black on red my 44 years inside the soviet union

In addition, the German military planned that tens of millions of Soviet citizens would starve to death as the intentional result of German occupation policies. Often referred to as mobile killing units, they were special units of the Security Police and the Security Service ( Sicherheitsdienst -SD). The Einsatzgruppen would conduct mass shootings of Jews, Communists, and other persons deemed to be dangerous to establishing l ong-term German rule on Soviet territory.

During the winter and spring months of 1941, officials of the Army High Command ( Oberkommando des Heeres -OKH) and the Reich Security Main Office ( Reichssicherheitshauptamt -RSHA) negotiated arrangements for the deployment of Einsatzgruppen behind the front lines. This was the first operational order for the invasion of the Soviet Union.įrom the beginning of operational planning, German military and police authorities intended to wage a war of annihilation against both the Soviet Union’s “Judeo-Bolshevik” Communist government and its citizens, particularly the Jews. On December 18, 1940, he signed Directive 21 (code-named Operation “Barbarossa”). In July 1940, just weeks after the German conquest of France and the Low Countries (Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands), Hitler decided to attack the Soviet Union within the following year. and the seizure of prime land within Soviet borders as Lebensraum (“Living space”) for long-term German settlement.Īs such, Adolf Hitler had always regarded the AugGerman-Soviet nonaggression pact (commonly referred to as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) as a temporary tactical maneuver.the permanent elimination of the perceived Communist threat to Germany.the destruction of the Soviet Union by military force.Since the 1920s, core policies of the Nazi movement included: This was the largest German military operation of World War II. Under the codename Operation “Barbarossa,” Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

Black on red my 44 years inside the soviet union