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About two
weeks before the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht high
command (OKW) issued the Kommissarbefehl, the “Commissar
Order.” The order was consistent with the Nazis’ ideological
perception of the invasion of the USSR as an action meant to
liquidate Bolshevism by physically eliminating all bearers of the
idea and the Soviet State apparatus. Thus, in contravention of
international law, the order stipulated:
...If
captured during combat or while offering resistance, [these
commissars] must on principle be shot immediately.... As for the
others, the following rules shall apply: Even if they are only
suspected of resistance, sabotage, or instigation thereto...
protection granted to prisoners of war... will not apply to them.
After having been segregated they are to be liquidated.
The
Commissar Order, signed by General Walter Warlimont and approved by
the OKW Chief of Staff, General Wilhelm Keitel, directly implicated
the German army in involvement in, and responsibility for, war
crimes in the occupied territories. In the summer of 1941, Keitel
had all copies of the Commissar Order destroyed, in order to remove
evidence of the army’s crimes. |
