Thread by @waitmanb

🧵#OTD in 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation #Barbarossa

Many people will focus on the massive battles, but it's also important to conside the ways in which the war in the East was directly connected to the Nazi genocidal project.

Most importantly, the invasion of the Soviet Union and the apparent initial success of the first months likely accelerated a decision-making process that had envisioned delaying the solution of "Jewish Question" until after the war.

In addition, the conduct and nature of the war in the Soviet Union was NOT an aberration in its violence, brutality, and criminality. To the contrary, this was the norm for the Nazi way of war. The wars in the West and in North Africa were actually the exceptions.

It's important to highlight the colonial mindset of the Nazis and the things they drew from other imperial/colonial projects (which I outline a bit in this thread)

One cannot overstate the importance of the invasion of the Soviet Union and the effect it had on the escalation of Nazi killing of all kinds.

What follows, then, is a list (in no particular order) of the ways in which the invasion of the Soviet Union and the conduct of the war there are inextricably connected to the larger Nazi genocidal project.

1) Mass murder of Jews.

Shortly after the invasion, we see the first orders to explicitly murder all Jews, regardless of age or sex. This is a departure from the Polish experience.

See, for example, the behavior of the Einsatzgruppen/SS separate brigades.

2) Treatment of Soviet POWs.

Over 2 million Soviet POWs were murdered by the Nazis. This constitutes a genocide within a genocide.

Pictured below: the Drozdy POW camp outside of Minsk where 100k people were kept without adequate shelter or provision.

The statistics below give you a sense of the scale of the atrocity committed, largely by the Wehrmacht, against POWs.

3) Soviet POWs and Auschwitz

Many people aren't aware that the massive expansion of Auschwitz- the building of Auschwitz II Birkenau- was initially spurred by the expectation of a mass of Soviet POWs arriving.

4) Babi Yar Massacre (Kiev)

The largest open-air shooting of Jews (ca. 33,771) was demanded by the German Army as a reprisal for NKVD booby traps.

5) Testing of extermination measures

SS officials tested various methods of mass killing throughout the Soviet Union before settling on carbon monoxide and Zyklon-B.

The first victims of a mass gassing at Auschwitz were...Soviet POWs.

6) Mass murder of mentally/physically handicapped

The Wehrmacht and the SS expanded Nazi killing operations against these people into the Soviet Union. Often, the Army would arrange or carry out these killings to free up hospital space for military casualties.

7) Demand for more efficient killing methods

The mass killing of as many as 2.5 million Jews in the USSR by shooting (in conjunction with the Wehrmacht) also helped drive innovation in the search for more efficient killing apparatuses.

8) "Hunger Plan"

The invasion of the USSR revealed the immensity of Nazi planned genocide. By extracting food from populations deemed surplus, planners (many military) explicitly foresaw the deaths of 30-40 million civilians.

This plan was only partially put into action, but it still resulted in the mass starvation of civilians across the USSR. The Siege of Leningrad is one well-known example, but thousands starved elsewhere as well.

9) Trawniki Men

POWs who weren't ethnically Russian were given the opportunity of escaping death in POW camps by joining the Germans as auxiliaries. Trained at the Trawniki camp, they provided most of the manpower in exermination camps.

This local manpower was essential for carrying out the Final Solution. It was also used to suppress the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Most famously Ivan "the Terrible" Demnjanjuk was one of these Soviet POWs who became a camp guard.

He is pictured here with other guards at the Sobibor extermination camp.

10) Increased Nazi reach.

Obvious, but important nonetheless is the fact that the German invasion of the USSR brought additional massive populations of victims (Jews and non-Jews alike) under Nazi control and led to their deaths.

11) Slave Labor

Nazi expansion into the USSR and the escalation of the war effort led to an increased demand for slave labor, much of which was fed with civilians from the occupied Soviet Union, with often lethal effect.

12) Massive war crimes and mass atrocities against civilians

The German Army generally acted criminally throughout the Soviet Union and ruthlessly victimized civilian populations (as I talk about below)

So, take a minute on this anniversary of Barbarossa to think beyond panzer battles and top tanks to the larger significance of this moment in history.