By late summer, Wehrmacht, SS, and police officials agreed on the inseparable link between Jews and partisans, which both increased the need for interagency cooperation and meant that intensified pacification measures fell most harshly on Jews. Racial and security concerns thus trumped the economic considerations of using Jews as a labor force; that autumn, Himmler repeatedly assured his men in the field of the need to liquidate Jews in order to crush Bolshevism and secure territory for German settlement. In mid-September, Keitel demanded “relentless and energetic measures, above all against the Jews, the main supporters of Bolshevism,” while, a month later, Brauchitsch echoed this with his own call for “ruthless and merciless” action. Jews, the commander of one security division emphasized, were “the sole supporters that the partisans can find” and, thus, should be remorselessly destroyed. Throughout Belorussia and Ukraine in late September and early October, as a result, SS and police units, supported by Wehrmacht security divisions, employed a task-oriented, flexible approach, mimicking the famed Auftragstaktik (mission-oriented tactics) in the military arena, in order to promote an efficient “de-Jewification” of the region.45
The best known of these ubiquitous mass executions by the murder squads, that of over thirty-three thousand men, women, and children at Babi Yar in late September 1941, illustrated well the intersection of security and ideological motives as well as the ample cooperation between army and SS. Beyond the obvious fact that it was German military success that created the conditions for the murder of the Jews of Kiev, relations between Reichenau, the commander of the Sixth Army, whose units seized the city on 19 September, and the head of Sonderkommando 4a of Einsatzgruppe C, SS Colonel Paul Blobel, were excellent. The two had already worked closely on coordinating the murder of Jews during the preceding months, with Blobel in personal contact with Reichenau during this period. The two also shared similar racial and ideological views that made the killing of Jews imperative. Just over a month earlier, in fact, Reichenau had personally intervened to order the Jewish children of Belaya Tserkov, temporarily spared when their parents had been murdered, to be shot as well. The head of Einsatzgruppe C, Otto Rasch, also valued Reichenau’s cooperation highly, while the latter often praised the valuable work of the special murder commandos. From the outset, a harmonious working relationship had been created between the army and the Einsatzgruppe, with the latter repeatedly encouraged to operate as far forward as possible.46
The capture of Kiev took place against a backdrop of continued frantic Soviet resistance and unexpected difficulties in occupying the city. Numerous buildings and facilities had been booby-trapped, putting German soldiers and authorities on edge. Between 24 and 26 September, powerful explosions rocked the city center, destroying a number of buildings in which the Wehrmacht had set up headquarters, and killing several hundred occupation troops. Obsessed with security, and determined to punish the guilty party, army and SS officials met on 26 September to discuss the situation and settle on appropriate “retaliatory measures.” Not surprisingly, the decision was taken to kill a large number of Jews. Einsatzgruppe representatives were informed, “You have to do the shooting,” even though army leaders had no objections to such a massacre and were, in fact, promoting it. In this instance, security concerns and ideology blended seamlessly; the excuse of retaliatory measures could be used to justify what would have happened in any case. As an SS report to Berlin confirmed, “The Wehrmacht welcomes the measures and requests a radical approach.”47
Implementation of this “security” decision was entrusted to the reliably murderous men of Blobel’s Sonderkommando 4a, composed of members of the Security Police and the SD, as well as Waffen-SS men on special assignment and two detachments of Police Regiment South (along with Ukrainian auxiliary police). As with other such actions in larger cities, the operation began with the posting of orders in Russian, Ukrainian, and German ordering the Jewish population to assemble at a designated location at 8:00 A.M. on 29 September, with failure to comply punishable by death. That morning a far larger number of Jews appeared at the Umschlagplatz (assembly point) than anticipated, with most, amazingly in retrospect, believing the German promise that they were to be resettled. German officials on the spot then ordered the Jews to begin walking toward the area of the city where the Jewish cemetery and a section of the Babi Yar ravine were located. Photographs taken at the time show long columns of well-dressed people moving calmly, despite the presence of occasional bloody corpses. The route itself was guarded by army soldiers, with the killing site manned by men of the murder squad.48
Once at the ravine, the Jews had to strip and hand over their clothes and luggage, then were sent by the Ukrainian helpers in groups through a narrow opening into the ravine. Then, as a participant remembered,
The Jews had to lie face down on the earth by the ravine walls. There were three groups of marksmen down at the bottom of the ravine, each made up of about twelve men…. Each successive group of Jews had to lie down on top of the bodies of those that had already been shot. The marksmen stood behind the Jews [i.e., walked on the bodies] and killed them with a shot in the neck. I still recall today the complete terror of the Jews…. It’s almost impossible to imagine what nerves of steel it took to carry out that dirty work…. I had to spend the whole morning down in the ravine. For some of the time I had to shoot continuously…. The shooting that day must have lasted until… 5:00 or 6:00 P.M. Afterwards we were taken back to our quarters… [and] given alcohol again.
Although another participant remembered the chaos, shouting, and tumult at the scene, official SS reports regarded the two-day shooting as quite successfuclass="underline" “The operation went smoothly, with no unforeseen incidents. The measures to ‘relocate’ Jews were definitely regarded favorably by the population. Hardly anyone is aware that the Jews were in fact liquidated…. The Wehrmacht also expressed its approval of the measures carried out.” The local army commanders had, in fact, done more than merely condone the killings; not only had they helped plan and organize the massacre, but the political unit of the Sixth Army also produced two thousand wall posters in its printing shop directing the Jews to their fate, and after the shootings a pioneer unit concealed the action by blowing up the area.49 In alleged retaliation for the bombings in Kiev, 33,771 Jews were executed on 29–30 September 1941.
Killings had escalated into mass butchery. Security was now to be achieved through the ruthless pursuit and annihilation of partisans and their accomplices, especially the Jews. Reports from the summer and fall of 1941 show the grisly result: a vast discrepancy between the number of partisans killed and casualties suffered by German soldiers and only slight differences between the number of people arrested and those shot. One unit, unusual only in its murderous efficiency and not in the trend, killed over ten thousand people in a single month, with the loss of only two dead and five wounded. To promote this policy of pacification, army officials even inaugurated an exchange of ideas and experiences between army and SS officers. “It’s good when the horror precedes us that we are exterminating Jewry,” Hitler remarked to Himmler and Heydrich in late October 1941, significantly enough, after he had blamed the Jews for the dead of the First World War and reminded them of his 1939 prophecy. As events on the ground demonstrated, criminal orders from above and vengeful impulses from below created a climate of violence that would remove any inhibitions about murder. The four Einsatzgruppen and their helpers killed well over 500,000 Soviet Jews in the first six months of Barbarossa in addition to tens of thousands of partisans and Soviet prisoners of war, none of which would have been possible without the willing and active cooperation of the Wehrmacht.50 Hitler had long considered military operations against the Soviet Union to win Lebensraum and political-police measures aimed at securing the newly won territory and exterminating racial-ideological enemies as simply different facets of the same war. As events in the field demonstrated, those involved in the killing process fully understood this complementarity.