Einsatzgruppen

Mobile SS and police units that followed German forces into occupied eastern Europe during World War II and carried out mass shootings, chiefly of Jews.

Mass shootings in the Holocaust: The systematic murder of Jews and other victims by firearms during the Holocaust. Einsatzgruppen killings were a major part of the Holocaust’s mass shootings.
Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, launched on June 22, 1941. The invasion created the eastern front behind which Einsatzgruppen conducted mass murder.
Otto Ohlendorf: An SS officer who commanded Einsatzgruppe D and later testified at the Einsatzgruppen Trial. His command and testimony provide unusually detailed evidence about unit operations.
Wannsee Conference: A January 1942 meeting of senior Nazi officials coordinating the deportation and murder of European Jews. The mass shootings preceded and continued alongside the deportation system discussed at Wannsee.
Einsatzgruppen reports: Operational summaries sent by German security forces describing killings and conditions in occupied territories. Their euphemistic tallies documented the units’ escalating murder campaigns.
Nazi racial policy: The ideology and state policies that ranked people by race and targeted Jews and other groups for persecution. The units’ violence applied Nazi racial goals to populations in occupied eastern Europe.
Paul Blobel: An SS officer who commanded Sonderkommando 4a and later organized the exhumation and burning of mass-grave victims. Blobel led a subunit involved in the Babi Yar massacre and later efforts to erase evidence.
Aktion 1005: A secret Nazi operation to exhume and burn the bodies of mass-murder victims in occupied eastern Europe. It sought to conceal the evidence left by mass shootings, including those by Einsatzgruppen.
Orpo: The Ordnungspolizei, Nazi Germany’s uniformed order police, responsible for policing and security duties. Order Police battalions served alongside Einsatzgruppen and participated in mass shootings.
Commissar Order: A 1941 German military directive ordering the execution of captured Soviet political commissars. It helped normalize unlawful executions during the invasion that accompanied Einsatzgruppen operations.

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