. The decree?already in
existence before the war began?removed legal responsibility for
crimes committed against populations from German soldiers,
unless their actions had endangered the security and discipline
of their own units. Murder and manslaughter, robbery and rape,
would either go unpunished or be treated as infractions of dis
cipline. The decree uniquely documents ideological/military
planning for depredations that would be committed outside the
bounds of morality and the standards of international law. Such
were the methods with which they purported to save western
civilization! Although soldiers would not be prevented from tak
ing part spontaneously in the murder-actions run by the Special
Forces, they were forbidden to "independently put to death
members of the populace." They did not, however, need to fear
punishment. General von Roques, Commander in the Rear
Army Territory, ordered:

All unauthorized executions of members of the populace and

Jews, by individual soldiers, as well as participation in
executions undertaken by the Security Services and Police
forces, are therefore to be punished as disobedience, or at least
as infractions of discipline.

Murder was treated as an infraction of military discipline, and

disobeying an order was forbidden, although killing a human
being was not.
The Department of Military Justice accepted its irrelevancy
to crimes committed in a war of extermination. Before the attack
on the Soviet Union, General Muller, the Supervisor of Military
Justice in the High Command of the Army, and a leading mili
tary authority, visited the Command Posts to apprize officials
and officers responsible for political and enemy affairs of the
official position. The message was, "Opposition is to be elimi
nated." Justice was ordered to take second place to the necessities
of war and the struggle was to the death?a noteworthy "legal
principle" enunciated even before the enemy had fired a single
shot.

The army and the National Socialist Security Forces and

Police shared an image of the enemy in eastern Europe. General
Fieldmarshal von Reichenau contributed a noteworthy formu

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lation, so true to the party-line that Hitler praised its excellence.

The Supreme Commander of the Army, von Brauchitz, advised
all Commanders of the Army to issue orders on its model.
Reichenau, whose decree was distributed down the line as far
as the Companies, had explained to his soldiers:

In the east the soldier is more than a warrior who obeys the
rules of the art of war. He must also represent an inexorable
national idea, and avenge all the bestial crimes committed
against the Germans and the peoples related to them. Thus the
soldier must assent to the harsh but just measures by which
the Jewish lower orders must be made to atone for their crimes.

The Field Marshal and the Staff Officers of the 6th Army, who
composed the decree, sought to remove their soldiers' last scru
ples. They bear a large part of the responsibility for the brutal
waging of the war. Similar orders were issued by numerous other
commanders. General Erich von Manstein, widely acknowl
edged as an authority, presented the "necessity" to destroy the
Jews to the soldiers of the 11th Army even more plausibly. In
his order of November 20th, 1941, he characterized "Jewry" as
the decisive source of Bolshevism's strength. Jews "occupied all
the key positions of political leadership and administration."
The Jew was the middleman connecting the partisan enemy in
the rear to the Red Army and its leadership. The Jewish-bolshe
vic system had to be destroyed for all time. The German soldier
was given the role of avenger who had to assent to harsh anti
Jewish measures, as the Jews had to be punished for being
"the spiritual/intellectual carriers of bolshevic terror." Jew =
conspirator, partisan, and collaborator, was the formula which
made every cruelty and degradation acceptable?or so these gen
erals must have thought, while they felt no need to worry about
the effect of their orders on the moral sensibilities of their
troops. And operations in the territories behind the advancing
army were commensurate. Thus, the monthly report of the
"Commander in White Ruthenia, attached to the Eastland
Armed Forces Command" and the commanders of 707 th In
fantry Division for the period 1/10 to 1/11/41:

Since they (the Jews) continue to make common cause with

Communists and partisans, total elimination of this alien
element will be accomplished.

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The numbers of those sacrificed show what was practiced here

in the name of ideological warfare: in one month in Ruthenia
10,431 of 10,940 prisoners were executed. During this period the
707th Infantry Division suffered the following losses in combat
with partisans: two dead, and five wounded. The Special Forces
could not complain that the army held back from working with
them. Reports mention excellent cooperation, joint murder
missions in which thousands were killed. A field commander
was of the opinion that there was a pressing need to "eliminate"
Jewish women and children: "this spawn must be extermi
nated." And it was done, although a passing infantry division
had voiced objections to the action. Ideological arguments jus
tified every kind of horror, especially when the High Command
of the Armed Forces gave the signals.
I know of only one General of the Army who admitted that
they waged the partisan-war while intending to exterminate the
Jews at the same time. General Rottinger, who became the first
Inspector of the West German Army, had been Chief of the
General Staff of the 4th Army from 1942-43. In November 1945,
in a position paper that was later withdrawn, he declared he
had realized "the final goal of the war against partisans was to
use the army to liquidate totally Jews and other undesirable
elements." An important, if incomplete, confirmation. We must
emphasize that the army was not merely "used," but acted in
dependently, and that Hitler applauded an Army Commander
for his "excellent" decree. That the Supreme Commander rec
ommended that this decree be looked to as a model for others.
General Rottinger also mentions other "undesirable ele
ments." His choice of language recalls how people who did not
fit into National Socialist schemes were classified under that
criminal system. Such "elements" could be women and chil
dren, citizens who loved their homeland or wished to protect
their neighbors. Entire villages with all their inhabitants were
destroyed in the "war against partisans." Over three million
prisoners of war starved to death or were murdered in German
prison camps.
The "goal-to-be-achieved" and the "over-all-line" which Hit
ler had ordered, however, made the war of extermination a just
one in the opinion of the Armed Forces leadership. The German
soldier was given the pertinent orders?his superiors demanded
that he commit murder and mayhem, and that he assent to the

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methods of an opportunistically initiated war of extermination.

In 1944, before an audience that included hundreds of generals,
Himmler was applauded when he spoke of the final solution
in the General Government region. As a further reason for the
Holocaust he asserted that no one who might take revenge
"against our children" could be allowed to stay alive.
The generals did not gag on such thinking. Their soldiers
were required to learn hate-slogans. As late as February, 1945,
the "Language Regulation" of the National Socialist Leader
ship in the Vllth Army Corps, stated:

1. Asia never This time, too, we will stem

conquered Europe.
the Asiatic flood.
2. It is against nature and a subversion of the meaning of his
tory, for the Asiatic lower orders to rule western Europe.
3. The Jew-grimace leers from behind the floodwave of the red
mob. The Jewish lust for power will be overcome again, as
it has been before in Germany.

After their systematic depredations and destructive crimes,

National Socialism and the Armed Forces of the Third Reich
themselves came to their end. In the service of their political
ideology they misused millions of people. The German occu
pation of eastern Europe is the darkest chapter in our history.

Trans, from the German

by Anne Halley

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