66. Cit. Aly, 270. The GPU was the State Political Executive, the successor body to the Cheka, the notorious secret police of the Tsars, then of the Bolsheviks.
67. Aly, 270–22.
68. In a paper as yet unpublished, ‘From Barbarossa to Wannsee. The Role of Reinhard Heydrich’, Eberhard Jackel (to whom I am most grateful for the opportunity to consult it) puts a compelling case for viewing Heydrich, not Himmler (as does Richard Breitman in his The Architect of Genocide), as the chief ‘architect’ of the Final Solution.
69. Halder KTB, ii.320 (17 March 1941); trans. Halder Diary, 339.
70. Streit, 31.
71. Warlimont, 158–60; Anatomie des SS-Staates, ii.172, 202–3 (Doc.2). Negotiations involving the General-Quartermaster Eduard Wagner and the SS leadership about the arrangements for the ‘special commission’ of the Reichsfuhrer-SS in the east were under way in early March (Anatomie, ii.171–2). According to Walter Schellenberg, he himself was involved in deliberations with Wagner, and in turning them into ‘an expression of the Fuhrer’s will’ (Schellenberg, 92; see Streit, 31–2 and 310 n.19 (for contradictions in Schellenberg’s testimony)). Wagner’s meeting with Heydrich turned upon establishing a demarcation line between police and military spheres of responsibility for the liquidation of captured political commissars, and was prompted by the Wehrmacht’s concern that Heydrich would greatly widen the scope of his own powers (Jorg Friedrich, Das Gesetz des Krieges. Das deutsche Heer in Ru?land 1941–1945. Der Proze? gegen das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Munich/Zurich, 2nd edn, 1995, 289–92).
72. DRZW, iv.416–17.
73. Halder KTB, ii.335–7 (30 March 1941); trans. Halder Diary, 345–6. According to Halder’s post-war testimony, Hitler justified his ideological warfare in the East by alluding to the fact that the USSR had not signed the Geneva Convention of 27 July 1928 relating to the treatment of prisoners-of-war. (IMG, vii.396–7 (statement by Halder on 31 October 1945). See also Anatomie, ii.174; and Streit, 36.)
74. IMG, xx.635 (testimony by Brauchitsch on 9 August 1946); see also Leach, 153; and Streit, 35.
75. Warlimont, 162. His explanation, that they had not followed Hitler’s diatribe or grasped the meaning of what he was saying, is scarcely credible.
76. Cit. Domarus, 1683, n.134.
77. Cit. Anatomie, ii.175–6; trans., Anatomy of the SS State, London, 1968, 516.
78. Anatomie, ii.176, 211–12.
79. Anatomie, ii.211.
80. See Jurgen Forster, ‘The German Army and the Ideological War against the Soviet Union’, in Gerhard Hirschfeld (ed.), The Policies of Genocide. Jews and Soviet Prisoners of War in Nazi Germany, London, 1986, 15–29, here 17. See also Streit, ch.III; Manfred Messerschmidt, Die Wehrmacht im NS-Staat. Zeit der Indoktrination, Hamburg, 1969, 390–411; and Helmut Krausnick, ‘Kommissarbefehl und “Gerichtsbarkeitserla? Barbarossa” in neuer Sicht’, VfZ, 25 (1977), 682–738, especially 717ff, 737.
81. Forster, ‘German Army’, 19; Streit, 36ff
82. Anatomie, ii.178–9, 215–18.
83. Forster, ‘German Army’, 19. See, on its genesis, Streit, 44–9.
84. Anatomie, ii.225–7; trans., Anatomy of the SS State, 532. (Italics in the original.)
85. Streit, 50–51.
86. Engel, 102–3 (10 May 1941); Anatomie, ii.177; DRZW, iv.446; Bodo Scheurig, Henning von Tresckow. Ein Preusse gegen Hitler, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin, 1987, 113–14. On reports of the order being implemented by different units, see Krausnick, ‘Kommissarbefehl’, 733–6. According to the most meticulous, if still provisional, statistical analysis yet made, between a half and two-thirds of front divisions implemented the order. (Detlef Siebert, ‘Die Durchfuhrung des Kommissarbefehls in den Frontverbanden des Heeres. Eine quantifierende Auswertung der For schung’. I am most grateful to Detlef Siebert for providing me with a copy of this as yet unpublished paper.)
87. Anatomie, ii.177.
88. Leach, 154–5. It has been surmised, however, with some justification that Bock’s objections were primarily levelled against the decree limiting military jurisdiction, issued a day after the decree on treatment of ‘political functionaries’ (Anatomie, ii.174–5).
89. DRZW, iv. 24, 446. For Kuchler’s support of ‘severe measures undertaken’ in Poland (where he had nonetheless criticized the brutality of the SS) in the interests of a ‘final volkisch solution’ of ‘an ethnic struggle raging for centuries on the eastern border’, see Streit, 55–6.
90. DRZW, iv. 24, 446. For a brief sketch of the career of the enigmatic Hoepner, see Samuel W. Mitcham, Jr and Gene Mueller, ‘Generaloberst Erich Hoepner’, in Gerd R. Ueberschar (ed.), Hitlers militarische Elite. Bd.2, Vom Kriegsbeginn bis zum Weltkriegsende, Darmstadt, 1998, 93–9.
91. See Arno J. Mayer, Why did the Heavens not Darken? The ‘Final Solution’ in History, New York, 1988, 212.
92. As Ulrich von Hassell put it, shortly before the campaign began: ‘Brauchitsch and Halder have already gone along with Hitler’s manoeuvre of transferring the odium of incendiarism (Mordbrennerei) to the army from the SS, which up to now had alone been burdened with it’ (Hassell, 257 (15 June 1941)).
93. CP, 432 (25 March 1941).
94. Staatsmanner I, 234.
95. Staatsmanner I, 236; Irving, HW, 217, for Abwehr reports of growing anti-government feeling in Yugoslavia.
96. Keitel, 260.
97. DRZW, iii.419.
98. Hillgruber, Strategie, 337; DRZW, iii.418.
99. Weisungen, 80.
100. DRZW, iii.421.
101. Weisungen, 94.
102. Weisungen, 95; DRZW, iii. 423.
103. DRZW, iii.422.
104. See Creveld, 96ff.
105. Creveld, 134–5.
106. DRZW, iii.418 n.10; Domarus, 1623–4.
107. Domarus, 1670; Hauner, Hitler, 158.
108. Weinberg, iii.216.
109. DRZW, iii.438–40.
110. DRZW, iii.442.ff.; Creveld, 139ff.
111. Keitel, 261.
112. TBJG, I/9, 210 (29 March 1941).
113. IMG, xxviii.22, Doc.1746-PS (Hitler’s speech to his military leaders); IfZ, ED 100, Sammlung-Irving, Hewel-Diary, entry for 27 March 1941; Irving, HW, 218.
114. Below, 265.
115. Peter Bor, Gesprache mit Halder, Wiesbaden, 1950, 180. See also Heidemarie Schall-Riancour, Aufstand und Gehorsam. Offizierstum und Generalstab im Umbruch. Leben und Wirken von Generaloberst Franz Halder, Generalstabschef 1938–1942, Wiesbaden, 1972, 159. Creveld, 145,
