by michael mills on 01 May 2005 06:22 Einsatzkommando 3, which operated mainly in Lithuania, played the pivotal role in 1941 in the initiation of the wholesale extermination of entire local Jewish populations in the territories occupied after the commencement of Operation Barbarossa.
Its key role was made manifest on 15 and 16 August, when Lithuanian auxiliaries commanded by a handful of EK 3 officers liquidated 3,200 Jews, Jewesses and Jewish children at the temporary concentration camp which had been established near the northern Lithuanian town of Rokiskis. This was the first time that children were included in the slaughter, and also that women were killed in equal or greater numbers than men. It marked the shift from a "White Terror" against Jewish Bolshevism to a comprehensive elimination of the Jewish population of Lithuania apart from a small residue preserved in three ghettos.
EK 3 continued this program of general slaughter for the rest of August and until the end of the year, by which time the greater part of the Jewish population of Lithuania had been destroyed. The methodology of comprehensive destruction was progressively adopted by the other German security forces operating in the occupied Soviet territories.
EK 3 is also important because of the report prepared by its comander, Karl Jäger, in December 1941, listing all the executions of enemies (mainly Jews) carried out in its area of operation until that point. The so-called Jäger Report is a key document demonstrating the initiation and development of the program of destruction of human life that eventually became a standard feature of German rule in the occupied East.
My aim is to examine the actual structure of EK 3 with a view to analysing what that structure can tell us about the initial mission of the Einsatzkommando and the process by which that group of personnel became the managers of a huge extermination campaign.
According to Appendix 2, "Stärke der Kommandos", of the Stahlecker Report of 31 January 1942, EK 3 had the following personnel:
24 Gestapo officials
32 SS reservists
44 drivers
13 Criminal Police (Kripo) officers
9 SD officials
7 temporarily assigned personnel
3 radio operators
3 clerks (women)
2 administrators
2 communications staff
Total: 139 personnel.
The above structure suggests an operational breakdown into:
1. A headquarters group consisting of:
7 Gestapo / Kripo / SD officials
5 drivers
3 radio operators
3 clerks
2 administrators
2 communications staff
Total: 22 personnel
2. A mobile operational group, consisting of:
39 Gestapo / Kripo / SD officers
39 SS reservists and temporarily assigned personnel
39 drivers
Total: 117 personnel
It is apparent that the operational group was not intended to function as a single unit moving together, but as separate three-man teams, consisting of a Gestapo/Kripo/SD official, an SS reservist as assistant cum bodyguard, and a driver. Since each team had its own driver, it could operate independently, in an extremely mobile fashion.
The structure enabled the three-man teams to fan out quickly over the Einsatzkommando's area of responsibility, carrying out its mission.
It is obvious that each three-man team could not act on its own, but would have a command function, drawing on other German personnel at the various places where it went into action.
The small size of each operational team suggests that the function for which they were designed was not something on a large scale, but small-scale actions which could be accomplished by the three-man team with some assistance from other German forces at various localities.
Given the make up of the executive part of the teams, comprising Gestapo, Kripo, and SD officers, it is likely that they had two main functions:
1. An intelligence function, in particular the securing of Soviet archives and document collections captured by the advancing German forces. The high mobility of the teams would enable them to race to any area where valuable intelligence material was expected to be captured.
2. An anti-personnel action, consisting of the identification, arrest, interrogation and, as appropriate, liquidation of the more important enemy personnel, and also of suppressing any manifestations of ordinary crime such as looting.
Given the initial function of the Einsatzkommando suggested by its structure, one is prompted to ask how it could have moved to the role of managing destruction of human life on a very large scale. To answer that question, it is necessary to survey the development of the killings of population elements identified as pro-Soviet enemies, these being primarily Jews, from the beginning of the German invasion.
The first killings were carried out by members of the Lithuanian anti-Soviet resistance, primarily of the Lietuviu Aktivystu Frontas (LAF), which rose in revolt in Kaunas as soon as the Red Army and Soviet administration began its withdrawal on 21 June. The revolt was assisted by the mutiny of a major portion of the Lithuanian component of the Red forces, the 297th Territorial Corps.
By the evening of 23 June, the LAF insurgents had captured most of Kaunas, and instituted a massacre of Jewish collaborators with the Soviet regime which lasted until June 28. According to the Stahlecker Report, during that period the Lithuanian partisans killed 3,800 Jews in Kaunas and 1,200 in the smaller towns. Most probably the Jews killed were mostly male collaborators, although innocent bystanders might have fallen victim as well.
At the beginning, the number of Lithuanian anti-Soviet partisans was very large, up to 100,000 men according to the memorandum by Prapuolenis to von Renteln in the name of the LAF dated 23 September 1941. No doubt that included the soldiers who had deserted from the 297th Territorial Corps.
With such a large number of men, the entire Jewish population of Lithuanian could quickly have been liquidated. If each of the 100,000 men had killed just two Jews, the task would have been accomplished.
However, the German occupiers did not want a large Lithuanian armed force acting independently which could have formed the basis of a future claim to Lithuanian independence. Instead, the German administration began disarming the Lithuanian partisans, and recruiting a smaller number of them into new auxiliary police and army units, called "Battalions for the National Preservation of Work". By 28 June, the independent massacres carried out by the LAF had been halted by the Germans.
At the end of June, the number of armed Lithuanian partisans had fallen to 16,000 in formations under German control. On 28 June, Colonel Bobelis, the Lithuanian provisional military commander of Kaunas, issued two orders, probably under German direction. The first announced the disbanding and disarming of the partisans; the second was the call for all former officers and men of the Lithuanian Army to register for duty in the above-named Battalions.
It was the new Lithuanian battalions that carried out renewed executions of Jewish collaborationists, this time under German direction. These executions are called a "White Terror" by Michael McQueen in his essay "Nazi Policy toward the Jews in the Reichskommissariat Ostland, June-September 1941: From White Terror to Holocaust in Lithuania", in the book "Bitter Legacy".
The "White Terror" began with a series of executions on two days, 4 and 6 July 1941, at Fort VII outside Kaunas. Lithuanian units shot 2,977 Jews, all men except 47.
It is unknown how those men and a handful of women were selected. In the case of the Jewesses, it is likely that they were persons who had some sort of connection with the previous Soviet regime, perhaps as members of Komsomol or some similar organisation. In the case of the men, they may have been selected simply because they were of military age and potential members of the Red Army. Alternatively, they may all have been members of the Jewish intelligentsia; we just do not know.
The involvement of EK 3 in the management of a program of selective mass-killing that eventually became comprehensive began with the setting up of a "Rollkommando", a mobile squad, under Obersturmführer Hamann, a few days after EK 3 took over responsibility for Lithuania from EK 1b under Ehrlinger on 1 July.
The Rollkommando Hamann consisted of "eight to ten proven (SS) men", and an unknown number of Lithuanians. It is not known which members of EK 3 comprised the "proven men", but it is likely that they were Gestapo, Kripo or SD officials plus a small number of drivers (perhaps five officials and five drivers, but that can only be a surmise).
From 7 to 31 July, the Rollkommando scoured Lithuania, killing 4,400 persons, all adults, in a number of individual actions in different localities. The number of victims of each action varied from one to 288. The vast majority were Jews, with only some 184 being identified as Lithuanian or Russian Communists.
A significant feature of the liquidation actions by the Rollkommando was that almost every one involved a mix of Jews and non-Jewish Communists, for example at Marijampole on 14 July, where the victims were "21 Jews, one Russian and nine Lithuanian Communists", or in Kedainiai on 23 July, with "83 Jews, 12 Jewish women, 14 Russian Communists, 15 Lithuanian Communists, one Russian Politruk".
According to MacQueen, these killing actions were meant to set an example, to terrorise, and to demoralise any potential opposition. In other words, they were not yet part of the extermination of a population group.
MacQueen also provides some interesting information on why the number of Jews shot was so much higher than the number of Lithuanian and Russian victims. He says that one of the functions of the Lithuanian "Saugumas", the former Secret Police of independent Lithuania which had been re-formed as the "Litauische Abteilung" of the German Sicherheitspolizei, was to separate out the "honest Lithuanian youth duped by the Komsomol" from the doomed. Contemporary Lithuanian police records demonstrate that a more heavily implicated Lithuanian, for example a Komsomol activist, could expect about three months of forced labour as punishment.
That would mean that the small number of Lithuanian and Russian Communists shot by the Rollkomando would have been only the most heavily implicated, eg more senior political officials.
As MacQueen comments, for any Lithuanian Jew formerly associated with the Komsomol, the only punishment was death. That explains the large number of Jews shot.
In the first half of August, the scale of the operations increased. The Hamann Rollkommando perpetrated 10 actions between 1 and 14 August, claiming 4,788 victims. The number of Communists shot declined, but the pattern of exemplary actions remained.
As stated at the beginning of this post, there was a qualitative change in the middle of the month, signalling the move to extermination of a population group. In the latter half of August, including the Rokiskis action, over 33,000 persons were killed in Lithuanian, of which only about 1,000 were non-Jews, among them 544 mental patients.
By December, EK 3 listed 133,346 persons liquidated, the overwhelming majority Jews. Some had been killed by the mobile Rollkommando, great numbers by the stationary Schuma battalions at Kaunas and the Special Detachment at Vilnius, a further 3,050 across the border in Belorussia. Including the victims of the Lithunanian partisans in the first days in June, Jäger claimed 137,346 victims.
It is clear that the massive death-roll claimed by Jäger was really achieved by the Lithuanian auxiliaries, with EK 3 only performing a management or coordinating role. Only 10 personnel of the Einsatzkommando were involved in the management of the Hamann Rollkommando, and perhaps a similar number in the management of the stationary Lithunaina battalions at Kaunas and Vilnius. It is clear that most of the members of EK 3 were involved in activities other than the mass'liquidations.
Without the Lithuanians, the death-toll boasted of by Jäger in his Report could never have been achieved. That raises the question of how the relationship between EK 3 and the large number of Lithuanians who did the actual killing was achieved. For example, was the operational structure of a small number of Germans managing a much larger number of Lithuanians planned in advance, or was it something decided on on the spur of the moment?
It seems unlikely that the RSHA officials who planned the tasks and functions of the Einsatzgruppen, including EK 3, in the months leading up to Barbarossa could possibly have known that they would be able to call on the services of thousands of Lithuanians ready, willing and able to carry out the task of eliminating enemies of Germany.
It seems equally unlikely that the RSHA would have planned a structure of a few Germans commanding thousands of Lithuanians purely on the speculation that those of Lithuanian auxiliaries would indeed be available.
The actual course of events shows that the German occupiers were somewhat surprised and indeed somewhat embarrassed at the sudden appearance of about 100,000 armed Lithuanian anti-Soviet insurgents who began independently to massacre persons suspected of being Soviet collaborators, these being mainly Jews. In fact, the initial reaction of the German authorities was to suppress the Lithuanian insurgents, to disarm them and bring them under control.
As stated previously, the German authorities could easily have left the 100,000 insurgents to wipe out the Jewish population of Lithuania on their own. But they preferred not to allow that to happen, most probably because they did not want to leave a large, independent Lithuanian armed force in existence. When the German authorities did go over to recruiting the Lithuanian insurgents as auxiliaries, they drastically reduced the number of men under arms from 100,000 to only 16,000.
The above course of events suggests that the Germans did not enter Lithuania with a prepared plan to use Lithuanian personnel in a program of mass liquidation, but rather that they decided to do so when they observed the readiness of Lithuanians to kill members of population groups that the Germans also regarded as the enemy.
The actual structure of EK 3 also does not suggest a force tasked with carrying out mass liquidations, and indeed it was not able to carry out such a task without the Lithuanian input. That raises the question of the extent to which the actual liquidation program was an additional task taken on by EK 3 based on the realisation that a huge pool of Lithuanian activists was available that was ready and willing to carry out such a program.
Axis History Forum
This is an apolitical forum for discussions on the Axis nations, as well as the First and Second World Wars in general hosted by Marcus Wendel's Axis History Factbook in cooperation with Michael Miller's Axis Biographical Research and Christoph Awender's WW2 day by day.
