Gerd Von Rundstedt - War Crimes in The East

War Crimes in The East

In April 1941, during the planning phase of Barbarossa, Himmler and Brauchitsch had agreed that as the Army conquered Soviet territory, it would be handed over at once to the SS and the German Police, now fused under Himmler's leadership in the HSSPF (Higher SS and Police Leadership). Himmler set up four Einsatzgruppen under the overall command of Reinhard Heydrich. In Rundstedt's area of command, Einsatzgruppe C, commanded by Otto Rasch, operated in northern Ukraine, and Einsatzgruppe D, commanded by Otto Ohlendorf, operated in southern Ukraine.

The Einsatzgruppen were initially ordered to establish "security" in the rear areas by killing communists and partisans, but by 1941 the identity between Jews and communism was strongly established in the minds of most SS men and Police officers. In July Himmler told an SS gathering: "This nation has been united by the Jews in a religion, a world-view, called Bolshevism." From the beginning, therefore, the Einsatzgruppen mostly killed Jews: initially only adult males, but after a few months indiscriminately. By December 1941, when Rundstedt was dismissed as commander of Army Group South, Einsatzgruppen C and D had killed between 100,000 and 150,000 people, mostly Jews. In addition, Police units had killed 33,000 Kiev Jews at Babi Yar in September 1941, only days after the city was occupied by the Army.

The Army did not usually participate directly in these mass killings, although officers of Reichenau's 6th Army took part in organising the massacre at Babi Yar. This was not coincidental, because Reichenau was the most committed National Socialist among the senior commanders in the east. On 10 October he issued an order (known as the "Reichenau Order") headed Conduct of the Troops in the East, in which he said: "The primary goal of the campaign against the Jewish-Bolshevist system is the absolute destruction of the means of power and the eradication of the Asian influence in the European cultural sphere... Therefore the soldier must fully understand the necessity for severe but just atonement by the Jewish subhumanity ." Two days later Rundstedt circulated it to all his senior commanders, with the comment: "I thoroughly concur with its contents." He suggested that "analogous orders" should be issued to all units.

Since Reichenau's order was widely understood as endorsing the mass killings of Ukrainian Jews which were going on behind the German lines, with which 6th Army at any rate was actively co-operating, Rundstedt's open endorsement of its strongly anti-Semitic language clearly contradicts his later assertions that he did not know what the Einsatzgruppen were doing. He told interrogators in 1946 that he was aware of just one atrocity, at Berdichev on 30 July. At Nuremberg he sought to portray the issue in terms of anti-partisan warfare: "Disorderly, irregular warfare behind the front of the Army must bring very great misery to the population of the country affected. No army in the world can tolerate such conditions for any length of time, but in the interests of the security and protection of its own troops it must take sharp, energetic measures. But this should, of course, be done in a correct and soldierly manner."

In September, however, Rundstedt issued an order that soldiers were not to participate in or take photos of "Jewish operations.", a clear indication that he knew they were taking place. It is now generally accepted that most of the commanders of the German Army in the Soviet Union both knew about and approved of the massacres of the Jews taking place behind the front, even if they made some efforts to prevent their troops taking part in or witnessing these events. Rundstedt cannot be supposed to be an exception.

In Germany before the war Rundstedt had not been noted as an anti-Semite. He testified at Nuremberg: "The generals either rejected the Party or were indifferent. As for the methods regarding the Jewish question, they absolutely rejected them, particularly because many comrades were severely affected by the Aryan laws." This was a reference to officers of Jewish background being forced out of the Army in 1934. (If German generals "absolutely rejected" these measures, they did nothing to oppose them.) But Rundstedt shared the general German Army prejudice against the Ostjuden (Eastern Jews) found in the Soviet Union. He described Zamosc as "a dirty Jewish hole."