Operation Barbarossa and the Escalation of the Holocaust

Daniel Uziel, Yad Vashem

Background and planning

• Hitler’s animosity towards the Soviet Union was based on:

1. Racism – He viewed the Slavic peoples as inferior.

2. Anti-Semitism – Hitler viewed communism as a Jewish phenomenon and the Jews as the real rulers of the SU.

3. Fear of communism as a threat on German nationality.

• Fear of communism was not unique to Germany in the 20s-30s, but only there it became part of a comprehensive ideology.

• August 1939: the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a tactical move by both countries.

Background and planning

• Planning started in August 1940, while Germany still prepared to invade England.

• General plan first appeared in “Führer’s order no.21: Operation Barbarossa” in December 1940.

• Aims of the invasion: elimination of the Soviet state and creation of an Arian living space.

• Method – conquest of 3 strategic places: Moscow, Leningrad, Ukraine-Caucasus

Map

Balance of military power

  Germany & Allies (in the

East)

USSR (in the West)

Ratio

Divisions 166 190 0.87:1

Soldiers 4,306,800 3,289,851 1.3:1

Canons 42,601 59,787 0.7:1

Tanks 4,171 15,687 0.27:1

Aircraft 4,389 11,537 0.38:1

German advance until December 1941

Soviet counter-offensive, winter 1941/1942

Plans for the occupied East

• Demography: Plans to get rid of around 36 million people in the East.The “Hunger/Backe Plan”.

• Administration: Initially military administration and then Ostministerium.

• Security: Securing the occupied territories before handing them over to the civilian administration.

• On 13/3/1941 Hitler gives Himmler executive powers in the occupied East.

Herbert Backe

Alfred Rosenberg

Establishment of the Einsatzgruppen

• Small Einsatzgruppen were used in former German invasions.

• May 1941: 4 Einsatzgruppen were established with 3,000 men.

• Mission of the Einsatzgruppen: to kill partisans, communists, Jewish men and other troublemakers.

Escalation of the killing

• Indiscriminate killing of Jews during local pogroms incited by the Germans.

• Fighting partisans and cutoff Soviet soldiers used as a pretext for indiscriminate killing.

• Other branches joined the Einsatzgruppen in July: Police, Wehrmacht, Waffen SS.

• From mid-August the Germans expanded the killng operation accross the entire front.

• In October the governor of the Lublin District asks to expend the killings to his district.

Map

Escalation in Romania, Hungary & Slovakia

• A dramatic escalation right after the invasion: Antonescu ordered on 27/6/1941 the cleansing of Iasi.

• Romanian troops marching into Bessarabia and Bukovina started mass killing of Jews in these regions.

• Hungary deported Jews from Carpato-Ruthenia in July 1941.

• August 1941 – The “Third Jewish Law”. • Slovakia sought to deport it Jew, October 1941.

Conclusion• The Holocaust was the result of a series of

decisions made in summer 1941-early 1942 – the timeframe of “Operation Barbarossa”.

• The fight against Bolshevism gave the Germans a perfect pretext for persecuting the Jews

• German military successes in the East gave them access to around one million Jews.

• During “Barbarossa” an exterminatory dynamics developed in the East and contributed to the escalation of the killing.