What was Einsatzgruppen?
O Einsatzgruppen was a special unit created in 1938, during the annexation of Austria (Anschluss), and its objective was to pursue opponents of the Nazi regime. Also known as death squads (the German term means “task force”), this unit was under the leadership of Reinhard Heydrich. O Einsatzgruppen he also acted in the persecution of opponents in Czechoslovakia. This grouping was transferred to Poland after the Nazi invasion in September 1939.
In Poland, the Einsatzgruppen was mobilized to carry out the pursuit and execution of the intelligentsia Polish, that is, the country's intellectual elite. Nazi Germany's aim in executing the Polish intellectual elite was to facilitate the conquest and assimilation of the country. The performance of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland led to the death of about 61,000 people|1| and it was identical to what the Soviet Union did in eastern Poland using the secret police (NKVD).
Subsequently, the performance of the Einsatzgruppen was extended to the Soviet Union and, from 1941, extermination groups were employed in the persecution of Jews under the influence of Reinhard Heydrich – one of the architects of the Holocaust.
Einsatzgruppen in the Holocaust
O Einsatzgruppen participated in the Holocaust due to the influence of Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler. Both convinced Hitler to anticipate the plan called Final Solution and deploy it during the war (the Nazi leader wanted to deploy it only after the war). This plan designed by Heydrich and Himmler engineered the extermination of Europe's Jews.
Heydrich convinced Hitler that the best way to exterminate the Jews was from shooting and when he received authorization from the Nazi leader to implement the Final Solution, he mobilized the Einsatzgruppen for the task. Hitler's order authorized the killing of all Jews in Europe from July 1941.
The performance of Einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe took place from three groups:
EinsatzgruppenA: responsible for the Baltic countries (Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia);
EinsatzgruppenB: responsible for Belarus (Belarus);
EinsatzgruppenC: responsible for Ukraine.
From that, the Einsatzgruppen, with the help of Schutzstaffel (SS) (Nazi paramilitary group), of the Wehrmacht (German army) and local collaborationists, carried out a true ethnic cleansing, executing thousands of Jews. O Einsatzgruppen he surveyed all the Jews existing in the places where he worked, built mass graves and shot them, depositing them in these mass graves.
The action of the Einsatzgruppen The promoted the death of 114,856,000 Jews in Lithuania, of which at least 70,000 lived in the city of Vilnius|2|. In addition, it was registered by the Einsatzgruppen The death of 69,750 Jews in Latvia|3| and in Estonia, where the number of Jews was smaller, the Einsatzgruppen killed about 5,000 Estonians who had collaborated with the Soviet Union, as well as having executed all 963 Jews found in the region.|4|.
Another great massacre was promoted by the EinsatzgruppenÇ in the city of Kiev in what became known as Babi Yar Massacre. In Kiev, the Nazis grouped the Jews at a certain point in the Ukrainian city and carried out the execution of 33. 761 people in about 36 hours. This made Babi Yar one of the biggest massacres in the Second World War.
At the end of 1941, the Einsatzgruppen, with the help of the SS and the German army, he had executed more than 1 million people|5|. The performance of the Einsatzgruppen, however, was weakening due to the numerous psychological disturbances that manifested themselves in the unit's soldiers caused by the large number of people executed. Because of this, the Nazis started a new phase of extermination of Jews through the use of gas chambers, installed in the extermination camps.
|1| SNYDER, Timothy, Lands of Blood: Europe between Hitler and Stalin. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2012, p. 166.
|1| Idem, p. 241.
|2| Idem, p. 242.
|3| Idem, p. 243.
|4| Idem, p. 270.
*Image credits: Molarjung and Shutterstock
By Daniel Neves
Graduated in History
