The gigantomania of the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin matched the monstrousness of the plans, which were sealed here on the late morning of March 30, 1941. Adolf Hitler called about a hundred of his highest-ranking generals to call them in for the upcoming "annihilation battle" against the Soviet Union. It was a fateful hour of the German military: under the massive ceremonial rugs, the army commanders missed the opportunity to protest against the illegal warfare that the dictator ordered them to do.
It was obvious that Hitler's demands meant blatant violations of law, morality and tradition. To make the "Crusade against Bolshevism" an "ideological struggle," as he put it, the dictator also ordered the "annihilation of the Bolshevik Commissars," those political officers who in the Red Army extended the extended arm of Stalin CPSU formed. In case of capture, Hitler demanded that opposing political officers "be eliminated immediately by the troops." The compliant Wehrmacht leadership soon poured the verbal instructions into a written "Fuhrererlass".
This so-called commissar order embodied no less than the fall of German military history. For the "Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars" of 6 June 1941 obligated the German front units to the systematic killing of regular prisoners of war. It was a historically unprecedented event: Never before had German troops been so blatantly ordered to carry out such systematic war crimes.
"Shoot on the spot on the orders of an officer"
All the more persistently veterans and apologists later denied that this criminal order was even obeyed in the East Army. Only decades after the end of the war, the legend of the "clean Wehrmacht" - who had fought honestly, while terrible crimes were committed by the SS in the hinterland without her knowledge - gradually faltered. Because reliable figures were missing, the debate over the commissioner's commission continued to the present day. Far-reaching clarity could be created only recently by the nationwide evaluation of the files of all German combat organizations from the Eastern Front.
And these records show that even before the attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht made little opposition to the order to kill. At their briefing for the Operation Barbarossa, most of the commanders passed the criminal "leader order" literally to their units. For example, the Infantry General Viktor von Schwedler, who summoned the divisional commanders of his IVth Army Corps on June 19, 1941, to give them the final instructions for the upcoming campaign. On the subject of "Treatment of Russian Political Commissars," the Minutes of the Meeting recorded only instructions that fully complied with the Commissar Order: "Wearing uniform but not recognized as a soldier Separating from other prisoners, shoot on the spot at the command of an officer. "
Some commanders even shot over the finish, such as Colonel-General Hoepner, the commander of Panzer Group 4, who was later to join the conspirators of July 20, 1944. In a statement issued on June 12, 1941, ten days before the invasion, the representatives of the subordinate associations not only received orders to "shoot Russian Commissars in uniform." At the same time, they were obliged to "treat civil commissioners equally" - the commissioner order did not even demand the indiscriminate killing of Soviet party and administrative officials.
The number of murders exceeds all estimates
While most of the strictly anti-communist Wehrmacht commanders gave their plazet, few intervened. One of these critical commanders was General Otto Stapf, who prohibited his 111th Infantry Division from carrying out commissar shootings. Captured political officers, he said, "are being dealt with backwards," in the back country of the front, and "not by the troops," who, of course, continued to be involved in the selection of commissioners. A typical case: Hardly anyone who identified himself with the aim of "eradicating Bolshevism" might completely refuse. Instead, they introduced a division of labor procedure, which in the end did not change the implementation of the murder program, but at least took account of widespread concern about the discipline of the front troops.
The scope of action to a noticeable weakening of the command passed, but hardly anyone used it. Thus, the files of the Ostheeres show that demonstrably about 60 percent of the commanders with the compliant passing of the commissar order already in advance of the campaign against the Soviet Union took the first step to its implementation - in view of the file gaps a highly disillusioning result. The murders that began with the beginning of "Operation Barbarossa" on June 22, 1941, were the logical consequence. A team soldier of the Ostheeres remembered it still two years later in American prisoner of war. Unaware that his conversation was intercepted by US Army Intelligence, he told his fellow inmates, "We've always shot the commissars in Russia, which are the most dangerous."
Due to the obligation to register, which was anchored in the Commissioner's Guidelines, the shootings were also reflected in the German military. In total, nearly 4,000 executions were recorded on Soviet political officers and officials. This guaranteed minimum number by far exceeds all previous estimates. However, given the gaps and gaps in the tradition, the actual number of victims is still significantly higher, to a high four-digit, maybe even just five-figure sum.
"Scoundrels", "greasy Jews", "criminals"
The Wehrmacht marched here largely in lockstep. Executions to Soviet political officers have been clearly demonstrated by all armies, all army corps and over 80 percent of the divisions on the Eastern Front. Another ten percent of the divisions have circumstantial cases, the rest of the associations are silent about the tradition. A finding that considerably surpasses the previously known quotas and only allows the conclusion that the commissar order was obeyed in the Ostheer nationwide.
Cadaver obedience, ideological fanaticism and the momentum of violence paved the way for these crimes. "The commissioners are 'done' on the spot," a battalion adjutant reported in early October 1941 on the practice in his unit. For the front officer a just cause: In the commissars he saw only "scoundrels", "sleazy Jews", "criminals", and "beasts" who had challenged this treatment itself. For the officer, the Soviet commissioners were delinquent stooges of a Bolshevik terror regime, at the same time he blamed them for the high German losses and the escalation of the war as a whole.
This or that similar thought many in the German Ostheer, driven by the Wehrmacht propaganda and as a result of the rapid brutalization of the fighting also driven by revenge. The accusations were blamed as legitimate reprisal actions whose blatant nature hardly disturbed the hate climate of the Eastern Front. Those officers and soldiers who violated the order, on the other hand, remained a vanishing minority. Anyone who could not overcome his scruples was in any case open to hand over the death candidates to other units. Hardly anyone refused to accept the selections, however, and the demonizing enemy image of the political officers seemed too strong.
The true essence of innocent protestations
Nevertheless, the commissar order for the Wehrmacht and Nazi regimes was a failure. For one thing, it was only possible at first to capture commissioners on a larger scale. The shootings quickly made the rounds of the enemy, and so most of the political officers fought to the last or even committed suicide in a hopeless situation. As soon as they were taken prisoner, they discarded their rank insignia and were barely identifiable by the overburdened German troops.
The associations registered more and more frequently that "no commissioners could be captured", as reported by the 9th Infantry Division on 15 November 1941. The fact that the capture of political officers became increasingly rare forms the true essence of the many innocent claims made by veterans after the war: many units did not even have the opportunity to use the commissar order.
Also, the shootings soon proved highly counterproductive. For they did nothing to speed up the collapse of the Red Army, as Hitler and many generals had hoped. On the contrary, the news of the prisoners' killings potentiated the Soviet will to resist and helped drive German loss rates to record levels. After the failure of the "Operation Barbarossa" before Moscow Hitler finally gave in to the pragmatic urgency of his generals and had the commissar order canceled in June 1942.
This ended a gloomy chapter of German military history. The implementation of the Commissar Order was certainly not the worst crime of the Wehrmacht in the Second World War. But it proved how contradictory and far-reaching the German military was willing to integrate into the extermination policy of the National Socialists - and to a good extent on its own conviction.
Dr. Felix Römer is the author of the study "The Commissar Order: Wehrmacht and Nazi Crimes on the Eastern Front 1941/42", F. Schöningh Verlag, Paderborn 2008.