Proof of Einsatzgruppen

Discussions on the Holocaust and 20th Century War Crimes. Note that Holocaust denial is not allowed. Hosted by David Thompson.
User avatar
paul 278
Member
Posts: 22
Joined: 27 Aug 2004, 03:31
Location: Canada

Proof of Einsatzgruppen

#1

Post by paul 278 » 19 Sep 2004, 05:22

Proof of Einsatzgruppen.

We allways read about these "Einsatzgruppen" but what actual proof is there of there existance, not to mention what they did.

xcalibur
Member
Posts: 1457
Joined: 20 Apr 2003, 16:12
Location: Pennsylvania

Re: Proof of Einsatzgruppen

#2

Post by xcalibur » 19 Sep 2004, 05:38

paul 278 wrote:Proof of Einsatzgruppen.

We allways read about these "Einsatzgruppen" but what actual proof is there of there existance, not to mention what they did.
I'm biting my tongue...

Hi. Welcome to the forum. Please refer to the search function at the top of this page. Hit that button. Simply type the word "Einsatzgruppen" in the little box, hit the "search" button and magically many references will appear. Please read all of those threads before posting again. Thank you.


ajk74
Member
Posts: 60
Joined: 08 Oct 2002, 20:14
Location: MTL, Canada

#3

Post by ajk74 » 19 Sep 2004, 06:03

Primarily the Ereignismeldungen and Lageberichte, of which there is documentation that makes it likely Hitler and Goebbels personally read, as well as the lists of recipients. The authenitcity of the situation reports were in no way disputed by any defendants during the EG trials immediately after the war, or the trials conducted over a decade later. Despite the quibbling over the numbers and the timing of any specific orders they received, the general tasks of the EG that can be gleaned from the reports was also not disputed by any of its members.

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#4

Post by David Thompson » 19 Sep 2004, 07:20

paul 278 -- Welcome to the forum. You asked:
We allways read about these "Einsatzgruppen" but what actual proof is there of there existance, not to mention what they did.
There's a lot of information on this subject, but the probably the best information consists of the unit reports and the statements of officers and members who served in the units. There is an excellent site on the internet, dedicated to this subject, which reproduces a large amount of material from the unit reports, at:

http://www.einsatzgruppenarchives.com/index.htm

Additional material from unit reports can be found in this forum at:

Einsatzgruppen Operational Situation Reports USSR
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=50368

The American trial of Einsatzgruppen officers after WWII (US v. Ohlendorf et al.), which contains extracts from the testimony of some of the defendants, can be read in page by page view on the Mazal Library website beginning at:

http://www.mazal.org/archive/nmt/04/NMT04-F001.htm

Bigraphies of many of the officers are available at Michael Miller's excellent Axis Biographical Research website at:

http://www.geocities.com/~orion47/SS-PO ... uppen.html

Discussions of the activities of the Einsatzgruppen in this section of the forum may be seen at:

Einsatzgruppen demographics and Paul Blobel
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=642
On the Einsatzgruppen
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=6105
An Einsatzgruppen inquiry
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=44765
Bialystok Einsatzgruppen killings September 1939
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=43464
John Ball on Babij Jar (Babi Yar)
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=41827
Faked photos of Einsatzgruppe atrocities
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=32127
Einsatzgruppe murders and German policy
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=32219
Were the men of Einsatzkommandos killers without exception?
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=25153
Einsatzkommando "careers"
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=15331
Einsatzgruppen
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=8341
An odd aspect of the Einsatzgruppen
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=18203
Einsatzgruppe Testimony of Leslie Gordon
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=48087

Einsatzgruppen reports
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=9959
Regarding the accuracy of the Einsatzgruppen reports
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=5047

The Jaeger report
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=12367
Karl Jager: "There are no Jews in Lithuania anymore
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=23403
Report on executions carried out by Jäger's EK 3
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=16152

Mass graves in Lithuania
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=1256
Mass graves
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=16440
Holocaust mass graves
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=3970

Destroying the evidence -- Hitler, Himmler, Blobel, etc.
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=107

The H&WC section rules are posted at http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53962

Please don't forget to read them.

menel
Member
Posts: 54
Joined: 14 Sep 2004, 00:37
Location: Poland

#5

Post by menel » 19 Sep 2004, 09:10

There are 5000 proofs in a forest near my father's village in eastern Poland.

User avatar
paul 278
Member
Posts: 22
Joined: 27 Aug 2004, 03:31
Location: Canada

#6

Post by paul 278 » 19 Sep 2004, 15:32

Thankyou all for your replies.

Theres certainly alot of infomation there to digest.

Having read mostly all that has been presented to me, makes me think that maybe my question of finding "proof" is a silly question.

I dont wish to offend anyone , but I really would like more evidance than what has been presented.

It seems like alot of scattered infomation, sources quoting sources etc.........

There must be a concise reasonable way of proving what the majority if not all Einsatzgruppen got up too.

To be perfectly honest I find it very hard to grasp the reality of it.
If I were to put myself in a situation to believe all that has been presented is true............

then my next questions would be:

1. why did it happen? the motives...
2. what was going through the minds of these people to be able to do this ?

I try very hard to put myself into the mind set of a person in a Einsatzgruppen.....and I just cant get there.........I just cant see how any sane person could possibly do it.

I mean its not really comparable to anything..........
It is easy to get into the mindset of a american or english bomber crew ,dropping bombs on civilian targets , killing 1000's of men,woman and children through bombings, fire storms etc..............

but they are doing the same thing, killing on mass, and killing civilians, they dont see the death of them, or the begging for survival etc, so its pretty easy for them.

I try to think about how much hate you would need to kill defenseless humans......and I still cant understand how this hate could be generated in so many willing people in Einsatzgruppen.

Its all pretty sad and miserable if it did take place.

User avatar
Juha Hujanen
Member
Posts: 2196
Joined: 20 Mar 2002, 12:32
Location: Suur-Savo,Finland

#7

Post by Juha Hujanen » 19 Sep 2004, 15:58

I can recommend 2 good books of that subject:

French MacLean-The Field Men.The SS Officers Who Led the Einsatzkommandos-the Nazi Mobile Killing Units.

Richard Rhodes-Masters Of Death.the SS-Einsatzgruppen And The Invention of The Holocaust.

Regards/Juha

szopen
Member
Posts: 814
Joined: 21 May 2004, 16:31
Location: poznan, poland

#8

Post by szopen » 19 Sep 2004, 16:07

Well, people in Einsatzgruppen did not neceserily hated their victims. First, there is a known fenomemenon that people tend to follow authorities even against themselves, even if there is no punishment for that (the infamous Milgram's experiment when one men was applying the electric shock to another one clearly showed that - i think all people here have read this so there is no need to elaborate).

Secibd thing is dehumanisation of the victims. Once they stopped to believe that their victims - Poles and Jews in 1939 campaign, Jews in 1941 campaign etc - are not human being, they could bring not more attention to killing them than to killing a fly.

As for "proofs" , as one of previous poster said, go to Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus. There are plenty of massgraves there.

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#9

Post by David Thompson » 19 Sep 2004, 21:10

For interested readers, the IMT testimony of Einsatzgruppe commander Otto Ohlendorf has been posted at:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=59859

User avatar
waldorf
Member
Posts: 1547
Joined: 31 Jul 2004, 05:16
Location: Pennsylvania

#10

Post by waldorf » 19 Sep 2004, 23:15

Another good book on the topic is: Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
by Christopher R. Browning

heres a link to reviews on the book by Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de ... ce&s=books

W.

User avatar
paul 278
Member
Posts: 22
Joined: 27 Aug 2004, 03:31
Location: Canada

#11

Post by paul 278 » 20 Sep 2004, 00:04

Hi-

To szopen

I know one can manipulate indivual minds to quite nealy do anything, but I find it really hard to understand that one could do it to such a large group.

I really cannot in anyway see how one can dehumanize a child, to the extent that one could kill it, and its mother and father.

I know that even the during the fall of berlin that the uneducated russians who hated germans still took pity on the german children (excluding the ones that were raped) by giving them food............I know that from first hand accounts from people who were there.

I dont think a mass grave proofs anything, except that alot of people died.
Forensic studies would have to be done by a unbiased group to show cause of death, of the majority, and who that majority even were, I mean were they really all jews, or just nearly anyone russian.

Correct me if i am wrong but, i am not aware that any proper forensic studies have yet been conducted by a creditable group.

Thankyou for the info about Milgram's experiment , i will look into it.


To David Thompson,

Thankyou for the infomation you have given, certainly all interesting.

One point i would like to make or more i opinion that i have regarding "testimonies" after the war.

In my possession, i have a original testimony and also a translated version english, its not about Einsatzgruppen, but rather an other subject.
Without going into what the other subject is about, one gets the general feeling that the testimony is untrue.

The testimony was from a friend of my grandad (My Grandad was a officer in the german , he has long been dead,but i remember him from when i was 5years old) anyway my mother kept some of his papers, and i came across them, and asked her about it, her opinion was that it was a true testimony, yet upon reading it over and over , i found so many flaws in it ..........so what i want to make clear is that it was presented to me as a true document , which I believe it is, but i dont believe the author of the document was being honest. I will post the english version on this forum one day for further opinions, but i dont want to go into it here much more , and loose the direction of this thread, I only wanted to say that i feel very uneasy about 1946 testimonies.......

but again thankyou for the info so far.


To Juha Hujanen
Thankyou for the book referances.


To menel
Thankyou for your reply

Does your father know anything more about graves , and how old would he be. Is there any futher info you can ad to it, such as has this site ever been dug up and examined?


To ajk74
Thankyou also for your reply.

"The authenitcity of the situation reports were in no way disputed by any defendants during the EG trials immediately after the war"

With respect to your opinion, but i dont see how any german would dispute anything immediately after the war, or even many years after, even within my own german family unit, very little if anything is talked about to this day, I am the only one who asks about it.

I just dont see how anyone could dispute anything, they would of been in fear for themselves or there families, even if you knew something to be totaly false, why would you put yourself into a postion of danger, I mean I would not even tell people today in the real world (not internet) that both my grandads were german officers, or in which units they were in!

To xcalibur
Thankyou for welcoming me to the forum, and i hope you didnt bite your tongue off :)

With respect to your opinion:

You said: "Please refer to the search function at the top of this page. Hit that button. Simply type the word "Einsatzgruppen" in the little box, hit the "search" button and magically many references will appear. Please read all of those threads before posting again"

Yes i am aware of it, but then one could do that for everything, one could just search all over the internet for anything and everything and never post any question at all.

There are many postings i can see on this website which could of been searched more before posting, or posting at all.

If we were to apply what your saying to most posts , then we would barely have any posting at all.

It is fair to say that my knowledge on Einsatzgruppen is not good, but in other areas of WW2 I am exceptional, but i would not dare to suggest to someone what your suggesting just because they dont have as greater knowledge on a particular topic.

Anyway I dont want to make enemies with you, but rather agree to disagree, unless you feel like debating the point further, to which i would be happy to do so, although i would rather discuss your opinions of Einsatzgruppen

User avatar
paul 278
Member
Posts: 22
Joined: 27 Aug 2004, 03:31
Location: Canada

#12

Post by paul 278 » 20 Sep 2004, 01:06

To szopen

Re: The Milgram Experiment

http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm


My personal opinion is that the experiment is flawed.

Because there is a big diffeance between giving a person a electric shock and cold blooded killing of babies and there mother or entire families etc.

At no time did the "experimenter" mention to the "teacher" that the "learner" could die from the electric shock.

Now consider if the "experimenter" told the "teacher" that the person could die or could die if the voltage was too high.

I really dont think people would be willing to take part of The Milgram Experiment if they were told this.

I some what feel that it was a really stupid experiment , if it was to somehow explain depravity, peer pressure, and the power of authority of acts alledged to have been comitted

The r website i found further states:

"The questions is, "Could it be that Eichmann, and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"

Correct me if i am wrong but i feel "million accomplices" to be a very large figure............thus it makes me a little suspisous of the agenda behind the experiment or the website i am quoting from.


If they were so serious about the experiment , then why not conduct a experiment using animals, they use animals for experiments for everything else.

Thus create a experiment where there is a person in charge, and a person who takes the orders from the person in charge.

The person in charge orders the other to start killing animals in a non clean way, body shots some animals still half alive etc etc

Then how many people would seriously do the experiment? not many i think.

thus I find it still very hard to understand what method they used to brainwash so many in Einsatzgruppen.

David Thompson
Forum Staff
Posts: 23722
Joined: 20 Jul 2002, 20:52
Location: USA

#13

Post by David Thompson » 20 Sep 2004, 01:09

paul 278 -- Of xcalibur's post above, you said:
With respect to your opinion:

You said:
"Please refer to the search function at the top of this page. Hit that button. Simply type the word "Einsatzgruppen" in the little box, hit the "search" button and magically many references will appear. Please read all of those threads before posting again"
Yes i am aware of it, but then one could do that for everything, one could just search all over the internet for anything and everything and never post any question at all.

There are many postings i can see on this website which could of been searched more before posting, or posting at all.

If we were to apply what your saying to most posts , then we would barely have any posting at all.
xcalibur was no doubt referring to this part of the H&WC section rules:
E. Questions, Claims and Proof

1. Questions

Because the H&WC section is a research area of the forum, we ask the posters to be reasonably well-prepared, and not ask others for information which they could easily get for themselves. There are several excellent resources which should be consulted before posting a question. At the top of the thread index page of this section of the forum, there are a series of announcements and research "stickies" which may be helpful. The two FAQ announcements contain links to many topics which have frequently been discussed here. In addition, the forum has an excellent search engine of its own at:

http://forum.axishistory.com/search.php

There are also collections of threads and posts on frequently discussed topics here at:

German and European Axis war crimes FAQs
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=52292
Japanese War Crimes
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=44352
Allied war crimes FAQs
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=53295
The Laws of War
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=26829

If a reader finds that there are pre-existing threads on the subject, we asked that the readers post there rather than start a new one.

For off-site searches, the engine of choice is the Google advanced search engine, which can be found at:

http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

Noncomplying posts are subject to deletion after warning.
This is a requirement here which I did not point out to you because this was your first post here and your question ("We allways read about these "Einsatzgruppen" but what actual proof is there of there existance, not to mention what they did") appeared somewhat serious. Nevertheless, preparatory research is a requirement for posting here, and now I have made you aware of it.

You are free to believe or disbelieve evidence as you choose. However, we have a higher standard for posts and threads in this section of the forum, as you have no doubt already seen after reading the H&WC section rules. Discussions here are required to be based on fact. Posts based on belief and opinion alone are of little or no interest to our readers and other posters. I think your original question has been answered, so the utility of this topic is pretty much exhausted.

As for your other observation:
thus I find it still very hard to understand what method they used to brainwash so many in Einsatzgruppen.
This is no surprise if you are unwilling to read the testimony of the various participants in the shootings.

I have never read any document indicating that the members of the Einsatzgruppen or the members of police battalions employed in the same kind of mass shootings of civilians were "brainwashed."

Here's what SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Adolf Eichmann said about the shooting execution he witnessed. In mid Aug 1941, SS-Gruppenfuehrer Heinrich Mueller, the chief of the German Secret State Police (Geheime Staatspolizei - Gestapo), ordered Eichmann to report on the mass executions being staged at Minsk by SS-Obersturmbannfuehrer Dr. Otto Bradfisch's Einsatzkommando 8, operating under the authority of Einsatzkommando B's commander SS-Gruppenfuehrer Arthur Nebe:
. . . Mueller said to me: 'In Minsk the Jews are being shot. I'd like a report on that.' So I went to Minsk. I had nothing at all to do there. I didn't know anybody. I went to the command post -- what was it called again! . . . Commander Security Police, or could it have been Action Team Security Police? -- and asked for the commanding officer. I still remember, he wasn't there. I spoke to someone else and told him I had orders to see what was going on. I spent the night in that town, and next day I went to the place, but I got there too late. The work for that morning was already done, almost done -- and I was very glad of that.

When I got there, I was just in time to see some young riflemen, I believe they were riflemen, with the death's-head collar patch, shooting into a pit . . . maybe four or five times as big as this room. Maybe bigger, say six or seven times. I . . . I . . . my orientation in this case is unreliable, because I saw this thing without thinking, I didn't think anything at all. I just saw it, and that's all. They fired into the pit. I can still see a woman with her arms behind her back, and then her knees crumpled, and I cleared out . . .

[The pit was full of corpses] It was full. I went to my car, I got in and drove away. I drove to Lemberg. I had no orders to go to Lemberg, I remember now. Somehow I went to Lemberg and found the man in charge of the Gestapo command post and I said to him: 'It's horrible what they're doing there. They're training young men to be sadists.' I told Mueller the exact same thing. I told Guenther [SS-Sturmbannfuehrer Adolf Guenther, Eichmann's deputy], too. I told everybody. I told them all. And I said to that SS officer in Lemberg: 'How can they stand there firing at a woman and children? How is it possible? . . . It's just not . . . Those men will either go mad or they'll turn into sadists . . . our own men.' He said to me: 'They're doing the same thing right here, shooting. Want to see?' 'No,' I said. 'I don't want to see anything.' 'We're driving past there anyway,' he said. There had been a pit there, it was already filled in, and blood was gushing out of it . . . how shall I say? . . . like a geyser. I've never seen anything like it. I'd had enough of that mission.

I went back to Berlin and reported what I'd seen to Gruppenfuehrer Mueller. I said to him: 'This is no solution to the Jewish question. And besides, we're training our men to be sadists. We shouldn't be surprised if they all turn out to be criminals, all criminals.' I still remember Mueller looking at me with an expression that said: Eichmann, you're right, that's no solution. But there was nothing he could do about it. Mueller definitely couldn't do a thing. Not a thing. Not a thing. Who gave the orders for those actions? The orders, the orders. Obviously, the orders were given by the head of the Security Police and the SD, namely, Heydrich. But he must also have had his instructions from the Reichsfuehrer-SS, namely, Himmler; on his own hook he can't . . . he could never have done such things on his own hook. And Himmler must have had express orders from Hitler. If he hadn't had orders from Hitler, he'd have been out on his ear before he knew what hit him. (Eichmann Interr 79-80)
Here is another account from a televised interview with SS-Oberstgruppenfuehrer Karl Wolff which appears in the "Holocaust" episode of the BBC series "The World At War."

In Aug or Sept 1941, Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler witnessed a mass execution of 100-150 Jews outside Minsk, Belorussia. This is how Wolff, then Himmler's liaison officer with Adolf Hitler's headquarters, described it:
An open grave had been dug and they had to jump into this and lie face downwards. And sometimes when one or two rows had already been shot, they had to lie on top of the people who had already been shot and then they were shot from the edge of the grave. And Himmler had never seen dead people before and in his curiosity he stood right up at the edge of this open grave -- a sort of triangular hole -- and was looking in.

While he was looking in, Himmler had the deserved bad luck that from one or other of the people who had been shot in the head he got a splash of brains on his coat, and I think it also splashed into his face, and he went very green and pale; he wasn't actually sick, but he was heaving and turned round and swayed and then I had to jump forward and hold him steady and then I led him away from the grave.

After the shooting was over, Himmler gathered the shooting squad in a semi-circle around him and, standing up in his car, so that he would be a little higher and be able to see the whole unit, he made a speech. He had seen for himself how hard the task which they had to fulfil for Germany in the occupied areas was, but however terrible it all might be, even for him as a mere spectator, and how much worse it must be for them, the people who had to carry it out, he could not see any way round it.

They must be hard and stand firm. He could not relieve them of this duty; he could not spare them. In the interests of the Reich, in this hopefully Thousand Year Reich, in its first decisive great war after the take-over of power, they must do their duty however hard it may seem. He appealed to their sense of patriotism and their readiness to make sacrifices. Well, yes -- and then he drove off. And he left this -- this police unit to sort out the future for themselves, to see if and how far they could come to terms with this -- within themselves, because for some it was a shock which lasted their whole lives.
Last edited by David Thompson on 20 Sep 2004, 02:06, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
paul 278
Member
Posts: 22
Joined: 27 Aug 2004, 03:31
Location: Canada

#14

Post by paul 278 » 20 Sep 2004, 01:57

Hi David

Thankyou for your reply

With respect to your opinion , i dont feel my questions have been answered, and I do hope that you could keep this thread going for a few more days maybe.

I certainly think that this forum has a much higher standard for posts than other WW2 forums, and I certainly do not wish to degenerate the quality of the forum.

" Discussions here are required to be based on fact. Posts based on belief and opinion alone are of little or no interest to our readers and other posters. "

I can agree with that , but I see a problem with the definition of what is a fact and what is not................maybe you could steer me in a direction to clear that one up, thus I will watch what i post.

Anyway I would be grateful if you could let this thread exist for a few days more , if you feel otherwise I will not be offened if you close the thread.

User avatar
maxxx
Member
Posts: 1743
Joined: 29 Apr 2004, 19:14
Location: austria
Contact:

#15

Post by maxxx » 20 Sep 2004, 02:11

without being too harsh with a newcomer-
what is your problem with believing in the existence of "Einsatzgruppen" after having so many possibilites here on the forum to see the evidences?

I dont think you just cannot believe how evil some human being can be?
Is it something more personal? A family problem?

Would you feel better if all the proof was false and all the witnesses were telling lies? If so, i am sorry, neither this site nor the knowledge of the historians will make you happy.

Truth does not always make happy. But it makes you free.

Post Reply

Return to “Holocaust & 20th Century War Crimes”