Vassals of the Third Reich - Part 1
Today it can be said that we do indeed always have the barbarians with us, as all pervasive as the poor, but in 1933 that was not so obvious as it was to become within 10 short years. And, even then, the world doubted its own senses and it took another three years, until the evidence was presented, for it to believe. The world, however, comforted itself with the thought that the Nazis were the last, and most horrible, example of the barbarian at the gate. They did not heed the words of Simone Weil who wrote, in 1939, in response to what she had so far seen of Hitler and his ways: "I would suggest that barbarism be considered as a permanent and universal human characteristic which becomes more, or less, pronounced according to the play of circumstances."
In Mein Kampff, Hitler had promised what he would do when he had the power but, of course, no one believed him in 1925 when he was more or less a joke. By 1941, he was only too believable especially to his own generals, believable, and terrifying should they not comply. In his preamble to the so-called Commissars Order, Hitler, who was addressing a meeting of all his chiefs of staff and field commanders in March 1941, stated that "...the war against Russia......is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful and unrelenting harshness. ......I insist absolutely that my orders be obeyed without contradiction." He went on to order the killing of all commissars and, in May, issued a directive that exonerated both officers and men for whatever actions they took against the enemy, very much including arbitrary killing, even where such actions were "at the same time (a) military crime(s)..."
It is a truism that violence begets violence and this was never more true than in the overall conduct of the invasion of Russia. Almost from the outset the Einsatzgruppen were brought into operation behind the German lines whose principal targets were Jews and other ethnic 'undesirables' but who would also act against the ordinary Russian citizen on little or no pretext. It was also very soon apparent that the German bureaucrats who arrived almost as quickly, were intent on plundering the country of everything that could be of use to Germany and sending it back by train. This was especially so of food. Faced with these two facts, for survival the Russians could only meet the viciousness with viciousness of their own; if they were either to die by a murderer's act or by starvation, then their only alternative was to join the partisans. Reprisals for partisan action, whether or not German lives were lost, were to take whatever number of innocent civilians closest to hand and to murder them. It soon became normal for wounded and prisoners of both sides, whether within or without the fighting zone, to be killed out of hand.
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