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{{Short description|Nazi order instructing frontline troops to murder Soviet political commissars}}
{{EngvarB|date=October 2019}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2019}}
[[File:Kommissarbefehl 001.jpg|thumb|First page of the Commissar Order, dated 6 June 1941]]
The '''Commissar Order''' ({{langx|de|Kommissarbefehl}}) was an order issued by the German High Command ([[Oberkommando der Wehrmacht|OKW]]) on 6 June 1941 before [[Operation Barbarossa]]. Its official name was '''Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars''' (''Richtlinien für die Behandlung politischer Kommissare''). It instructed the ''[[Wehrmacht]]'' that any [[Soviet Union|Soviet]] [[political commissar]] identified among captured troops be [[summary execution|summarily executed]] as a purported enforcer of the so-called [[Jewish Bolshevism|Judeo-Bolshevism]] ideology in military forces. It is one of a series of [[Criminal orders (Nazi Germany)|criminal orders]] issued by the Nazi leadership.

According to the order, all those prisoners who could be identified as "thoroughly [[Bolsheviks|bolshevised]] or as active representatives of the Bolshevist ideology" should also be killed.<ref>[http://www.historynet.com/wars_conflicts/world_war_2/3037296.html Soviet Prisoners of War: Forgotten Nazi Victims of World War II] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080330210330/http://www.historynet.com/wars_conflicts/world_war_2/3037296.html |date=March 30, 2008 }}</ref>

==History==
Planning for Operation Barbarossa began in June 1940. In December 1940, [[Adolf Hitler]] began vague allusions to the operation<ref>{{Cite web|title=Führer Directives and Führer Orders|url=https://ww2db.com/doc.php?q=300|access-date=2021-07-19|website=WW2DB}}</ref> to senior generals on how the war was to be conducted, giving him the opportunity to gauge their reaction to such matters as collaboration with the [[Schutzstaffel|SS]] in the "rendering harmless" of Bolsheviks, which eventually culminated in [[wikisource:Führer_Directive_21|''Führer'' Directive 21]] on 18 December 1940. The ''Wehrmacht'' was already politicised to some extent, having participated in the [[Night of the Long Knives|extra-legal killings]] of [[Ernst Röhm]] and his associates in 1934, communists in the [[Sudetenland]] in 1938, and Czech and German political exiles in France in 1940.<ref>Burleigh 1997, p. 65</ref> On 3 March 1941, Hitler explained to his closest military advisers how the [[war of annihilation]] was to be waged. On that same day, instructions incorporating Hitler's demands went to Section L of the ''Oberkommando der Wehrmacht'' (OKW) (under Deputy Chief [[Walter Warlimont]]); these provided the basis for the "Guidelines in Special Areas to Instructions No. 21 (Case Barbarossa)" discussing, among other matters, the interaction of the army and SS in the theatre of operations, deriving from the "need to neutralise at once leading bolsheviks and commissars."<ref>[[Manfred Messerschmidt]], Forward Defence (as included in ''War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II 1941–1945'', edited by [[Hannes Heer]] and [[Klaus Naumann (historian)|Klaus Naumann]] (2000); page 388</ref>

Discussions proceeded on 17 March during a situation conference, where Chief of the [[Oberkommando des Heeres|OKH]] General Staff [[Franz Halder]], Quartermaster-General [[Eduard Wagner]], and Chief of Operational Department of the OKH [[Adolf Heusinger]] were present. Hitler declared: "The intelligentsia established by [[Joseph Stalin|Stalin]] must be exterminated. The most brutal violence is to be used in the Great Russian Empire" (quoted from Halder's War Diary entry of 17 March ).<ref>Messerschmidt; page 389</ref>

On 30 March, Hitler addressed over 200 senior officers in the [[Reich Chancellery]]. Among those present was Halder, who recorded the key points of the speech. He argued that the war against the Soviet Union "cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion" because it was a war of "ideologies and racial differences." He further declared that the Commissars had to be "liquidated" without mercy because they were the "bearers of ideologies directly opposed to [[Nazism|National Socialism]]."<ref name="RiseFall" /> Hitler stipulated the "annihilation of the Bolshevik commissars and the Communist intelligentsia" (thus laying the foundation for the Commissar Order), dismissed the idea of courts-martial for felonies committed by German troops, and emphasised the different nature of the war in the East from the war in the West.{{sfn|Kay|2011|p=72}}

Hitler was well aware that this order was illegal, but personally absolved in advance any soldiers who violated international law in enforcing this order. He said that the [[Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907]] did not apply since the Soviets had not signed them.<ref name="RiseFall">Shirer, ''The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich'' (Touchstone Edition) (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990)</ref> The Soviet Union, as a distinct entity from the [[Russian Empire]], did not, in fact, sign the [[Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War|Geneva Convention of 1929]]. However, Germany did, and was bound by [[Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War (1929)#Execution of the convention|Article 82]], stating "In case, in time of war, one of the belligerents is not a party to the Convention, its provisions shall nevertheless remain in force as between the belligerents who are parties thereto."

The Commissar Order read as follows:
{{quotation|'''Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars'''

In the battle against Bolshevism, the adherence of the enemy to the principles of humanity or international law is not to be counted upon. In particular it can be expected that those of us who are taken prisoner will be treated with hatred, cruelty and inhumanity by political commissars of every kind.

The troops must be aware that:

1. In this battle mercy or considerations of international law is false. They are a danger to our own safety and to the rapid pacification of the conquered territories.

2. The originators of barbaric, Asiatic methods of warfare are the political commissars. So immediate and unhesitatingly severe measures must be undertaken against them. They are therefore, when captured in battle, as a matter of routine to be dispatched by firearms.

The following provisions also apply:

3. ... Political commissars as agents of the enemy troops are recognizable from their special badge—a red star with a golden woven hammer and sickle on the sleeves.... They are to be separated from the prisoners of war immediately, i.e. already on the battlefield. This is necessary, in order to remove from them any possibility of influencing the captured soldiers. These commissars are not to be recognized as soldiers; the protection due to prisoners of war under international law does not apply to them. When they have been separated, they are to be finished off.

4. Political commissars who have not made themselves guilty of any enemy action nor are suspected of such should be left unmolested for the time being. It will only be possible after further penetration of the country to decide whether remaining functionaries may be left in place or are to be handed over to the ''Sonderkommando''. The aim should be for the latter to carry out the assessment.

In judging the question "guilty or not guilty", the personal impression of the attitude and bearing of the commissar should as a matter of principle count for more than the facts of the case which it may not be possible to prove.}}

==Response==
The first draft of the Commissar Order was issued by General [[Eugen Müller]] on 6 May 1941 and called for the shooting of all commissars in order to avoid letting any captured commissar reach a [[Prisoner-of-war camp|POW camp]] in Germany.{{sfn|Jacobsen|1968|pp=516–517}} German historian Hans-Adolf Jacobsen wrote:

<blockquote>There was never any doubt in the minds of German Army commanders that the order deliberately flouted international law; that is borne out by the unusually small number of written copies of the ''Kommissarbefehl'' which were distributed.{{sfn|Jacobsen|1968|p=517}}</blockquote>

The paragraph in which Müller called for army commanders to prevent "excesses" was removed on the request of the OKW.{{sfn|Jacobsen|1968|pp=518–519}} [[German Army (1935–1945)|German Army]] Commander-in-Chief [[Walther von Brauchitsch]] amended the order on 24 May 1941 by attaching Müller's paragraph and calling on the army to maintain discipline in the enforcement of the order.{{sfn|Jacobsen|1968|p=519}} The final draft of the order was issued by the OKW on 6 June 1941 and was restricted only to the most senior commanders, who were instructed to inform their subordinates verbally.{{sfn|Jacobsen|1968|p=519}}

Nazi propaganda presented Barbarossa as an ideological-racial war between German National Socialism and "Judeo-Bolshevism," dehumanising the Soviet enemy as a force of Slavic ''[[Untermensch]]'' (sub-humans) and "Asiatic" savages engaging in "barbaric Asiatic fighting methods" commanded by evil Jewish commissars to whom German troops were to grant no mercy.{{sfn|Förster|2005|p=126}} The vast majority of ''Wehrmacht'' officers and soldiers tended to regard the war in Nazi terms, seeing their Soviet opponents as sub-human.{{sfn|Förster|2005|p=127}}

The enforcement of the Commissar Order led to thousands of executions.<ref name="Förster pages 494-520">[[Jürgen Förster|Förster, Jürgen]] "The Wehrmacht and the War of Extermination Against the Soviet Union". ''The Nazi Holocaust'' p. 502</ref> German historian [[Jürgen Förster]] wrote in 1989 that it was simply not true that the Commissar Order was not enforced, as most German Army commanders claimed in their memoirs and some German historians like [[Ernst Nolte]] were still claiming.<ref name="Förster pages 494-520" /> The majority of German units carried out the Commissar Order.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia|title=The War of Annihilation in the Soviet Union|encyclopedia=The German Military and the Holocaust|url=https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-german-military-and-the-holocaust|access-date=2020-08-10|language=en}}</ref> [[Erich von Manstein]] passed on the Commissar Order to his subordinates, who executed all the captured commissars, something that he was convicted of by a British court in 1949.<ref name="Smesler, Ronald page 97">Smesler, Ronald & Davies, Edward ''[[The Myth of the Eastern Front]]'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007 p. 97</ref> After the war, Manstein lied about disobeying the Commissar Order, saying he had been opposed to the order, and never enforced it.<ref name="Smesler, Ronald page 97" /> On 23 September 1941, after several ''Wehrmacht'' commanders had asked for the order to be softened as a way of encouraging the [[Red Army]] to surrender, Hitler declined "any modification of the existing orders regarding the treatment of political commissars."{{sfn|Jacobsen|1968|p=522}}

When the Commissar Order became known among the Red Army, it provoked stronger resistance to German forces.<ref name="HolocaustEncyclopedia">[http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007454 Holocaust Encyclopedia: Commisar Order]</ref> This unwanted effect was cited in German appeals to Hitler (e.g. by [[Claus von Stauffenberg]]), who finally cancelled the Commissar Order after one year, on 6 May 1942.{{sfn|Hartmann|2013|p=91}} The order was used as evidence at the [[Nuremberg trials]] and as part of the broader issue of whether the German generals were obligated to [[superior orders|follow orders]] from Hitler even when they knew those orders were illegal.

==See also==
* [[Commando Order]]
* [[German atrocities committed against Soviet prisoners of war]]
* [[Main Political Directorate of the Soviet Army and Soviet Navy]]
* [[Severity Order]]

==References==
===Citations===
{{Reflist}}

===Sources===
{{refbegin}}
* [[Michael Burleigh|Burleigh, Michael]]. Ethics and Extermination. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Cambridge Books Online. Web. 5 May 2016. {{doi|10.1017/CBO9780511806162}}
* [[Jürgen Förster]]: "The Wehrmacht and the War of Extermination Against the Soviet Union" pages 494-520 from ''The Nazi Holocaust Part 3 The "Final Solution": The Implementation of Mass Murder'' Volume 2 edited by [[Michael Marrus]], Westpoint: Meckler Press, 1989 {{ISBN|0-88736-255-9}}.
* Jürgen Förster: "Das Unternehmen 'Barbarossa' als Eroberungs- und Vernichtungskrieg." In: {{cite book |isbn = 3-421-06098-3 |pages = 435–440 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=IBhnmwEACAAJ |title = Germany and the Second World War |year = 1983 |publisher = Clarendon Press }}
* {{cite book
  | last = Förster
  | first = Jürgen
  | author-link = Jürgen Förster
  | contribution = The German Military's Image of Russia
  | editor1-last = Erickson
  | editor1-first = Ljubica
  | editor2-last = Erickson
  | editor2-first = Mark
  | title = Russia War, Peace and Diplomacy
  | publisher = Weidenfeld & Nicolson
  | location = London
  | year = 2005
  }}
* {{cite book | last=Hartmann |first=Christian |title=Operation Barbarossa: Germany's War in the East, 1941–1945 |year=2013 | place=Oxford and New York | publisher=Oxford University Press | isbn = 978-0-19-966078-0  }}
* {{cite book | last = Jacobsen |first = Hans-Adolf | chapter = The ''Kommissarbefehl'' and Mass Executions of Soviet Russian Prisoners of War | title = Anatomy of the SS State | editor1-last = Krausnick | editor1-first = Helmut | editor2-last = Buchheim | editor2-first = Hans | editor3-last = Broszat | editor3-first = Martin | editor4-last = Jacobsen | editor4-first = Hans-Adolf | year = 1968 | publisher = Walker and Company | location = New York | isbn = 978-0-00-211026-6  }}
* {{cite book
  | last = Kay
  | first = Alex J.
  | author-link = Alex J. Kay
  | title = Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political And Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940–1941
  | url = http://www.berghahnbooks.com/title.php?rowtag=KayExploitation
  | publisher = Berghahn Books
  | location = New York
  | year = 2011
  | orig-year = 2006
  | isbn = 978-1-84545-186-8
   }}
* [[Helmut Krausnick]]: "Kommissarbefehl und 'Gerichtsbarkeitserlass Barbarossa' in neuer Sicht," In: ''Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte.'' 25, 1977, pp.&nbsp;682–738.
* Reinhard Otto: "Wehrmacht, Gestapo und sowjetische Kriegsgefangene im deutschen Reichsgebiet 1941/42." Munich 1998, {{ISBN|3-486-64577-3}}.
* [[Felix Römer]]: "Der Kommissarbefehl. Wehrmacht und NS-Verbrechen an der Ostfront 1941/42." Schöningh, Paderborn 2008, {{ISBN|978-3-506-76595-6}}.
* {{cite contribution |last=Römer |first=Felix  |author-link = Felix Römer| contribution=The Wehrmacht in the War of Ideologies: The Army and Hitler’s Criminal Orders on the Eastern Front |title=Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization |editor=Alex J. Kay |editor-link=Alex J. Kay |editor2=Jeff Rutherford |editor2-link=Jeff Rutherford |editor3=David Stahel |editor3-link=David Stahel |publisher=[[University of Rochester Press]] |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-58046-407-9 }}
* [[Christian Streit]]: "Keine Kameraden. Die Wehrmacht und die sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen 1941–1945." Dietz, Bonn 1991 [1979], {{ISBN|3-8012-5016-4}}.
{{refend}}

==External links==
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20050206192724/http://ns-archiv.de/krieg/sowjetunion/kommissar.shtml  Der Kommissarbefehl] 6 June 1941 [[Hitler]]
* [http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English58.pdf Commissar order: English translation]
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=Q-4Dw_Bt0zcC&dq=aus%C3%BCbung+der+kriegsgerichtsbarkeit+im+gebiet&pg=PA172  "Fuhrer-Erlasse" 1939–1945 (über die Ausübung der Kriegsgerichtsbarkeit im Gebiet "Barbarossa")] 13 May 1941 [[Wilhelm Keitel|Keitel]]

{{Einsatzgruppen}}
{{Soviet prisoners of war}}
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[[Category:Military history of Germany during World War II]]
[[Category:Military history of the Soviet Union during World War II]]
[[Category:Eastern Front (World War II)]]
[[Category:Orders by Adolf Hitler]]
[[Category:Nazi war crimes]]
[[Category:War crimes of the Wehrmacht]]
[[Category:Anti-communism in Germany]]
[[Category:1941 documents]]
[[Category:Nazi war crimes in Russia]]
[[Category:Politicides]]
[[Category:Operation Barbarossa]]
[[Category:Political commissars of the Soviet Army|#]]