The Scourge of the Swastika Read online

  The Commissar Order has been branded as an illegal order by several war crime tribunals, including the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, who in their judgment called it ‘a systematic plan to murder’, and so it was. In obedience to it the killing of commissars went on throughout the duration of the Russian campaign along the entire battle front.

  With such precision were these instructions carried out during the first three months of the campaign that towards the end of September 1941 one German general protested to OKW that its enforcement was impeding the advance.

  It is significant that this protest, like that of General von Falkenhausen in Belgium with regard to the shooting of hostages,2 was made not for the reason that the order was inhumane or a breach of the laws of war, but solely upon grounds of expediency.

  By that time it was common knowledge throughout the Red Army that prisoner of war status would not be granted to political commissars who were captured. This knowledge gave them the best of all possible reasons for urging their men to fight it out to the bitter end. Consequently, Russian resistance had stiffened, Germany’s advance had slowed down, and their casualties had increased. The Commissar Order was therefore, to say the least of it, short-sighted, but Hitler would not rescind it and the slaughter continued.

  In the Eleventh German Army, from the time when Field-Marshal von Manstein took command in September 1941 until he relinquished it in November 1942, there is evidence that large numbers of commissars were ‘liquidated’ in pursuance of this order.

  This general does not appear to have made a single written protest against the order, although he has admitted that when he received it he was very indignant as, in his view, it ran counter to all military tradition.

  He stated at his trial, however, that he was not concerned with its legality but only with the honour of his troops and that he approached Field-Marshal von Leeb, who was then Commander-in-Chief of the Army Group, and told him that he could not carry out the order. Leeb appeared to share von Manstein’s views.

  When the Field-Marshal gave evidence before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg he said, with reference to his receipt of the Commissar Order, ‘It was the first time I found myself involved in a conflict between my soldierly conception of honour and my duty to obey…. In practice the order was not carried out. My Divisional Commanders who had already received the order independently before leaving Germany, shared my view. The troops disliked the order intensely.’

  How did the troops know of this order? When issued it was only for distribution down to Commanders-in-Chief of Armies and Air Fleet Chiefs and was to be communicated orally to lower formations. It is surely a reasonable inference that if the troops knew its contents it must have reached them, and it can only have done so through their commanders.

  The fact remains, and there is evidence to prove it, that large numbers of commissars were murdered by the German Armies in Russia during their advance in 1941 and 1942, and that the numbers of victims only began to diminish later when the Nazis were in retreat and the commissar was no longer the pursued but the pursuer.

  Article 6 of the Hague Regulations provides that the State having the custody of prisoners of war whom its troops have captured, may employ their labour, excepting officers, according to their rank and capacity. The work must not be excessive and ‘shall have no connection with the operations of war’.

  The interpretation of what is meant by prohibited work presents certain difficulties. Under the appropriate Article of the Hague Regulations the prohibition is not confined to dangerous work. The element of danger is prohibited by implication from the necessity for humane treatment but it is not specifically mentioned.

  In Article 6, the words ‘no connection with the operations of war’ are so embracing that in the conditions in which modern wars are conducted, in which almost the whole manpower of the State is harnessed to meet military requirements, it would be difficult to name any work which could properly be said to have no such connection.

  Article 31 of the Geneva Convention of 1929, however, which was not binding upon Germany in her war with Russia, provided that the work done by prisoners of war must have no direct connection with the operations of war. It is impossible to lay down any precise criterion as to whether work is directly or indirectly connected with military operations but there can be little or no doubt that the construction of entrenchments in the battle zone is directly connected with the operations of war and that the clearing of minefields generally involves a degree of danger.

  In the High Command Trial1 the Tribunal regarded the employment of prisoners of war by combat troops in the combat areas for the construction of field fortifications as constituting ‘dangerous employment under the conditions of modern war’; and further, that the use of prisoners on such work and for mine clearing was clearly prohibited by International Law and constituted a war crime.

  In November 1941 the German High Command issued a directive to all Army Groups and Armies in Russia on the subject of’Prisoner of War Battalions’.

  The following is an extract:

  The exigencies of war economy demand that a German should, if possible, only be employed when he cannot be replaced by a foreigner or a prisoner of war. A number of duties in the army and in the field to which many German soldiers have so far been tied down can be undertaken by prisoners of war if they are strictly and efficiently incorporated within the military framework. The High Command will, therefore, form prisoner of war battalions.

  This directive was implemented by all subordinate formations on the Russian front who issued orders based on it.

  Even prior to the directive from OKW, orders for the formation of labour companies had been promulgated by subordinate commanders. A directive on the subject had been sent out from the Eleventh Army over the signature of the Chief of Staff, Wöhler. It stated that prisoners were valuable labour forces, and it provided for the creation of labour companies so that prisoners could speedily be utilized ‘for the military purposes of the troops in the zone of operations’.

  Prisoners were sent from the cages to artillery, engineer, and signal units for employment in the forward areas. Infantry regiments were authorized to retain those they needed for labour in the front line from the prisoners they captured. Drivers of horse-drawn supply columns and artillery ammunition columns were replaced by Soviet prisoners and sent to fighting units.

  All this was clearly contrary to the Hague Regulations but from the very start of the campaign it was the manifest intention of the German High Command to employ Russian prisoners in violation of the laws of war. In July 1941 an order had been issued by OKW that certain classes of prisoners must not be evacuated to Germany but employed in the theatre of operations, and the Eleventh Army’s directive of 3rd August 1941, which has been quoted above, was in implementation of that decision.

  Within a month, 43,000 such prisoners were being employed in the forward supply services and 13,000 on the construction of defence positions. This work was clearly of a military nature and in the combat zone and Army rear area. They handled military stores, equipment, and ammunition for the forward troops and constructed defence positions. The Germans themselves described the work as of ‘the greatest importance for the conduct of operations’.

  That this policy was systematically carried out is beyond question. There are entries in the War Diaries of German formations at all levels regarding the employment of prisoners of war on the construction of fortifications in large numbers throughout 1942 and 1943.

  Nor was this all. Prisoners were largely used for the clearing of minefields. An order issued by the German XXXth Corps referring to a directive from OKW reads: ‘Stress is laid on the Commander-in-Chief’s decision that in order to spare German blood only Russian prisoners will be used for detecting and clearing mines, except in action or if danger is imminent. This ruling applies to German mines too. For this purpose, special prisoner of war units will be formed’.

  Still more
reprehensible was the use of prisoners as guides to precede German troops attacking through enemy minefields. Had they been used in this connection merely to guide the German soldiers through known gaps in the minefields little criticism could be made of the practice, even though it would have been a technical breach of the Hague Regulations. They were not, however, used for that purpose, but as a human screen to set off the mines so as to render them harmless to the advancing Germans. The orders regarding the selection and use of prisoners for mine exploding directed that they should be closely watched so that they would not ‘evade the mines by taking longer steps’.

  Many instances of brutality towards Russian prisoners of war have been investigated and confirmed. Some were tortured with bars of red-hot iron; their eyes gouged out, their stomachs ripped open; their feet, hands, fingers, ears, and noses hacked off, mutilation more suited to Mau-Mau savagery than German Kultur.

  After the Germans had retreated on the Dnieper, the bodies of a Russian battalion commander and his Commissar were found. Their arms and legs had been nailed to stakes and on their bodies five-point stars had been cut, apparently with knives; lying near them was the body of another Russian soldier, his feet had been burnt and his ears cut off.

  Captured female hospital nurses and orderlies were frequently abused and violated. Large numbers of wounded Russian prisoners near Smolensk were bayonetted or shot where they lay awaiting treatment.

  During the winter the German troops and their officers used to divest all prisoners of their warm clothing, including women prisoners, and even stripped the dead leaving them stark naked.

  In the little village of Popovka in the Tula region, German troops drove 140 Red Army prisoners of war into a barn and set fire to it, and near Leningrad the Germans in the course of their retreat used explosive bullets to kill 150 Soviet prisoners of war whom they had first beaten and tortured. They then mutilated the bodies.

  In December 1941, again near Smolensk, the Germans executed 200 prisoners of war whom they had marched through the town of Kovdrovo naked and barefoot, shooting on the way any who were too exhausted to take another step, as well as some of the local inhabitants who had offered them bread on their way through the streets.

  Orders were also given for the branding of prisoners. ‘Soviet prisoners of war will be branded with a distinct and lasting mark. The brand will consist of an acute angle of about 45°, one of its sides being about a centimetre in length, pointing downwards on the left buttock about a hand’s breadth away from the rectum. Indian ink will be used for colouring.’

  The conditions of the German prisoner of war camps in Russia baffle all description. Their occupants were killed by the thousand. Those who were sick never received medical attention. In one camp, near Smolensk, two hundred died daily from starvation, typhus, dysentery, or freezing to death. Emaciated sick prisoners were forced to work in the Smolensk power station and those who collapsed from exhaustion were shot out of hand by their guards. The camp hospital was nothing but a shambles. A doctor who worked there during the early months of 1942, in the depths of the Russian winter, stated that it was unheated, that the wounded lay unbandaged on the bare boards, and their clothing and bedding was covered with pus and excreta.

  One prisoner of war camp was established in the civil jail at Orel. When the Germans retreated a Commission of doctors took evidence from some of the medical officers in the camp. The prisoners daily diet consisted of 200 grammes of bread and a litre of soup made from rotten soya beans and mouldy flour. The flour from which the bread was made was mixed with sawdust. The maximum dietetic value of the daily ration was 700 calories.

  On such a diet the prisoners were expected to work eleven or twelve hours a day. They were, of course, unable to do so and many of them died of sheer physical exhaustion. Hundreds of prisoners in this camp suffered from œdema due entirely to this process of deliberate starvation; but no such diagnosis was allowed in the camp. The swelling was always put down to heart or kidney trouble and the very mention of ‘hunger œdema’ was forbidden.

  Fuel and fresh water were completely lacking, and the camp was infested with vermin. Mortality assumed mass proportions and at least three thousand died solely of malnutrition. Prisoners died at the rate of six a day and the living slept with the dead.

  Nor was this camp worse than any others, for in the early months of the campaign the German High Command cared not whether their Russian prisoners lived or died. It was only later, when their importance as slave labour was realized, that greater efforts were made to keep them alive.

  The bare minimum ration laid down by OKW for a prisoner of war for a period of twenty-eight days does not appear to have been excessive. This scale was as follows: bread 6 kilos, meat 400 grammes, fat 400 grammes, sugar 600 grammes. For prisoners doing especially strenuous work the scale was slightly higher.

  The prisoners were also deprived of their clothing. An administrative order issued by one German Division headed ‘Situation with Respect to Clothing’ laid down that all boots which were serviceable should be removed from Russian prisoners without hesitation. Half starved, stripped of their clothing, and left to live out in the open in the freezing cold of the winter of 1941/42, it is small wonder that they died like flies.

  But it was not solely from starvation, neglect, and exposure that they perished. On 24th July 1941, a month after Hitler’s armies had invaded Soviet territory, the German High Command issued a basic order on the treatment of Russian prisoners of war in the theatre of operations. It dealt with their screening, collection, and disposal. For this purpose they were to be divided into five categories, one of which was described as consisting of ‘elements which are politically insupportable; suspects, commissars, and agitators’. All such were to be dealt with in accordance with ‘Special Instructions’. This meant that the Sonderkom-mandos1 of Gestapo and SD which were attached to each prisoner of war camp selected these ‘politically insupportable elements’. In the phraseology of the order itself, these SD units were to operate ‘as unobtrusively as possible’, and the liquidations were to be carried out without delay at such distances from transit camps and villages as would ensure their not becoming known to other prisoners of war or to the civilian population.

  Such were the instructions; but in practice the prisoners were nearly all sent off to concentration camps. For their last journey they were packed into closed trucks like so many carcases, often without food and water, and shut in for three or four days.

  On one occasion, when a prisoner of war train, consisting of fifty trucks, arrived at its destination and the trucks were opened, the stench of dead bodies was overpowering; half the prisoners were dead, many on the point of death, and the few who still had the strength to make a dash for water were shot by the guards. Another train full of prisoners, made up of thirty trucks, at the end of its journey was found to contain not a single living soul, and 1500 dead bodies were unloaded from it.

  1 Sergeant.

  1 This crime is generally known as the ‘Paradis Massacre’. Knochlein was tried by a British Military Court in 1948 and sentenced to death.25

  1Known in Germany as the Kommandobefehl.

  1 Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Supreme Headquarters of the Armed Forces.

  2 The recipients of the order were the High Command of the three services, C-in-C Norway, C-in-C South-East, High Command West, High Command South, High Command Twentieth Mountain Army, Panzer Army Africa, Reichsführer SS and Chief of SIPO.

  1 Save in North Africa where Rommel burned it.

  2 A direct order from Hitler.

  3 See page 28 above.

  1 Falkenhorst was tried at Brunswick in 1946 by a British Military Court, sitting with a judge advocate, for his participation in carrying out the Commando Order and was found guilty of eight charges alleging that he incited the forces under his command not to give quarter to Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen taking part in Commando operations and to kill them after capture and with being concerned in the
killing of a large number of Allied prisoners of war by handing them over to the Security Service (SD) for execution. He was sentenced to death by the Court but this sentence was commuted to one of life imprisonment by the Commander-in-Chief, British Zone of Germany, then Marshal of the RAF Sir Sholto Douglas.

  2 Brigadier Antony Head, CBE, MC, now Secretary of State for War.

  1 Sergeant-major.

  2 Lit., water police. This was used as a cover name for a branch of the Gestapo.

  1 Hereafter referred to as SAS.

  1 General Gallenkamp, Colonel Köstlin, Captain Schönig, and others were tried by a British Military Court in Germany in 1946 upon a charge alleging that they were concerned in the killing of these prisoners of war. They were all found guilty. General Gallenkamp was sentenced by the Court to suffer death by being hanged but the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment; Colonel Köstlin was sentenced to imprisonment for life, and Captain Schönig to imprisonment for five years.

  1 Robert Wagner was tried by the French Permanent Military Tribunal at Strasbourg in 1946 and sentenced to death for the murder of Allied airmen and many other war crimes.

  2 The Volkssturm was an auxiliary military organization somewhat resembling the Home Guard in this country.

  1A junior commissioned rank in the SS.

  1 Grossfahndung, hue and cry: lit., widespread search.

  1 The ‘Kugel erlass’.

  1 K. for Kugel, meaning bullet.

  2 The Political Department, i.e., the branch which looked after so-called ‘political’ prisoners.

  1 See Appendix.

  2 See page 53.