Einsatzgruppen Became SS Death Squads in 1939

In July of 1939, SS Einsatzgruppen underwent a radical – and genuinely murderous – transformation. This transformation (into genuine SS death squads that did not exist before) became another major step on the Road to Holocaust – and another slab in the “stack of slabs” that ultimately killed four million Jews.

Prior to the summer of 1939, Einsatzgruppen were essentially hybrid SD/Gestapo units: they collected valuable intelligence from documents, interrogations and informants and arrested and detained the “enemies of the Reich”.

Acting on direct orders from Hitler, SD, SiPo and Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich (who conceived and ultimately commanded the Einsatzgruppen) radically expanded their functions into so-called “pacification” of occupied Poland.

Unlike in Austria, Sudetenland and Bohemia and Moravia, Nazis expected fierce resistance in occupied Poland. For Adolf Hitler, extreme violence (including murder) was the preferred method for solving this problem – so he ordered “pacification” of Poland by identifying and murdering all potential activists of Polish Resistance. This task was assigned to Heydrich’s Einsatzgruppen.

Heydrich re-formed the Einsatzgruppen to travel in the wake of the German armies – and “pacify” territories occupied by the latter. Seven Einsatzgruppen of battalion strength (numbered I to VII) were wormed – each was subdivided into four Einsatzkommandos of company strength. Membership at this point was drawn from the security services: the SD, the police, and the Gestapo.

Heydrich placed SS-Obergruppenf;hrer Werner Best in command, who assigned Hans-Joachim Tesmer to choose personnel for the task forces and their subgroups, called Einsatzkommandos, from among educated people with military experience and a strong ideological commitment to National-Socialism. Some had previously been members of paramilitary groups such as the Freikorps.

Initially numbering 2,700 men (and ultimately 4,250), the Einsatzgruppen’s mission was to murder members of the Polish leadership most clearly identified with Polish national identity: the intelligentsia, members of the clergy, teachers, and members of the Polish nobility.

These orders were given by Heydrich in mid-August following Hitler’s command that “… there must be no Polish leaders; where Polish leaders exist, they must be killed, however harsh that sounds“.

These orders meant that it was now OK to murder anyone considered an “enemy of the Reich”. As all Jews were seen as such by Nazi ideology, this step made serial mass murder of Jews so much easier for the SS.

The Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen – lists of people to be murdered – had been drawn up by the SS as early as May 1939, using dossiers collected by the SD from 1936 onward.

Einsatzgruppen committed mass murders with the support of the Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz, a paramilitary group consisting of ethnic Germans living in Poland. During the “Holocaust by Bullets”, SS death squads will also utilize local paramilitaries – Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, etc.

Another reason for this radical transformation of Einsatzgruppen becoming a major step on the Road to Holocaust was a series of massacres of Polish Jews (men of military age for now).

Dozens and hundreds of Jews were murdered at the same time for no other reason than being Jews. Hence, it became OK to mass murder Jews… which made “Holocaust by Bullets” so much easier for the SS.

It must be noted that the SS, the Wehrmacht, and the Ordnungspolizei also shot civilians en masse during the Polish campaign. In addition to potential activists of Polish Resistance and male Jews of military age, all of the above murdered Jews, prostitutes and (of course) the mentally ill.

Psychiatric patients in Poland (sentenced to death by Aktion T4 personnel) were initially murdered by shooting, but by spring 1941 gas vans (reinvented by Germans) were also used.