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ElNSATZGRUPPEN— FIRST ORGANIZED MASS MURDERS On 22 June 1941 the German armed forces attacked the Soviet Union. The decision to invade the Soviet Union preceded the actual German attack by about a year.As early as June 1940, after the unsuccessful attempts at bringing England to her knees, Hitler ordered his military leaders to begin preliminary planning for an attack on the Soviet Union.The reasoning behind this move was that the elimination of the Russian state in "one blow" would destroy all hope for England of continuing the war.1 Further incentive was Hitler'ssuspicion of the territorialacquisitions carried out by the Soviets in the east. In June 1940 the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were annexed to the Soviet Union,a final consequence of the August 1939 Ribbentrop-MolotovPact,2 which gave the Soviets free reign in eastern Europe. On 28 June 1940 the Soviet army entered Bessarabia and northern Bukovina,two areas that had belonged to Romania. Bessarabia, with its capital of Kishinev, lay between the Pruth and Dniester rivers and had a total population of approximately 3 million.3 Northern Bukovina, which formed the western part of Bessarabia and bordered on Hungary and Poland, had its capital in Czernowitz and had a population of about 500,000.4 All these areas as of June 1940 became part of the Soviet Union. The eastern region of Poland had fallen into the hands of the Soviets in September 1939.This area comprised roughly half the countrysome 196,000 square kilometres with a Jewish population of more than 1 million. It embraced the major Polish regions of Volhynia, Eastern Galicia,and Polish Belorussia.5 Thus by the end of 1940, with the exception of the neutral countries and Britain, Europe was divided into areas under direct control or influence of either Germany or the Soviet Union. Concerns about England or fears of Soviet expansion were not the only motivating factors for the assault on the Soviet Union.The conquest of Soviet territory would allow Germany to exploit the immense natural resources of the country and would thus free Germany from the need for imports to sustain her economy. In addition, Hitler's dreams of Lebensmum for the German people were predicated on further expansion to the east. The Soviet Union in Hitler's mind was a "Bolshevik-Jewish"state, manipulated by Jews who wished to impose their communist rule on the rest of Europe. The coming war against the Soviets was to be unlike the more usual war that had been waged in western Europe. The war against the Soviets was to be a war of two incompatible ideologies. It was to be a war of toted destruction^ war in which the Jews, as the alleged instigators and 1. Burdick and Jacobsen, Haider War Diary, 241-246. For evidence of the initial plans to attack the Soviet Union, see Nuremberg Documents PS-1799,PS2353 , PS-3014, PS-3031, PS-3032.See also Warlimont affidavit in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression,Supplemental Vol. B, 1634-1637.See also Russel H.S.Stolfi, "Barbarossa Revisited:A Critical Reappraisal of the Opening Stages of the Russo-German Campaign (JuneDecember 1941)"Journal of Modern History 54 (1982),29-30. 2. Dov Levin, The Lesser of Two Evils: Eastern European Jewry Under Soviet Rale, 1939-1941 (Philadelphia and Jerusalem:The Jewish Publication Society, 1995), 10-ll.Vilna (Vilnius) was handed over to the Lithuanian army in October 1939. Ibid., 5,33. 3. Ibid., 15.Bessarabia had earlier been part of Czarist Russia. In 1918 the region became part of Romania and formed Romania's northeast corner adjacent to the Soviet Union. 4. Ibid.,6. 5. Ibid.,xv. Volhynia until 1914 was part of the Russian Empire.After World War I it was part of Poland as a separate district until September 1939.Under Soviet rule the area was divided into the districts of Rovno and Volhynia. Eastern Galicia lay south ofVolhynia.The Ukraine formed its eastern border,while the western border was the River San. Eastern Galicia included such cities as Lvov.Tarnopol, and Stanislowow. Polish Belorussia was the western part of an area known as Belorussia, or White Russia.Following World War I it had been divided into two parts: a large eastern region that became part of the Soviet Union; and a smaller western region that was part of Poland. 203 6. Yahil,//o/ocm/s/,243-245. 7. The original date for the invasion was 15 May 1941. Bad weather...

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