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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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his own responsibility in measures required for "the
final and definitive struggle between two opposed political systems." By Order
of the Führer four mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) of the Sipo-SD
were created. These groups, progressing immediately behind the Wehrmacht, were
to break down all resistance in the Soviet population. The agreement between
the High Command of the Army (OKH) and the Sipo-SD was concluded in March April
1941 (100).
The order to
exterminate all of the Jews in the occupied Soviet regions is not explicitly
mentioned in the officials texts defining the missions of the Einsatzgruppen.
In contrast, the reports on their action carefully enumerate the quantities of
Jews massacred and refer on this subject to a superior order that they are
carrying out (101). According to the
testimony of Blum, chief of a sub group in one of the four Einsatzgruppen
(NO-4145), the officers of these formations were convoked to an information
meeting in May 1941 under the presidency of Heydrich. It was explained to them
that "according to the Führer's opinion, eastern Judaism was the
intellectual reservoir of Bolshevism" (102) and that because of this it had to be exterminated.
Ohlendorf, Commander of the Einsatzgruppe D, testified in the same way
(NO-2890) (103).
The Wehrmacht
engaged in the East was informed of the necessity of drastic military actions
against the Jews. The order of the day of June 4,1941, of the General Staff of
the Army (104) began its "Directives for
the behaviour of soldiers in Russia" as follows:
"Bolshevism is the mortal enemy of the
National Socialist German People. It is against this corrosive ideology and
those who bear it that Germany is engaging the struggle. This struggle requires
ruthless and energetic intervention against Bolshevik instigators, partisans,
saboteurs and the Jews; and the total elimination of all resistance, active or
passive (restlose Beseitigung jedes passiven oder aktiven Widerstandes)."
The massacre of the Jews began in July 1941. The principal
instruments of it were the Einsatzgruppen of the Sipo-SD. But the men of the
Wehrmacht were witnesses of these massacres, and it happened that they took
part. In October 1941, the Generalfeldmarschall v. Reichenau, Commander in
Chief of the Sixth Army, addressed the following order of the day to the
soldiers, an appeal which one may consider as emanating from Hitler, for the
latter approved it warmly (D 411) (105):
"In the regions of the East, the soldier is
not only a combatant [sic] in conformity with the rules of the art of war, but
also the bearer of the intransigent populist idea (voelkische) and the avenger
of all of the beastialities [sic] inflicted on the German popular entity or on
a related species. That is why the soldier must have a full understanding of
the necessity of a tough but just expiation inflicted on the Jewish sub
humanity. Another goal is to nip in the bud revolts behind the back of the
Wehrmacht which, as experience proves, are always fomented by
Jews." It was foreseeable that the Soviet power would engage in
guerrilla warfare against the Nazi invader. Hitler commented on the Soviet
decision in a conference of July 16,1941 (L-221), with Goering, Keitel, Lammers
and Rosenberg (106):
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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
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