A Jewish woman with her child shortly before being murdered by a member of the Einsatzgruppen.

A Jewish woman with her child shortly before being murdered by a member of the Einsatzgruppen.

A Jewish woman with her child shortly before being murdered by a member of the Einsatzgruppen.

Einsatzgruppen (Special Task Forces) were mobile killing units of the German Security Police and SD (intelligence service of the SS) that operated in German-occupied Europe (mostly the Eastern Front). They were formed by one of Hitler’s most loyal high ranking officers, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Hydrich, the architect of the Holocaust, but also a well-educated classical music composer.

The Einsatzgruppen leaders and their subordinate officers were carefully selected by Heydrich from among the best-educated and dedicated Nazis. Of the 25 Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommando commanders, 15 bore the title of PhD, most of them doctors of jurisprudence or philosophy.

On 22 June 1941, approximately 3.8 million German military personnel and their Axis allies, including Romanians, Hungarians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Slovakians and Italians invaded the Soviet Union.

 Four Einsatzgruppen detachments, numbering 3,000 men bolstered by other German and Axis field units and collaborators, most notably Ukrainian, Lithuamian, Latvian, Estonian and Hungarian paramilitary and police detachments followed close behind, tasked with rounding up and murdering all Jews, Communists, Gypsies and other undesirables. Within the first nine months of the war they murdered over half a million people, mostly Jews.

Three of the four top Einsatzgruppen commanders held doctorates; Franz Walter Stahlecker (EG A), Otto Rasch (EG C – a double PhD), and Otto Ohlendorf (EG D). Ohlendorf was a famed Economist. The commander of Einsatzgruppe B was Arthur Nebe, then head of the Kripo (Kriminalpolizei – Criminal Police). Of the 17 initial SK, EK, and Vorkommando leaders, a further 7 held a doctorate. 

Subsequent leaders included an ex-pastor (Ernst Szymanowski alias Biberstein), a physician (Weinmann), and a professional opera singer (Klingelhöfer). These were clearly no gangsters. They represented those who, in a different time and culture, might have been considered among the brightest and best of their generation.

Other than some of the top commanders, most members of the Einsatzgruppen were never held accountable for their crimes. Revisionist historians have rebranded the local collaborators complicit in mass murder, especially in Ukraine and the Baltic Republics, as “Freedom Fighters” fighting against Communism.