Wehrmacht and SS-Einsatzgruppen tensions

jonniebgood1

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

Getting the terminology right is a part of having a discussion about what actually happened rather than what one thinks happened or what one presupposes had happened.

I prefer to use the terms for individual units if possible rather than catch all terms which can mean just about anyone in the general area. By the period you are talking aboutthe war had moved far east and Army Group Centre would have been involved in the battles around Bryansk and minsk would firmly be considered a rear area at this point.

The book you linked to mentions the 707th infantry division being in the Minsk area at the time but it dosen't mention the context that although it was called an infantry division, it wasn't, it was a security division which is a different thing altogether. Security divisions were made up of older troops who were unfit for front line combat, at the time the Heer was already short of infantry so it wouldn't have wasted frontline troops on rear area security.

I have not found any information in detail enough to show the make up of this division, i.e. older soldiers so would appreciate if you could source that. It is interesting that the older troops may have been used for this type of security.

BlaasForRafa wrote: »

I'd suggest that if you want to research it more that you find out more about the 707th security division, who commanded it at the time and what organisation it reported to at the time, that way you'll find out more about why it was involved in whatever action it took at the time. It seems unlikely to me that it would have been under direct command of army group centre at the time.

You are correct in this. I will look into some more information on the activities of this division to see were they acting on their own or as part of a command structure. It seems from this book that it may have been a bit of both. The Holocaust and history:.... pg. 277. Michael Berenbaum. This also introduces context to the conversation in the second section particularly.


The reference to 707th continues on pg 278:

Braemers command in this perios is listed as "24 June 1941-20 Apr 1944: Armed Forces Commander of Ostland (Headquarters in Riga)." http://www.specialcamp11.fsnet.co.uk/General%20der%20Kavallerie%20Walter%20Braemer.htm
and mojor general gustav von bechtolsheim, commander of 707th (15 February 1941: Chief of the General Staff of the XXIII Army Corps. [Initially held in Army Group North reserve, the XXIII Army Corps, commanded by General der Infanterie Albrecht Schubert, took part in the invasion of the Soviet Union from 22 June 1941. Transferring to control of Army Group Center, the corps saw heavy combat at Polozk, Velikiye Luki and Toropez.]
1 October 1941: Chief of the General Staff of the XXIX Army Corps on the Eastern Front. [Commanded by General der Infanterie Hans von Obstfelder, the XXIX Army Corps saw action in southern Russia at Sumy, Belgorod and Kharkov. Oberst (later General der Infanterie) Eberhard Kinzel assumed the post of corps chief of staff upon the transfer of Oberst Freiherr von Mauchenheim genannt Bechtolsheim to France.]) http://www.bridgend-powcamp.fsnet.co.uk/General%20der%20Artillerie%20Anton%20von%20Bechtolsheim.htm

The suggestion is there that it was army command who facilitated mass shooting by the 707th through loose command orders. It is open to debate but I have'nt seen any evidence of reprimand to 707th for these mass shootings. Again I am open to being corrected on that. Having a control on security is necessary when the situation suitable for underground resistence occurs but this is clearly more than just security.
This leads to more queries although I am sure some may question this.
The main one to me is how widespread was this type of security division. Was there an equivalent to this 'security division' in each sector or for each army group (apologies if this is incorrect terminology also)?

Morlar

We seem to have moved from 19k killed in 1939 to September of 1941, 2 years into the war and the killing of 10k as an isolated event.

This basic information on the 707 may be useful :


http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=20967

http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Gliederungen/Infanteriedivisionen/707ID.htm

&

http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=3975

707. Infanterie-Division was formed on 2 May 1941 as part of the 15. Welle (wave). It was transferred to the Eastern front in August 1941 where it served mainly on security and anti-partisan operations in the rear area of Heeresgruppe Mitte. The division was destroyed near Bobruysk in June 1944 during the Soviet summer offensive. It was formally disbanded on 3 August 1944.



Known war crimes

This division was involved in the murder of 10.000 Belorussian Jews in the fall and winter 1941/42, it is the only Wehrmacht division known to have been involved in the Holocaust to such an extent.



Soldiers of Infanterie-Regiment 727 took part in the killing of at least 12 Soviet civilians captured near the village of Gololobowo in September 1942.

Commanders
Generalmajor Gustav Freiherr von Mauchenheim gennant von Bechtolsheim (3 May 1941 - 22 Feb 1943)
Generalleutnant Hans Freiherr von Falkenstein (22 Feb 1943 - 25 Apr 1943)
Generalleutnant Wilhelm Rußwurm (25 Apr 1943 - 1 June 1943)
Generalleutnant Rudolf Busich (1 June 1943 - 3 Dec 1943)
Generalmajor Alexander Conrady (3 Dec 1943 - 12 Jan 1944)
Generalleutnant Rudolf Busich (12 Jan 1944 - 15 May 1944)
Generalmajor Gustav Gihr (15 May 1944 - 27 June 1944) (POW)

Operations Officers (Ia)
Oberstleutnant Fritz-Wedig von der Osten (May 1941 - May 1943)
Oberstleutnant Edmund Graf von Boullion (May 1943 - Feb 1944)
Major Klaus Mayer (Feb 1944 - June 1944)

Area of operations
Germany (May 1941 – Aug 1941)
Eastern Front, central sector (Aug 1941 – June 1944)

Nicknames

Gamsbock-Division



Order of battle

Grenadier-Regiment 727
Grenadier-Regiment 747
Artillerie-Abteilung 657
Feldersatz-Bataillon 707 (1)
Nachrichten-Kompanie (later, Abteilung) 707
Pionier-Kompanie 707
Versorgungstruppen 707


Footnotes
1. Feldersatz-Bataillon 707 was redesignated Feldersatz-Bataillon 657 on 1 September 1943.



Published sources used
Hannes Heer - Extreme Normalität: Generalmajor Gustav Freiherr von Mauchenheim gen. Bechtolsheim. Umfeld, Motive und Entschlussbildung eines Holocaust-Täters

Peter Lieb - Täter aus Überzeugung? Oberst Carl von Andrian und die Judenmorde der 707. Infanteriedivision 1941/42

C.F. Rüter & D.W. de Mildt - Justiz und NS-Verbrechen (Nazi crimes on trial)

jonniebgood1

Morlar wrote: »

We seem to have moved from 19k killed in 1939 to September of 1941, 2 years into the war and the killing of 10k as an isolated event.

the 19k reference was Minsk in the white ruthenia area (if from previously linked book) http://books.google.ie/books?id=cDP1d8RMND8C&pg=PA223&lpg=PA223&dq=wehrmacht+minsk+19,000&source=bl&ots=ZWzwa3YhFx&sig=1_7dBC9QZO-l8y0udXaYukXty-4&hl=en&ei=cRFHTpLDBMbQhAeM5M3CBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false . The date was not mentioned specifically but would have been barbarossa and 1941 also. I will read your links on the 707th later.

Morlar

This work from a jewish author may also provide a little context to the events of Minsk:

The Minsk Ghetto, 1941–1943
Jewish Resistance and Soviet Internationalism

Barbara Epstein

This author refers throughout to jews, communists, belorussians, officials fleeing red army, westerners (jews and communist jews who fled eastward) and so on, as far as the other side goes she only ever seems to refer to them as the 'Germans'. She is not a military historian, more of a political historian.

If the Germans assumed unanimous local support, they turned out
to have been wrong, at least in the case of Minsk. A powerful resistance
movement emerged. In the ghetto and also outside it, in the area
that both Jews and non-Jews called “the city,” secret opposition groups
formed, made up of rank-and-file Communists (who, unlike the Communist
leaders, had remained in Minsk) and others whom the Communists
trusted; these groups came together in a united underground movement
that included both Byelorussians and Jews. With the help of this
united underground movement, and also of many Byelorussians who
were not members of the underground, thousands of Jews fled the ghetto
12 Jewish-Byelorussian Solidarity in Minsk and joined partisan units in the surrounding forests. No one knows for sure how many Jews from the Minsk ghetto survived to join partisan units, but they certainly numbered in the thousands, and some estimate as many as 10,000, from a ghetto whose population was approximately 100,000 at its height. Nowhere else in occupied eastern Europe were such large numbers of Jews able to flee the ghettos and engage in resistance. What made this possible in Minsk was the alliance of Jews with non-Jews outside the ghetto.2 My account of resistance in the Minsk ghetto is based on more than fifty interviews with ghetto survivors and on a slightly larger number of written memoirs, most of which are by ghetto survivors, including members of the ghetto underground, with a smaller number by members of the Byelorussian underground outside the ghetto. These accounts, written and oral, show that there was widespread resistance in the Minsk ghetto, and that it took a different form than the much better-known resistance movements in Polish and Lithuanian ghettos such as Warsaw and Vilna. In these ghettos, as in others in Poland and Lithuania, Jewish underground movements attempted to mobilize revolts within the ghetto walls. Such efforts were successful only in the Warsaw ghetto, where a revolt of great magnitude took place. Elsewhere, however, underground movements were unable to mobilize such revolts, because it was clear that the revolts would be defeated. But given the absence of allies outside these ghettos, it was difficult to find an alternative to internal revolts. In the Minsk ghetto, by contrast, there was no effort to mobilize an internal revolt. Instead, the main aim of the underground movement was
to send as many Jews to the forest as possible to join the growing sovietaligned partisan movement. Flight to the partisans also became the aim of large numbers of ghetto Jews who did not belong to the underground;
in effect, it became the major strategy of resistance of the ghetto as a
whole.

=============

In the ghetto, some “westerners” among the secret groups (Jews, mostly Communists, from outside the Soviet Union, who had fled to Minsk and were trapped there) laughed at these concerns and argued that the best way to locate the First Committee would be to form an underground organization. Since the legitimate underground committee did not appear, and the need to organize resistance was pressing, an underground organization was formed with the term “Second” tacked onto its name to indicate its deference to the First Committee. The First Committee was never found, because it did not exist. Gradually the terms “Second” and “Auxiliary” passed out of use, and members of the underground came to regard their organization as the legitimate underground, the Minsk branch of what they hoped would become a wider Communist resistance in occupied Byelorussia. It later turned out that the Byelorussian Communists had been right to worry about the consequences of acting without approval from the leaders of the Communist Party.

This Map is from 1943 and so not directly accurate to the events of 1941 however it may give an idea of the context (shaded areas are partisan held) :

Morlar

There is an interesting thread here with a composition on an Einsatzgruppen-EinsatzKommando unit , I post this as a sample Einsatzgruppen unit composition for reference and in order to give some context :


http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=76709&sid=2b618331615ed685a3dbe23e6b47eca6

Einsatzkommando 3 in Lithuania, 1941

Postby michael mills on 01 May 2005, 07:22


Einsatzkommando 3, which operated mainly in Lithuania, played the pivotal role in 1941 in the initiation of the wholesale extermination of entire local Jewish populations in the territories occupied after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa.

Its key role was made manifest on 15 and 16 August, when Lithuanian auxiliaries commanded by a handful of EK 3 officers liquidated 3,200 Jews, Jewesses and Jewish children at the temporary concentration camp which had been established near the northern Lithuanian town of Rokiskis. This was the first time that children were included in the slaughter, and also that women were killed in equal or greater numbers than men. It marked the shift from a "White Terror" against Jewish Bolshevism to a comprehensive elimination of the Jewish population of Lithuania apart from a small residue preserved in three ghettos.

EK 3 continued this program of general slaughter for the rest of August and until the end of the year, by which time the greater part of the Jewish population of Lithuania had been destroyed. The methodology of comprehensive destruction was progressively adopted by the other German security forces operating in the occupied Soviet territories.

EK 3 is also important because of the report prepared by its comander, Karl Jäger, in December 1941, listing all the executions of enemies (mainly Jews) carried out in its area of operation until that point. The so-called Jäger Report is a key document demonstrating the initiation and development of the program of destruction of human life that eventually became a standard feature of German rule in the occupied East.

My aim is to examine the actual structure of EK 3 with a view to analysing what that structure can tell us about the initial mission of the Einsatzkommando and the process by which that group of personnel became the managers of a huge extermination campaign.

According to Appendix 2, "Stärke der Kommandos", of the Stahlecker Report of 31 January 1942, EK 3 had the following personnel:

24 Gestapo officials
32 SS reservists
44 drivers
13 Criminal Police (Kripo) officers
9 SD officials
7 temporarily assigned personnel
3 radio operators
3 clerks (women)
2 administrators
2 communications staff

Total: 139 personnel.

The above structure suggests an operational breakdown into:

1. A headquarters group consisting of:

7 Gestapo / Kripo / SD officials
5 drivers
3 radio operators
3 clerks
2 administrators
2 communications staff

Total: 22 personnel

2. A mobile operational group, consisting of:

39 Gestapo / Kripo / SD officers
39 SS reservists and temporarily assigned personnel
39 drivers

Total: 117 personnel

It is apparent that the operational group was not intended to function as a single unit moving together, but as separate three-man teams, consisting of a Gestapo/Kripo/SD official, an SS reservist as assistant cum bodyguard, and a driver. Since each team had its own driver, it could operate independently, in an extremely mobile fashion.

The structure enabled the three-man teams to fan out quickly over the Einsatzkommando's area of responsibility, carrying out its mission.

It is obvious that each three-man team could not act on its own, but would have a command function, drawing on other German personnel at the various places where it went into action.

The small size of each operational team suggests that the function for which they were designed was not something on a large scale, but small-scale actions which could be accomplished by the three-man team with some assistance from other German forces at various localities.

Given the make up of the executive part of the teams, comprising Gestapo, Kripo, and SD officers, it is likely that they had two main functions:

1. An intelligence function, in particular the securing of Soviet archives and document collections captured by the advancing German forces. The high mobility of the teams would enable them to race to any area where valuable intelligence material was expected to be captured.

2. An anti-personnel action, consisting of the identification, arrest, interrogation and, as appropriate, liquidation of the more important enemy personnel, and also of suppressing any manifestations of ordinary crime such as looting.

Given the initial function of the Einsatzkommando suggested by its structure, one is prompted to ask how it could have moved to the role of managing destruction of human life on a very large scale. To answer that question, it is necessary to survey the development of the killings of population elements identified as pro-Soviet enemies, these being primarily Jews, from the beginning of the German invasion.

The first killings were carried out by members of the Lithuanian anti-Soviet resistance, primarily of the Lietuviu Aktivystu Frontas (LAF), which rose in revolt in Kaunas as soon as the Red Army and Soviet administration began its withdrawal on 21 June. The revolt was assisted by the mutiny of a major portion of the Lithuanian component of the Red forces, the 297th Territorial Corps.

By the evening of 23 June, the LAF insurgents had captured most of Kaunas, and instituted a massacre of Jewish collaborators with the Soviet regime which lasted until June 28. According to the Stahlecker Report, during that period the Lithuanian partisans killed 3,800 Jews in Kaunas and 1,200 in the smaller towns. Most probably the Jews killed were mostly male collaborators, although innocent bystanders might have fallen victim as well.

At the beginning, the number of Lithuanian anti-Soviet partisans was very large, up to 100,000 men according to the memorandum by Prapuolenis to von Renteln in the name of the LAF dated 23 September 1941. No doubt that included the soldiers who had deserted from the 297th Territorial Corps.

With such a large number of men, the entire Jewish population of Lithuanian could quickly have been liquidated. If each of the 100,000 men had killed just two Jews, the task would have been accomplished.

However, the German occupiers did not want a large Lithuanian armed force acting independently which could have formed the basis of a future claim to Lithuanian independence. Instead, the German administration began disarming the Lithuanian partisans, and recruiting a smaller number of them into new auxiliary police and army units, called "Battalions for the National Preservation of Work". By 28 June, the independent massacres carried out by the LAF had been halted by the Germans.

At the end of June, the number of armed Lithuanian partisans had fallen to 16,000 in formations under German control. On 28 June, Colonel Bobelis, the Lithuanian provisional military commander of Kaunas, issued two orders, probably under German direction. The first announced the disbanding and disarming of the partisans; the second was the call for all former officers and men of the Lithuanian Army to register for duty in the above-named Battalions.

It was the new Lithuanian battalions that carried out renewed executions of Jewish collaborationists, this time under German direction. These executions are called a "White Terror" by Michael McQueen in his essay "Nazi Policy toward the Jews in the Reichskommissariat Ostland, June-September 1941: From White Terror to Holocaust in Lithuania", in the book "Bitter Legacy".

The "White Terror" began with a series of executions on two days, 4 and 6 July 1941, at Fort VII outside Kaunas. Lithuanian units shot 2,977 Jews, all men except 47.

It is unknown how those men and a handful of women were selected. In the case of the Jewesses, it is likely that they were persons who had some sort of connection with the previous Soviet regime, perhaps as members of Komsomol or some similar organisation. In the case of the men, they may have been selected simply because they were of military age and potential members of the Red Army. Alternatively, they may all have been members of the Jewish intelligentsia; we just do not know.

The involvement of EK 3 in the management of a program of selective mass-killing that eventually became comprehensive began with the setting up of a "Rollkommando", a mobile squad, under Obersturmführer Hamann, a few days after EK 3 took over responsibility for Lithuania from EK 1b under Ehrlinger on 1 July.

The Rollkommando Hamann consisted of "eight to ten proven (SS) men", and an unknown number of Lithuanians. It is not known which members of EK 3 comprised the "proven men", but it is likely that they were Gestapo, Kripo or SD officials plus a small number of drivers (perhaps five officials and five drivers, but that can only be a surmise).

From 7 to 31 July, the Rollkommando scoured Lithuania, killing 4,400 persons, all adults, in a number of individual actions in different localities. The number of victims of each action varied from one to 288. The vast majority were Jews, with only some 184 being identified as Lithuanian or Russian Communists.

A significant feature of the liquidation actions by the Rollkommando was that almost every one involved a mix of Jews and non-Jewish Communists, for example at Marijampole on 14 July, where the victims were "21 Jews, one Russian and nine Lithuanian Communists", or in Kedainiai on 23 July, with "83 Jews, 12 Jewish women, 14 Russian Communists, 15 Lithuanian Communists, one Russian Politruk".

According to MacQueen, these killing actions were meant to set an example, to terrorise, and to demoralise any potential opposition. In other words, they were not yet part of the extermination of a population group.

MacQueen also provides some interesting information on why the number of Jews shot was so much higher than the number of Lithuanian and Russian victims. He says that one of the functions of the Lithuanian "Saugumas", the former Secret Police of independent Lithuania which had been re-formed as the "Litauische Abteilung" of the German Sicherheitspolizei, was to separate out the "honest Lithuanian youth duped by the Komsomol" from the doomed. Contemporary Lithuanian police records demonstrate that a more heavily implicated Lithuanian, for example a Komsomol activist, could expect about three months of forced labour as punishment.

That would mean that the small number of Lithuanian and Russian Communists shot by the Rollkomando would have been only the most heavily implicated, eg more senior political officials.

As MacQueen comments, for any Lithuanian Jew formerly associated with the Komsomol, the only punishment was death. That explains the large number of Jews shot.

In the first half of August, the scale of the operations increased. The Hamann Rollkommando perpetrated 10 actions between 1 and 14 August, claiming 4,788 victims. The number of Communists shot declined, but the pattern of exemplary actions remained.

As stated at the beginning of this post, there was a qualitative change in the middle of the month, signalling the move to extermination of a population group. In the latter half of August, including the Rokiskis action, over 33,000 persons were killed in Lithuanian, of which only about 1,000 were non-Jews, among them 544 mental patients.

By December, EK 3 listed 133,346 persons liquidated, the overwhelming majority Jews. Some had been killed by the mobile Rollkommando, great numbers by the stationary Schuma battalions at Kaunas and the Special Detachment at Vilnius, a further 3,050 across the border in Belorussia. Including the victims of the Lithunanian partisans in the first days in June, Jäger claimed 137,346 victims.

It is clear that the massive death-roll claimed by Jäger was really achieved by the Lithuanian auxiliaries, with EK 3 only performing a management or coordinating role. Only 10 personnel of the Einsatzkommando were involved in the management of the Hamann Rollkommando, and perhaps a similar number in the management of the stationary Lithunaina battalions at Kaunas and Vilnius. It is clear that most of the members of EK 3 were involved in activities other than the mass'liquidations.

Without the Lithuanians, the death-toll boasted of by Jäger in his Report could never have been achieved. That raises the question of how the relationship between EK 3 and the large number of Lithuanians who did the actual killing was achieved. For example, was the operational structure of a small number of Germans managing a much larger number of Lithuanians planned in advance, or was it something decided on on the spur of the moment?

It seems unlikely that the RSHA officials who planned the tasks and functions of the Einsatzgruppen, including EK 3, in the months leading up to Barbarossa could possibly have known that they would be able to call on the services of thousands of Lithuanians ready, willing and able to carry out the task of eliminating enemies of Germany.

It seems equally unlikely that the RSHA would have planned a structure of a few Germans commanding thousands of Lithuanians purely on the speculation that those of Lithuanian auxiliaries would indeed be available.

The actual course of events shows that the German occupiers were somewhat surprised and indeed somewhat embarrassed at the sudden appearance of about 100,000 armed Lithuanian anti-Soviet insurgents who began independently to massacre persons suspected of being Soviet collaborators, these being mainly Jews. In fact, the initial reaction of the German authorities was to suppress the Lithuanian insurgents, to disarm them and bring them under control.

As stated previously, the German authorities could easily have left the 100,000 insurgents to wipe out the Jewish population of Lithuania on their own. But they preferred not to allow that to happen, most probably because they did not want to leave a large, independent Lithuanian armed force in existence. When the German authorities did go over to recruiting the Lithuanian insurgents as auxiliaries, they drastically reduced the number of men under arms from 100,000 to only 16,000.

The above course of events suggests that the Germans did not enter Lithuania with a prepared plan to use Lithuanian personnel in a program of mass liquidation, but rather that they decided to do so when they observed the readiness of Lithuanians to kill members of population groups that the Germans also regarded as the enemy.

The actual structure of EK 3 also does not suggest a force tasked with carrying out mass liquidations, and indeed it was not able to carry out such a task without the Lithuanian input. That raises the question of the extent to which the actual liquidation program was an additional task taken on by EK 3 based on the realisation that a huge pool of Lithuanian activists was available that was ready and willing to carry out such a program.

If you read through the rest of the thread you will see an interesting back and forth discussion on the theories around EK unit composition. I believe the 100k Lithuanian anti-partisans figure is very, very high estimate, I'd be equally sceptical of some of the downward revisions later in the thread.

I think that is one of those 'we will never know' scenarios.

jonniebgood1

Morlar wrote: »

This work from a jewish author may also provide a little context to the events of Minsk:

Other than your own prejudices can you state any reason why the author being Jewish is worth mentioning?

Morlar

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

Other than your own prejudices can you state any reason why the author being Jewish is worth mentioning?

Any other author I referenced would likely be attacked and dismissed as being 'revisionist' so on that basis this author's ethnicity (given the subject matter) becomes relevant. Personally, in the normal run of things, I could care less.

I note that you have not addressed ANY of the points raised in the above posts in relation to the subject matter of this thread.

jonniebgood1

Morlar wrote: »

Any other author I referenced would likely be attacked and dismissed as being 'revisionist' so on that basis this author's ethnicity (given the subject matter) becomes relevant. Personally, in the normal run of things, I could care less.

I note that you have not addressed ANY of the points raised in the above posts in relation to the subject matter of this thread.

My apologies, I don't know what made me doubt your motives

Morlar wrote: »

...
The methodology used, the scope of it, which scholars from Israel, Russia and Germany were involved and for how long etc.

I would not be inclined to trust Israeli scholars on this subject, as there is a clear political motive in downgrading the numbers killed by stalin in order to elevate the numbers killed by Hitler, hence to enhance jewish victimhood which has been the political rockbed of the state of israel, .... http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056333635

I will come back to this thread when I have a chance as there is plenty of interesting tangents.

Morlar

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

My apologies, I don't know what made me doubt your motives

You are taking one reference, regarding a specific circumstance (on a different thread) and trying to blanket apply it to this thread out of context. You asked a loaded question about why I mentioned this authors ethnicity - which I have answered honestly & clearly.

Still no response to any of the points above ?

jonniebgood1

Morlar wrote: »

Still no response to any of the points above ?

I will read the points and sources again before I respond to them.

jonniebgood1

Morlar wrote: »

There is an interesting thread here with a composition on an Einsatzgruppen-EinsatzKommando unit , I post this as a sample Einsatzgruppen unit composition for reference and in order to give some context :

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=76709&sid=2b618331615ed685a3dbe23e6b47eca6

If you read through the rest of the thread you will see an interesting back and forth discussion on the theories around EK unit composition. I believe the 100k Lithuanian anti-partisans figure is very, very high estimate, I'd be equally sceptical of some of the downward revisions later in the thread.

I think that is one of those 'we will never know' scenarios.

Such a low number of personnel in the Einsatzkommando is interesting. How many of these units made up the group in Lithuania at that time?

A low number of personnel suggests less opposition or army support (Heer (Blaas)).

jonniebgood1

Morlar wrote: »

We seem to have moved from 19k killed in 1939 to September of 1941, 2 years into the war and the killing of 10k as an isolated event.

This basic information on the 707 may be useful :


http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=20967

http://www.lexikon-der-wehrmacht.de/Gliederungen/Infanteriedivisionen/707ID.htm

&

http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=3975

So the 707th acted almost independently in terms of the army command structure. Given that what they were doing was not against what other parts of the army wanted they would not have had much objection from higher rank. To bring this back into the contect of this thread- Did they act in conjunction with any of the einsatzgruppen?

Tony EH

jonniebgood1 wrote: »

How were relations between the ordinary German soldiers and the ordinary members of the einsatzgruppen. I have read recently that the wehrmacht soldiers in some cases resented the relative comfort that the SS-Einsatzgruppen soldier had. This was specifically in relation to the kovno area in Lithuania. The einsatzgruppen did not have to endure the conditions on the front line and were usually posted well behind the front. A similar situation is referenced here in a book summary

Was this common? I thought they worked in unison so how widespread was this tye of feeling and did any hostilities arise from it? Does'nt seem to be much info on this.
Does anyone have any further information or sources on this?

There wasn't much "dispute" between regulars and the Einsatzkommando, for the simple reason that the vast majority of the Army, or the Waffen SS for that matter, wouldn’t have had any contact or real knowledge of them. I'd wager that the first time that a lot of German soldiers heard of the Einsatzgruppen was after the war had ended. They probably just figured that they were another part of the SD, or SS.

Also, aside from the more nefarious activities for which they are popularly known, much of the Einsatzgruppen's work involved rather boring intelligence gathering and administration. The average duty for an Einsatzgruppen member would have been very boring indeed and his frontline counter-part would have probably considered him nothing more than a REMF*, assuming he had any opinion on him at all.


*REMF - "Rear Echolon Mother F*ucker" Modern US Military slang for admin staff and rear area military personnel, who don't have any frontline experience or duties.

Tony EH

berettaman wrote: »

The Erickson guy that did the road to stalingrad is supposed to be doing a book on exactly how much the Higher Wehrmacht knew about what the Einsatzgruppen were up to. Should be good.

It'll be feckin amazing. John Erickson's been dead for nearly 10 years.

ejmaztec

Tony EH wrote: »

It'll be feckin amazing. John Erickson's been dead for nearly 10 years.

Perhaps he's using a ghost-writer?

berettaman

I said supposed because I was told that was what he was working on before he passed. It was supposed to be released in conjunction with the university where he worked- forget which one... Just passing on what I heard and I agree, despite the sarcasm, I am sure it would be amazing...

Morlar

As an FYI that same Professor John Erickson has been on TV a lot lately in the Bob Carruthers tv documentary series 'Weapons of War'. Also includes Stephen Walsh from Sandhurst. It is surprisingly good in my view. The 1hr episodes each on Army Group North, Army Group Centre and Army Group South were decently put together.

berettaman

Thanks for that Morlar, I will definitely keep an eye out for that.

Morlar

berettaman wrote: »

Thanks for that Morlar, I will definitely keep an eye out for that.

I have many of them recorded, & some are on youtube :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUZjtGwvZeA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSaWxeV6mkQ

(I think it you watch one it should show the next segment afterwards - about 5 or 6 per episode)

I found a website once which listed off about 20-30 episode titles (can't seem to find it at the moment). I haven't been able to find much about it otherwise. Unfortunately they are not availble on dvd boxset to my knowledge.

berettaman

Morlar,
Thank you for the links, I will watch them with interest over the weekend.
B