The Evolution of Vernichtungskrieg: The German Army and the Occupation of the Soviet Union

The Evolution of Vernichtungskrieg: The German Army and the Occupation of the Soviet Union
With Jeff Rutherford
Part of Germans at War Week Part 2
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Jeff Rutherford is Associate Professor of History at Wheeling Jesuit University, West Virginia. In addition to publishing many articles on the German army and the war on the Eastern Front, he is co-editor, with Alex J. Kay and David Stahel, of Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide and Radicalization and the author of Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front: The German Infantrys War, 1941-1944. / jeffcrutherford
The German Army on the Eastern Front: An Inner View of the Ostheer's Experiences of War by Jeff Rutherford
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UK uk.bookshop.org/a/5843/978147...
Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front: The German Infantry's War, 1941-1944 by Jeff Rutherford
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[@mindbomb9341]

I am half American and half German. I moved to M05c0w for 6 years (until 2020 -- where I also met my wife). My longest running landlord there was, of course, R@55'n. I have always been disgusted with the Germans in WW2. He, however, told me an interesting story, and that was that his R@55'n grandfather was wounded in the opening of the German invasion of their country (my German grandfather was fighting on the other side of course and was badly wounded in July of 1941 near Opochka -- you may know what that means about his unit). The Germans then occupied the village where his man and his family lived. A year into the occupation, the German officer in charge of the area came to him and said, "We can see you are disabled because of your wound. We can offer you a pension because of this." They then actually paid the man a pension. I don't know how much exactly. I would have NEVER believed such a story had my own R@55'n landlord not told it to me. Crazy. I guess there were some people who simply refused to play along with the madness.

[@susanyu6507]

Thank you so much for this informative presentation Jeff. Your research was incredibly detailed and the treatment, cruelty, and inhumanity was stomach churning. When I say we sit in the shade of these people, that died so horribly, I think I could have been one of these people. Any of us could have been anywhere around the world. But here we are, learning about them through the miracle of the internet, under a roof, with enough to eat. And here we are, having the same thing happening again. I wish we humans could learn from our past.

[@cheesenoodles8316]

My wise friend, with a great WWII book library.... cautioned me on the German war diaries to appreciate when these were written and their limitations. He may have been reading Mr Rutherford. Excellent guest, that 1 hour and 18 minutes flew by.

[@mjinnh2112]

During the First World War, the Germans were horrified by the poverty and backwardness in Russia. Many Jews in German service were particularly struck by the contrast between their assimilation, economic security and education in Germany and the Jews living in shtetls. There were many civilians who followed, nurses for example, the Wehrmacht to do various jobs. Sometimes their attitude towards the Russian people was a bit like modern development workers. There is a great book, Hitler's Furies by Wendy Lower (she would be a wonderful guest if she hasn't been on already) about civilian women who came to work in Russia.

[@ebolalegion]

With the focus of this video and others like it, it seems as if you should have an entire video dedicated to the influence the Cold War had/has in forming WW2 historiography through the decades. The reason I started to read more about the USSR and the Soviet-German war was, as stated in this video - to most westerners it comes off as this dark shadowy event that takes place in the background. While in reality its the largest single conflict out of the Second World War. I've come to look upon the Japanese occupation of mainland China throughout the 1930s and on, years before the "start" of WW2, as my new shadowy background conflict that is very little understood and seldom spoken about - compared to its size and intensity.

[@WW2TV]

A good idea

[@kewlwarez]

@@WW2TV in the opposite direction, how the German experiences fighting the USSR shaped the Cold War itself, through the historiography established just after the war, the operational focused memoirs Jeff talked at the start of this talk and the US Army sponsored projects also mentioned. How much were the expectations of what would happen if the Cold War turned hot based on the German experiences in the second half of the war on East, that stereotype of elite troops barely holding back shapeless masses of infinite Soviet human waves. How does the vernichtigingskrieg shape the assumptions that of course NBC weapons would be used in defence as the alternative of a Soviet victory would be unthinkable.

[@ilnigromante666]

@@kewlwarez There's a channel called three arrow that has an extensive video about how german memory of the army's actions was shaped along the decades.

[@mrk3830]

I have watched a lot of these talks now (though very few of them live), and have thoroughly enjoyed a lot of them. However, I do have one minor suggestion - I would consider decreasing the volume on your intro videos to be more in keeping with the volume you are speaking at. Not a deal breaker, but it does make life more pleasant for those of us with headphones. Keep up the good work!

[@jeffbybee5207]

Stay loud. I'm sort enough to lower the ampflication on my end but some channels still can't hear at my highest volume

[@FergalByrne]

Understandable but unforgivable that this reality was papered over for decades, and continues to be frowned upon. Excellent presentation and great use of questions, top notch!

[@scottgrimwood8868]

An absolutely amazing presentation by Jeff! The depth and quality of the research is incredible. This is a very important topic and I really appreciate WW2TV & Jeff bringing it to the world.

[@standyl2268]

Brilliant presentation! Worthy complement to David Stahel's presentations.

[@scottkrater2131]

Chilling to see film of masses of captured Soviet soldiers being marched off, seeing individual faces, and knowing 2 out of 3 will die.

[@reiniergroeneveld7801]

A real eye opener! I learned a lot about the German goals in the east: ideology, security and economic. But most of all I never knew that the focus shifted between these three during the war in the east depending on the developments of the war.

[@philbosworth3789]

A mind boggling presentation! Certainly got me thinking.

[@marks_sparks1]

51:18 of all the things I didn't expect to see in this presentation is the possible thought of an Otto Carius doubling up as a Panzer ace and a Farmer Joe in the same year. Myth shattering - not all German combat units in Barbarossa were seeing continuous combat.

[@TheVigilant109]

Fantastic presentation. In depth research and harrowing in it's detail. Thank you

[@kewlwarez]

Great show. Love to see more of Jeff Rutherford here as well as more on both the ideological and economically driven parts of the Eastern Front.

[@WW2TV]

I will definitely be inviting Jeff again

[@steveoliver771]

Excellent show as usual. I had no idea that German occupation policy was recalibrated later in the war.

[@black__bread]

Another great and nuanced presentation, though the parallels to be drawn between one conflict driven by ideology and national chauvinism and today are perhaps too painfully apparent.

[@andrewbutcher6162]

Amazing presentation! The detail was outstanding and gave me an entirely new perspective on the scorched earth policy. Brilliant!

[@alexeyzayko3464]

Thank you.

[@marks_sparks1]

Taking Jeff's presentation with its thought provoking facts together with the stellar shows about the SS, Clean Wehrmacht & Auftragstaktik myths on WW2TV, you can only despair at the Western Allies/NATO (especially the USA & UK) swallowing these blatant historical distortions about the Eastern Front in the 1950s for the sake of political expediency. The Cold War has a lot to answer for. WW2 history was twisted to deny justice to the victims of the Shoah and the Eastern Front. One could understand Halder, Guderian, Manstein etc. lying to save their skins from the noose or a deserved long incarceration. But there was no excuse from the Western generals & governments to accept them. It's sad to think NATO believed a military amateur thug like Kurt Meyer could provide the best instruction on how to beat the Soviets. And more regrettably, Ronald Reagans visit to Bittburg Cemetery 1985 only sanctified these lies. It was criticised rightly at the time because of the SS graves present but after looking at these shows on Wehrmacht, that visit really does look bad.

[@FilipDePreter]

An eyeopener of a presentation, learned a lot. Thanks Woody and Jeff.

[@WW2TV]

Glad you enjoyed it

[@parkestanley2436]

Superb, Jeff!! Thanks!!

[@jimwatts5192]

Howdy folks. Lots of new information and new ideas backed by outstanding research. Changes my view of the German occupation of Ussr and how it changed. Well done.

[@carstenjansing6373]

Great work

[@barriereid9244]

Breathtaking.

[@Canadian_Skeptical]

Great Topic.

[@mathewkelly9968]

8:36 im not normally into burning books , but all the above titles need to be burnt . The whole myth that Germany where the good guys and the Soviets where the bad guys is the worst 'revisionism' in the history of history . Ok now im going to lay off on my anti naughty ww2 germans rant .

[@tonyvart7068]

A tough watch in some ways but extremely well researched and presented. A show on how this all translated into the Cold War would be good i feel.

[@johndoe6298]

A video that could serve that function is the WW2TV video titled 'Virtuous Wehrmacht', which streamed before this one and looks at how the post-war myths emerged in the context of the early Cold War. kzbin.info3cuxqtmt3Gc?feature=share

[@dexterscott7824]

“We will win quickly, no need to plan for occupation or care what the local population thinks” - not just Barbarossa 1941 but also Iraq 2003. Great planning for Phase IV guys! That May 1942 order to respect the Soviet population… should have thought of that in June 1941.

[@kennethkloby2726]

I realize Jeff was focused on German policy in the East; however, he spent no time explaining a root cause of that policy was the threat Bolshevism posed to the West. Recall, even the USA sent troops to Russia in an attempt to defeat the Bolsheviks. Germans saw the Bolshevik attempt to enslave Poland, and the Bolsheviks would have continued into Germany had the Poles not stood firm. Even so, the Bolsheviks infiltrated the West and conducted a non-military campaign against the West. The Bolsheviks were brutal to the Russian people but all we hear about is how brutal the Germans were, I doubt the Germans even came close to the numbers killed by the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks get a pass in the media which is disgraceful and says a lot about the current state of the world, can't be sullying the reputation of the Communists.

[@crunchytheclown9694]

The world at war was my 1st gritty expure, great work gents

[@jeffreyhuggins3074]

Again thank you for this info and history of the whole situation and other events that took place in wwll in the East and West as well as the other areas of the Nazis war against the world 🌍, and plans as well as what happened.

[@liamhackett513]

1:01:37 an admission of the straitened, dire circumstances.

[@boofather]

Excellent presentation. Need for workers to do their rare area security and execution squads

[@liamhackett513]

This is war history.

[@misterbaker9728]

Yes we can tackle the whole war and the atrocities but to say that if you just focus on let’s say tanks that’s bad?! It’s history and honestly anyone interested in any part is good. At least they’re looking. I’ve noticed we are a small group who is interested in any of this.

[@caryblack5985]

Nothing wrong with that. However if you are writing a comprehensive book on WWII or on one of the fronts you need to include the atrocities and war crimes as well as military battles.

[@WW2TV]

Nothing wrong with focussing on tanks and plenty of good KZbin channels do, it's just that for me there are more important subjects

[@mjinnh2112]

Sure, focus on the tanks, but let's not forget why they were there.

[@jimplummer4879]

Economics is definitely a key part of fighting a war, case in point the USA in WW2.

[@jmccallion2394]

That the Nazis continued to upscale the Holocaust and thus use resources badly needed at the Front and this too needs to be considered!

[@johndoe6298]

Not quite. This relates to a common question that asks why Nazi Germany wasted time and effort exterminating Jews when they had a war to fight, to which there are two answers: Firstly, the Final Solution didn't use as many resources as you might think. Much of the German manpower used to exterminate Jews (such as Wehrmacht Security Divisions, Order Police Battalions, etc) was a combination of men who would have been carrying out rear-area security anyway and/or were considered too old for frontline service anyway. For example, Reserve Police Battalion 101, which historian Christopher Browning has written about, had an average age of 39 years old, a good 15-20 years older that most frontline soldiers. There are also the collaborators, who often vastly outnumbered their German counterparts. Examples include the 'Schutzmannshaft' (auxiliary policemen working with German SS and police units in occupied Soviet territories) and the 'Trawniki men' who manned the extermination camps of 'Operation Reinhard' (Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka) in the 'General Government' (former central and southern Poland) under SS-Totenkopfverbände. A place like Sobibor would have had several times more former Soviet POWs/citizens than their were German SS personnel. Then there were also the ethnic German 'Volksdeutsche' from Eastern Europe, many of whom spoke Russian, Ukrainian and other Eastern European languages that fewer 'Reichsdeutsche' could. And the civil servants and deskbound murderers who carried out the administrative side of the genocide back in Berlin did so as part of their broader bureaucratic role. Even concentration and extermination camps themselves were often built using slave labour. For example, Auschwitz I was built upon an existing old Polish Army barracks that was expanded using the initial Polish political prisoners, Auschwitz II (AKA Birkenau) was built using Soviet POWs. Even Jewish slave labour (of which there were plenty in all the ghettos in Polish cities) were also used to build facilities for their own eventual extermination. Additionally, the aforementioned camps of Operation Reinhard used engines recovered from captured Soviet tanks to pump carbon monoxide into gas chambers. Meanwhile, Auschwitz II and Majdanek used Zyklon B, as it was a pesticide of which they had and produced lots of for genuine fumigation as well. So the number of people involved in the Final Solution who could have realistically been used in alternative roles fighting the German war effort would have been marginal at best, whilst materially it was designed to use as few resources as possible, whilst it was organised to use as few material resources as possible. The second answer is that defeating and/or destroying the Jews was a key war aim. The same racial and antisemitic delusions that motivated the Holocaust are the same ones that motivated the Nazis to go war in the first place. A Germany that didn't seek to destroy the Jews would not have been Nazi Germany and without Nazism, Germany probably wouldn't have started the war in the first place. Remember, believers of Nazism thought they were fighting a worldwide Jewish conspiracy that had pitted the world powers against Germany. In Nazi eyes, the 'Big Three' of the UK, USA and USSR were merely pawns of an international plot for 'Jewish world domination', a supposed racial struggle for existence between "the Aryan" and "the Jew". As the war escalated, the priority of "destroying World Jewry" went up the list of Nazi priorities, as the Nazis believed that killing all the Jews would thereby weaken the Allied resolve to defeat Nazi Germany. We need to remember that the war and the Holocaust were not merely parallel events, they were one and the same thing.

[@morganhale3434]

This is old content! Drang noch Osten has been the center piece of all the histories about Operation Barbarosa since the late 1970's when I started to read about it as a teenager. The ideological war on the Russian Front has always been a part of the histories of WWII.

[@WW2TV]

Well you must have read different books to me

[@mjinnh2112]

I think that until recently the ideological part was more like a footnote. "And by the way..." What Woody and scholars such as Philipp Blood are doing are putting the ideological part back where it originally was in German plans and Weltanschaung; front and center. The connections were more seamless than earlier authors, particularly Germans, wanted you to believe. Scholars such as Rutherford are going back and examining those connections.

[@morganhale3434]

@@mjinnh2112 What about Max Hastings book in 1981: "Das Reich: Resistance and the March of the Second SS Panzer Division Through France, June 1944" and also many atrocities carried out by German soldiers in the west were put down to the fact that they had just come from the Russian front where that behavior was typical. Take the Western Desert campaign out of the equation and the brutality of German soldiers is remarked upon quite regularly in WWII in the ETO. Also the book "SS Bodyguard of lies" puts to bed the notion that the majority of atrocities were done by the SS.

[@johndoe6298]

@@morganhale3434 You have mentioned the SS three times, but not the Wehrmacht. Also, "the Russian front where that behavior was typical" was often put down to the fierce fighting, but the details and the ideological dimension that motivated ordinary soldiers, including troops in the regular army, was largely absent from the academic literature for a long time. Plus, the climate of the Cold War meant that atrocities in the USSR were often played down or even ignored in the West, whilst the narrative of the Final Solution was largely dominated by survivors of concentration and extermination camps. The Holocaust by Bullets was given little attention, apart from its place from which the more mechanised extermination process emerges. Additionally, how the genocide against the Jews was related to the war against the Soviet Union and the ideological framework that bound it all together wasn't as fully understood as it is today. There was a trickle of new research in the 1980s (as historians questioned old ideas and debates around the Holocaust gathered pace), which turned into a flood in the 1990s with the end of the Cold War, the reunification of Germany, the collapse of the USSR and the end of communist regimes in Eastern Europe, all of which gave researchers access to archives, places, survivors and witnesses which had been completely closed to Western historians. Local witnesses (and even collaborators who had served prison sentences in the GULAG in return for giving evidence against their former comrades) were able to give testimonies that were open, honest and not influenced by communist state narratives (either for OR against them). Places could be visited by researchers without government minders whispering state narratives in their ears or restricting where they could go. And in Germany and Austria, many veterans were in their twilight years and therefore more open about what they and their comrades had done in the east. They were less worried about what their neighbours, colleagues (most were retired by the 90s) or even relatives might think. Not all of them were so open and there was even a backlash against an exhibition that showed the crimes of the Wehrmacht, particularly in the Soviet Union. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wehrmacht_exhibition ww2history.com/testimony/Holocaust/Member_of_Einsatzgruppe

[@Swellington_]

I have a question,did any of the German generals object the einsatzgruppe access to their operating in their sector? I've heard somewhere that Paulus shut em down when he took command of the 6th but I really don't know,but I'm pretty sure he did,anyway fantastic video 👍

[@johndoe6298]

By and large no, German generals accepted the activity of these "Operational Groups". The generals viewed the Einsatzgruppen as aiding the German war effort by "securing" the rear areas. This meant killing Jews and communists, since in the Nazi worldview Jews were behind communism and the Soviet state, and therefore were behind any partisan activity in the rear areas. According to this view, killing Jews in the rear eliminated any potential partisan actions before it even started. And although not technically Nazis, many German generals subscribed to this view to varying extents. Therefore, they had no problem with the Einsatzgruppen activities. The Wehrmacht actually supported them with logistics (the Einsatzgruppen didn't have their own logistics chain and so were dependent on the military for supplies, transportation orders, etc, so even ammo was provided by the military), guarded killing sites and even provided personnel (where it was practical) to carry out these killings. They also allowed Einsatzgruppen into the various temporary POW camps they established in the occupied territories to eliminate any commissars, Jews or other perceived 'enemies of the regime'. This cooperation was agreed before the invasion of the USSR between head of the Reich Security Main Office Reinhard Heydrich and Army Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner. It's not as if the Wehrmacht commanders were going to object on moral grounds. After all, they were conducting their own atrocities against both Soviet Jews, POWs and the wider local population. In addition to the elimination of Red Army political officers under the 'Commissar Order', they often employed this regulation to eliminate Jews from amongst the Soviet troops, since they subscribed to the idea of 'Judeo-Bolshevism'. They also conducted food requisitions, which meant stealing food from the local population and condemning them to starvation, whilst their anti-partisan sweeps in the rural areas would often include shooting local civilians and/or burning their houses down (as reprisals and on the assumption that they had aided the partisans). All of this is covered in the video above, so is hardly new. The Wehrmacht was up to its waist in the blood of Soviet non-combatants, including Jews. There was some objection by a minority of military commanders in September 1939 when the Einsatzgruppen and other SS/police formations followed the army into Poland to kill potential political opponents, though this was mainly on disciplinary grounds. Some officers were concerned that this would 'brutalise' the men and therefore make them harder to control. One notable voice of protest was Johannes Blaskowitz, but his concerns were dismissed by many others (including army Chief of Operations Staff Alfred Jodl) and Hitler even remarked that "one cannot fight a war with Salvation Army methods", describing Blaskowitz as having "childish attitudes". But by the time of the war against the Soviet Union, these minority objections were largely gone. As for Friedrich Paulus, I've never seen any evidence that he shut the Einsatzgruppen down in his area. Einsatzgruppe D continued to operate in the areas of Army Group South (which the 6th Army was a part of) and Paulus never rescinded the 'Severity Order' that his predecessor, Walther von Reichenau, issued in 1941. I would need to see an academic source on that. After all, his army was the same one that, under his predecessor, had aided and abetted the Einsatzgruppen and their local auxiliaries in killing Jews in Bila Tserkva. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bila_Tserkva_massacre

[@PaleoCon2008]

The systematic exploitation of the population helps better explain what the Soviets did when they conquered Germany. Literally entire factories were packed up and shipped back to the USSR. Personal goods were likewise plundered and returned to the USSR. Since so much of Belarus and Ukraine were destroyed there was practically nothing left when the Soviets liberated those regions. I know too many Germans who still believe the myth of "clean hands" when it comes to the Wehrmacht.

[@davidlavigne207]

"4 From whence come wars and fighting among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? 2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. 3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts." James 4: 1-3 KJV. I mention this quote to remind us that all wars are essentially economic at heart. Systematic and state sanctioned robbery is at the core of all the reasons nations go to war, and then justify it in the name of 'national survival." I perceived this theme throughout Professor Rutherford's presentation. I shall have much less sympathy for those who subscribe to the "clean Wehrmacht" view. This show proved to me that the whole German Army was deeply involved in the crimes perpetuated by the Nazi regime. It put's me in mind of what's happening in Ukraine today; another corrupt regime justifying the taking of what is not theirs. Will we never learn? Obviously Putin never did.

[@justinwilliams2000]

I agree, the same thing happened in Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Syria in 2014.

[@mathewkelly9968]

'Vernichtungskreig' that's a strange way of saying 'cowardly war criminal' .