The initial, formal killings of the Final Solution were undertaken by the SS Einsatzgruppen ( Task Forces ) death squads who followed the Wehrmacht during the Operation Barbarossa invasion of the USSR in June 1941.

In an act of retaliation for the killings on Bloody Sunday, a number of Polish civilians were executed by German military units of the Einsatzgruppen, Waffen SS, and Wehrmacht.

Sydnor remarked that Irving's statement that the Einsatzgruppen were in charge in the death camps seems to indicate that he was not familiar with the history of the Holocaust, as the Einsatzgruppen were in fact mobile death squads who had nothing to do with the death camps.

In parallel, the SS organized special Einsatzgruppen (" task forces ") to murder Jews in these areas and a few massacres were carried out.

Gross asserted emphatically that Polish perpetrators were not coerced by the Germans: “ the ‘’ Einsatzgruppen ,’’ German police detachments and various functionaries who implemented the ‘ final solution ’ did not compel the local population to participate directly in the murder of Jews ... the so-called local population involved in killings of Jews did so of their own free will .” ( p. 133 )

Since Reichenau's order was widely understood as endorsing the mass killings of Ukrainian Jews which were going on behind the German lines, with which 6th Army at any rate was actively co-operating, Rundstedt's open endorsement of its strongly anti-Semitic language clearly contradicts his later assertions that he did not know what the Einsatzgruppen were doing.

These inconsistencies were exposed both at Nuremberg, in the trials of the Einsatzgruppen leaders ( who also claimed they had a duty to obey distasteful orders ) and in the 1947 trials of senior officers, and in Manstein's trial in 1949.

Timothy Snyder notes that in the Soviet Union alone there were 8, 000 documented cases of Roma murdered by the Einsatzgruppen in their sweep east.

Starting in July 1941, the Jewish inhabitants were subjected to mass extermination by shooting in a German campaign carried out by four Einsatzgruppen (" operational groups ") specially organized for the purpose.

After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, special extermination squads ( the Einsatzgruppen ) were organised to kill Jews in the areas of eastern Poland which had been annexed by the Soviets in 1939.

It commanded a number of Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD formed with Gestapo, Kripo and SD officers who were theoretically subordinate to local Wehrmacht commanders.

Through the use of Einsatzgruppen A and B over a million Jews were killed in the Reichskommissariat Ostland.

Most of the town's Jewish population ( which in its history included such famous rabbis as Leo Baeck and Jacob of Lissa as well as the Polish-Jewish writer Ludwig Kalisch ) and remaining Poles were murdered by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen.

Einsatzgruppen (;, " deployment groups " singular Einsatzgruppe ; official full name Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD ) were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting.

The Einsatzgruppen were responsible for the murders of over 1, 000, 000 people, and they were the first Nazi organizations to commence mass killing of Jews as an organized policy.

The Einsatzgruppen were formed under the direction of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich ( deputy to Heinrich Himmler ) and operated by the Schutzstaffel ( SS ) before and during World War II.

" From the beginning, therefore, the Einsatzgruppen mostly killed Jews: initially only adult males, but after a few months indiscriminately.

By June 1942 the main producer of gas vans, Gaubschat Fahrzeugwerke GmbH, delivered 20 gas vans in two models ( for 30-50 and 70-100 individuals ) to Einsatzgruppen, out of 30 ordered.

Following the Heydrich-Wagner agreement on April 28, 1941, Fieldmarshal Walther von Brauchitsch ordered that when Operation Barbarossa began, all German Army commanders were to identify and register at once all Jews in occupied areas in the Soviet Union, and fully co-operate with the Einsatzgruppen.

On July 17, 1941 Heydrich ordered that the Einsatzgruppen were to kill all Jewish Red Army POWs, plus all Red Army POWs from Georgia and Central Asia, as Heydrich viewed them as being possibly Jewish.

There is no evidence to support these assertions ; Hedyrich's order to the Einsatzgruppen leaders of June 29, 1941 was to " silently " encourage pogroms, and on July 2, 1941 he ordered the murder only of Jews who were Communist Party members or who held positions in the Soviet government.

In August 1941, General Walther von Reichenau, the commander of the 6th Army ordered his men to assist the Einsatzgruppen and its Ukrainian auxiliaries with killing the Jews of Byelaya Tserkov.

In areas near the front, the Einsatzgruppen were under Army command, so when Colonel Groscurth ordered the planned massacre to be put on hold, the local Einsatzkommando leader had no choice, but to comply.

It remains unclear whether that was a decision made on Hitler's own initiative motivated only by his own anti-Semitic prejudices, or ( impressed with the willingness and ability of Einsatzgruppe A to murder Jewish women and children ) ordered that the other three Einsatzgruppen emulate Einsatzgruppe A's bloody example.

Himmler ordered the development of gas vans, and these were used by the Einsatzgruppen for mass killings from 1942.

In occupied territory, the Einsatzgruppen also used the local populace for additional security and personnel ( see below ).

Their role was not to serve in combat, except in emergencies, but to carry out " police and security operations " in occupied territories like the Einsatzgruppen.

* Reichssicherheitshauptamt ( RSHA ) – an SS subsidiary organization made up of 7 main departments including, the intelligence & security forces and secret police forces for Germany and occupied territories ; also oversaw the Einsatzgruppen.

The rank was held commonly as an non-commissioned officer staff position and could be found in all of the Nazi security agencies, including the Sicherheitsdienst, and the Einsatzgruppen.

The Germans also decided to bring rear forces ( mostly Waffen-SS units and Einsatzgruppen ) into the conquered territories to counter the partisan activity they knew would erupt in areas they controlled.

The Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner ( representing Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht ) met Heydrich and agreed to the activation, commitment, command, and jurisdiction of Security Police and SD units in the Wehrmachts table of operations and equipment ( TOE ): in the rear operational areas, the Einsatzgruppen were to function in administrative sub-ordination to the field armies in order to effect the tasks assigned them by Heydrich.

The Einsatzgruppen ( SS task forces ) had been originally formed by Heydrich to secure government papers and offices in areas taken over by Germany before World War II.

In a further agreement between the army and the SS concluded in May 1941 by General Wagner and Walter Schellenberg, it was agreed that the Einsatzgruppen in front-line areas were to operate under army command while the army provided the Einsatzgruppen with all necessary logistical support.

Among other things, he gave evidence about the murder of hundreds of thousands of Soviet prisoners of war and the Einsatzgruppen death squads, who liquidated more than a million Jews in the conquered areas of the Soviet Union, Poland and the Ukraine.

Authorised by Hitler and under the direction of Himmler and Heydrich, the Einsatzgruppen units — now repurposed as death squads — followed the Heer ( army ) into Poland, and by the end of 1939 they had murdered some 65, 000 intellectuals and other civilians.

Following the army into the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen rounded up and killed Jews and others deemed undesirable by the Nazi state.

According to an international commission report released by the Romanian government in 2004, Antonescu's dictatorial government of Romania is responsible for the murder in various forms ( including deportations to concentration camps and executions by the Romanian Army and Gendarmerie and the German Einsatzgruppen ), between 280, 000 to 380, 000 Jews in Romania and in the war zone of Bessarabia, Bukovina and Transnistria.

The SS Einsatzgruppen death squads, formed by his deputy, Heydrich, murdered many civilian non-combatants, primarily Jews, in the countries occupied by Germany during World War II.

Before Operation Reinhard, over half a million Jews had been killed by the Einsatzgruppen, mobile extermination units, in territories conquered by the German army.

After the outbreak of war between Germany and Poland, in September 1939, Canaris visited the front and witnessed examples of the war crimes committed by the SS Einsatzgruppen.

During trips to Russia in 1941, Heinrich Himmler learned the psychological impact on the Einsatzgruppen killers posed by the shooting of women and children.

For his war crimes Paul Blobel was sentenced to death by the Nuremberg Military Tribunal in the Einsatzgruppen Trial.

Sydnor pointed out that Hitler had received an SS report in November 1942 which contained a mention of 363, 211 Russian Jews executed by the Einsatzgruppen between August – November 1942.

Behind the Army came SS Einsatzgruppen ( task forces ) commanded by Theodore Eicke, who began systematically executing Jews and members of the Polish educated classes.

He was accused of responsibility for war crimes by Poland ( the shooting of surrendered soldiers in 1939 ), the Soviet Union ( the actions of the Einsatzgruppen in 1941 ), Britain ( the Commando Order of 1942 ) and France ( the Oradour massacre of 1944 ).

The camp, which did not have gas chambers, used three gas vans, that had been previously employed by Einsatzgruppen on the Russian Front, to kill Jews from the Łódź Ghetto.