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Genocide and the Wehrmacht

Historical accounts of Nazi crimes often focus on the actions of the

Heinrich Himmler and the SS. This narrow point of view, however, neglects

the important role that the Wehrmacht fulfilled not only in facilitating the

actions of the SS, but in actively advancing Adolf Hitler’s genocidal

worldview. Through the development and implementation of the Hunger

Plan, utter disregard for the lives of prisoners of war, and direct orders

from the high command targeting Jews and coordinating with the SS, the

Wehrmacht not only allowed but was complicit in the Nazi crimes of

genocide and mass murder.

On May 2, 1941, several weeks before the beginning of Operation

Barbarossa, a meeting of the Staatssekratäre adopted a plan designed by

Herbert Backe for the administration of food in the soon to be occupied

areas of the Soviet Union.1 The plan was designed to expropriate food from

occupied territories in order to feed not only the soldiers of the Wehrmacht,

but civilians in Germany as well. Appropriately now known as the Hunger

Plan, the document also recognized that, “x million people will doubtlessly

starve, if that which is necessary for us is extracted from the land;” later

estimates put the number at 30 million people.2

While the Hunger Plan was developed by Backe, a representative of

the Reich Ministry for Food, several senior members of the Wehrmacht,

notably General Georg Thomas and Lietenant-General Dr. Wilhelm

Schubert, were present at the meeting.3 Thomas and Schubert represented

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the Economic Command Staff East, which was responsible for developing

and enforcing the economic policy for occupied Soviet territories.4 Their

presence at the meeting demonstrates that senior Wehrmacht officials were

not only aware of Backe’s plan, but approved of it. Approval, however,

means less without action. While in reality, the Wehrmacht was never able

to fully implement the Hunger Plan, in Leningrad, where two German

armies were available to enforce a blockade, at least 600,000 Soviet

civilians died of starvation.5

The effects of the Hunger Plan were not only limited to civilians

though. On the Eastern Front, the lack of food was a major factor in

Wehrmacht abuse of Soviet prisoners of war. Of the three million Soviet

POWs who died in German captivity, the vast majority died of starvation.6

The food shortages deliberately caused by senior Wehrmacht officers were

compounded by simple vindictiveness. When local civilians offered to help

feed starving POWs, the German army refused their offers and banned any

future attempt to do so.7 The same lack of concern for human life extended

to the construction of POW camps, which were often less camps than they

were fields enclosed with barbed wire.8 Official numbers state that 58

percent of the 5.7 million Soviet soldiers taken prisoner by the Wehrmacht

died before the end of the war.9 In reality, the true number was likely much

higher.10

Many Soviet soldiers, however, did not even have the chance to

become POWs. Specific orders from Wehrmacht high command, which will

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be discussed further below, in addition to widely accepted Nazi racial

beliefs, resulted in little mercy for Soviet soldiers attempting to surrender

during the opening weeks of Operation Barbarossa.11 Wehrmacht abuse of

POWs, moreover, was not confined to the Eastern Front. While Wehrmacht

treatment of Western POWs was usually drastically better than that given to

their Soviet counterparts, certain groups were also targeted for abuse and

murder based on Nazi racial theories. When the French Army surrendered

in June 1940, the Wehrmacht took thousands of Tirailleurs Sénégalais, West

African colonial troops, as prisoners. German soldiers—occasionally with

the encouragement of their officers—arbitrarily murdered an estimated

three thousand of these men in only two months.12

As indicated above, the most searing indictment of Wehrmacht

complicity in Nazi crimes comes from the orders issued by Wehrmact

generals themselves, which legitimized the violence and brutality of their

soldiers. The general guidelines issued for Operation Barbarossa provide

insight into how the Wehrmacht understood its duties. The guidelines

ordered, “ruthless and energetic action against Bolshevik agitators,

irregulars, saboteurs, Jews and total elimination of active and passive

resisitance.”13 Destruction of active resistance, in other words actually

defeating the Red Army, is the second to last task on the list. Later in the

war, the Wehrmacht and the Reichsicherheitshauptamt, which administered

the death camps, fought bitterly over priority for supplies only to be told

that they were of equal importance; the military actions of the Wehrmacht

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were simply the vehicle for the enforcement of Hitler’s worldview.14 The

inclusion of Jews in a category of their own further demonstrates this point.

By setting Jews aside as targets alongside armed, military objectives,

the orders for Operation Barbarossa built on precedence established during

the occupation of Poland; they gave the Wehrmacht authority to kill any

Jews its soldiers encountered, civilian or not.15 Individual generals,

moreover, further elaborated on the racial nature of their actions. Field

Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch, Commander in Chief of the Army, for

example, called the invasion, “the struggle against World Jewry, which [is

striving] to arouse all the peoples of the world against Germany.”16 General

Erich Hoepner’s May 2, 1941 marching orders provide a similar example.

Hoepner described the war against Russia as, “a fundamental part of the

German people’s struggle for existence,” the main threat to which was

“Jewish Bolshevism.”17 Other generals issuing such orders included Walter

von Reichenau, Erich von Manstein, and Karl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel.18

Bolshevism itself was another strong area of concern for the

Wehrmacht. The general guidelines for Operation Barbarossa were followed

by another order from Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, head of the Combined

Armed Forces Supreme Command, which made use of the guidelines

provisions against “Bolshevik agitators.” On June 6, 1941, Keitel issued

what is now known as the “Commissar Order;” this order required that any

Soviet commissar, a political officer attached to Red Army units, be

summarily executed upon being taken prisoner.19 No generals raised any

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objection to this order and very few failed to implement it.20 Even if,

however, commissars were not shot on sight, the Wehrmacht often turned

them over to the SS for “special treatment.”21

Cooperating with the SS, indeed, came from direct orders as well. A

meeting between Army Quartermaster-General Horst Wagner and Reinhard

Heydrich resulted in an order allowing the SS Einsatzgruppen and the

Order Police to operate unimpeded behind the front lines.22 These two

groups were tasked with carrying out the commissar order in addition to

targeting Jews and Gypsies for murder. They relied on the Wehrmacht for

provisions, intelligence, and, occasionally, protection. For instance, when

army chaplains attempted to intervene in the murder of approximately

ninety Jewish children, Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt, commander of

Army Group South, sided with the SS, ordering they show no mercy.23 It was

only with the aid and assistance of the Wehrmacht that the SS was able to

operate so successfully.

General Franz Halder summarized the way the Wehrmacht would

function during Operation Barbarossa well when he said, “we must abandon

the standpoint of soldierly comradeship. The Communist is first and last no

comrade. This is a war of annihilation.”24 Combined with the overarching

focus on Jews, it is easy to conclude that the Wehrmacht officer corps

shared Hitler’s worldview and sought to advance it through their actions.

The prevalence of these attitudes explains why the Wehrmacht devoted

time, resources, and attention to genocide while simultaneously engaged in

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the largest martial struggle of 20th century and rightly links it to the crimes

of the Nazi state.

1 Alex J. Kay, “Germany’s Staatssekratäre, Mass Starvation and the Meeting of 2 May 1941,” Journal of Contemporary History 41, no. 4 (2006), 685-686. 2 Quoted in ibid; ibid, 688-89.3 Ibid, 690. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid, 700. 6 Ibid. 7 Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War, (New York: The Penguin Press, 2009), 184.8 Ibid, 183.9 Ibid, 185.10 Ibid. 11 Ibid, 182.12 Doris Bergen, War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009), 139. 13 Quoted in Evans, The Third Reich at War, 175.14 Eberhard Jäckel¸Hitler’s World View: A Blueprint for Power, trans Herbert Arnold (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), 62.15 Evans, The Third Reich at War, 175-76.16 Quoted in ibid. 17 Quoted in ibid, 176.18 Ibid, 177.19 Ibid, 176. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid, 182.22 Ibid, 17723 Bergen, War & Genocide, 157-58.24 Quoted in Evans, The Third Reich at War, 175.

Bergen, Doris. War & Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2009.

Evans, Richard J. The Third Reich at War. New York: The Penguin Press, 2009.

Jäckel, Eberhard. Hitler’s World View: A Blueprint for Power. Trans Herbert Arnold, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981.

Kay, Alex J. “Germany’s Staatssekratäre, Mass Starvation and the Meeting of 2 May 1941,” Journal of Contemporary History 41, no. 4 (2006): 685-700.