Now, all right, so here we are now June 22nd, 1941 the Germans crossed the Soviet border. And with them come Einsatzgruppen an important word. These are special detachments but these special detachments were created already with the incorporation, in 1939, of making Bohemia into a Into a protectorant. And did these unsubs group, and their task was to eliminate any opposition, to take over any buildings, and what have you. And then they played the role in pacifying Poland, but when they crossed the Soviet border, their task was something very different. They crossed the Soviet border with the explicit instruction of killing Bolsheviks and Jews. Now, it really is something remarkable. This is very important for us to contemplate. At no time were members of the Einsetzen group more than about 3,000. They were divided into four major units according to the German regional divisions, and they operated A, B, C, D. And then, they were further subdivided, depending on where they were going, where they were moving into. John Deere commando smaller units depending on the size of the settlement where they operated. They operate under front line conditions. And this had several consequences. Once that they had to have established relations with the army command. Now this was pre-negotiated, but it was one thing to pre-negotiate it, and another to have relations with the individual German commander in the field. And it turns out, to the happy surprise of the Nazi leaders, that the army was perfectly happy to collaborate. And this was something new. In Poland, the army wanted to keep a little bit aloof. Let the special detachments, let the Nazi institutions carry out the dirty work. But once the war was taken to the Soviet Union the situation changed. It's an interesting phenomenon that the German officers who operated in the West, and I will be talking about Western Europe in a short time, behaved differently than is in with army units operating in the west. But not so keen to become part of the task of exterminating Jews. In the east, however, they were. They operated seamlessly. And that was very important, because of course, these small units depended on support, logistical and material support from the local army commander. And, the army provided service, even to the extent of hurting Jews and handing them over to Einstein's group and Einstein's commando to carry out their tasks. And to me this has always been the most interesting and most important question of the Holocaust. Who were these people? Where did they come from? And the answer to this, is nowadays, is self evident. You are reading the book which is called Ordinary Men, and that's what we are talking about. Now it's interesting to talk about their organization, the police organization, one might say, the terror organization of the Nazi state, as a totalitarian entity, it had to have control. And indeed, there was the regular police, which was incorporated. Then there was the SS, Schutzstaffel, which was originally as Hitler's bodyguard, and in the course of the 1930s greatly expanded, or the Gestapo, geheime staatspolizei, with the translation the secret police. And then as I say, the Nazis also incorporated the regular police, which pre-existed in the region of police. All of these institutions provided man power for. And that's the point the people who served in these commandos. But first of all it is striking that we're talking about 3000 people only. I mean in any given moment it was about 3000 people. I mean obviously there was turnover and the magnitude of the tasks. In the first months of German occupation, they killed about 100 thousand people per month. The territory in which they occupied had approximately 2 million Jews. And ultimately, they managed to kill about a million and a half. The rest succeeded in escaping to the east, very small percentage have survived. Less than five percent who actually survived German occupation in these territories. That is clearing these territories, namely the Baltic states, the Ukraine, and Belarus. The chances of survival if you had the misfortune of actually staying there rather than moving to the East, your chances of survival were very, very, very minimal. But the important thing is for us to envisage who these people were. Well the Nazi organization created a certain unity and a certain higher organization, which was headed by Himmler. Himmler is a very important person in our Topic in our subject. And you that aside form Hitler, he was the most powerful person in the Nazi hierarchy. The entire terror organization was concentrated in his hands. And I will be attempting to quote a few sentences about what he thought, what he was doing, and justification for what he was doing. How he saw the world. Well, the existing organizations, the police, the Gestapo, the SS provided the raw material for these [INAUDIBLE]. By and large, these were older people, because they had the good fortune of not having to engage actually from the activities and consequently their chances of survival were better than that of the average German soldier. So you chose people who were older than the average German soldier. Well, quite self consciously, the Nazi leadership shows the heads of these organizations, of these four groups. Highly educated people who had doctorates, and one of them was a theologian that is, in a sense, the Einsatzgruppen were representing German society, a cross section of German society. That is, they were not people who were chosen because they hated the Jews so much that they wanted to go out and kill them. It seems to me that it went the other way. First, they engaged in killing and then they hated the Jews more and more. Because, hating the Jews was a sort of justification. Why am I killing these people? Well I kill these people because they deserve to be killed. Cuz otherwise, you have some problem. Well the first months were rather ill-organized. They were encountering Jews, who were easy picking, in as much as. We must remember that we are talking about the territories which came under Soviet occupation only in 1939. That is, there will be a big difference, and this will be very important I will come back to it, between the behavior of the population and indeed behavior of the Jews and indeed the kind of Jews there were farther East. That is, those who had been part of the Soviet Union already in 1939. What I had in mind is that the Soviet Union during the 20 years of existence of the Soviet Union, there has been going a good acculturation of Soviet Jews. That is there was a good demographic movement. The Jews moved into the major cities. The Jews, just like before, in Western Europe, came to be acculturated. Yes. >> When were they acculturated? >> Well, from 1917 to 1939. That is they lived under a regime who's leadership was not explicitly antisemitic. Now many Russians and many Ukrainians were antisemitic. But the state did not pursue explicitly antisemitic policies. By contrast, those areas which were part of Poland and the Baltic states, which were independent, Jewish life has not changed all that much, after the First World War, and consequently, the Jews Well, looked like Jews. I don't know how else to put it. They lived in shtetls, meaning that they were very easy to pick them up. Going further to the east, it became more different and more difficult. So the German army very quickly advances and with them go these Ansnads group and carrying up their task. First in a rather unorganized fashion then this was the first wave. And then in the winter of 1941, they would have to come back and go over this again. And kill the people that some have forgotten to kill. Well, it's very important for us to remember that these Einsatzgruppen crossed the border with explicit instructions to kill Bolshevik commissars and Jews. Now, all right. A Jew is the same as a Bolshevik. And indeed, in the course of the first half of the year the Germans managed to murder more Jews than they killed Soviet soldiers in actual combat operation. It was easier. It's an easier task. In 1941, in the first months of the war, they killed about half a million Jews. And they did not kill as many Soviet soldiers who actually had arms and therefore more difficult to kill. It's easier to kill Jews than soldiers, I mean.
